''Desert Star'' is the 37th novel by American crime author

Michael Connelly Michael Joseph Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of Detective fiction, detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring Los Angeles Police Department, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and cr ...

, and the twenty-fourth novel featuring

Los Angeles Police Department The City of Los Angeles Police Department, commonly referred to as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is the primary law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 8,832 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the th ...

detective

Harry Bosch Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is a fictional character created by American author Michael Connelly. Bosch debuted as the lead character in the 1992 novel '' The Black Echo'', the first in a best-selling police procedural series now numberi ...

. The book was published by

Little, Brown and Company Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries, it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emil ...

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

Reception

Oline H. Cogdill of the ''

Sun Sentinel The ''Sun Sentinel'' (also known as the ''South Florida Sun Sentinel'', known until 2008 as the ''Sun-Sentinel'', and stylized on its Nameplate (publishing), masthead as ''SunSentinel'') is the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ...

'' called the novel "superb" and praised its "heart-wrenching" ending. Chris Hewitt of the ''

Minnesota Star Tribune ''The Minnesota Star Tribune'', formerly the ''Minneapolis Star Tribune'', is an American daily newspaper based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of 2023, it is Minnesota's largest newspaper and the seventh-largest in the United States by circula ...

'' wrote: "Both cases are absorbing and Ballard's outings with Bosch have made her a sharper (and crankier) character." A review in ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

'' opined that of the two murder cases featured in the novel, the Pearlman cases is "considerably more interesting—partly because the break that leads the unit to a surprising new suspect turns out to be both fraught and misleading, partly because identifying the killer is only the beginning of Bosch's problems", while the Gallagher case is "more heartfelt but less wily and dramatic." The review concluded that the novel is "Not the best of Connelly's procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best."

References

{{Authority control 2022 American novels Harry Bosch series Novels set in Los Angeles American detective novels Little, Brown and Company books