The start of a two-man Innocence Project

Michael Connelly has published 38 novels. "Ideas come to me in dreams and wake me up. Sometimes, I'll get up in the middle of the night and write them down. I always have a laptop next to my bed. It helps that I don't need a lot of sleep." 

Connelly is best known for his Harry Bosch series, which stars a LAPD detective, now retired after forty years and plagued by a form of bone cancer. He also has a Renèe Ballard series, the first of his female characters to lead her own series and based on a real-life detective he's known for more than fifteen years. And he has the Micky Haller (aka "the Lincoln Lawyer") series; Micky is Harry's half brother and, until the most recent book, Resurrection Walk, they have been on opposite sides. Harry has been trying to put the bad guys in prison; Micky has been trying to keep the unjustly accused out.

In Resurrection Walk Harry is working for Micky as his driver and investigator. While working the other side of the law bothers Harry, he's taken the arrangement so that he is under Micky's medical insurance and is able to participate in a clinical trial that may cure or put his cancer into remission. 

The previous Bosch mystery ended with Harry siccing Micky on the state for convicting an innocent man. By the time this one opens, Micky has obtained the guy's freedom and because of the publicity is knee-deep in letters from prisons in three states from prisoners who want Micky to work his magic for them. He has hired Harry to screen the letters to see if there are any likely candidates for release. 

One of the many elements that makes Connelly such an extraordinary writer is that you do not have to have read any of his earlier novels to understand and enjoy Resurrection Walk. The story grows out of the earlier book but it also stands by itself. Interestingly, it is the first book in which the point of view shifts from Harry's third-person chapters as he investigates to Micky's first-person chapters in court. 

One of the letters Micky has received is from a female prisoner who took a plea bargain to a murder she now claims she did not commit. It raises questions, and Harry and Micky set off after, not just the truth, but for a case that will withstand the state's best efforts to show the woman was always guilty. With the elements of police procedure and courtroom drama, Resurrection Walk has elements to please fans of both.

I have not read every one of Connelly's novels, and taste is subjective anyway, but I believe he gets better with every book. Part of it may be because "Michael does an enormous amount if ressearch to make sure he gets things right," says Asya Muchnick, his editor at Little, Brown. "He holds himself to a high standard. As a reader you feel like you can trust him/" His manager Heather Rizzo adds, "He's tireless. He makes a point of having a lot of breakfasts with cops and detectives, and he listens to everyone at the table, and it comes out in his writing."

At the end of Resurrection Walk Micky has spent a night in jail that has given him time to evaluate his life. He's discovered that helping the incarcerated innocent is in some important ways more rewarding than by using the law to help the possibly guilty evade conviction. I'm looking forward to following Micky and Harry through their next case.

Why Michael Connelly is so great

Dark Sacred Night is Michael Connelly's latest mystery starring California police detective Harry Bosch. Harry, as a result of events that occurred in an earlier book, no longer works for the Los Angeles Police Department but is working part time as a reserve officer for the San Fernando PD. Harry is probably in his early 60s, is a widow, with a daughter in college, and has taken in a recovering drug addict, the mother of a murdered child.

In this book, Connelly introduces Reneé Ballard, a 32-year-old LAPD detective who provoked a departmental transfer when she reported the sexual harassment of a superior. Ballard now works "the late show," the graveyard shift out of Hollywood Station. By the end of the book, Bosch and Ballard have formed a team. In fact the cover of Dark Sacred Night says that this is "A Ballard and Bosch Novel."

So what makes Connelly so great?

First, although Harry Bosch has been the main character in twenty previous novels, you need not have read them to understand and enjoy this one. Too often series writers have to (or feel they have to) explain why the detective is the way he is by summarizing a previous book. We don't need to know why Bosch no longer works for the LAPD; if we care we can read the earlier book.

Next, Connelly tells his stories from the limited third-person point of view. The Dark Sacred Night story begins with a title page: "Ballard" in which we travel with her to the scene of a death. Forty-three pages later, another title page: "Bosch," in which we learn that Bosch is working on a nine-year-old cold case. While we switch between Ballard and Bosch, which gives Connelly somewhat more freedom of action  we are never in any other point of view. Too often for my taste the writer puts us in the mind of the murderer,  coyly not identifying him (or her), or in the point of view of the victim; I think it's a form of cheap—unearned, perhaps—suspense.

Finally, Dark Sacred Night sounds as if this is what police work is actually like. Both Ballard and Bosch have to spend an inordinate amount of time on tedious, boring, unproductive tasks. Connelly is able somehow to evoke this side of police work without writing a tedious, boring book. Also, Ballard is called out to investigate at least three other cases during the time the novel covers. These a're not all deaths, not all the deaths are homicides, and the homicide is solved, like most, within forty-eight hours. (I've read that if a murder is not solved within two or three days, it may never be.)

Dark Sacred Night is a police procedural, with the stress on procedure. I can imagine a complaint that  Ballard and Bosch are too focused on the work; we don't get enough of their internal, their emotional lives. I would disagree, perhaps because I am a man. Neither Bosch nor Ballard is dropped from Mars. They do have, or have had, families and current relationships. They are not lonely figures riding off alone and separate into the dawn at the end of the book. They do solve the crime (a given in a mystery), and both the crime and its solution feel plausible. With Bosch and Ballard teaming up, there's more to come and I look forward to reading it.

Why Michael Connelly is so great (again)

Harry Bosch is back and he's still detecting in The Wrong Side of Goodbye.

Bosch, as mystery lovers know, is the Los Angeles-based police detective created by Michael Connelly. I've written about Connelly in the past and what I admire about his novels, so in this review I may repeat myself. Very well. I repeat myself.

