Void Moon

Void Moon
Author(s)	Michael Connelly
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Crime novel
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	407 pp
ISBN	0-75382-716-8

Void Moon is the ninth novel by American crime author Michael Connelly. It was released in the UK in 2000 and was Michael Connely's third book not to follow the character Harry Bosch. It was also his first (and, as of 2009, only) novel to feature a female protagonist, Cassidy "Cassie" Black, and a protagonist who is a criminal instead of an investigator of criminals.

Plot summary

The book opens with a quick scene of Cassie and her boyfriend Max Freeling as they argue about who gets to pull their last heist in Vegas, which Max insists on doing. Then we jump to Cassie, now an ex-con who works at a Porsche dealership, looking at a house with a "For Sale" sign and learning that the owners are moving to Paris with their five-year-old daughter Jodie. Over time, we learn that Jodie is actually Cassie and Max's daughter, that Max had insisted on doing the last job because Cassie had just told him she was pregnant but then died during it at a casino called the Cleopatra (known as the "Cleo"), and that Cassie had to put the baby up for adoption because she was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison as Max's accomplice, although she had actually pulled most of the heists, and has been out for less than a year. She decides to pull one major crime to get enough money to kidnap Jodie before Jodie's parents move away and contacts Leo Renfro, Max's half-brother, who arranged their jobs. The job that Leo offers her will net her about $150,000, because the "mark" is supposed to be a high roller who has about $500,000, but it also requires her to go back to the Cleo. Leo's only warning is not to be in the mark's room between 3:22 and 3:38 in the morning, because that period is a "void moon" in astrology, and Max's death had occurred during a void moon. However, two unwelcome surprises occur. First, the mark gets a phone call when Cassie is in the room, forcing her to stay hidden through the void moon. Second, he is a courier for the Miami Cuban Mafia, who are looking to buy the Cleo, and actually has over $2.5 million. In the morning, the courier is found, dead.

Vincent Grimaldi, the Cleo's manager, hires Jack Karch, an investigator/hitman, to find the money, which had been sent as a payoff. Karch had arranged the illegal trap for Max Freeling, and he traces the robber's steps in Vegas back to an electronics supplier, who had been the one that originally informed Karch about Cassie and Max, and then kills him after he gives up Cassie's name. Grimaldi tells Karch that he had learned that the crime had been planned by Leo Renfro in league with the Chicago Mafia; a Chicago gangster had ruined Karch's father's career as a magician and opening act in Vegas. Meanwhile, Cassie tells Leo that she had nothing to do with the death of the courier. Leo turns down her advice to run and takes the money, asking for two days to try to straighten the mess out. Using the information from Grimaldi, Karch finds and tortures Leo that evening, before Leo kills himself with a piece of broken glass.

At work the next day, Cassie takes a person calling himself Terrill Lankford on a test drive, but it turns out to be Karch, who had traced her from a call on Leo's cell phone. She crashes the car and escapes, only to learn that Karch had killed others at the dealership in a method that pointed to her. Karch then goes to her house, where he surprises and critically wounds Cassie's parole officer, who tells him about Jodie. Cassie, meanwhile, retrieves the hidden money from Leo's house and returns home to find the wounded and bleeding officer. She calls the police from her cell phone but is too late to prevent Karch from kidnapping Jodie. Karch takes Jodie to Vegas, demanding the money from Cassie in return for her daughter’s life. Unknown to Karch, Cassie is only a few minutes behind him on the road to Vegas and so arrives hours before Karch expects. Cassie then successfully moves Jodie into the air ducts and frames Karch with Grimaldi by leaving the money and calling Grimaldi to thank him for approving the exchange.

As Grimaldi and his thugs find the money and take Karch, Grimaldi admits that everything was a setup, because the Miami gangsters would never be approved to buy the Cleo. The Chicago Mafia was never involved. His thugs killed the courier, and Miami will now search for the dead Karch as the thief. Grimaldi admits that he hates Karch because, as a child, he had helped his father kill his mother for infidelity, but Karch never knew that it was Grimaldi with whom his mother had had a ten-year affair. Using a concealed weapon, Karch ambushes and kills the thugs on the elevator, tells Grimaldi that he knew for years that his father was not his biological father (which shocks Grimaldi, who did not know) but had never known until now who his real father was, and then kills Grimaldi. Returning to the room, Karch surprises Cassie and Jodie, but Cassie manages to knock him out a window into the casino to his death (the same way that Max had died, and that Karch had planned to kill her and Jodie) ... and then scatters over half of the money out the window, creating a riot to cover her escape with Jodie. On her way back to L.A., Cassie realizes that, if the parole officer survives, she will be in the clear unless she kidnaps Jodie, but that the police suspect her for all of Karch's crimes, and she could be taking Jodie into an unstable life. Instead, Cassie returns Jodie home to her adoptive parents and drives off with the remainder of the money.

Notes

Cassie Black makes a cameo appearance (using her new name) in The Narrows (2004) and is referenced by attorney Mickey Haller as a former client in The Brass Verdict (2008). In A Darkness More Than Night, Terry McCaleb sees a banner at the police station that reads "Welcome Back Thelma!", an obvious reference to the parole officer's injuries. The injured parole officer appears again in The Closers (2005) during one of Bosch's investigations, and Bosch recognizes Cassie's mugshot in a newspaper article in her cubicle.