Lisbeth Salander – better known as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – was created by Stieg Larsson in response to the rise of fascism and disproportionate number of crimes against women in his home country of Sweden. Salander serves as a vigilante dispensing her own brand of justice against such inequities, as well a poster child for those who stand against sexism, racism, and all other forms of toxic “isms” that exist in the world.
Unfortunately the United States shares many of the same disparities that brought Lisbeth Salander to life, and in the era of #MeToo it was only a matter of time before a fictional American heroine arrived on the scene like Salander in Sweden. Although unintentional, mystery writer Michael Connelly answered the call with Renee Ballard, a character worthy of standing alongside Lisbeth Salander while remaining independent from her as well.
The story of a female Los Angeles police detective who is reassigned after filing a sexual harassment claim against her superior officer was released in July 2017, just three months before the #MeToo movement went viral. Although The Late Show – as well as its 2018 follow-up Dark Sacred Night – is a mainstream detective novel, Renee Ballard’s gender and personal experiences are just as important to the narrative as the need to catch the bad guys.
Ballard initially found success within the LAPD and was assigned to the elite Robbery Homicide Division. Unfortunately her superior officer, Robert Olivas, considered her a woman he could exploit rather than a valued team member, and suggested that her advancement depended on a sexual relationship between them. When Olivas pushed her against the wall at an office Christmas party and attempted to kiss her, Ballard had enough and filed a complaint.
The complaint was eventually dismissed due to a lack of collaboration and Ballard was transferred out of RHD and given the “late show” in Hollywood instead – the midnight shift that files the initial reports on crimes committed overnight that are then turned over to the appropriate departments the next day. While her work on the late show is purely of a preliminary nature, Renee Ballard finds herself unable to let go of the cases she encounters nonetheless. When an elderly woman has a credit card stolen from her home that is later illegally used on Amazon, for instance, she wants to follow-through on her own as opposed to leaving it for the burglary department.
“Because they won’t deal with it,” Ballard explains to her partner. “It will get lost in the stack. They won’t follow up and that’s not fair to her.”
“Nobody said anything about anything being fair,” her partner replies. “It is what it is.”
“It is what it is” is a philosophy that Renee Ballard cannot abide. In both The Late Show and Dark Sacred Night, she continually investigates cases that are not hers, sometimes with the blessing of her superiors as “hobby cases” and sometimes without, sometimes on the clock and sometimes without getting paid. Ballard is driven by a deep empathy for the victims she encounters, the need to see things through, and the belief that she is the best person to solve the crime.
And in many ways she is, as Renee Ballard continually showcases deductive skills that rival those of Sherlock Holmes. When she is called to the home of an elderly woman found dead in her bathroom, for instance, Ballard quickly determines that it was an accident, that the victim had slipped on the wet floor and hit her head against the tub. When the son of a wealthy benefactor of the mayor goes missing, meanwhile, Ballard is sent to his apartment during the late show. His roommate has explained on previous police visits that the missing person simply shacked up with some new boyfriend but Ballard notices that the carpet in the living room appears to have recently been relocated from the dining room.
When a judge refuses to issue a search warrant, believing that Ballard doesn’t have enough evidence to issue one, the female detective returns to the apartment under the pretext of leaving a flashlight behind on her previous visit. While the roommate goes to find the item, Ballard lifts the rug and notices a dark stain underneath. The roommate later becomes defensive when asked why the carpet had been relocated and is eventually provoked into attacking Ballard, giving her the reason she needs to search the premises.
Entering a suspect’s apartment under false pretexts is just one of the questionable actions that Renee Ballard takes in both The Late Show and Dark Sacred Night. Often times such conduct is illegal, and on two occurrences result in Ballard placing herself in life-threatening situations, but none of that makes a difference. From calling in an anonymous – as well as false – report of suspicious activity near the house of one suspect to breaking-and-entering the business of another without just cause, Renee Ballard has no qualms about bending the rules.
Although the main narrative of The Late Show centers on a shooting at a Los Angeles night club, most of the cases that Ballard investigates involve violent crimes against women. Just as Stieg Larsson originally intended The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to be named Men Who Hate Women, the title could just as well fit the investigations of Renee Ballard.
“Murder was murder,” Dark Sacred Night contends. “But Ballard was always struck by the murder of a woman. Most times the cases she reviewed and worked were exceedingly violent. Most times the killers were men. There was something deeply affecting about that. Something unfair that went beyond the general unfairness of death at the hands of another. She wondered how men would live if they knew that in every moment of their lives, their size and nature made them vulnerable to the opposite sex.”
While the abduction and murder of a homeless girl from nine years earlier serves as the primary storyline of Dark Sacred Night, the side cases that Renee Ballard investigates on the late show reflect other examples of the gender gap that don’t relate to physical violence. The first involves a potential robbery at a Los Angeles strip club. The venue is fitted with numerous surveillance equipment, and the owner has detected movement on the roof and fears an impending break-in. Instead of finding hard-core criminals, however, Ballard discovers two teenage boys playing peeping toms through the skylight in order to ogle the naked women below.
“She glanced at (Officer) Dvorek and saw a small smile on his face,” Dark Sacred Night says of Ballard. “She realized on some level he admired their ingenuity – boys will be boys – and she knew that in the world of men and women, there would never be a time when women were viewed and treated completely as equals.”
The second is a “he said, she said” situation involving a comedian-slash-actor named Danny Monahan and the woman he picked up at a bar and then took home for sex, something he admits to doing regularly. Although their initial interactions were consensual, the woman contends that she was later raped from behind while he maintains that the act was consensual as well. Renee Ballard initially believes the woman – Chloe – but when she attempts to place Monahan under arrest, he reveals that he records all of his sexual activities.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a creep,” he explains. “With all this MeToo stuff starting up last year, I thought I needed protection.” The tape ultimately proves that the entire evening was indeed consensual. A female officer at the scene, meanwhile, overhears Chloe tell someone on her cell phone, “This guy’s going to pay, I’m going to be rich,” suggesting financial motives for her lying to the police.
“She left the Monahan estate not knowing which of the two people she had interviewed was the more loathsome example of the human form,” Dark Sacred Night explains afterwards of Ballard. “She decided to focus her enmity on Chloe as a betrayer of the cause. For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.”
Renee Ballard may not be Lisbeth Salander but she is a defender of women who face violence from men in Los Angeles just like Salander is in her homeland of Sweden. And while neither The Late Show nor Dark Sacred Night is as politically charged as Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, both novels contain snippets that relate to the harassment that women encounter and the additional obstacles they face because of gender, making the story of Renee Ballard just as relevant as that of Lisbeth Salander – and a fitting testament of the times as well.
Anthony Letizia