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Every Soul Counts

 In the weeks before Michael Connelly's "The Dark Hours" popped up, Stephen King read a pre-release copy and Tweeted, "I don't know how Connelly actually keeps getting better at this late stage in his career."


I'm not sure he is getting better, but he is at least maintaining his momentum. His brain seems inexhaustible. He puts flawed, eccentric people in weird situations -- and I can't look away.

"Dark Hours" refers to the most-difficult periods you endure, alone, after you have lived through a violent crime. In this novel, a pair of rapists, "the Midnight Men," are wandering around Los Angeles. They seem to egg each other on. Before any individual rape happens, the victim is forced to wear a blindfold, even though the rapists are already masked. Could this be because some kind of filming session is occurring -- and the rapists want to keep secret the presence of cameras?

Elsewhere, in Los Angeles, there is a New Year tradition of firing bullets into the sky at midnight. Sometimes, a stray bullet falls to Earth and injures/kills someone. This seems to have happened in 2020 -- except that the forensics team has a bombshell. The victim in question wasn't just a part of a freak accident. Someone sought this victim and planned an assassination for midnight -- precisely when no one in Los Angeles would be paying attention.

These two strange scenarios send our lead detective, Renee Ballard, on various chases. And it's in the chases that Connelly's genius for detail shines through. The LAPD has a fleet of battery-powered BMWs -- but if you're trying to solve a case, you're driving all over, and the battery inevitably dies, leaving you stranded. One unit, formerly called the Fingerprint Unit, is now called the Fingerprint Analysis Unit -- because no one wants to belong to a group called FU. Ballard hates when her lazy Hollywood boss says, "All quiet on the Western front" -- because Hollywood actually is *not* a Western front. But if you remember that the neighborhoods further West than Hollywood are extremely wealthy -- and generally free of crime after dark -- then Hollywood really *does* become a "Western front," if not in a *literal* sense.

I don't have the greatest attention span, for now, and I'm happy to have Connelly's sense of authority and his short chapters. I know I'm in good hands. I'm grateful for that.

P.S. On a more pedestrian plane -- the title "Dark Hours" also refers to possible goings-on within the Los Angeles Lighting Bureau. This is a group that takes responsibility for LA's street lights. I love the role that lighting plays in the plot -- something I'd never, never think of.
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