IRONWOOD: A CATALINA NOVEL (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Published in 2026 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by Will Damron.
Duration: 7 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Ironwood is the second novel featuring Los Angeles County Sheriff Detective Sergeant Stilwell. He is in charge of the Sheriff's office on Catalina Island, twenty two miles out from mainland Los Angeles County. The island has about 6,000 permanent residents and hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. 

While Catalina is a beautiful place, a sheriff department posting on the island is often considered to be a punishment of sorts and the department jokes that deputies on the island are posted on "the island of misfit toys." Stilwell is sent there as a punishment, but has found a new life on the island. He is living with a local woman and is getting a real feel for rhythms and politics of the island.

The story starts with a three deputies waiting for a plane to make a surreptitious middle of the night landing. A deputy who was recently posted on Catalina received a tip from a mainland conidential informant that a Mexican drug cartel plane would be making an illegal quick landing on the island's lone landing strip. When the deputies move in to make the arrest, all hell breaks loose and Stillwell's two deputies are gunned down...

My Review

One of the best things about the Catalina novels is that they are big city crime novels and small town crime novels at the same time. Stilwell is looking into vandalism cases while also investigating a murder. This book has five different cases at various phases of development going on at the same time. Some are very local, some involve the mainland.

A Sheriff's Jeep on Catalina Island

Stilwell ties in to the larger Harry Bosch universe. I can't think of a single Connelly book that is not at least indirectly tied in to that universe, but I may be wrong. In this novel, Stilwell stumbles across evidence that reopens a cold case with Renee Ballard's team. 

I don't want to make any spoilers in a police procedural book, so I won't go on about the plot. The book is well-paced and enjoyable. I listened to the whole audiobook at a very brisk pace. I intentionally slowed myself down and took a break for almost an entire day because this book just came about and there won't be another Connelly book for a while. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. Very enjoyable as an audiobook.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Ironwood: A Catalina Novel by Michael Connelly.