82. The Waiting by Michael Connelly

Ballard & Bosch #6

listened on Audible (purchased)

407 pgs.

2024
Adult Mystery
Finished 12/8/2024
Goodreads rating: 4.47
My rating: 5
Setting: LA and vicinity, contemporary

My comments: The Cold Case Unit in LA, headed by Renee Ballard - Connelly spent the 6th in the series about this LA police detective working on three major cases.  They're all intricate and edge-of-your-seat fascinating.  Renee and Harry have become very close friends, having similar thoughts, feeling, and reactions to many things.  What was wonderfully great for me sas that Maddie Bosch is part of this book! (Why is her relationship with her father so strained? and almost secretive?)  This was a really good one!

Goodreads synopsis:  LAPD Detective Renée Ballard tracks a terrifying serial rapist whose trail has gone cold, with the help of the newest volunteer to the Open-Unsolved Unit: Patrol Officer Maddie Bosch, Harry’s daughter.

Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The arrested man is only twenty-three, so the genetic link must be familial. It is his father who was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles.

Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun, and ID are stolen—a theft she can’t report without giving her enemies in the department the ammunition they need to end her career as a detective. She works the burglary alone, but her solo mission leads her into greater danger than she anticipates. She has no choice but to go outside the department for help, and that leads her to the door of Harry Bosch.

Finally, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit. Bosch’s daughter Maddie wants to supplement her work as a patrol officer on the night beat by investigating cases with Ballard. But Renée soon learns that Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls.