Stil a thrill
And off we go on Michael Connelly's 40th superb police procedural, riding the freeways of Los Angeles with hardboiled homicide cop Harry Bosch, detective Renee Ballard, and most recently young police officer Maddie Bosch, following in father's footsteps.
Oh, wait.
Mark DeLong Photography
Michael Connelly is known for his detective Harry Bosch, but in his 40th police procedural, he's introduced a new main character: detective sergeant Stilwell.
There are no freeways on Catalina.
And no one named Bosch or Ballard is in sight, though our lead detective sure sounds a lot like Harry Bosch. A past in the police dive unit rather than a tunnel rat in Vietnam, but still, could be a younger Bosch clone.
Insubordinate? Check. Doesn't follow orders? Check. Ventures outside the rules at times? Check. Doesn't get along with lazy or corrupt fellow police officers? Check. Opposes authority at any level, at any time? Check. Messes up relationships with great women? Check.
But does he solve crimes that so many others can't?
Oh, please.
Nightshade brings us Connelly's latest new character, Los Angeles County sheriff's detective sergeant Stilwell — no first name, Stil to his friends, Stillborn to several loathsome characters.
And for all intents and purposes, he might as well be Harry Bosch, Harry having become quite old and retired. Connelly's apparently decided against exploring Harry's earlier decades-old cases in favour of simply creating a Harry Bosch by another name.
Sure, most of those attributes also apply to Renee Ballard, but work with us here.
Does Connelly succeed?
Oh yeah, it works, splendidly. Nightshade is terrific.
Who knew that if L.A. cops get into the bosses' bad books, but not badly enough to get fired, that they get banished to Catalina — where they drive golf carts instead of cruisers?
Other than weekend bar fights, Catalina is, until this murder, pretty quiet. Stilwell immediately loses the case to mainland homicide detectives and, as luck would have it, to a jerk who orchestrated Stil's demotion. Don't you hate when that happens?
The mayor is already all over Stil — a murder is bad for impending summer business, when every place on the island is booked solid. How inconvenient. How like the mayor in Jaws.
Nightshade
The mayor made it clear when Stil arrived that whatever the law said about police independence from politicians, the mayor calls the shots on Catalina. Think Stil bent a knee?
Pay attention when you hear that the mayor is involved with offshore investors who want to build a giant ferris wheel. No, you're not going to find out here if it comes up again.
Stil first figures out who the dead woman is when he checks out a report of a stolen jade statue from the exclusive men's club and marina. Treating Stil as a servant, the manager tells Stil he fired a young woman who was using her job to try to find a sugar daddy, and the statue's disappearance soon followed. And that young woman had — you got it in one — purple streaks in her hair.
Meanwhile, Stil is sleuthing the killing of an endangered species of animal in the remotest part of the island, likely linked to what passes on Catalina for an odious mobster.
And Stil's spidey sense is tingling about the drunk he's got in the cells, who concussed a deputy by hitting him from behind with a bottle. Just seemed a little contrived. Hmmmm.
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Stil of course ignores orders not to investigate the murder, duly investigating said murder and getting way ahead of the mainland homicide team.
Connelly's ability to intrigue us with the minutiae of a police procedural is just so fluid and so seamless. We're hooked long before we realize we don't want to put the book down.
Connelly's previous murder mystery promised to establish Ballard and Maddie Bosch as an ongoing team, with Harry acting as though he still carried a badge, and his half-brother, the Lincoln Lawyer, always available to spice up a plot.
But Stilwell — pretty safe to say he'll be back.
Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin stopped clutching his pearls when he realized that for the first time after 39 guilty pleasures, Michael Connelly's sleuth would not be burning gazillions of gallons of fossil fuels on the freeways.
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Winnipeg Free Press
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Great white shark is seen near popular beaches in Maine, sparking a warning from police
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Toronto Sun
05-08-2025
- Toronto Sun
Here's what shark experts do to stay safe in the ocean
Published Aug 05, 2025 • Last updated 6 minutes ago • 4 minute read Photo by Getty Images Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Discovery Channel's 'Shark Week' begins Sunday for the 37th year. And Steven Spielberg's movie 'Jaws' celebrated its 50th anniversary in June. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Despite the fanfare and some highly publicized reports of shark bites, researchers are quick to point out the apex fish are not the bloodthirsty predators they're made out to be. Instances of sharks biting humans are extremely rare. You're more likely to die falling into a hole at the beach, in a riptide or in an alligator attack than from a shark bite, according to data from the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File. Last year, the museum recorded 47 unprovoked bites worldwide. 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Winnipeg Free Press
18-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Discovery ‘Shark Week' has breaching great whites, looks back at ‘Jaws' and starts with some dancing
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The seven nights of new shows — and a related podcast — ends off the Mozambique coast with a once-a-year feeding frenzy that turns into a showdown between the sharks and their massive prey, the giant trevally. One highlight is Paul de Gelder's 'How to Survive a Shark Attack,' which he has intimate knowledge about. He lost his right hand and leg in 2009 during an attack by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor. 'If you're in the jaws of a shark, you want to fight for all of your life. You want to go for the soft parts. You want go for the eyeball. You want to go for the gills,' he says. 'But if you're not being attacked by a shark and you're just encountering a shark, then you just want to remain calm.' De Gelder debunks one myth: Punching a charging shark will stop its attack. 'If you really want to hurt your own hand, go ahead,' he says. A better approach is to not thrash about and gently redirect the animal. 'The secret I got taught many years ago was don't act like food and they won't treat you like food.' 'Shark Week' has become a key part of the summer holiday TV schedule, a place where humans safe on land can see ancient apex predators unnervingly glide into view and snap open their jaws. This year's highlights also include the hunt for a 20-foot great white that can leap into the air — 'Air Jaws: The Hunt for Colossus' — and a show about male and female great whites competing in a series of challenges to determine which sex is the superior predator, naturally called 'Great White Sex Battle.' Joseph Schneier, senior vice president of production and development at Discovery, says the shows are born from listening to what the diving and science community is seeing, like pro divers moving artistically with the sharks as they fed them, leading to 'Dancing With Sharks.' 'We realized, well, there's something here that we can go further with,' he says. 'We're lucky that sharks continue to surprise us. Which helps us get kind of new stories and new things to focus on. That's been the mantra for us — the sharks are the stars, not the humans.' As always, there is a deep respect for the creatures and strong science beneath the amusing titles, sharky puns, dramatic music and racy titles like 'Frankenshark' and 'Alien Sharks: Death Down Under.' 'It's like putting your vegetables in a dessert,' says Bergeron. 'You get all the allure of a 'Dancing With Sharks' or other specific shows, but in the midst of that you do learn a lot about sharks and ecology and the importance of sharks in the ecosystem. It's all in your strawberry sundae.' Discovery's 'Shark Week' has a rival — National Geographic's 'SharkFest,' which also has hours of sharky content. There's also the unconnected shark horror comedy 'Hot Spring Shark Attack' and a movie earlier this summer that added a serial killer to a shark movie — 'Dangerous Animals.' 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'So much of the programming this year speaks to what's happening with the rest of the world — climate change and how much that affects where sharks are and when they're there and what they're eating,' she says. 'As a keystone apex predator, sharks do set the tone for what's happening.' Bergeron says being a part of 'Shark Week' for the first time and meeting some of the divers who interact with sharks has actually made him braver. 'I don't think I'm at a point where I could go down there with them and have the sharks swirling around me without a cage. But with a cage, I think I am ready to do that,' he says. 'Just don't tell my wife.'
