Publisher's Synopsis
Renée Ballard, a LAPD detective, left the force a year ago in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and interminable paperwork. Ballard, on the other hand, takes back her badge and leaves "The Late Show" to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department.
Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him for years: a psychopath who killed a family and is still free. Bosch accepts Ballard's offer: Come volunteer as an investigator in her new Open-Unsolved Unit, and with the LAPD's resources behind him, he can pursue his "white whale." The unsolved rape and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl is Ballard's top priority. The councilman who supported re-forming the unit and was able to shut it down again is dependent on the decades-old case because the victim was his sister. The political pressure on Ballard has never been greater when he receives a "cold hit" linking the killing to another similar incident, demonstrating that a serial predator has been operating in the city for years. She must nab Bosch from his own investigation, the case that brings his lifelong mission to an end, in order to maintain momentum. The two should set to the side old feelings of hatred and new pressures to race to ground not one yet two hazardous executioners who have worked with reckless exemption. Michael Connelly demonstrates once more why he is regarded as "one of the greatest crime writers of all time" in what may be his most gripping and profoundly moving book to date (Ryan Steck, Crimereads).
