Desert Star, Michael Connelly (2022)
Let’s suppose that Michael Connelly’s books are jazz albums that he produces and engineers himself. Then you could say that he made Desert Star a much better listen than The Dark Hours (2021) by doing two simple things at the mixing-desk. He turned down the young female vocalist and turned up the old guy on tenor sax.
In other words, there’s less Renée Ballard in this one and more Harry Bosch. Renée Ballard is Connelly’s new-ish female detective of color-ish. Harry Bosch is Connelly’s old white detective who fought in Vietnam. And boy was Ballard irritating in The Dark Hours. And in The Night Fire (2019). And in all the other novels she’s appeared in. She’s a goodthinkful PC paragon and I suspect that Connelly doesn’t like her himself. I also suspect that he’d have preferred to make her Black. But he must have realized that, with a Black Ballard, he’d certainly have got in trouble for writing a WoC while being a WHAM (that’s “Woman of Color” and “White Heterosexual Able-Bodied Male”). So he made her part Hawaiian (possibly) and got away with it.
But there was still a problem. Ballard is nowhere as good a character as Bosch and I suspect that Connelly’s readers don’t like her either. For example, as of August 2023 no-one has written articles for any of her novels at Wikipedia. So Bosch had to be brought back in The Dark Hours to dilute Ballard. There was still too much of her, though, so there’s even more Bosch in Desert Star. And it works. The plot isn’t as good as it is in The Dark Hours, but the relief of less Ballard makes up for that.
And in one way the plot’s the same. Indeed, the same as ever. In Connelly novels, the villains are always white and almost always white men. The victims of miscarriages of justice, on the other hand, are always Black or Hispanic. There are two big villains in Desert Star and both are white men. There’s one victim of a miscarriage of justice and he’s a Hispanic man. His girlfriend gets raped and murdered, so the corrupt and cruel American justice system, which is designed to oppress Communities of Color, decides that hedunnit and sends him to jail. But he didn’t dunnit, of course. He’s a Person of Color and Persons of Color do not commit rape or murder in a Michael Connelly book. And they especially don’t commit rape and murder. Never. Nunca. No way, José.
Fortunately, although Bosch is a white male he’s on the side of truth and decency. So his clever detective work and intuition rescue the Hispanic victim of injustice and track down the real villain in that half of the plot, which is about a white man raping and murdering Women of Color. As white men so often do. Bosch’s clever detective work and intuition also track down the villain in the other half of the plot, which is about a white man murdering a whole family, including kids, and burying them in the desert. As white men so often do. But everything in the plot has appeared in a Connelly novel before. For example, there was an unjustly-imprisoned-for-rape-and-murder Hispanic man in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005). And a slaughtered family somewhere else. But what hasn’t appeared in a Connelly novel before is the saddest but most natural thing in the world finally and fully happening to Bosch.
It’s called old age. Bosch is old now and some of the nastier characters in Desert Star – the white male ones, that is – mock him for it. His life is nearly over and his body is starting to let him down. At one point, Ballard notices that he’s struggling to carry something up some stairs. She asks him if he wants help. He says no, of course, but it’s still a sad moment. Some readers will have lived with Bosch right from the beginning, in the string of excellent novels that introduced him to the world in the early 1990s. He was young and vigorous back then, but that was thirty years ago. Now the novels are no longer as good and Bosch isn’t young or vigorous any more. I didn’t start read the Bosch novels when they were first published, but I still feel as though I’ve travelled with Bosch through time. And I like him as a character and as a person, despite the political correctness that has always governed his plots. Connelly is a good and realistic writer who’s been able to make Bosch breathe and bleed on the page. Okay, after thirty-six previous novels, it’s not surprising that Desert Star isn’t a classic. But it still has its moments. This bit of dialogue was effective, for example:
“Let’s drop these at the pod, then you and I can go somewhere to talk,” Ballard said. “I want your take on a couple of things.”
“Roger that.”
“You gotta stop saying that. Everybody has to stop saying it.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“When influencers are saying it on TikTok, it’s jumped the shark.”
“I don’t know what a word of that means.”
“Which is a good thing.” – end of chapter 15
Bosch is still going his own way as the shadows thicken around him and the Grim Reaper gets ready to swing his scythe. He’s pre-internet, even if he’s not pre-PC, an old white man in a world of wokeness. And I’ll be sorry when he’s finally gone. It will feel as though a real person has left the world and the Bosch novels will feel different to read. They’ll no longer feel as though they’re about a living person, someone who has real memories of what the novels describe, someone who bears real scars on his body and on his heart.
Michael Connelly isn’t a giant of literature like Arthur Conan Doyle and the Harry Bosch novels don’t have the depth or cultural importance of the Sherlock Holmes stories. But Connelly is still a clever and compelling writer, and he’s brought Bosch to life in the minds of millions of readers. I won’t be alone in feeling sorry that there’s another way in which Bosch won’t be like Sherlock Holmes. When Bosch is gone, he won’t be coming back.
Previously Pre-Posted on Papyrocentric Performativity…
• Pair’s Fair — review of Connelly’s The Dark Hours (2021)
• Marred Moon — review of Connelly’s Void Moon (2000)
• Double WHAMmy — review of Connelly’s The Reversal (2010)
• All Bosched Up — thoughts on Michael Connelly and his characters
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