Detective Stilwell (Catalina)

About the Detective Stilwell (Catalina) series

Michael Connelly's newest series moves his Los Angeles universe offshore to Catalina Island, 29 miles from the mainland but a world apart from it, where Detective Sergeant Stilwell runs the tiny one-man substation in Avalon. Exiled there after a career setback on the mainland, Stilwell expects a quiet posting of drunk-and-disorderlies and petty theft — until Nightshade (2025) opens with a body wrapped in plastic and weighted down in the harbor, a case that forces him to cross every line of jurisdiction and protocol the island's isolation usually lets people ignore. Ironwood (2026) escalates the stakes: a suspected drug-running flight ends with one of Stilwell's own deputies dead and another badly hurt, and as Stilwell works to clear his name he crosses paths with LAPD's Renee Ballard and the Open-Unsolved Unit.

The series gives Connelly a genuinely new setting and protagonist after three decades of Bosch, Haller and Ballard, while keeping the same connective tissue that ties his books together — Ballard's appearance in Ironwood signals this new series is meant to sit inside the same wider Los Angeles-adjacent universe rather than off in its own corner.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: Nightshade (2025), then Ironwood (2026). Stilwell's standing on Catalina and the fallout from Nightshade's case carry directly into Ironwood, and Renee Ballard's arrival in the second book connects this series to Connelly's wider Los Angeles universe — familiarity with the Renee Ballard novels adds context but isn't required to follow Ironwood.