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The Night Fire (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel, 22) Summary and Reviews

The Night Fire (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel, 22) by Michael Connelly

The Night Fire (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel, 22)

by Michael Connelly

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  • Published:
  • Apr 2020, 448 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor in this New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before — the unsolved killing of a troubled young man.

Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. As she begins her inquiries — while still working her own cases on the midnight shift — Ballad finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don't add up.

The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a disturbing question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?

Written with the intense pacing and masterful suspense that have made Michael Connelly "the hard-boiled fiction master of our time" (NPR), The Night Fire continues the unofficial partnership of two fierce detectives determined not to let the fire with burn out.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Connelly is without peer when it comes to police procedurals, and once again proves that he's the modern master of the form." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Remarkable narrative legerdemain...Not only has Connelly created another fully formed series lead in Renée, who has her own fascinating backstory, but he has also forged a fascinating yin-and-yang relationship between the old school Harry and the unconventional loner Renèe...Master chef Connelly has once again combined familiar ingredients into a new and completely satisfying dish. Connelly is on a roll, with three consecutive number-one New York Times bestsellers. Don't bet against number four." ―Booklist (starred review)

"Connelly manages to top himself with his latest intensely gripping thriller...He tells a superb tale with an economy of words using a no-nonsense, fly-on-the-wall style of writing...Fans of this prolific author of crime dramas and either series will find this best-seller-list-bound novel hard to put down." ―Library Journal (starred review)

"The Night Fire offers more than a few incendiary surprises." ―Los Angeles Times

This information about The Night Fire (A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel, 22) was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Michael Connelly Author Biography

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which ...

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