Waiting

Detective Renée Ballard and the Los Angeles Police Department's Open and Unsolved Cases Unit identify a DNA match between a recently arrested man and a rapist and murderer who disappeared twenty years earlier. The arrested man, however, is twenty-three years old, so the genetic link points instead to a relative: the detainee's father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city. When Ballard and her team close in on their suspect, however, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal obstacles.

To make matters worse, Ballard's weapon and police ID are stolen—which she cannot report without giving her enemies in the department grounds to ruin her career. She has no choice but to seek help outside the department, which leads her to Harry Bosch's door and, unexpectedly, also to accept a new volunteer for the Open and Unsolved Cases Unit, none other than Bosch's daughter, Maddie, who is looking to complement her work as a patrol officer by investigating cold cases. Renée soon discovers that Maddie has a hidden motive for wanting access to that batch of the city's lost souls: precisely an unsolved case that could very well be the most iconic in Los Angeles's criminal history…