On New Year's Eve, all hell breaks loose in Hollywood: At midnight, hundreds of revelers shoot into the sky during the traditional lead rain. It doesn't matter that everything that goes up has to go down again. A few minutes later, Renée Ballard, a night shift detective at the LAPD, and one of her uncommitted colleagues, who usually works during the day, are called to a crime scene: the owner of a car repair shop has been shot in the middle of a crowded street party and dies in the ambulance. It quickly becomes clear that this deadly bullet did not fall from the sky. Ballard is busy with another case: The Midnight Men, a gang of sex offenders, have raped two women in the past five weeks - and left no trace. On top of that, the pandemic and recent protests have fundamentally changed Ballard's work. No one believes that the police do good anymore - not even herself, Ballard fears, when she looks at the morale of the college. Determined to solve both cases, she turns to the only detective she can count on: Harry Bosch. Biography (Michael Connelly) Michael Connelly, born in Philadelphia in 1956, initially studied journalism and creative writing in Florida. He then (from 1980) worked for various newspapers in Fort Lauderdale and Daytona Beach, where he specialized in police reporting. After one of his reportages was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as a police reporter. For his thriller debut, he immediately received the Edgar Award, the most prestigious American crime award, in 1992. Today he lives with his family in Florida again.