Publication Date May 19, 2026

A year or so ago, one of my favorite authors, Michael, brought out a new character in the novel Nightshade, featuring a detective named Stilwell from the LASD.  I’m a Southern California native who grew up loving Catalina Island, so it was somewhat of a headscratcher when in this book Stilwell’s reassignment to Catalina is somewhat a banishment or demotion…I was SO hoping that after reading Nightshade, I would be eagerly awaiting the next adventure of this new detective, but I’m afraid I came away not all that invested in what happens next.(I noted that  “ I still don’t know Stilwell’s real backstory or even his last name.”)

I did say I would read the next one, so when Little, Brown gave me a copy of Ironwood (the second book featuring Stillwell) in exchange for my honest review, I was happy to dive in.

Catalina Island is once again the setting, and Connelly still makes it an essential character in the story, Stillwell and some deputies, acting on a tip from a confidential informant, see a plane land in the middle of the night at the Airport in the Sky, which is a remote airstrip in the island’s mountains. Sounds like a perfect spot for running drugs, right?, Sure enough, a duffel bag of drugs is dropped on the airstrip and the deputies move in, but while Stilwell is busy chasing  the pickup man, the plane takes off and shots are fired on the runway.

Stillwell is benched while an internal inquiry gets underway, but he is determined to find out who was responsible, so he starts his own secret investigation.sort of snooping around the substation, he digs through the lost and found and finds a backpack that was never claimed. He traces it to a woman who disappeared while hiking on the island several years earlier.  As he works to unravel the mystery of why the backpack was just turned in recently after the woman had disappeared quite awhile ago, his investigation ends up at the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit and Detective Renée Ballard (a favorite character in Connelly’s books about crime in the Southern part of California..

Things progress from there, with both Stillwell and Ballard working the case (from both sides of the channel, him on the island and her on the mainland). It’s a great story, and a fun read. I liked this second entry in the Stillwell series  much better than Nightshade. Four stars.