Bosch was left with a cold case by his mentor. He worked on the case and wondering why he hold on to this case. 

Renee was in and working with Bosch. Now that Bosch has retired, he couldn't actively work case any more. 

A lot of good detective work later, with load of interviews with the persons involved in the case, they found a similarity between this cold case with an active one. 

The book is divided between Bosch and Renee. 

It start a bit slow as not a lot of action take place beside talking. 

Bosch is also having a law suit on his own. He is suing for damage done to him while he is on the job. He was working on a case when radioactive material was stolen from a hospital. He recovered it only to get affected himself. He was clear but now he got cancer. Not fair. 

His brother is going to get involved in this of course. 

How is this murders linked? Bosch found out with Renee that it is linked back to a firm, with a lawyer being humiliated by the judge who got killed. 

The detectives on the case refused to be believed that they got the wrong guy who confessed to the crime under stress. 

Now, without the support of the department, Renee is going at it alone with Bosch to find out who is the real killer and why. 

Fun read. The Bosch part is very good as it is really developed. Renee still feels as bit much that she has no life and sleep on the beach. She has no emotional attachment that make her more human. 

Still a 4.5 stars read. 

Not much to say besides Michael Connelly has hit on a winning formula with retired cop Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard investigating cold cases. In this one, three of the cases the duo are working on independently (and one together) end up coming together. That's the only thing I coughed BS on since that was too big a coincidence, but I was enjoying the ride to get there I just let it go. Connelly is showing his hands I think in this one with what may come next for Harry, his daughter, and even Renee. I was so sad to get to the end of this and re-read it twice before reluctantly sending it back to my library. 

"The Night Fire" has Harry and Renee coming together again to work on a cold case from an ex mentor of Harry's. The man had the file of a young man who was murdered by a gang decades earlier. Harry is wondering what the connection the young man had to his mentor and why this case haunted him. Harry is also helping out his brother Mickey Haller in a defense case that got foisted on him. The case sounds wrong to Harry and then he slowly puts together why it's wrong. Renee though is looking into a man who was burned alive at a homeless camp that is part of her night patrol. At first glance it looks like an accidental fire, but Renee starts to smell something wrong there right away.

Harry is going through changes in this one. Because of a prior case, there is something that is boomeranging back at Harry. Also, he is still struggling with helping defendants, even when he knows they are innocent. I really wish that Connelly would stop that mess with Harry feeling torn. It's like he doesn't read papers these days and realizes innocent people are sent to jail all the time. The police are not infallible. I also liked his interactions with Mickey (more Mickey or a standalone please!) and with his daughter. I also loved how things are going with Harry's daughter and what her post college life may look like.

Renee is still doing the whole homeless, but not really thing. She's running on E and I think Harry sees it best at how that can end up messing with her and the cases she's running. I wish we would see Renee more settled. At times she feels a bit ghostlike except when working a case or tossing ideas/smart remarks to Harry. These two really work well together.

I thought the writing was tight and that Connelly did a great job of setting up when Harry and Renee were talking and when they were together. The flow ran smoothly from beginning to end and the ending even had my heart pumping a little. We may get another case that Harry and Renee will end up closing. 

What a great book in the series! I’m impatient for the next one now. 

Bosch and Ballard shine in this one. There’s a slightly morbid update regarding Bosch, but things seem to be good so far. Connelly points out he’s almost 70 now. Ballard loves the Late Show and isn’t interested in going back to Robbery Homicide. When Harry provides information on a cold case an ex partner had she and Harry start looking into a murder that happened decades ago. Ballard also has a case of a homeless man being burned to death. And Harry has his own case looking into a murder trial Haller got asked to work on. All three cases end up being linked, but it was such a fun way to get there I won’t complain. 

The ending shows that there’s another cold case that may be the focus of the next book. 

Five stars!

So Bosch and Renee's POVs still work well together. I think the two cases that are going on are giving me a bit of whiplash though. Definitely happy to see Mickey Haller again. The constant put down of defense attorney's makes me roll my eyes though. It's like these people don't live in a world where the Central Park 6 was a thing.

...I'm not sure how much I can be involved."

 

"You're dumping this case on me. You changed my radio station and dumped the case on me."

 

"No, I want to help and I will help. John Jack mentored me. He taught me the rule, you know?"

 

"What rule?"

 

"To take every case personally."

 

"What?"

 

"Take every case personally and you get angry. It builds a fire. It gives you the edge you need to go the distance every time out."

 

Ballard thought about that. She understood what he was saying but knew it was a dangerous way to live and work.

 

"He said 'every case'?" she asked.

 

"'Every case,'" Bosch said.

