Michael Connelly may well be the most successful and popular crime-fiction writer working today. Nightshade is his 47th novel; the preceding 46 were all bestsellers. There’s no reason to think this one won’t follow suit.

His first, The Black Echo, featuring his most popular character, L.A. homicide detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, was published in 1992. This prolificacy should not be confused with a lack of quality. Only Chasing the Dime, a stand-alone novel, stumbled a bit.

With Nightshade, Connelly is launching a new series, this one starring L.A. County Detective Sergeant “Stil” Stilwell. In addition to the Bosch novels, Connelly has two other hugely popular series: Mickey Haller — the Lincoln Lawyer, so-called because he handles his cases from the back seat of a Lincoln sedan — and L.A. detective Renee Ballard, head of the department’s cold-case unit. He also has two other minor (but excellent) series, one featuring reporter Jack McEvoy and the other anchored by FBI agent Terry McCaleb.

All of them are set in the same fictional Bosch universe, and the characters frequently appear in each other’s stories. Sergeant Stilwell is no exception: He also exists in the Bosch universe, as Connelly adds a throwaway line in Nightshade about an event that occurred in a recent Ballard/Bosch novel. Perhaps Stil and Bosch will cross paths in a future Stilwell adventure. If so, there are sure to be sparks over their differing though similarly unyielding approaches to investigations.

At the opening of Nightshade, Stil has been assigned to the sheriff’s office on Catalina, a resort island about 25 miles off the coast of Los Angeles that serves as a sort of Slough House for misfit deputies. Six months earlier, Stil got into an unruly altercation with a fellow detective over the resolution to a homicide case they were working. It’s what earned him this ticket to Catalina.

Now, while still bitter over his exile, Stil has become reconciled to it and is comfortable with his new assignment, helped not incidentally by his relationship with assistant harbormaster Natasha (“Tash”) Dano.

But his idyll is shattered one fine morning when the body of a young woman wrapped in a sail bag and weighted by an anchor is discovered in Avalon Bay. The corpse has dark hair with a dyed purple streak the color of nightshade, the beautiful but poisonous flower that grows on the island.

Homicides on Catalina are investigated by detectives from the mainland. One of the two assigned to this case is Ahearn, the cop Stil tangled with half a year prior. Ahearn orders him to stay away from the case. Of course, Stil ignores the order and begins his own investigation when he concludes Ahearn is again about to go for the easy (and wrong) solution.

The antagonism between Stil and Ahearn is renewed when they’re forced to partner in solving the “Nightshade” murder after Stil turns up some crucial clues. Stil has the same work ethic as Bosch, whose credo is “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” Ahearn’s credo is more along the lines of “Resolve the case, rightly or wrongly.” The murdered woman’s character wasn’t the most sterling, but Stil is nonetheless dogged in his pursuit of justice for her.

Meanwhile, he’s working a second, apparently more mundane case. A protected buffalo on the island has been killed and mutilated. The media hypes the story as possible evidence of alien activity. Stil suspects it’s actually a cruel attempt to increase tourism. But the carcass turns out to be only the tip of a much more sinister and corrupt scheme that ultimately threatens Stil and those he cares about.

As with all of Connelly’s books, there’s a relentless narrative drive powering the story along to an explosive climax. His plotting, as usual, is tight and without a school of red herrings to distract the reader. Its strengths are its evocative atmosphere, realistic dialogue, and well-developed characters.

Stil is a complex and troubled individual whose obsession with unearthing the truth results in mistakes, some tragic. His girlfriend, Tash, is a native of Catalina, and she won’t let her love for him overcome her love for the island, its culture and traditions, and her way of life, especially as his increasing fixation on his cases threatens their relationship. Come what may, Stil is sure to soon take his place alongside Harry, Mickey, and Renee as a beloved Connelly stalwart.

Terry Zobeck is a retired federal substance-use researcher and policy analyst. He is the author of A Trawl among the Shelves: Lawrence Block Bibliography, 1958-2020.