Void Moon

Written by Michael Connelly

Narrated by L.J. Ganser

In L.A., Cassie Black is another beautiful woman in a Porsche: except Cassie just did six years in prison and still has "outlaw juice" flowing in her veins. Now Cassie is returning to her old profession, taking down a money man in Vegas. But the perfect heist goes very wrong, and suddenly Cassie is on the run - with a near-psychotic Vegas "fixer" killing everyone who knew about the job. Between Cassie and the man hunting her are a few last secrets: like who really set up the job, why Cassie had to take the chance, and how, in the end, it might all be a matter of the moon...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Nov 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9781594834806

Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly nación en Filadelfia y estudió periodismo. La afición compulsiva por la novela negra y la admiracion por los autores que cultivaron este género en Los Angeles lo llevaron a trasladarse a esa ciudad. Los diez años que dedicó al periodismo de sucesos en el Los Angeles Times le sirvieron para aprender los mecanismos del trabajo policial.La invención de Harry Bosch dio origen a la serie formada por El eco negro (premio Edgar de 1993), Hielo negro y La rubia de hormigón. Para escribir la cuarta novela de Bosch, El último coyote, Connelly abandonó el periodismo y se dedicó a la literatura a tiempo completo. Connelly es autor, además, de El poeta, Pasaje al paraíso, El vuelo del ángel, Luna funesta, Deuda de sangre, Más oscuro que la noche, Llamada perdida y Ciudad de huesos. Las novelas de Michael Connelly han recibido los premios Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Nero Wolfe (Estados Unidos); Grand Prix, .38 Caliber (Francia) y Maltese Falcon (Japón).

Reviews for Void Moon

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An early effort by MC from 2000. A stand alone Vegas caper gone bad. MC ties the past and present with past actions influencing present realities. The characters were mostly believable but Karch was a little too psychotic and Cassidy in the elevator shaft was a bit too super hero-esque. None the less had a hard time putting it down while the ending was as it should have been. A little too detailed in places but that is a quibble. A good read for sure.

[atticusfinch1048 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Void Moon is a standalone thriller by Michael Connelly that was originally published in 2000.

Cassie Black is going straight, and she is on parole in Los Angles, after doing her ‘bit’ in Nevada and having not seen Vegas in five years she was almost happy. She had to report monthly to her parole officer and go through all the legal motions, but at least her job at the Porsche dealership gave her a living.

Cassie gets news that shakes her to the core, and she needs to lay her hands on money and very quickly. She calls Leo, a man that used to put work her way and he has a job for her in Vegas. Even worse the job involved the hotel where her Max had met his death but even, so she agrees to the job. She plans the job and gets everything she needs to complete it and get back to LA. But everything goes sides ways because of the Void Moon.

The casino does not go to the police but their go-to-man, a nonsense killer who is on Cassie Black’s tail. Within hours he has the information he requires to get too Cassie. As he heads towards LA the bodies begin to pile up and he finds out the secret as to why Cassie is in LA. Cassie hopes she can keep her secret safe.

A brilliant thriller by Michael Connelly.

[zmagic69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not a Bosch, Lincoln Lawyer, or Jack McEvoy book.
Void Moon is about Cassie Black an expert thief hoping for the big score. Unfortunately the score is too big, and she winds up with the wrong people after her.
The first half is rather slow which is why it is only 4 stars. The second half is non stop action.

[gac53 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent! Unexpected turns.

[lbswiener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Void Moon is a difficult book to read. It takes most of the book to figure out who is who in the book and to see that something is actually happening. In fact one could call this book boring until the last three chapters. It is interesting to learn the astrological reason for a void moon and its bad luck ramifications. Unfortunately only three stars were awarded in this review.

[tmph_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Almost gave up a third of the way in. Then: boom! It becomes a real page turner. Though, I still didn't care for much of anybody throughout the whole book. Certainly not the protagonist. Still: recommended. Worthwhile ending.

[susandennis-139327 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Michael Connelly weaves a story better than anyone. Void Moon may be one of his best. Cassie Black, working with Max, was one of the best. They worked out of Las Vegas, successfully slipping in and out of the rooms of high rollers while they slept and relieving them of their winnings. Then Max was gone and Cassie did time and started a new life. But, now she needs back in the game. Connelly manages twists and turns that are so tight you need a seat belt.

