Michael Connelly: Nightshade (UK 2025)

From the Publisher:
'A murder case is like a shark. It sleeps it dies.'
LAPD Detective Stilwell has been forced out of the Homicide department to a dead-end post on Santa Catalina Island.

It might be an idyllic holiday destination but Stilwell knows it's a backwater to keep him out of sight and out of mind. But the usual weekend case-load of petty drunken violence is disturbed by a report of a body found in the harbour, weighed down by an anchor.

Driven to prove a point to his superiors back on the mainland, Stilwell will cross every line of protocol and jurisdiction to solve the murder case.

It's sink or swim, as failure will cost him everything, and finding the killer will reveal the dark heart of his new home.

But on a small island with big secrets -someone is always watching...

Michael Connelly: Nightshade. As the tide turns secrets will surface. Orion Books, ISBN: 9781398726697 (May, 2025), 343 p., £22.00, eBook £11.99.

Michael Connelly: Nightshade (USA 2025)

From the Publisher:
Introducing Detective Stilwell: a cop relentlessly following his mission in the seemingly idyllic setting of Catalina Island.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor -- a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig.

Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases. Though hampered by an old beef with an ex-colleague determined to thwart him at every turn, he is convinced he is the only one who can bring justice to the woman known as "Nightshade." Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.

Propulsive and atmospheric, Nightshade launches a brand new character into the Connelly universe, and proves without question that Michael Connelly is "the undisputed master of the modern crime novel" (Real Book Spy).

Michael Connelly: Nightshade. Little, Brown, & Co., ISBN: 9780316588485 (May, 2025), 352 p., $30.00, eBook $14.99.