First, Connelly is able to stay within the point of view of Bosch throughout the book. We readers see and hear what Harry sees and hears. We don't jump into the heads, or points of view, of other characters, most notably the villain's.

Connelly convinces me that the places he describes are as he describes them. The streets are real, the neighborhoods look as he says, the public buildings are just as he writes.

In the course of an investigation, Bosch by necessity meets and works with a couple dozen other characters. Connelly is able somehow (magically?) to make each of those characters individual. I am tempted to re-read the book with a highlighter to try to spot the sentences, the dialogue, the actions that bring all those characters alive on the page.

Finally, the mechanics of the investigation seem to me to be exactly right. Some leads work, some are dead ends or brick walls. Bosch is able to bring memory and experience to what he learns and thereby to put new information into a context. For example, as a Vietnam vet himself, Bosch is able to understand what civilian clothes in a dead Vietnam vet's effects implies.

This last point is important to me because I believe that a Connelly novel actually teaches me something about the world and the way real people live in it. This is what a police detective is able to do, is not able to do, and is able to do but, if he does it, will have consequences.

I haven't said anything about The Wrong Side of Goodbye, so here it is: Bosch, having been removed from the LAPD for cause (and the action in an earlier novel), is working as an unpaid investigator for a small, independent police department that has been hit with budget cutbacks and has a pile of cold cases that need work. Bosch is glad to have a badge and something to do and is working on serial rape case.

But the book's inciting incident is a $10,000 invitation to visit a reclusive, elderly billionaire who wants Bosch to discover whether he has an heir. The money is to induce Bosch to visit the estate and hear the man's story. Bosch takes the challenge.

So, The Wrong Side of Goodbye tells two stories simultaneously, the rape investigation and the hunt for a possible heir. I suspect a less skillful writer, in an effort to be clever, would at the book's end reveal how the one investigation connects with the other. Connelly doesn't do that. The only connection between the stories is Bosch, so the reader gets two intriguing stories for the price of one in another exceptionally satisfying mystery.

Why Michael Connelly is so great

Michael Connelly does not need my praise, but I've been thinking about some of the reasons why I think he's one of the best crime writers in America.

1) He knows where to start the story for maximum dramatic effect. Here are the first two sentences of his latest Harry Bosch mystery, The Burning Room: "It seemed to Bosch to be a form of torture heaped upon torture. Corazon was hunched over the steel table, her bloody and gloved hands deep inside the gutted torso, working with forceps and a long-bladed instrument she called the 'butter knife.'" We are watching an autopsy that initiates an investigation into a 10-year-old shooting.

2) He limits the point of view to Harry Bosch. The reader knows only what Bosch knows. This means Bosch has to learn things from his partner, a young detective named Lucy Soto, and from other people. So the book is crowded with names and places, but we are able to keep track easily and the flow feels natural.

3) His account of LA police procedures and politics ring absolutely true. Because I do not know Los Angeles well, I cannot tell whether places are where Connelly says they are—but I suspect they are. Using real streets, neighborhoods, and locations lends the book authority and verisimilitude.

4) The puzzle Bosch has to solve is both complex and plausible. He is working on a both a 10-year-old shooting and a 21-year-old arson case and the action stops long enough for Bosch and his partner to compare notes, or for Bosch to report to his superiors on his progress, which helps the reader keep track of what's going on.

5) Connelly is able to introduce history (back story) naturally without interrupting the story's flow. For example, Bosch and the reader learn the details of the arson case by reading about it from departmental records. At another point he is talking to a retired detective about an old case and he recalls "the infamous 1997 shoot-out in the streets outside a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood." Bosch played only the most minor role in the incident (part of the team securing the crime scene after it was all over), but the memory has its role.

6) His characters are neither paragons of virtue nor embodiments of evil. Bosch is, in some ways, a loose cannon, although he will get a search warrant when he needs one. He's doing his best to be a good father to his teenage daughter. When Bosch and Lucy meet a neo-Nazi ex-con witness, perhaps the most unpleasant character in the book, the guy seems more pitiful than viscous for all his vitriol.

7) He does not rely on coincidence to help the story along. I believe there is only one incident that might be considered coincidence in the entire 388 pages (a news story that happens to appear on the back of a news clipping Bosch is reading). But it is so natural few readers would question it.

8) The dialogue is crisp and at times funny. For example, a reward has been offered and Bosch gets one of the tip callers who says: "I want to register for the reward."
"What do you mean 'register,' sir? It's not a lottery. Do you have information that can help us?"
"Yeah. I got information. The shooter is named Jose. You can mark it down."
"Jose what?"
"I don't know that part. I just know it's Jose."
"How do you know this?"
"I just do."
"He was the shooter."
"That's right."
"Do you know this man? Do you know why he did it?"
"No, but I'm sure you will get all of that once you arrest him."
"Where do I arrest him?"
The man on the other end of the line seemed to scoff at the question.
"I don't know that. You're the detective."
"Okay, sir, so you are saying that I need to go out and find and arrest a man named Jose. No last name, no known whereabouts. Do you know what he looks like?"
"He looks Mexican."
"Okay, sir, thank you." Bosch hung up the phone, banging it hard into the cradle. "Douche bag," he said to himself....

9) The descriptions of places and people are crisp and to the point. For example: "Ojeda was sitting at a small table. Seeing him in the cold light of the room, Bosch saw that he was a handsome man with a full head of jet-black hair, smooth skin, and a trim built. There was a weariness or sadness in his dark eyes...."

10) He saves a final twist for the last seven pages of the book. It's entirely plausible, a complete surprise—and I'm not going to spoil it here.

I'm sure there's more—and these notes could easily apply to almost any novel. We who are still learning should be taking notes.