Review: The Late Show

The Late Show by Michael Connelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Never read anything by this author though I really enjoy the TV adaptations of Harry Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer. Took a couple of chapters to get into the rhythm of his writing but well worth the effort. The characters are so multidimensional you can almost see them and hear them. Renee in particular is clear-cut: driven, determined to solve her cases at all costs and willing to take on cases not her own. She has been shunted to the night shift, where she and her partner pick up the cases and then, come morning, after documenting their parts, they turn them over to other detectives to work.

Her partner, being a long time detective, is perfectly happy with that arrangement--his days are his own with no need to spend hours away from his family. For Renee, however, it is frustrating. She has only her dog and a Grandmother up the coast that she returns to when she has week-ends off. She made waves when a superior sexually harassed her and, though the rank and file, for the most part, took her side, he was powerful enough to side line her. Even her former partner, turned his back on her and is now the superior's right hand man.

Much of this turns around, once some of the pieces of the major crime, a murder of three big time losers in a nightclub, start to fall into place. She's been kept out of it but the former partner is right in the thick of it. In the meantime, she has her own case to tie up--the brutal attack on a transexual male prostitute--and almost loses her life doing it.

Good, dramatic, fast paced sleuthing all around.