Desert Star

The novel opens with retired LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch lining up pills on his kitchen table when a knock at the door interrupts him. He sweeps the pills into a drawer and finds Renée Ballard, an LAPD detective he has not seen in nearly a year. Ballard has been authorized to lead a newly reconstituted Open-Unsolved Unit focused on cold case homicides and wants Bosch as a volunteer investigator. The unit exists because City Councilman Jake Pearlman, whose sixteen-year-old sister Sarah was raped and murdered in an unsolved 1994 case, pressured the department to restart cold case work. Bosch is bitter that Ballard previously abandoned their plan to open a private investigation partnership, but the chance to return to the Gallagher Family case, a quadruple murder he never solved, draws him in.

Ballard sets up the unit inside the Ahmanson Center in Westchester, which houses the LAPD's homicide archive. Her team includes retired agents and officers from various departments, a retired deputy district attorney named Paul Masser who handles legal strategy, and Colleen Hatteras, a civilian genealogist who claims to be an "empath." Ballard privately warns Bosch about Ted Rawls, a retired Santa Monica police officer placed on the team by Nelson Hastings, Pearlman's chief of staff, to serve as a pipeline of information back to the councilman's office.

At Ballard's request, Bosch first reviews the Pearlman case. He focuses on a partial palm print found on the windowsill of Sarah's bedroom, the suspected entry point, realizing the tape used to lift the print may have captured DNA from the intruder's sweat. Darcy Troy, the unit's DNA lab technician, extracts DNA from the tape, but instead of matching a known offender, it produces a case-to-case hit linking to the 2005 unsolved murder of Laura Wilson, a 24-year-old aspiring actress strangled in her Hollywood apartment. Troy explains that the Wilson case DNA was extracted from blood in urine on the victim's toilet seat, a condition called hematuria indicating the killer had kidney or bladder disease.

In parallel, Bosch rebuilds the Gallagher Family case. He drives to the remote Mojave Desert gravesite where the four family members were found and rebuilds four crumbling rock columns marking each grave. Stephen Gallagher, an Irish immigrant, ran an industrial equipment rental company. His associate Finbar McShane remained after the family disappeared in 2013 and looted the company by selling off all equipment in a bust-out scheme, a method of stripping a business of its assets, netting over $800,000 before vanishing. The family's remains were discovered a year later; they had been killed with a nail gun from Gallagher's warehouse. The only physical link to McShane was rock in an excavator's tire tread matching the gravesite geology, deemed insufficient for charges. Bosch reinterviews Sheila Walsh, Gallagher's former office manager, and discovers that a burglary at her home attributed to McShane was actually committed by her son, who has a methamphetamine addiction, meaning McShane's fingerprints were left during a separate visit.

Meanwhile, Ballard reviews Wilson's crime scene photos and spots a "JAKE!" campaign button in the victim's junk drawer from Pearlman's unsuccessful 2005 council race, held just days after Wilson's murder. She tracks down Sandy Kramer, Pearlman's 2005 campaign manager, who reveals that Hastings served as Pearlman's driver during that campaign, contradicting Hastings's claim that the election predated his involvement. Kramer also confirms that Rawls was a campaign volunteer who distributed buttons. These discrepancies, combined with Hastings apparently knowing Wilson was Black before Ballard disclosed her race, make Hastings the primary suspect. Bosch obtains Hastings's VA medical records showing he underwent a nephrectomy, the surgical removal of a kidney, in 2008, seemingly aligning with the killer's kidney disease.

Ballard and Bosch devise a ruse to collect Hastings's DNA at a coffee shop in Grand Central Market. Bosch, disguised as a busboy, retrieves Hastings's discarded cup, but the lab results are a shock: Hastings's DNA does not match. Troy suggests the nephrectomy may have been a donation rather than treatment. Ballard and Bosch confront Hastings, who reveals he donated his kidney to Rawls, who had cancer that destroyed both kidneys. Hastings confirms Rawls volunteered on the 2005 campaign and distributed buttons, meaning Rawls could have given Wilson the button.

The investigation pivots to Rawls. While Ballard works with Masser on a search warrant for Rawls's DNA, Bosch stakes out Rawls's business in Santa Monica and spots his car with its trunk open. Rawls slips away, and Bosch pursues. Rawls executes a PIT maneuver, spinning Bosch's vehicle out of control. In the confrontation that follows, Rawls's shot clips Bosch's ear before Bosch returns fire, hitting Rawls in the shoulder. Rawls then turns the gun on himself. A cardboard box in his trunk contains souvenirs taken from victims over the years.

DNA and palm prints from Rawls match both the Pearlman and Wilson murders, officially closing those cases. The chief of police holds a press conference omitting the fact that Rawls was a unit member placed by Pearlman's office. Bosch tips reporter Keisha Russell of the Los Angeles Times, and the full story is published. Ballard faces political fallout but tells the chief that if Bosch is removed, she will resign.

Bosch's observation that Rawls had his trunk open before entering the store leads Ballard to check the alley dumpsters. She finds a second box containing a nightgown, bunny slippers, a hammer, and a bracelet with a painter's palette charm engraved "G-O." Hatteras discovers the charm is a locket with a photo of a young man. Ballard matches the face to Jorge Ochoa, convicted in 2009 of murdering his girlfriend Olga Reyes. Ochoa's mother confirms the bracelet belonged to Olga. The evidence strongly links Rawls to Reyes's murder, but the District Attorney's Office refuses to act because the chain of custody connecting the box to Rawls is too weak. Ballard secretly tips Bosch's half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, who agrees to pursue Ochoa's release through a habeas corpus petition, a court filing challenging the legality of the imprisonment.

Bosch pressures Walsh into revealing that McShane returned years after the murders to reclaim money she had extorted from the bust-out proceeds. McShane made a cryptic remark referencing the cruise ship Dawn, which sails to Key West. Bosch flies to Florida alone, leaving sealed letters for Ballard and his daughter, Maddie Bosch. In Key West, local contacts lead him to a houseboat where McShane lives under the alias Davy Byrne. Bosch enters at 3 a.m. carrying only a screwdriver. McShane is waiting with a gun. He confesses that the Gallagher children were awake and knew what was coming when he killed them. When McShane moves close, Bosch deflects the gun and drives the screwdriver into McShane's ribs, killing him.

Unable to reach Bosch for days, Ballard and Maddie search his house. Maddie finds the farewell letter and loose pills she identifies as counterfeit fentanyl. Ballard flies to Key West and finds Bosch asleep in his hotel room. He tells her the Gallagher case is closed but offers no details. He then reveals that exposure to radioactive cesium from a prior case has given him cancer that has spread to his bone marrow; the fentanyl pills are his planned means of ending his life when the disease becomes unbearable. Ballard insists he tell Maddie, and he agrees.

In the final scene, Ballard drives Bosch to the Mojave gravesite, where the four rock columns still stand beside a mesquite tree. He carries a wooden box of the Gallagher family's ashes, entrusted to him by Stephen Gallagher's sister in Ireland with instructions to scatter them once justice was done. He lets the ashes fall through his fingers and drift on the wind. He tells Ballard he will not return to the unit. Looking at the desert star flowers growing at the base of the columns, Bosch tells her a friend once called them a sign of resilience. "Like you," he adds. They walk back to the car and drive toward the city.