Ironwood: A Catalina Novel, Michael Connelly, author; Will Damron, narrator
When the book begins, there is a stakeout at an airfield where a plane is expected to arrive for a drug drop. When the small plane lands, a courier arrives and leaves a bag to be picked up by the pilot of the plane, but things go awry. The two volunteer police officers, who were working with Detective Sergeant Steve Stilwell that night, were unexpectedly attacked. One of them, Deputy Alton Quigley, had actually tipped Stilwell off about the drop. He was fatally shot; the other one was critically injured. It seems that someone had been hiding on that plane with a weapon, but why? Stilwell did not witness the attacks because he had taken off after the courier, to prevent his escape, but he lost him. The courier, however, was trapped on the island, so how would he get away? Stilwell spotted the courier trying to leave by ferry, and using his contacts, he enabled his capture. This angered Stilwell’s boss who had taken him off the case because of the murder at the airport, the ensuing investigation and the negative publicity. Although the courier was not to be moved from the jail, fake ICE agents picked him up, and he escaped. Eventually, Stilwell comes to believe that the officer murdered at the airfield was the actual target, and the drop was the decoy. He had been set up, but why? It was discovered that the victim and his wife were both unfaithful and involved in a divorce. Stilwell began to follow additional leads about their relationships. When it was discovered that a fragment of the bullet used that fateful night was a kind that came from a certain manufacturer; it was a unique bullet. Stilwell looked into the company and put two and two together to solve the crime. Then, his own life and future were threatened. Stilwell’s boss, Captain Corum, did not want the publicity or the controversy. He ordered him to drop the case. He wanted him to look the other way, let the commotion die down, and to let the suspects go free. It seems that everyone else involved in the investigation had suddenly retired or gone on vacation. What would Stilwell do? Should he allow the case to die, a murderer to go free, and protect his own future? Should he defy the boss and risk it all, Tasch and the life on the island that he loved? Perhaps the next book in the series will answer that question.
There were other investigations going on at the same time as the murder at the airfield. When Stilwell finds the backpack of a woman who had been missing for four years, in the lost and found at the station, he brings the information to the cold case division of the Los Angeles Police Department where he meets Investigator Renee Ballard. They decide to work together. When the body of a missing woman is found on the island of Catalina, with the help of Stilwell’s intuition and sharp eye, they realize that other women have been murdered in the same way. They begin to think that they are looking for a serial killer who may have come to Catalina and is sending out clues. Perhaps he thinks he is so smart that they won’t catch him. Stilwell suspected a Forest Ranger, Kent Middleton, who had recently come to the island. Stilwell and Ballard shared information to solve this crime, but even though they were right and they caught the killer, it had a bittersweet ending.
Stilwell had also been involved in a case involving the former corrupt Mayor of Avalon, Douglas Allen. Before he could give testimony as a witness, however, a plea bargain brought the case to an unhappy end. He was not happy with the result, but law enforcement could be disappointing, at times. Neither he nor the prosecutor believed in plea bargains.
I enjoyed the slow and methodical investigation of the crimes on and off the island of Catalina by Detective Stilwell. He quietly exposed corruption in the police force and in the political arena, as well as pointing out the shortcomings in the business of law enforcement as a whole. Each new development held my interest, and each crime had a successful, if not always satisfactory conclusion. The relationship between Stilwell and his girlfriend Tash Dano was a pleasant distraction and identified them both as honest and sincere characters, with all the right values. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, and he had grown to love her and the life on the mostly quiet island, a place he had once hoped would be temporary. Now he hoped to stay there for life with her.