{"id":8578,"date":"2024-11-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=8578"},"modified":"2024-10-28T20:16:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T00:16:42","slug":"the-waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/the-waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"THE WAITING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have followed Michael Connolly\u2019s \u201cHarry Bosch\u201d series of police procedural novels since they first came out. The character arcs are in real time. The lead character is now old, retired, fighting cancer but still able to mentor those who\u2019ve become the primary protagonists. In his latest, \u201cThe Waiting<\/a>,\u201d those are young LAPD detective Renee Ballard and Bosch\u2019s daughter Maddie, now in her third year on LAPD herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connolly\u2019s novels capture the politics of policing, particularly in the big city. In \u201cThe Waiting<\/a>,\u201d there\u2019s a Gascon-like \u201cprogressive\u201d district attorney who dislikes the police so much that he won\u2019t file charges on the most infamous murder in Los Angeles history. His motive? To deny his political enemy, an honest chief of police, the credit his department (and Renee and Maddie) deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For gun people, the Bosch novels are better than most. Renee carries a Glock 17 and a Ruger LCP .380 for backup, guns which last I knew were indeed approved by LAPD. About the only technical point I\u2019d quibble with in \u201cThe Waiting\u201d is when a bad guy points a Glock at Renee, not realizing she has cleverly unloaded it beforehand, and pulls the trigger. Click. When it doesn\u2019t go off, he keeps pulling the trigger and gets three more clicks. Gun people realize that Glocks don\u2019t work that way: the slide would have to be activated to reset the trigger after that first \u201cclick,\u201d because Glocks don\u2019t have double strike capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s a bigger lesson for gun owners in the book\u2019s subplot. Renee leaves her duty gun, badge, wallet and phone in her car when she goes to the beach, locking the vehicle but leaving the key in a magnetic box inside the wheel well.  Of course, gun and badge and all get stolen. Here approach to retrieving it is clever but totally out of bounds. It\u2019s a reminder that firearms should never be left in unattended motor vehicles unless they\u2019re locked in a secure safe therein, and car keys should remain on one\u2019s person. Stolen guns end up in the hands of criminals, as happens in this novel. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have followed Michael Connolly\u2019s \u201cHarry Bosch\u201d series of police procedural novels since they first came out. The character arcs are in real time. The lead character is now old, retired, fighting cancer but still able to mentor those who\u2019ve become the primary protagonists. In his latest, \u201cThe Waiting,\u201d those are young LAPD detective Renee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8586,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions\/8586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}