Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly: A review

If anyone does police procedurals better than Michael Connelly, I don't know who it is. He takes us step by step by step through investigations and describes the actions of the police, warts and all. We see when they step over the line into criminal behavior in order to catch a criminal. In Connelly's world, though, their motives are always righteous.

Dark Sacred Night, the title taken from a phrase in the lyrics for "What a Wonderful World," is Connelly's latest effort and it features two of his characters: Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch. Detective Ballard is still working for LAPD on the "late show," the night shift of the department working the streets of Los Angeles. Harry is still working as a reserve officer with the San Fernando Police Department, assigned to working cold cases.

It's a cold case that brings the two together. Harry is working on the case of a 15-year-old runaway named Daisy Clayton who was brutally raped and murdered and her body dumped on the streets of Los Angeles several years earlier. He has a connection with Daisy's mother who he helped to get clean from a drug habit and who he's now trying to keep clean. He has promised her that he will find the person who killed her daughter and bring him to justice.

His investigation takes him to the LAPD and Ballard discovers him there where he has picked the locks and is going through the files. She ushers him out but is intrigued by his interest in this old case and after finding out more about it, she finds herself drawn into it, also. She offers to work with him on the case, working on it in her spare time as a "hobby case." Thus a partnership is born.

Ballard, of course, has a full-time demanding job and Connelly shows us how most of her time is taken up with handling the cases assigned to her in that job. She works on the Clayton case on her own time.

Bosch, too, has other responsibilities with the SFPD, responsibilities that he doesn't seem to be handling very well these days. In fact, he makes mistakes which result in a witness being murdered and then one of his fellow cops trying to kill himself while in Bosch's charge. Maybe Bosch is finally past it and ready to retire. For the third time. In the end, his boss makes that choice for him and suspends him indefinitely. It's unlikely he'll be working for SFPD again.

At least that frees him up to work full-time on the Clayton case.

Connelly, as always, does an excellent job of describing the painstaking and mind-numbing detail involved in looking through records and running down clues to finally isolate potential suspects in a case that is years old and has gone very, very cold. Of course, Ballard and Bosch get there in the end. Was there ever any doubt?

I found it interesting that Connelly referenced several current day events and phenomena in the telling of his story. He referred to the #MeToo movement and in one instance alluded to Stormy Daniels. Moreover, he gives a lot of free publicity to Uber; everybody "Ubers" in the book. Apparently, it is now a verb.

My only problem with this book was the switching back and forth between hot current-day cases and the cold case. It was a bit hard to keep focused and occasionally I lost the thread and had to go back and read a chapter - or at least part of it - to remind myself of where I was. But the story of Daisy Clayton and her mother, Elizabeth, was heartbreaking and the efforts of Ballard and Bosch to bring justice to the case were compelling. It was a good read.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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