By Michael Connelly
“It’s so easy to forget that there’s great beauty in the desert!” So remarks Detective Renee Ballard as she and Harry Bosch pause at the Old Spanish Trail to fulfill a commitment. Taking in the distant ridgeline, the salt flats and the flowers at their feet. Of the flowers, Bosch remarks,
“Desert Star,” . . . "I know a guy, says they’re a sign of god in the fucked-up world. That they’re relentless and resilient against the heat and the cold, against everything that wants to stop them” (388).
Bosch takes the flower as a metaphor for Ballard, but the same of course can be said of the aging detective, relentless in his pursuit of the killer who took the life of a family of four.
Desert Star is volume five of the Renee Ballard series, but with other novels crosses over into the life of Bosch. There is a reason Michael Connelly has sold 80 million books. Desert Star blends his talent for creating credible characters while weaving threads to multiple lines of intrigue all in the search for “justice” or at least resolution.
According to Connelly, Harry Bosch is seventy-two after aging in real-time over thirty years and twenty-four thrillers. Connelly’s writing is like a new adventure with old friends — fresh and exciting.