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A just released female con does one last theft job in Vegas.

[josephking6602 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good for a ‘thriller’ crime drama...even though it is now a bit dated.
Y

[fernemysteryreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this novel as a stand-alone and as I read the first three pages I was intensely immersed in the love story of Cassie and Max and immersed in the details of the ritual between them. I had never heard of a Void Moon so I was quite intrigued by the title, wondering what a Void Moon is and if it fit into the ritual and/or what other meaning would be revealed.

I was mesmerized by Cassie's planning and so wanted her to achieve the dream of going "to the place where the desert is ocean."

I'm so glad I had luxurious hours of reading available as I didn't want to put the book down sometimes reading pages as quickly as possible and sometimes reading slowly so I could assimilate the meticulous actions by Cassie in the penthouse of a casino hotel room. WoW!

I'll remember Cassie Black. Hope you take the time to read about her too! But, perhaps this is a novel to read at home or on the beach and not in a hotel room.

[ajlewis2_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The plot was quite good, but so very much of the book was the details of how to commit various crimes and I found it tedious. The main bad guy, psychopath, was hard to read about with a lot of detail about killings and his gruesome thoughts. It was not so much that it was over-the-top gruesome, but just that it moved so slowly without actually doing much for the story. The book held my interest enough, primarily with liking the main character and hoping for a good resolution, so that I completed it. The audio rendition was very good which helped. I'll have to give it "I liked it" even though there was so much of it that I did not like.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of my favourite films is Charley Varrick, directed in 1973 by Don Siegel and starring Walter Matthau, in which the title character and three associates mount a raid on a bank in a small New Mexico town. They think that they have planned the escapade well, down to every last detail, and expect to net around $20,000. Unfortunately, the raid does not go smoothly, and two of the gang, including Charley Varrick’s wife, are killed. Charley and the final member of the gang, the hapless Harmon, manage to escape and hole up in a trailer park a few miles away. When they finally get around to counting the swag, they find that they have actually got away with over $750,000. They are even more perplexed when the bulletins on local television put the sum stolen at around $18,000. Harmon is overjoyed but Charley is immediately concerned, suspecting that they have inadvertently stumbled upon a Mafia laundering operation. This proves to be the case, and the paid find themselves hunted down by a contract killer, sent not just to recover the money but also to lay down a lesson to deter anyone else from following suit in the future.

This novel has many similarities. Cassie Black is working for a Porsche dealership in LA, having been released from prison on parole. She had been inside for her part in a series of audacious burglaries in Las Vegas in which she and her late partner Max had identified successful high stakes gamblers at the large casinos and then broken into their hotel rooms to steal their winnings. Now she is out and trying to go straight, but still dreaming of one last big job that could set her up for life. Max’s half-brother Leo contacts her, thinking that he may have just such a job for her. Cassie havers but takes the job on, only to find herself in the same position as Charley Varrick, having netted a huge amount more than anticipated, and worrying to whom it really belongs.

This was the first of Michael Connelly’s books to feature a female protagonist and also the first in which the central character is a criminal rather than working for law enforcement. It is written with his customary tautness – just as gripping as ever, with a fine attention to detail that stops short of being intrusive or tedious. Cassie Black is an engaging and immensely plausible character. Like all of Connelly’s characters, she has her flaws, too, which simply lends to the credibility of the story.

Very entertaining, and immediately gripping.

[darylanderson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this novel Connelly tells his story from the other side of the law. His protagonist Cassie Black is a recent ex-con and former scam artist who with a debt to settle and a few ghosts to be laid to rest. While the action is compelling--one expects nothing less from Connelly--I didn't entirely buy Cassie's character or the choices she made. I also found the bad guys a bit too formulaic.

Still, it's a good read.

