The Waiting, Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch, Book 6, Michael Connely, author; Christine Lakin. Titus Welliver, Madison Lintz, narrators
Renee Ballard is a Detective with the LA Police Department. She is in charge of cold cases. She runs a unit of volunteers that works to solve them. One lovely morning, she is surfing and unaware that while she is centering herself, her car is being broken into by thieves. When her belongings are stolen, she fears she will be fired if the crime is discovered. Her Glock, ID, phone and Badge are missing. Keeping the crime a secret, she opens her own investigation to try and recover the missing items. An unsolved cold case, that took place in the same parking lot, offers her clues to the thieves. She engages Harry Bosch to help her solve the crime. Actually, his daughter Madeline Bosch, a patrol officer, has just begun to volunteer with the cold case unit, but she hasn’t told her father yet.
Renee is not only searching for her belongings, she is also searching for her mom, with whom she is estranged. Her mom lives in Lahaina. A tragic fire there has just destroyed the city and has left a very high death toll in its wake. She has not been able to locate her and doesn’t know if she has survived. If she finds her, will they reconcile? She is seeing a therapist hoping to work out her anger issues and to resolve her feelings toward her mother who abandoned her.
Ballard is often manipulative. She bends the rules to obtain evidence and does not present law enforcement in the best possible way. The image of a law enforcement officer that I have is of someone quite different. I expect them to uphold the law, treat people with respect and behave lawfully themselves. Ballard defies those principles with abandon and does not always make herself a likeable character. She seems to consider herself above the law, is often devious, steals evidence, and is rude to Colleen, a devoted genetics expert who works for her unit. The picture of law enforcement that the author is drawing through her, is not very encouraging as it depicts a politically motivated system that often does not deal in justice but is governed by current controversies instead. Individual selfish needs might take precedent over the cases being explored. Sometimes it took a tragedy or scandal to shake things up and correct the process.
In her capacity as an LA Detective, Ballard is working on two other very cold cases. Both involve cold-blooded, violent murders and/or sexual assault. One is about a serial killer called the Black Dahlia and the other is about the Pillowcase Rapist. Occasionally, it got a bit confusing as the narrative seemed disjointed, but in the end, as the crimes were resolved, the book came together. The investigations were detailed and interesting.
At one point in the book, seemingly placed inappropriately, however, the author inferred that the unarmed Ashli Babbitt, the former soldier who was murdered in cold blood on January 6th, was a terrorist. She was in no way connected with the terrorist named DeHaven in this book, than she was related to Mickey Mouse. She was a patriot who had served her country and had been in the military for 14 years. Many of the so-called conspiracy theories that the author may or may not believe, have since been proven to be fact, not conspiracy Therefore, although I love Harry Bosch books, and anytime he is mentioned I immediately have an interest in reading them, if Ballard/Bosch books are going to twist the truth to satisfy personal political beliefs, whatever they may be, I may reconsider by desire to read them. There are two sides to every story and two can play the same game. This last election has shown that more than half the country is rightfully and lawfully questioning current political views and assessments. I hope that authors will continue to write books for all of us to read, without trying to offend any of us.