Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch, #24; Harry Bosch Universe, #37)

by Michael Connelly

McShane had wiped out the whole Gallagher family in 2013 and buried them in the desert. But Bosch had never been able to prove it. And then he retired. He hadn’t solved every case he’d been assigned in almost thirty years working murders. No homicide detective ever did. But this was a whole family. It was the one case he hated most to leave on the table.

Finbar McShane was still out there somewhere and living free. Bosch had never found any solid evidence against him but he knew in his gut and in his soul that he was the one. He was guilty.

a year earlier, Ballard had pulled the rug out on him. She had quit the department in frustration with the politics and bureaucracy, the misogyny, everything, and they had agreed to make a partnership and go private together. Then she told him she was going back, lured by a promise from the chief of police to allow her to pick her spot. She chose the Robbery-Homicide Division downtown and that was the end of the planned partnership.

OPEN-UNSOLVED UNIT Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts

he’s a direct pipeline to Pearlman and Hastings.” “Hastings?” “Nelson Hastings, Pearlman’s chief of staff.

“Investigative genetic genealogy. You upload your suspect’s DNA to GEDmatch, which accesses a number of databases, and you sit back and wait for a hit.

He had lost much of his faith in the goodness of people. To him the violence wasn’t the departure from the norm. It was the norm. He knew this was a pessimistic view of the world, but fifty years of toiling in the fields of blood had left him without much hope. He knew that the dark engine of murder would never run low on fuel. Not in his lifetime. Not in anyone’s.

Beto Orestes was the Inyo County investigator who first responded to the call about bodies being found in the desert eight years before.

While the LAPD took the lead on the case, the crime scene investigation was headed by Orestes and run by his department.

“You know what that is?” Bosch asked. “Sure,” Orestes said. “This one’s called the desert star.”

“‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’” “MLK, right? Let’s hope he was right.”

“These two were the mistakes.” “Where he left DNA.”

Was it coincidence that she ended up with a button supporting a candidate whose sister had been murdered eleven years earlier by the man who would also kill Wilson?

“Greenblatt’s.” “Right, Greenblatt’s—what a loss. I loved that place. They had a room upstairs and we would all meet there at six every night. We’d order sandwiches and a beer, expensing it to the campaign, and then we’d divvy up the neighborhoods so there wouldn’t be any overlap. We’d hand out buttons and pledge cards and then we’d split up to go knock on doors. Grassroots, man. But the truth was, I didn’t know shit about running a campaign. It was fun, though.”

Hastings wants to know what moves we’re making.” “Really? Can’t Hastings just call you anytime he wants?” “He could, yeah. But he wants to hide how closely he’s paying attention, because Hastings is our guy.” “What do you mean? The killer?” “I’d bet my badge on it, Harry. We get his DNA, and it’s going to match.”

that’s not a little lie. That is a lie meant to throw me off. That makes it a big lie.”