‘BALLARD’ ON AMAZON PRIME
  
A prolific author of detective novels and crime fiction, Michael Connelly has a legion of fans not only for his books but for the television series “Bosch,” Bosch: Legacy,” and “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
  
With 41 bestselling novels to his credit, it does not appear the 69-year-old author is slowing down any time soon. His Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, is back with a case in “The Proving Ground” novel due in October.
  


This year also brought the release of “Nightshade,” an introduction to a new cop with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell exiled to a low-key post on Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. Could this augur a future television series?
 
Several Connelly novels featured LAPD detectives Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch working together to hunt killers, from the “Desert Star” search for a man murdering an entire family, to “The Night Fire” in which Ballard and Bosch become an investigative team.
  
Now streaming on Amazon Prime is “Ballard,” starring Maggie Q as Robbery-Homicide detective Renee Ballard, who is about as popular with the department bureaucracy as Scottish detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) is with his own in “Dept. Q,” which was reviewed last week.
  
The connection between “Ballard” and the “Bosch” universe is unambiguous, given the literary existence of the two detectives working together, and yet they never came in contact during the television series until the last episode of “Bosch: Legacy.”
  
We first saw Maggie Q’s Ballard when she entered uninvited into Bosch’s private investigator office, demanding he return the files she accused him of purloining. It looked like the start of a contentious relationship.
  
The investigation was a cold case into the murder of one of the young girls that Bosch was unwilling to forget, even after leaving the police force. This case involved a firefighter suspect returning to Los Angeles after a dozen years.
  
After a reluctant but effective partnership to nab the murderer, Ballard and Bosch exchange compliments for good work. Prophetically, Bosch proclaims, “Maybe somewhere down the line we’ll get to work together again.”
  
With its provenance to the Michael Connelly literary sphere, “Ballard” most appropriately draws in a few familiar faces from the “Bosch” domain, including the lovable retired LAPD curmudgeons Crate and Barrel.
  
As a result of getting on the wrong side of the insular LAPD culture, Ballard is ostracized by friends and colleagues for lodging an attempted sexual assault complaint against a senior officer who is seemingly an untouchable insider. Never mind that Ballard is one of LAPD’s finest detectives.
  
Banished to a file room in the basement of the LAPD training center, Ballard is left to her own devices to put together a team, getting help from Councilman Jake Pearlman (Noah Bean) for some funding, as he has a personal interest in the twenty-year old cold case of his murdered sister.
  
Ballard’s former partner in the Robbery-Homicide division, Thomas Laffont (John Carroll Lynch), comes out of retirement to join the cold case task force. He provides a steady presence inside a somewhat hectic team.
  
An eclectic group of volunteers form the backbone of the cold case unit. Colleen Hatteras (Rebecca Field) is most energetically enthusiastic, relying on intuition and new age superstitions to postulate her crime theories, which are not necessarily off-base.
  
College student intern Martina Castro (Victoria Moroles) is studying law with a perspective on crime that may be unorthodox to some. Ted Rawls (Michael Mosley), wealthy owner of a security firm and acting as a watchdog for the interests of his friend the Councilman, joins the team as a reserve LAPD officer.
  
To round out the crew, Ballard pursues Samira Parker (Courtney Taylor), formerly an investigator on an LAPD cold case, who resigned from the force after a brief, unpleasant stint as a Robbery-Homicide detective. Only Ballard’s persuasive power brings Samira back into the fold.
 
It’s not all about sleuthing for Ballard. She shares a waterfront double-wide trailer home on the Malibu beach with her grandmother Tutu (Amy Hill), and clears her head from the heavy workload with early morning surfing sessions that also allow her to remember with admiration her late father.
  
“Ballard” is not just about the police work on forgotten cases. The storyline takes a deep look into complex issues, ranging from corruption to sexual improprieties to a culture rife with convolutions that go beyond the usual, perfunctory themes of cop dramas.
  
Unquestionably in this reviewer’s perspective, “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy” rate highly in the pantheon of police procedurals as among the best of all time TV shows. “Ballard” shows promise to create a trifecta of remarkably essential and laudatory entertainment.
  
Without disclosing the slightest hint of how the first season’s cliffhanger concludes, suffice it to say that a failure of “Ballard” to come back for a second turn would be an unforgivable crime. We just can’t be left hanging.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.