Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is a writer, born 1956.
Two characters carry Connelly's career, and they work because their professions are at war. Harry Bosch is an LAPD homicide detective; Mickey Haller is a criminal defence attorney; ten of the novels put both of them in the same story, which means the reader spends half a book wanting a conviction and half a book wanting it thrown out. The first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. He has since written 42 novels and one work of non-fiction, translated into 40 languages.
The specific skill is procedure. Connelly writes the parts other crime novelists cut: the murder book, the warrant that has to be argued for, the jurisdictional squabble that eats a day. Cases break because somebody reads a file properly, not because a detective has a flash of intuition in the rain, and the recurring antagonist is at least as often the department as the killer. It is a slow pleasure, and it is why the books reread well when the puzzle is already spent.
Hollywood arrived early. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the adaptation of Blood Work in 2002, Matthew McConaughey played Haller in the 2011 film of The Lincoln Lawyer, and Connelly created the television series Bosch: Legacy. He turned up in an episode of Castle playing himself, and served as president of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
TV (2)
Books (26)
- The Fifth Witness (2011)
- Angels flight (1999)
- The Burning Room (2014)
- The late show (2017)
- The fifth witness (2011)
- The last coyote (1997)
- The burning room (2014)
- The reversal (2010)
- Nine dragons (2009)
- In the company of Sherlock Holmes (2014)
- Face Off (2014)
- The Narrows (2004)
- Lost Light (2003)
- City of Bones (2002)
- A darkness more than night (2000)
- Blood Work (1998)
- Trunk Music (1997)
- The Poet (1996)
- The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch) (1995)
- The Last Coyote (1995)
- The Black Ice (Harry Bosch) (1994)
- The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch) (1994)
- The black ice (1993)
- The black echo (1992)
- The Black Echo (Harry Bosch) (1992)
- The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller #1) (1895)
Where to start with Michael Connelly
Start with The Black Echo (Harry Bosch): it is the Edgar winner, and Bosch arrives more or less fully formed, so nothing about the early books feels tentative.
The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch) and The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch) are where the early run peaks, and they are the two to judge the whole series on. If police procedure bores you, The Poet moves faster and plays nastier, and Blood Work is the one Clint Eastwood filmed. The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller #1) is the other front door, courtroom instead of crime scene, and the better entry point for anyone who came from the screen adaptations. The late show opens the newer strand with a different lead. On television, Bosch: Legacy is the version worth your evening.
The Harry Bosch novels
More than twenty novels following one LAPD detective across thirty years of real Los Angeles change. The Black Echo is the debut and won the Edgar. City of Bones and The Last Coyote are where the writing is strongest.
The Mickey Haller novels
The defence-lawyer series, which runs on procedure rather than investigation and is the better legal fiction for it. The Lincoln Lawyer is the first and the one adapted twice, as a film and then a Netflix series.
The standalones and the newer series
The books outside the two main series. The Poet is the standalone most readers name as his best, a serial-killer novel narrated by a journalist. The Late Show introduces Renee Ballard, who later pairs with Bosch.