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How Ballard Mashes Up the Bosch Universe
The first season of the Maggie Q–starring spinoff lands in a very different place than the books on which it’s based.
For the most part, Ballard sticks to the professional history established for Renée in Connelly’s books: She was a slightly reckless, but respected, Robbery-Homicide Division (RHD) detective who got abandoned by her colleagues after she filed a complaint against her supervisor, Robert Olivas. In Dark Sacred Night, Ballard shares that Olivas, who has a documented pattern of sexual abuse, has been put in charge of a special task force investigating sex crimes; Connelly loves portraying the LAPD as incompetent and self-defeating. He’s old-fashioned in his understanding of gender dynamics, but working with the heavily female Cold Case Unit changes his mind, a switch that Mosley’s Rawls handles well in a conversation with Ballard about the danger women face from men every day of their lives.
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