If ever a book opened with a bang, it’s Michael Connelly’s latest, Ironwood, featuring Detective Stilwell and set on Catalina island, off the coast of California. This is the second in the series, and it’s released a year after we first met Stil, in Nightshade.
Connelly’s books have usually been set in the heart of the city of Los Angeles, but Catalina offers a much slower pace of life – and crime – with the former LAPD homicide detective running the gamut of island wrong-doings, from stolen golf buggies to graffiti tagging and vandalism.
Nevertheless, Ironwood begins with Stil and his team acting on a tipoff from a confidential informant. They are high on a mountain, staking out the island’s ‘Airport in the Sky’ and lying in wait for a drugs drop-off that soon goes to the bad, leaving one deputy dead and another badly injured and the perpetrators in the wind.
What exactly went wrong? The answer to that question is just one of the powerful storylines that intertwine throughout this book.
As an investigation is launched and Stil is sidelined, he can’t just sit there cooling his heels. Instead, he sets to work clearing a room full of items left behind by the thousands of visitors that come to Catalina every season and forget to take their belongings home with them. Which is where he unearths an expensive rucksack that sets his spidey senses tingling. Further investigation links the bag to a long-missing woman – and soon, Stil is in contact with the mainland… and Detective Renee Ballard.
Our favourite cold case detective has a big role in Ironwood – and it was a pleasure to discover fleeting appearances for both Harry Bosch and his police officer daughter Maddie too, from Connelly’s famous detective series. Stil and Harry never meet, but it’s a Bosch workaround, passed along by Ballard, that helps Stilwell to catch a break in a years-old cold case.
Much like a Western movie, Detective Stilwell is the only sheriff in town – or in this case, island – which is why it seems appropriate that here are so many film references scattered throughout Ironwood, many of them old-style cowboy shoot-’em-ups. But don’t think that Connelly is living in the past, instead he keeps things absolutely current with pertinent storylines that feature ICE and the threat to freedom of speech.
His heart may be lost to LA but it’s clear that this author has a growing affection for Catalina, and its landscape, lifestyle and inhabitants figure large, adding an insular, claustrophobic air that brought to mind Ann Cleeves’ Shetland books. Even the Ironwood of the title is a tree native to the island and it has a vital part to play here.
But it’s a pleasing mix of small town and big city that keeps the narrative interesting and the pages a-turning, and in Stilwell we have a character who is destined to be revealed bit by bit. Already, it’s clear that he’s sharp, intuitive, fond of tweaking the rules a tad, and a guy who could definitely take “everybody counts or nobody counts” as his mantra. Harry Bosch would be proud! With Ironwood, things are beginning to bed in somewhat. I have a feeling that this is a series that could be in for the long-haul.
As a bonus, two books in, we finally get a hint of Stil’s first name – but could it really be Steve? Connelly is staying tight lipped – and probably lying low to avoid the wrath of fans of the Catalina series after delivering an ending that leaves so much open. At least it means we’re assured of another Stilwell book, so perhaps we’ll let him off this time.
A city cop working outside of her comfort zone features in Sarah Hilary’s The Drowning Place, reviewed here.
Orion
Print/Kindle/iBook
£12.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
