Dark Sacred Night is a 2018 novel by Michael Connelly. It is the 21st novel featuring Connelly's most frequent protagonist, veteran homicide cop Harry Bosch, and the second novel featuring Connelly's newest protagonist, much younger but similarly haunted LAPD cop Renee Ballard.
Renee Ballard is still working the night shift in her precinct routinely being the first person called out to crime scenes 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.
Harry, as is his wont, is pursing an old case. In the previous novel, Two Kinds of Truth, 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 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 dead 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.
A portion of this story was adapted into the sixth season of Bosch.
Tropes present in this work:
- Adopted to the House: Bosch's continuing sense of responsibility for Elizabeth Clayton after helping her to stop using heroin has led him to allow her to live in his house. Harry's daughter Madeline, now 21 years old and a college student, is pissed off at this.
- Back-Alley Doctor: The SanFers gang, like most LA gangs, has doctors that treat wounded gang members on the down-low. This becomes important when Harry has cause to believe that the man who murdered Martin Perez got wounded in the process.
- Bittersweet Ending: 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.
- Blood from the Mouth: It 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.
- Broken Bird: Elizabeth Clayton, who is a shattered person after the death of her daughter. Bosch reflects on how Elizabeth used opiates to take the pain away and wonders if he did her any favors by getting her to stop using.
- Buddy Cop Show: Bosch and Ballard, dual protagonists, working a case together. (Tellingly, the book was marketed as "A Bosch and Ballard novel", signaling the new direction of the Bosch series.)
- Chekhov's Gun: 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.
- Chekhov's Gunman: 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.
- Continuity Nod: As always, there are plenty in a Connelly novel.
- One cop tells Ballard the old story about how Bosch was somehow responsible for the murder of his old lieutenant, Harvey Pounds. That's an allusion to The Last Coyote, when Bosch's habit of using his supervisor's name as an alias while conducting an off-the-books investigation got Pounds killed by the bad guys.
- Many references to Two Kinds of Truth, since Elizabeth Clayton was carried over as a character from that novel to this one, and Harry Bosch is fulfilling a vow he made at the end of that book to investigate the Daisy Clayton murder.
- Several references to the first Ballard novel The Late Show, like how Renee saved the life of a porn star named Beatrice Beaupre, or how she caught a burglar who was buying luxury goods with stolen money and credit cards, or the quintuple murder at a nightclub that was the main plot of that book.
- 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 The Concrete Blonde.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: A thug opens the door to the shed where Bosch is being kept prisoner, which "filled the shed with blinding light." It's a while before Harry is able to see anything.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: All the cops at the San Fernando PD are disappointed when the usual morning doughnuts are missing from the meeting.
- Driven to Suicide: Elizabeth Clayton overdoses. Bosch believes she did it on purpose.
- Fair Play Whodunit: 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.
- False Rape Accusation: Ballard is called out when a Chloe Lambert calls 911 and reports that she was raped by Danny Monahan, a famous comedian. Ballard is hugely pissed when she discovers, via the hidden camera that Monahan used to record the scene, that Lambert is lying and falsely accused Monahan with the purpose of getting a big payday.
- Feeling Their Age: A major problem for 68-year-old Harry Bosch, who limps and has a bad hip and is generally depressed about getting old.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: 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 Chekhov's Gunman character.
- Friends with Benefits: Renee and Aaron the lifeguard, two attractive people, "sometime lovers with no commitment beyond the time they were together."
- Fun with Acronyms: Bosch and Ballard laugh about the GRASP program, the Geographic Reporting and Safety Program. Bosch jokes that the ASS Office—"Acronym Selection Section"—must have come up with that one.
- Groin Attack: A woman cop has to be a Combat Pragmatist, so Ballard kicks a suspect in the crotch when he tries to attack her.
- Knight in Sour Armor: 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.
- Meet Cute: A non-romantic example, as Ballard and Bosch meet for the first time when she catches him rooting through department files and pulls a gun on him.
- The Mole: 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.
- Mythology Gag: A rueful Ballard, going into a house where a body has been decaying for several days, thinks about how "odors are particulate." This is a joke that dates all the way back to a comment Jerry Edgar made in 2002 Bosch novel City of Bones.
- 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."
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: 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."
- Noodle Incident: Ballard reads up on Bosch and learns that he was involved in some legendary cases, like the Dollmaker case (mentioned a lot in Bosch books), but also "The Woman in the Suitcase" and "The Man With No Hands", two cases that don't match up with anything in the Harry Bosch canon.
- Non-Indicative Name: The disgusting, stinking landfill where Renee has to go rooting around for body parts is called "Sunshine Canyon".
- Old Cop, Young Cop: 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.)
- The Peeping Tom: The strip club "burglars" turned out to be teenage 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.
- Reluctant Retiree: Hieronymus Bosch. Harry managed to latch onto a part-time position with the San Fernando PD after being fired from the LAPD at the end of The Burning Room, but when the Vega investigation leads to one person being dead and another in a coma, he's let go from the SFPD as well. Harry is rather depressed at the prospect of being out of law enforcement for good at the age of 68.
- Retirony: A particularly sad take: Tim Farmer was just a month away from retirement when he killed himself.
- Sequel Hook: 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.
- Serial Killer: It turns out Roger Dillon has killed a lot of young women and his cleaning truck doubled as a murder van.
- Sherlock Scan: 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.
- Shown Their Work: Ballard claims not to be an expert on organized religion and very shortly thereafter assumes "John the Baptist" named himself after the "John 3:16" bible verse citation on his van door. This is an amusing character error and Brick Joke in one, as the Gospel writer John (of "John 3:16") and the original John the Baptist are not the same person, and the verse John 3:16 has nothing to do with the original Baptist, either. It's Connelly winking and saying, "She told you she doesn't know this stuff."
- Steal It to Protect It: 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.
- Switching P.O.V.: 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".
- Title Drop: McMullen the kooky street evangelist says, "Each dark sacred night brings more souls to Christ."
- What You Are in the Dark: 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.
- You Can Leave Your Hat On: Ballard has to go to a strip club to investigate a burglary.
