Renée Ballard

Ballard debuts late in Bosch: Legacy S3. Bosch is deep in the case of the missing Gallagher family, with the FBI and the LAPD on his back, when she crosses his path. The two work together at the end of the season. The case gets solved, and the finale hints at a new partnership between the detective and the veteran.

In Ballard, she runs the Robbery-Homicide Division's new cold case unit, staffed almost entirely by volunteers. The team includes Thomas Laffont (John Carroll Lynch), Samira Parker (Courtney Taylor), Colleen Hatteras (Rebecca Field), Martina Castro (Victoria Moroles) and Ted Rawls (Michael Mosley). Off the clock, Ballard leans on her grandmother, Tutu (Amy Hill).

Few people in the department take the unit seriously, and Ballard has to prove with results that it deserves to exist. Her first big case is the murder of Sarah Pearlman, sister of Councilman Jake Pearlman.

The investigation links Sarah to Laura Wilson's 2008 murder, a Bosch case, and Bosch turns up again as an ally. Along the way, Ballard exposes a police cover-up and a ring of dirty cops.

Ballard's unit is surrounded by people from Bosch's world. Barrel, the station veteran, gives the eulogy at Chastain's funeral in episode 4. Mo Bassi helps Bosch trace Driscoll's contacts in episode 7, the same episode where Bosch and Ballard meet at a motel.

Driscoll, a masked attacker, dies by suicide after Ballard saves him from being strangled. Jerry Edgar congratulates Ballard in episode 9, and in episode 10 she tells him she isn't coming back to homicide. In that same episode, DA Honey Chandler confronts her.

The killer is Gary Pearlman, the councilman's father, who targeted women on the rise in their careers and killed his own daughter when she found his trophies. Gary kills Rawls, Ballard's colleague, and attacks her during a blackout, but ends up in custody.

The relief doesn't last. At the end of the season, Ballard is arrested as a suspect in Olivas's death, right after confronting him.

Ballard debuted in the books with The Late Show (2017). The show draws on that novel, The Dark Hours and Desert Star. S2 has been confirmed, with no premiere date yet.