Nightshade by Michael Connelly

4 Stars from me

As solid a crime thriller as you would expect and anticipate from someone of Michael Connelly‘s literary pedigree, Nightshade delivers a reliably good read.

Nightshade contains some great characters, all skillfully fleshed out. The members of the exclusive club were all suitably unpleasant and this collective ‘superiority’ was conveyed very well throughout the book.

The ‘bad guys’ in the picture felt tangibly bad, there was a real down and dirty grit to the narrative involving ‘babyhead’ and crew, meaning that there was several scenes and locations that felt truly unsafe and uncomfortable.

The snark, back biting and open conflict between Stilwell and Ahearn was a relentless side dish to the main story, with their puerile nicknames for each other and petty rivalry. It added a touch of silly but relatable realism that I greatly enjoyed.

Overall, a good solid read that fans of these types of detective series and I hope that this will be the first of many featuring Stilwell.

Follow me on Blue Sky for more bookish content: https://bsky.app/profile/coffeecurls.bsky.social  My thanks to the author, NetGalley and Orion Publishing for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Blurb: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland.

But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbor. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case.

Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.