History Literature / DarkSacredNight

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Renee Ballard is still working the "late show" in her precinct, specifically, the night shift, routinely being the first person called out to situations at night when the rest of the squad's detectives are home sleeping. One night while at Hollywood Division headquarters, she notices an old man rifling through some papers. It turns out that the grizzled old dude who picked a lock to get into the files is none other than Harry Bosch.

* BittersweetEnding: Elizabeth kills herself. Harry's 40-odd year career in law enforcement is finally over for good after he's let go by the San Fernando police. He's feeling his age and facing mortality more than ever. But he's found a kindred spirit in Renee Ballard, and they're going to work cases together.
* BloodFromTheMouth: It [[CreatorThumbprint wouldn't be a Bosch novel]] without a bad guy getting shot and Harry Bosch realizing the bad guy will die after seeing Blood From The Mouth. This time it's Cortez, the [=SanFers=] gang boss who had Harry kidnapped.

* BuddyCopShow: Bosch and Ballard, dual protagonists, working a case together. (Revealingly, the book was marketed as "A Bosch and Ballard novel", signaling the new direction of the Bosch series.)
* ChekhovsGun: Harry mentions that he and Madeline have an app that allow them to track each other's phones. This saves Harry's life after he's kidnapped.
* ChekhovsGunman: Roger Dillon, the crime scene cleaner who pops up when he's hired to clean up the death scene Ballard is investigating in the first chapter. He's the one who killed Daisy Clayton.

** Ballard reads about how her informal partner had some cases famous enough to get names, like the "Dollmaker" case. The Dollmaker was a serial killer case that took place shortly before the Harry Bosch series started, but is mentioned several times and was crucial to the plot of ''Literature/TheConcreteBlonde''.
* DayHurtsDarkAdjustedEyes: A thug opens the door to the shed where Harry Bosch is being kept prisoner, which "filled the shed with blinding light." It's a while before Harry is able to see anything.

* DrivenToSuicide: Elizabeth Clayton overdoses. Bosch believes she did it on purpose.
* FairPlayWhodunit: It's explained that Daisy Clayton's murderer cleaned her body with bleach in an industrial tub, and probably had a van to use as a murder vehicle. All that leads to Roger Dillon of the crime scene cleaning service.

* KnightInSourArmor: After getting fired from San Fernando, Harry starts to get bitter, describing himself as "a fool" for wanting to change things rather than spend his life surfing like Renee's father did.

* TheMole: Luzon, one of the cops in the San Fernando PD, is an informant for the [=SanFers=] gang and spilled the details of the Vega investigation to them.

** Dillon inadvertently stumbles headlong into Bosch's personal CatchPhrase ("Everyone counts or no one does") when he tries to explain not having names of his victims because that "they didn't count."
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Reluctant witness Martin Perez tips off Bosch that there might be bullets from the gun that killed Vega in the garage where Perez used to work. Bosch and the SFPD search but find they cannot make a match, that the bullets in the wall are too deformed. So basically they have no evidence to implicate Tranquilo Cortez in the Vega murder. But in the meantime Cortez has Perez murdered, which gives Bosch and the SFPD a whole new opportunity to come after him. His partner Bella Lourdes calls it "the definition of irony."

* OldCopYoungCop: Eventually it becomes clear that Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard are kindred spirits, haunted by past tragedies and driven by the cause of justice. Harry sees some of himself in Renee and takes her on as an unofficial partner. (Of course this is also Connelly making a transition between cop protagonists, as 68-year-old Harry Bosch is getting too old.)

* SequelHook: The second Bosch book in a row to end with one of these. Harry, now out of law enforcement for good, asks Renee to help him work cases anyway, and she agrees.
* SerialKiller: It turns out Roger Dillon has killed a lot of young women and his cleaning truck doubled as a murder van.
* SherlockScan: Ballard shows hers off in the opening chapter, when she takes a look around the scene of the woman dead for several days in her bathroom, and figures out that the death was accidental, and the injuries to the woman's face were caused by her hungry cat.

* StealItToProtectIt: The guy caught with the Andy Warhol prints from the old lady's apartment ''claims'' he was doing this, that he took the prints for "safekeeping" after the old lady died. Ballard is not convinced, seeing as how he had to climb through a window to get them. She arrests him.
* SwitchingPOV: Sections of the novel are told from the perspectives of Harry and Renee and labeled "Bosch" or "Ballard". The last chapter, an epilogue in which Harry and Renee agree to work together as off-the-books partners, is labeled "Bosch and Ballard".
* TitleDrop: [=McMullen=] the kooky street evangelist says "Each dark sacred night brings more souls to Christ."
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: Bosch, angry and grieving about the death of Elizabeth Clayton, and no longer in law enforcement, calls the father of one of Roger Dillon's murder victims and tells him where Dillon is. Then he has an attack of conscience and calls the cops rather than leave Dillon to be murdered.

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!!Tropes:

* YouCanLeaveYourHatOn: Ballard has to go to a strip club to investigate a burglary.

* FourLinesNoWaiting: As with most novels in Michael Connelly's later career there are several plot threads, some of which are entirely independent of each other. Bosch and Ballard are working the Clayton investigation, while Bosch is working the Vega case. There are also tertiary cases like the strip club burglary Renee is called out to investigate, the missing person case Renee is called out to investigate, and the unexplained death Renee is called out to investigate--that last one actually tying back to the Clayton case through a tertiary character.

Renee Ballard is still working the "late show" in her precinct, specifically, the night shift, routinely being the first person called out to situations at night when the rest of the squad's detectives are home sleeping. One night while at headquarters, she notices an old man rifling through some papers. It turns out that the grizzled old dude who picked a lock to get into the files is none other than Harry Bosch.

It turns out that Harry, as is his wont, is pursing an old case. In the previous novel, ''Literature/TwoKindsOfTruth'', Bosch took under his wing a heroin addict named Elizabeth Clayton. While helping her get clean, Harry discovered the reason for Elizabeth's spiral into drug addiction and despair: nine years earlier, her 15-year-old daughter Daisy, a teenaged runaway, was abducted, raped, and murdered. At the end of that book Bosch swore to find the man who killed Elizabeth's daughter. After Ballard finds out what Bosch is up to, he enlists her help.

Meanwhile, both Bosch and Ballard have other cases. The book opens with Ballard investigating the mysterious death of an older woman, and after solving that mystery, investigating the theft of some valuable art from the old woman's house. Bosch, who at age 68 is still hanging on to a badge as a part-time reservist with the San Fernando Police Department, is investigating the 2004 murder of one Cristobal Vega, a gangbanger and murderer who was shot in the back of the head, presumably by a fellow gang member. And Bosch has another complication in his life, in the person of Elizabeth Clayton, who has been living in the guest's room in Bosch's house ever since he helped her kick heroin.

* KnightInSourArmor: After getting fired from San Fernando, Harry starts to get bitter, describing himself as a "fool" for wanting to change things rather than spend his life surfing like Renee's father did.

* ThePeepingTom: The strip club "burglars" turned out to be teenaged boys who had snuck onto the roof to gawk at the strippers. Ballard is very angry about this and is even angrier that her male coworkers aren't angry about it.