Another page-turner—oops, "screen-swiper"—from Michael Connelly. It's his second book in his "Catalina" series. (I reported on the first one here.) The hero is Stilwell, a detective on Catalina's skeletal branch of the LA county sheriff's office. Cop-wise, Catalina is (at least in these books) very much the analogue of Mick Herron's "Slough House": it's an assignment for police who have messed up, but not badly enough to be fired. Or, in Stilwell's case, ran afoul of a superior by his insistence on doing the right thing.
The book opens with a literal bang. Well, actually, two. Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Stilwell has hastily assembled a team to intercept a cartel's drug delivery via plane at a Catalina airstrip. Unfortunately, things go very wrong: one officer dead, another gravely wounded, all the bad guys escaped, and Stilwell's taken off the case.
But don't worry: he'll eventually piece things together.
There's other stuff going on too. A backpack in the island's lost and found turns out to have been owned by a hiker who vanished four years previous. An island winemaker has had a row of his precious grapevines hacked up. And a vandal has been defacing famed island landmarks with spray-paint graffiti.
One of these cases causes Stilwell to connect with another Connelly heroine, Renée Ballard, and she plays a major role here. (There's even a non-speaking cameo from Harry Bosch!)
No spoilers, but the ending is kind of a cliff-hanger, with Stilwell's future in law enforcement in peril. I will, of course, be checking Amazon for future developments.
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