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall, it is a quick-paced modern-era crime thriller that is quite detailed and nuanced. It is an enjoyable read. Cassie Black is on parole in Los Angeles, having found a job as a saleswoman for a Porsche dealer. She is quite the saleswoman, but she is bored and longs for more action. Leo is her contact, her middleman. He sets up action and he has something for her that is guaranteed to have a large pay-off. Cassie initially doesn't want this job because the last time she did a job at "the Cleo" (which is a thinly disguised pseudonym for the Luxor), she ended up in prison and her boyfriend/ fiancé ended up dead. She absolutely does not want to go back, but the payoff is so large that she can't turn it down. Cassie is the consummate professional and one of the more interesting things about this book is the exquisite detail about Cassie's preparations including what items she needs to pull off the job and how she practices her craft. You would think that with this much detail the book would be tedious. It's not. Connelly provides fascinating details about how a pro would go about ripping off a mark in a Vegas hotel room. The entire book takes place over the course of just a few days in Cassie's life, but every second of the job is infused with excitement and anticipation. And yes, a void moon is apparently something astrological that occurs between the changing of the signs and it is something that Leo advises Cassie to avoid by all means. Although some of the plot devices might be clichés and some of the characters as well, Connelly is professional enough to pull it off and this is a very worthwhile read.

[infjsarah · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my only remaining unread Michael Connelly book. I'd put off reading it cos I'm not that fond of his non Bosch books. I quite enjoyed it although the whole heist plot thing I'm not that keen on. Quick read.

[skinglist · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I needed to read this more quickly than I did. Not because it wasn't good - it was - and I devoured it but over the two and a half weeks I lost track of the details as there were a lot of moving pieces. Leo Renfro, the Shaws, Cassie, Max, Thelma... But a solid read and I didn't find myself looking fo Bosch as much as I thought I might.

I liked the ties into the Bosch series especially with Joey Marks and the character development of Black. She was a much more believable character than Barch, Grimaldi and while I loved the early and middle chapters, I felt the ending contrived and rushed. I wish there were more Cassie Black books as I like that fallen hero.

[dara85 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a departure from Harry Bosch where the bad guys come out ahead.

[henrykrinkle-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Void Moon" is one of the best "Vegas heist gone south" thrillers you'll ever read. Ex-con Cassie Black needs one last big score to start a new life. An old friend arranges a job, and it goes horribly wrong. Connelly does a great job of describing technical details without sounding like he's copying them from a textbook. The characters, including the psychopathic hit man, are fully realized. "Void Moon" has several secrets it hints it and reveals at the perfect moments. I read one of Connelly's Harry Bosch books a long time ago, and didn't think much of it. I think I'll try again.

[bookappeal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Connelly's standalone crime thriller stands up pretty well over time. Cassie Black is only 10 months into a 2-year parole but she's already bored with her job selling expensive cars. She needs the adrenaline of a well-planned heist and, even more, she needs the money. But the "mark" turns out to be more than she bargained for and triggers events that endanger not only her plans, but her life. The only flaw in this page-turner is Connelly's pedantic description of the preparation and execution of crimes. His criminal tradecraft contains no flair or glamour and reads more like an instruction manual. But his plotting is in excellent form as Cassie and the psychopath searching for her outwit and outmaneuver each other. The characters are given some depth by the gradual revelation of their emotional motivations and the ending is appropriately cinematic.

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Connelly is the excellent creator of the Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch series of police procedurals. His latest works have been a little different. [book:A Darkness More than Night] brings together two characters, Bosch and McCaleb (another Connelly character) in a story that pits one against the other, and this one that has neither. It concerns Cassie Black, ex-con on parole, who works at a car dealership in Los Angeles. She is haunted by the specter of the death of her lover and father of her child, who died during what was to be their last caper. She and Max had specialized in burglarizing the hotel rooms of Vegas high rollers while they were asleep in their rooms. Using sophisticated surveillance tools, they had been quite successful until the owner of the Cleopatra, an aging casino, hired Jack Karch, a local detective, to trap the thief. About to be caught, Max commits suicide by throwing himself through a window of the hotel he was about to burglarize, falling spectacularly to his death on the crap tables below. Their child, born to Cassie in prison, had been put up for adoption, and Cassie, learning that the adoptive family is about to move to France, wants to do one last score to have enough money to escape the country and take her daughter with her. Unfortunately, she doesn' realize that she is being maneuvered into a much more complicated scenario that will again involve Karch, the Mafia, two-and-a-half-million dollars and the deaths of several people. The key word, synchronicity, helps to unravel the plot. A great page-turner, but quite different from the Bosch series.

