Renée Ballard

Renée Ballard is a 30-something LAPD detective who has wholly dedicated her life to her demanding job. She is a small woman but very strong, and she has intentionally built up her upper body power through frequent paddleboarding in her spare time. Her choice to have no fixed residence and instead live in a tent of the shore of Venice Beach mirrors her idyllic but turbulent Hawaiian childhood, when after her surfer father’s death by drowning she lived on her own on a beach between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.

Ballard’s strictly ascetic lifestyle is calculated to give her the most time possible to devote to her cases, many of which involve some of the worst acts of human cruelty, or as Ballard calls it, “‘big evil’” (18). Her soft side only extends to her rescue dog Lola and her paternal grandmother Tutu...