Detective Sergeant Stillwell of the Los Angeles County Sheriff鈥檚 Department has been banished from the homicide division. His sin: accusing his former partner of dropping a murder case for lack of evidence when, according to Stillwell, there was plenty of it.
Branding him a troublemaker, his superiors packed him off to Catalina Island and put him in charge of a small, backwater office where cases normally range from petty theft to drunk and disorderly.
This was supposed to be punishment, but Stillwell likes it. The island is beautiful. Recently divorced, he鈥檚 already found a new love there. And he鈥檚 relieved that he鈥檚 free of department politics 鈥� or so he thinks.
In 鈥淣ightshade,鈥� Stillwell is introduced as a new series character by whose other repeating protagonists, including Harry Bosch and are regulars on the bestseller lists and subjects of popular television series. Like Bosch, Stillwell doesn鈥檛 bow to authority and is relentless in pursuit of justice for crime victims. However, he鈥檚 younger, easier to get along with, and seemingly less prone to violence.
The trouble starts when a workman scraping barnacles from the hull of a yacht discovers the body of a woman bound to an anchor at the bottom of the harbor. The local mayor, whose main concern is attracting tourists and developers to the island, demands that the case be handled quietly.
In his new role, Stillwell is required to turn the investigation over to the homicide division on the mainland, but when his former partner is assigned to the case 鈥� and ultimately arrests the wrong man 鈥� Stillwell again defies authority and launches his own investigation. In the end, he not only identifies the real killer but exposes the kind of dark conspiracy he thought he鈥檇 escaped when he moved to the island.
At first, the plot unfolds slowly as the author introduces a new community of characters, but soon the pace picks up. As always with a Connelly novel, the characters are well drawn and the prose is tight, precise, and easy to read.
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winner of the Mystery Writers of America鈥檚 Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including 鈥淭he Dread Line.鈥�
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AP book reviews:
Bruce Desilva, The Associated Press