[johngrant1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a standalone title, not one of Connelly's Harry Bosch novels, and it's an out-and-out suspenser rather than a mystery or a psychological thriller. Years ago Cassie Black acted in collaboration with her lover Max Freeling to rob Vegas casinos, until one terrible night when they were caught and Max was killed. Now on probation after serving her time in jail, Cassie dreams of the day she'll be able to reclaim -- or steal -- her and Max's daughter Jodie from the child's adoptive parents and make a new life for them both somewhere far away. To this end she allows herself to be persuaded to take on the customary "one last job" . . . and of course it goes awry, bringing her back into the sights of the casino-employed private-investigator-cum-wetwork-operator responsible for Max's death, the sociopathic Jack Karch. Karch in effect goes on a sanctioned killing spree to eliminate all those involved in Cassie's latest heist and recover the dough, yet he too is being doublecrossed -- as he eventually discovers.

This is a real humdinger of a thriller which had me reading later than intended a couple of nights and, during the intervening day, sneaking quick reads when I was supposed to be doing other, more important things. To be honest, the plotting seems to fall apart a bit -- to rely too much on the implausible -- during the final stages, when it has to engineer the mechanics of Cassie getting into a hotel suite to rescue Jodie therefrom, but by that point in the book the momentum of my reading was at such a feverishly high level that I didn't really care.

[crazybatcow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had a hard time putting this one down... it was very engaging and suspenseful and I was always wondering what Cassie would do next.

At the start, I thought it was one kind of story (a woman trying to rebuild her life after jail) but it ended up having a much larger scope than that. Guess I should have known that Connelly wouldn't have made the novel straight-forward.

There are a lot of plot components but they are nicely tied together (full-circle) by the end of the story. The origins and motivations of all the characters are explained.

I liked how the bad guy (well, the baddest guy) was, on one hand, a very bad guy but on the other hand, just wanted what he thought was his due. He even had a couple redeeming features (trying to help a stranger type thing).

And the big change in Cassie in the final scene of the book was believable and redeeming.

[creighley_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cassie Black has just been released from prison for manslaughter. In Nevada a participant in a crime can be convicted of manslaughter if anyone gets killed in the course of the crime. Cassie's lover, Max Freeling was killed during their robbery at the Cleopatra in Las Vegas. Once again, Connelly has written a fast-paced thriller, but one without Harry Bosch.

[imsodion · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'll admit, I am a Michael Connelly fan and am at the point with him, that if he wrote a phone book - I'd read it. He is a master in this genre; from the first paragraph I'm beguiled and swept overboard into the familiar home of mermaids, completely immersed in someone else's world. I detest Las Vegas, gambling offends me and magic tricks are near the top of things that produce catatonia AND all of it is Void Moon. Yes, I recommend the book; the story is captivating, the characters feel right, no-one is superhuman, everyone is loaded with flaws and he kept me wondering almost to the end. He understood who Cassie Black really was and pulled her through a bowl of spaghetti to reach her destiny. Good read.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another great book by Michael Connolly. It would be a page-turner if I'd gotten it on paper. Fine use of technology and the gambling industry in Vegas.

[sakismom · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing thriller. Main character is a female ex-con who returns to a life of crime, but we're supposed to be on her side. Unlikeable characters. Ending has the feel of a sequel coning on - unsatisfying.

[debavp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bit of a departure of Connelly's other books. I could see where this, if done properly, could be developed into a worthy series. I liked that it gave you a little look at old school Vegas, mainly from some of the characters' perspective, but wasn't boo-hoo nostalgic. The story moves along quickly and has some interesting characters and quirks. I think I'll be haunted for a while trying to decide if Max really did say what he said about being a father.

[jrtanworth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As a fan of the Harry Bosch series, I put off reading this book for a while because I figured that it would not be as good as the books in that series. (I didn't especially like The Lincoln Lawyer, for example.) This book is different in pace and style from the Bosch series, but it is very good. It is more thriller than mystery, and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. The description of the planning and execution of the hotel room heist by protagonist Cassie Black is a masterpiece of suspense writing. I'll never feel safe in a hotel room at night again. Good thing I'm not a high roller.

[raizel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Degrees of evil are explored through the book's characters.

[darrol_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the best Michael Connelly book I have read so far. I like Bosch as a character, but this book is superior to any of the Bosch series.