Thursday, April 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Books: Mining the cop beat

Michael Connelly grounds his fiction in truth

By John Ziebell

Michael Connelly was covering the crime beat for the Los Angeles Times when he turned out his first novel, The Black Echo, a little more than a decade ago. The book was an edgy, credible vehicle that introduced Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, a former hotshot in the Robbery Homicide Division who, for his bureaucratic sins, had been bumped down to the lowest rung of the LAPD homicide ladder: Hollywood. The novel won an Edgar Award, but more importantly, it introduced a writer whose level of engagement--his commitment to character, craft and language--immediately raised the bar for procedural crime fiction.

Connelly has come a long way in 11 years. He's published a total of 13 novels, including nine that feature Bosch. His books have won numerous awards, and new Connelly titles rise almost automatically to the bestseller lists. Clint Eastwood turned the stand-alone novel Blood Work into a feature film last year, and more Connelly-based projects are reportedly in development.

Readers familiar with the author will notice a significant shift from the opening page of Lost Light, his most recent effort. Bosch, for the first time, speaks in the first person. It's a change that promises new insights into a character who, despite how well we think we know him, retains a sense of enigmatic emotional distance.

"Harry has left the force, and he's got a P.I. license, so this is a good time for a change," Connelly says. "At least I think it's a good thing. We'll see if readers agree."

There's more than just a change in point of view, of course. The LAPD has been both curse and salvation for Bosch; there's a question of how he'll survive outside it. He has to rework his methodology, since he's lost the investigative support that went with the badge. Coming up with those new strategies is one way Connelly keeps his own perspective fresh.

"That was one of the most fun parts about writing this novel. Harry was always an outsider inside the system, but he's a total outsider now. He has to be more wily, has to call in debts and favors from all the connections he developed on the force."

Connelly freely admits Lost Light and its new perspective were meant to "follow more closely in the noir tradition," but even role models such as Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald didn't make the transition an easy one.

"For me, it means a lot more rewriting. It's easier for me to write in third person. I could tantalize the readers more, for one thing. When you're writing in first person, that means you sometimes end up cheating, because the reader expects to know what your narrator knows when he knows it."

The Bosch novels also demand a mode of diligence that his four stand-alone novels did not; plainly put, keeping long-running characters both fresh and alive is a hard job. "It's tough to sustain a series--both the writing and the reading. Some other writer once said the only thing that can be constant in a series is change, and he was right. I concentrate on challenges that keep me writing and the audience reading. If I get bored writing a novel, I know the reader's going to be bored too."

Connelly went to college in Florida and worked there as a crime reporter during the 1980s--the "Miami Vice" years, in all their felonious excess. After being shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize, he landed a job at the L.A. Times. In the mid-1990s, after the publication of his third novel, he was able to quit journalism to write fiction full time.

"I don't miss being a reporter as a job," Connelly says, "but I do miss the everyday interaction with the front line of law enforcement. I still have a cadre of cops who keep me up to date, but I don't have the access I used to."

It was that immediacy, a journeyman familiarity with the ins and outs of what Connelly calls "the underside of the legal system," that made the early novels stand out. But the persuasive illustrations were always balanced by solid writing.

"I always say that the most important thing is character, and you've got to ground that character in truth--you've got to get the details right," Connelly insists. "On the other hand, you can't go too far with it and be a slave to procedure--deadly accurate is deadly boring."

Another thing Connelly gets right is Las Vegas. He has a strong fictional connection to the city. Void Moon was a very Vegas book, centered on a high-tech female thief who takes down high-rollers in the big Strip casinos. Harry Bosch has followed cases to Sin City in many of his novels; his estranged wife makes her living in casino poker rooms, and at the end of Lost Light there's a hint that he might be spending more time here in the future.

"I like Las Vegas from a writer's standpoint," Connelly says. "Most towns reinvent themselves over time, but Las Vegas has done it twice since I've been going there. I have an analogy I like that came from the title of my favorite novel by Raymond Chandler--The Little Sister--a riff on Las Vegas being L.A.'s little sister, in a way. It's a place of dreams, hope and last resort. From that, a lot of great fiction can be drawn."