Michael Connelly: NIGHTSHADE

Prolific crime-writer Michael Connelly launches another new series, set on the  island of Santa Catalina off the coast of California and administratively part of Los Angeles County. LAPD Detective Sergeant Stilwell has been posted to the island’s Sheriff’s office as a kind of banishment after a case in which he made enemies on the mainland. When the body of a woman with a purple streak in her hair is washed up in a harbour, Stilwell’s investigation uncovers a streak of corruption among the island’s elite residents. As well as purple hair the victim had a colourful life as a gold-digging good-time girl.

As always, Connelly takes us through the mundane routine of a murder investigation: interviews and forensics, a few truths but more lies, false leads and blind alleys. The first 200 pages of Nightshade are slow and heavy going, until another murder and a kidnapping kick off a change of pace and some new suspects.

This is not Connelly’s best, a long way short of the peak of his Harry Bosch series, books like The Concrete Blonde, The Poet and Echo Park. I hope this is just a temporary downturn and the next volume – bring back Bosch! Or the Lincoln Lawyer – is something with more edge, more tension. Here he seems to be treading water. We know he can do better – a great deal better – than Nightshade.