In The Night Fire Michael Connelly gives one more piece of evidence that yes, you can occasionally have too much of a good thing. We've got a little bit of a Mickey Haller case, something that Bosch works mostly on his own, something that Bosch and Ballard work together, a case that Ballard works mostly on her own, and then a hint of something else that Bosch primarily does solo. Plus there's something about Bosch's personal life and a dash of Maddie's life. Which is all a lot to ask out of 405 pages.

It's plenty to ask out of 650 pages, come to think of it. But anyway, let's take a look, shall we?

Haller was drafted to defend an indigent man accused of murdering a judge, and is doing okay in the trial, but not well enough with things coming to an end. Bosch watched a little bit of the trial, waiting to talk to his half-brother and something strikes him wrong. So he takes a look at the files and gives Haller to think about. But it's clear to Bosch that the LAPD isn't going to act on anything they turn up, they've got their man. So if anyone's going to expose the judge's killer, it's going to be Bosch. While it's to be expected that the detectives that arrested Haller's client would resent Bosch's involvement with the defense—but Ballard is antagonistic toward the idea as well. Just because these two respect each other and can work with each other, they're not clones, they don't agree on a lot.

Ballard's called to the scene of a homeless camp, where someone had burned to death in a tent fire. She's just there as a precaution, in case the LAFD decides it's arson (and therefore homicide) instead of an accident. Having been brushed off—and afraid that the LAFD will do the same to the case—she takes a little time to turn up enough evidence to justify treating the case as a homicide. Then she was promptly removed from the case, so her old team at RHD could work it. Naturally, like every character Connelly has ever created, Ballard walks away, right? Yeah, I can't type that with a straight face—she cuts a corner or two and works the case herself, making better progress than anyone else does, too. This brings her into contact with her old antagonist, now-Captain Olivas. He's close to retirement, and it'll be interesting to see what happens to her career after that.

But what gets the majority of the attention of the novel is the case that the Ballard and Bosch work together—Harry's mentor (and father figure) has died and left him a murder book from 1990 that he'd, um, "borrowed" when he retired. John Jack wasn't assigned to the case in 1990, it's unclear that he did anything in 2000 when he took the file home. Bosch has no idea why he had it, but convinces Ballard to read it over and look into the case. They start working it, bringing them into contact with retired and not-retired gang members, digging up the past, and the question about why John Jack had taken the file.

Watching Connelly balance these mysteries/storylines is a treat—he does a great job of moving forward with each of them while bouncing back and forth between. I do think each case could've used 10-20% time than he gave them. But I could be wrong. They all wrap up satisfactorily, and There's not a lot of time given for anything that isn't case related, but we get a little bit. Both the personal material for Bosch (which is what he was waiting in court to talk to Haller about) and what we learn about Maddie make me really wonder what's around their corners—and it appears we won't learn anything in 2020 (unless we get a bit of an update in the Haller novel next year). Ballard's material is always about her work primarily, but we do learn a little more about her life between her father's death and her time with LAPD. I'm glad that Connelly hasn't given us her whole biography, but man...what we have been given just makes me want more. Clearly, he's making sure that fans of all three characters are going to have to come back for more as soon as he produces it.

I appreciated the discussion Bosch and Ballard had about some actions at the end of Dark Sacred Night, I have a friend who will rant at the drop of a hat about Ballard's choices there (and I trust my email/text messages will get another one when he reads this post). I don't think this conversation will satisfy him, but it's good to see the pair acknowledge mistakes they made. While I don't think either of them do anything quite as misguided in this book, but they both make a couple of reckless moves. Bosch's always had a little bit of dirt on/leverage with superiors (even some history) to give him some coverage when he gets reckless. Ballard doesn't. So when she goes maverick, it's more nerve-wracking than it is when Bosch did/does it. A nice little bit of character work, and a good distinction between the two characters.

There's a moment in every Michael Connelly novel, no matter how good it is, where something just clicks and suddenly I'm more invested in it than I am in almost any other book. I think I've talked about it before, but when That Moment hits—there's nothing better. I get that with a lot of Thrillers/Mysteries (and even some books in other genres), but never as consistently as I do with Connelly. I knew that moment had hit when my phone told me it was time to put the book down and go into my office and I audibly groaned. How was I supposed to focus on anything else when Bosch and Ballard were on the hunt?

Lastly, and this is very likely going to be only a problem I had. Several right-hand pages in my copy that have very faint—practically missing—letters. It's like it'd been left in the sun too long, or like when an inkjet printer is running out of ink. Please tell me that Little, Brown has better equipment than I do.

This isn't the best Connelly can do, but man...it's so good. Solidly put together, we get to spend time with all our favorites and it hits every button it's supposed to. Connelly is one of the best around—The Night Fire shows why.