Book Review: A detective banished defies orders not to investigate a murder in 'Nightshade'

Book Review: A detective banished defies orders not to investigate a murder in 'Nightshade'

In “Nightshade,” crime novelist Michael Connelly introduces L.A. County Detective Stillwell, who has been banished from the homicide division and exiled to a backwater office on Catalina Island.

Book Review: A detective banished defies orders not to investigate a murder in ‘Nightshade’

Detective Sergeant Stillwell of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has been banished from the homicide division. His sin: accusing his former partner of dropping a murder case for lack of evidence when, according to Stillwell, there was plenty of it. Branding him a troublemaker, his superiors packed him off to Catalina Island and put him in charge of a small, backwater office where cases normally range from petty theft to drunk and diso…