Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 14, 2025
Spoilers for Season 1 of Ballard
Ballard premiered last week on Prime Video, and if you’re a fan of quality detective series and haven’t watched yet, you should. It arguably improves upon Bosch, the long-running series it spun off from, thanks in part to the performances of Maggie Q and a more personable supporting cast (I was particularly fond of John Carroll Lynch’s character). While it blends storylines from three Michael Connelly novels — The Late Show, Dark Sacred Night, and Desert Star — its shocking ending is pure Connelly … and yet, it doesn’t come from any of the Renee Ballard books.
In Ballard, Maggie Q’s lead character heads a cold-case unit. In the novels, it’s a voluntary gig; in the series, she’s assigned the role as retaliation for filing a sexual assault claim against her former partner, Robert Olivas. Two major cases anchor the season: one involving a serial killer whose impotent male rage manifests in the murder of women (not unlike the arson motive in Apple TV+’s Smoke).
One of the killer’s victims is 16-year-old Sarah Pearlman, murdered in 1994. She was the sister of councilman Jake Pearlman, the man who paved the way for the cold-case unit with the expectation that his sister’s murder would be solved. After ten episodes of unraveling cold cases, Ballard’s unit identifies the unexpected killer: Gary Pearlman (Kevin Dunn), Jake’s father and Sarah’s stepfather. Gary had mostly lurked in the background as a grieving old man. Misogynistic and resentful of “uppity” women, he killed Sarah when she discovered a box of “trophies” and assumed it was evidence of infidelity, when in fact, it was evidence of his murders.
The second storyline is classic Connelly: a department-wide LAPD conspiracy. Not only did Olivas attempt to rape Ballard, but he also successfully assaulted another partner, Samira Parker, who left the force and later joined Ballard’s cold-case team. Bonded by shared trauma, Ballard and Parker eventually uncover an LAPD gun-running network linked to the Zacatecas cartel. That investigation unexpectedly leads back to Olivas, who takes over the operation after Ballard kills the original leader in self-defense.
Ballard and Parker gather enough evidence to expose the entire network, but in a demoralizing twist, Olivas cuts a deal and walks free in exchange for his testimony against other officers. Ballard confronts him at his home, goads him, and walks away, leaving Olivas raging. Later, in the finale’s major twist, Olivas is found dead, murdered, and Ballard is arrested for the crime.
That final twist doesn’t originate in any Bosch or Ballard novel, but fans of Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer may find it familiar. The most recent season of that series also ends with the protagonist being arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. That twist comes from Connelly’s novel The Law of Innocence, which will form the basis of the upcoming fourth season. In it, after winning a case, Mickey Haller is pulled over and arrested when a dead body is found in the trunk of his car.
So now, there are two concurrent Connelly series whose protagonists have been wrongly accused of murder. (It’s worth noting that Harry Bosch is also investigated for various crimes over the course of that television and book series, as well.)
As for who actually killed Olivas? There’s no shortage of suspects: Parker, the other partner he assaulted; any of the women he likely victimized; his wife, who bitterly left him; members of the LAPD gun-smuggling ring who didn’t want him to testify; or even someone from the Zacatecas cartel, furious at his betrayal. Given how many enemies Olivas had, and how valuable his testimony was, it’s frankly absurd that he wasn’t in protective custody or a safe house awaiting witness protection.
