欧宝娱乐

Cold Case Crimes
A review of the Little, Brown & Company audiobook (October 15, 2024) released simultaneously with the Little, Brown & Company hardcover/eBook.

The Waiting continues the Ren茅e Ballard storyline with the sometime surfer detective still heading up the LAPD Unsolved Crimes Unit together with a group of volunteers. Harry Bosch's daughter Maddie Bosch asks to work part-time for the unit, seeing it as a way to accelerate her police career from patrol to detective work.

The story kicks off with Ballard having her gun and badge stolen from her car during a morning surfing excursion. The hunt for her IDs leads her to uncover a much larger conspiracy which allows for Harry Bosch to play a small undercover role.

Meanwhile back at the Unsolved Crimes Unit, a current DNA hit causes the squad to focus in on a historical case of serial rapes and murder. The hunt is on for the father of the current young offender. When Maddie Bosch joins the unit her curiosity leads her to the investigation of a notorious 77-year-old cold case which causes political blowback in a conflict with the DA's Office.

The several cases are juggled well in this police procedural, along with a Ballard subplot of the search for her lost mother in Hawaii. I did think the fictional solution of the 77-year-old case (I'm intentionally not saying its name here to prevent a spoiler) was a bit of a stretch. I have to guess that something of a spectacular nature was needed in order to give the Maddie Bosch character a prominent role.

The Waiting is primarily a Ren茅e Ballard book with Harry Bosch and Maddie Bosch having smaller cameo roles. The audiobook did have TV series actors Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz voicing their respective Bosch characters, so that was great. Christine Lakin continues to voice the Ballard role but will not be portraying the character on screen, see below under Trivia for more on that.

Trivia and Link

Actor Maggie Q and an earlier Ballard novel. Image sourced from Deadline (see link below).
It has been announced that actor Maggie Q will portray Ren茅e Ballard in an upcoming, currently untitled TV series (2025?) as a further spinoff to the (2014-2021) and (2022-2024?) TV series. The series is expected to use the LAPD Unsolved Crimes Unit as its story setting and Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch is expected to play a role. Read about that in a Deadline article from March 21, 2024.