I have said it before and I'll say it again: I love Renée Ballard. She is one bad-ass bitch (I say that as the highest compliment) and if I ever found myself the victim of a crime, I'd want her to be the detective in my case.

The Dark Hours takes place over the course of December 2020 through January 2021, and Connelly encorporates current, real-life events like the covid-19 pandemic and the social justice movement and civil unrest that followed the murders of George Floyd and other Black Americans during 2020, including calls to defund the police. I love that Connelly doesn't shy away from tackling hard topics, especially those that affect his main characters, LAPD officers. That being said, if you're trying to escape from current events, this might not be the book for you. As for me, I appreciate that Connelly doesn't try to pretend like problems within our criminal justice system don't exist and uses his platform as a crime writer to draw attention to those issues; I don't think I could continue reading his books if he didn't.

As a huge fan of the television series Bosch, which Connelly created and produced, Renée reminded me a lot of Grace Billets, a lieutenant who made the decision to stand for change as a female leader from inside her department no matter how hard it was for her personally. Even though I'm not in law enforcement, I found myself relating to Renée's internal struggle as she decides whether it's better to take on an institution from within, or leave the institution altogether. I can't wait to see what she decides to do and hope I don't have to wait too long until the next installment of this series!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I enjoyed this story immensely, although the Midnight Men storyline was deeply disturbing and made me really worry about the state of our country and how we continue to treat women. The murder case was a little too complicated with everything else going on in the book, but overall this was another solid procedural from Connelly.