History Literature / ADarknessMoreThanNight

* NoPronunciationGuide: Inverted. Connelly helpfully tells us that Judge Houghton has a nickname: "Shootin' Houghton," which ''should'' definitively establish that his last name is pronounced to rhyme with "Shootin'."

The two protagonists are LAPD Detective Literature/HarryBosch, Connelly's most frequent main character, and Terry [=McCaleb=], hero of previous Connelly novel ''Literature/BloodWork''. The novel starts three years after the events of ''Blood Work''. [=McCaleb=] is now married and the father of a little girl, with a prosperous charter fishing business on Catalina Island, but he is dissatisfied and yearns to get back into the crime-fighting business. Conveniently, he is asked to lend his expertise to an unsolved murder case. A dirtbag named Edward Gunn is found to have been murdered in a highly ritualistic manner. [=McCaleb=] winds up zeroing in as his main suspect on a homicide cop who was frustrated in his attempts to nail Gunn for murder years ago--none other than Detective Harry Bosch.

* ArcWords: It is with this novel that "man on a mission" truly coalesces as Connelly's express characterization of Harry Bosch, though he has made reference to it in past works. Since his normally minimalist narrative style wouldn't really suit such a relatively colorful description in most Bosch novels, here we get it as part of the notes profiler Terry [=McCaleb=] took when he first worked with Bosch years ago.
* AssholeVictim: Bosch tells [=McCaleb=] about [[Literature/TheLastCoyote Harvey Pounds' murder]], calling him a "pure-bred asshole" but acknowledging that Harry's own actions [[ItsAllMyFault got Pounds killed]].

** Janis Langwiser returns from ''Literature/AngelsFlight'', with a mention of how Bosch's interaction with her on that case led to his recommendation of her to be second chair on the current case.

** The murder victim is one Edward Gunn, a former prime suspect in one of Harry Bosch's cases. Bosch threw his supervisor Harvey Pounds through a window after Pounds read Gunn his MirandaRights, which led Gunn to lawyer up. This whole story, which proves crucial to the plot, is also the backstory of 1995 Bosch novel ''Literature/TheLastCoyote''. It's why Bosch is on involuntary stress leave and visiting a psychiatrist at the start of that novel.
* DeadGuyJunior: [=McCaleb=] was so taken with "Cielo Azul," the name Bosch gave to an anonymous murder victim, that he named his daughter after her.
* DirtyBusiness: How Bosch views letting Tafero kill Gunn so he could turn around and take Tafero and Storey off the board.

* DrowningMySorrows: Harry Bosch has really developed a drinking problem in this novel; [=McCaleb=] notices it repeatedly. Along with the smoking, it's clearly a symptom of his having lost Eleanor.

* FrameUp: The whole Edward Gunn murder is an elaborate plot to frame Bosch in order to ruin the David Storey trial and get Storey acquitted.
* GoodIsNotNice: Harry Bosch more or less let Tafero kill Gunn. Tries to justify it with IDidWhatIHadToDo.
** Also, he makes a couple of truly cruel remarks to Rudy Tafero after the brothers try to kill [=McCaleb=] and Bosch.

* IntrepidReporter: Jack [=McEvoy=], hero of ''The Poet'', turns up as the reporter who gets the Bosch-Gunn story. Bosch has to hustle to find out who the real killer is before [=McEvoy=] publishes his story and ruins the David Storey case.

* LeadPoliceDetective: Harry hasn't been on the witness stand for a while, so [[ShowDontTell this is our first chance in several years to hear him explain in so many words what his job is and where it fits in the ranks]]. As of this novel, he is a Detective, 3rd grade, which he explains is equivalent to Detective Sergeant, but that's a rank the L.A.P.D. does not use; one step up would be Detective Lieutenant. Also, he specifies that he is the lead detective of a three-detective team at Hollywood division's homicide squad, with some supervisory responsibilities over other officers.

* MurderByInaction: The ending reveals that Harry knew that the bad guys were going to kill Gunn and did nothing to stop it. For all his CowboyCop antics and his hardboiled persona Harry's sense of right and wrong usually stops him from doing stuff like this. [=McCaleb=] calls him out in the last chapter and the novel ends with Harry agonizing about whether he crossed the MoralEventHorizon.

* PleaBargain: Rudy Tafero exposes David Storey in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. After Tafero produces evidence to keep people from suspecting he's lying to save his own life, Storey agrees to plead guilty so he'll also avoid the death penalty.

* SayingTooMuch: How Bosch accidentally reveals that he knew who killed Gunn and let the Storey conspiracy happen.

** When [=McCaleb=] arrives at ''The Following Sea'', Buddy says he's watching "a show about this task force that goes after computer hackers," almost certainly a reference to ''[[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244627/reference Level 9]]'', a short-lived series of which Connelly was an executive director. See Trivia page for more.

* WhatHaveIDone: Bosch gets a strong dose of this after [=McCaleb=] confronts him and leaves. He gets over it.
* WhatTheHellHero: [=McCaleb=] gives this speech to Bosch when he figures out that Bosch more or less let David Storey's conspiracy play out in order to get Gunn killed. Bosch throws it right back at him for the way [=McCaleb=] went to Rudy Tafero's office and provoked him, resulting in the death of Tafero's brother when they try to kill [=McCaleb=].
* WrongGenreSavvy: What [=McCaleb=]'s suspicions about Bosch amount to. He was a very successful FBI serial killer [[TheProfiler profiler]], but has been out of the game for a while, so naturally, when clues start pointing toward Bosch being a KillerCop, he runs with it. The problem is, this isn't actually a SerialKiller story, it's a FrameUp story using a SerialKiller motif. In his prime, [=McCaleb=] probably wouldn't have been fooled.

* ByTheBookCop: Terry [=McCaleb=], full stop. By chapter four, it's already been established pointedly that he never exceeds the safety limit for number of people on his boat, drives along the lanes of an empty marina instead of crossing through the vacant slips, and he passes up a beer to drink water, implicitly [[LawfulGood because he's back on the job now]] (he had had wine with dinner before getting started). Is it any wonder he finds it so easy to believe CowboyCop Harry Bosch is a [[KillerCop killer]]?

* NoPronunciationGuide: Inverted. Connelly helpfully tells us that Judge Houghton has a nickname: "Shootin' Houghton," which ''should'' definitively establish that his last name is pronounced to rhyme with "Shootin'." Not quite ItIsPronouncedTroPAY because there's no real attempt to glam the name up. See Trivia page for more, though.