{"id":4182,"date":"2026-08-09T18:47:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T00:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=4182"},"modified":"2026-08-11T19:05:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:05:38","slug":"the-dark-hours-renee-ballard-book-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=4182","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Hours, (Ren\u00e9e Ballard Book 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Michael Connelly, 2021, Audiobook narrated by Christine Lakin and Titus Welliver, Little, Brown &amp; Company <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-3-5.gif\" alt=\"3.5 stars\"\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I jumped into this series on book 4 rather than starting with the first book in the series.  It didn&#8217;t seem to diminish the book at all.  Despite the foul language which I don&#8217;t care for, I enjoyed it. I listened to it shortly after listening to an Ian Rankin book, and I was struck with the vast difference between an American crime novel and one that took place in Edenborough, Scotland.  The tone and the characters seem very different, not to mention the Scottish accent of the narrator of the Rankin book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The theme of each of these books seems similar, however: a somewhat rebellious detective fighting an ineffective police bureaucracy.  This book starts out with a person who is killed during a fireworks display. Ballard begins an investigation which eventually ties the murder to a series of rape assaults in the Los Angeles area.  Ballard enlists the help of her friend, Harry Bosch, a retired police detective. Together, they discover the link between the rapes and solve the crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I enjoyed the book and the narration and will decide to do another book in the series,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Michael Connelly, 2021, Audiobook narrated by Christine Lakin and Titus Welliver, Little, Brown &amp; Company I jumped into this series on book 4 rather than starting with the first book in the series. It didn&#8217;t seem to diminish the <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=4182\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-4182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4183,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182\/revisions\/4183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}