Series: "Ballard" on Amazon Prime, the inner fire of a determined investigator
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What is hidden behind that beautiful, serious face? What steel is this frail figure made of? Renée Ballard doesn't give herself up easily, neither to her colleagues nor to the viewer drawn into a complex and thrilling investigation. And that's one of the key assets of the series inspired by the novels of Michael Connelly: the mysterious opacity of its heroine. Even her grandmother, with whom she shares a house by the ocean, can't crack Renée's armor, as she confides her feelings to the waves of the Pacific rather than to those close to her.
Because she implicated her former and powerful teammate, Renée Ballard is relegated to a basement. There lie unsolved cases of little interest to anyone. Except for one of them, involving a Los Angeles politician whose sister was murdered without the perpetrator being identified or arrested. Soon, the investigator and her team, composed partly of courageous volunteers, pull the threads of a tangled web, cross-check previously overlooked clues and discover that the young victim might not be the only one. Renée Ballard thus finds herself face to face with a serial killer.
However well-executed it may be—and this is the case here—a detective story is only worth its salt if the setting, the characters, and the twists and turns, both large and small, are drawn with originality and depth. Challenge met, as the solitary investigator finds herself very well supported on screen. There's a lot of humanity within the small family of her collaborators, some more or less professional, who assist her fervently. The villains, including corrupt police officers, are just as well portrayed, without Manichaeism or sensationalist recourse to violence.
Renée Ballard moves forward, unconcerned about a career that her integrity and indifference to power have seriously compromised anyway. Each veil lifted makes her doubt while at the same time reinforcing her passion for justice and truth. But there's no point counting on her for grand speeches conjuring up good and evil. Her fire burns within.
La Croıx
