Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 39 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Early life
Connelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second oldest child of W. Michael Connelly, a property developer, and Mary Connelly, a homemaker. According to Connelly, his father was a frustrated artist who encouraged his children to want to succeed in life and was a risk taker who alternated success with failure in his pursuit of a career. Connelly's mother was a fan of crime fiction and introduced her son to the world of mystery novels.
At age 12, Connelly moved with his family from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he attended St. Thomas Aquinas High School. At age 16, Connelly’s interest in crime and mystery escalated when, on his way home from his work as a hotel dishwasher, he witnessed a man throw an object into a hedge. Connelly, curious, decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt. After putting the gun back, he followed the man to a bar and then left to go home to tell his father. Later that night, Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone. This event introduced Connelly to the world of police officers and their lives, impressing him with the investigators’ hard faces and the way they worked.
Connelly had planned on following his father’s early choice of career in building construction and started out at the University of Florida in Gainesville as a building construction major. After earning grades that were lower than expected, Connelly went to see Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye (1973) and was enchanted by what he saw. The film, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel of the same name, inspired Connelly to want to become a mystery writer. Connelly went home and read all of Chandler's works featuring Philip Marlowe, a detective in Los Angeles during the 1940s and ‘50s, and decided to switch majors to journalism with a minor in creative writing. He was a student of Harry Crews.
Early career
After graduating from the University of Florida in 1980, Connelly got a job as a crime beat writer at the Daytona Beach News Journal, where he worked for almost two years until he got a job at the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in 1981. There, he covered the crime beat during the South Florida cocaine wars, an era that brought with it much violence and murder. He stayed with the paper for a few years and in 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of the 1985 Delta Flight 191 plane crash, which story earned Connelly a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The honor also brought Connelly a job as a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He moved to California in 1987 with his wife Linda McCaleb, whom he met while in college and married in April 1984.
After moving to Los Angeles, Connelly went to see the High Tower Apartments where Raymond Chandler's famous character, Philip Marlowe, had lived (in The High Window (1942)), and Robert Altman had filmed. Connelly got the manager of the building to promise to phone him if the apartment ever became available. Ten years later, the manager tracked Connelly down, and Connelly decided to rent the place. This apartment served as a place to write for several years, but its value derived more from nostalgia than comfort (for example, the apartment lacked air conditioning).
After three years at the Los Angeles Times, Connelly wrote his first published novel, The Black Echo (1992), after previously writing two unfinished novels that he had not attempted to get published. He sold The Black Echo to Little, Brown to be published in 1992 and won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for best first novel. The book is partly based on a true crime and is the first one featuring Connelly's primary recurring character, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, a man who, according to Connelly, shares few similarities with the author himself. Connelly named Bosch after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his paintings full of sin and redemption, such as the painting Hell, a copy of which hangs on the office wall behind Connelly’s computer. Connelly describes his own work as a big canvas with all the characters of his books floating across it as currents on a painting. Sometimes they are bound to collide, creating cross currents. This is something that Connelly creates by bringing back characters from previous books and letting them play a part in books written five or six years after first being introduced.
Connelly went on to write three more novels about Detective Bosch â€" The Black Ice (1993), The Concrete Blonde (1994), and The Last Coyote (1995) â€" before quitting his job as a reporter to write full-time.
Full-time novelist
Harry Bosch and Connelly received a good deal of publicity in 1994, when U.S. President Bill Clinton came out of a bookstore carrying a copy of The Concrete Blonde in front of the waiting cameras. According to Connelly, it was a big honor to have such a famous fan, and a meeting was set up between the two at the Los Angeles Airport.
In 1996, Connelly wrote The Poet, his first book not to feature Bosch; the protagonist was reporter Jack McEvoy. The book was a success and earned Connelly comparisons to author Thomas Harris by reviewers. In 1997, Connelly returned to Bosch in Trunk Music before writing another book, Blood Work (1998), about a different character, FBI agent Terry McCaleb. Blood Work was made into a film in 2002, directed by Clint Eastwood, who also played McCaleb, an agent with a transplanted heart, in pursuit of his donor’s murderer. The book came together after one of Connelly’s friends had a heart transplant, and he saw what his friend was going through with survivor's guilt after the surgery. When asked if he had anything against the changes made to fit the big screen, Connelly simply replied: “If you take their money, it’s their turn to tell the storyâ€.
Connelly wrote another book featuring Bosch, Angels Flight (1999), before writing Void Moon (2000), a free-standing book about Las Vegas thief Cassie Black. In 2001, A Darkness More Than Night was published, in which Connelly united Bosch and McCaleb to solve a crime together, before releasing two books in 2002. The first, City of Bones, was the eighth Harry Bosch novel, and the other, Chasing the Dime, was a non-series novel. In 2001, Connelly left California for Tampa Bay, Florida, together with his wife and daughter, so that both he and his wife could be closer to their families. But even though Connelly moved from one coast to the other, his novels still took place in Los Angeles; he feels no desire to write books set in Florida.
In 2003, another Bosch novel, Lost Light, was published. With this book, a CD was released, Dark Sacred Night, the Music of Harry Bosch, featuring some of the jazz music Bosch listens to. Connelly says he prefers listening to rock and roll, jazz, and blues. While writing he listens exclusively to instrumental jazz, though, because it does not have intrusive vocals, and because the improvisational playing inspires his writing. The Narrows, published in 2004, was a sequel to The Poet but featured Bosch instead of McEvoy. Together with this book, a DVD was released called Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles, in which film, Connelly presents some of the places in Los Angeles that are frequently featured in his books.
The Closers, published in May 2005, was the 11th Bosch novel. It was followed by The Lincoln Lawyer in October, Connelly’s first legal novel; it features defense attorney Mickey Haller, Bosch’s half-brother. The book was made into a film in 2011, directed by Brad Furman and starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. After releasing Crime Beat (2006), a non-fiction book about Connelly’s experiences as a crime reporter, Connelly went back to Bosch with Echo Park (2006). This book sets its opening scene in the High Tower Apartment that Connelly rented and wrote from. His next Bosch story, The Overlook, was originally published as a multipart series in the New York Times Magazine. After some editing, it was published as a novel in 2007. In October 2008, Connelly wrote The Brass Verdict, which brought together Bosch and Mickey Haller for the first time. He followed that with The Scarecrow (May 2009), which brought back McEvoy as the lead character. 9 Dragons, a novel taking Bosch to Hong Kong, was published in October 2009. The Reversal (October 2010), reunites Bosch & Haller as they work together under the banner of the state on the retrial of a child murderer. The Mickey Haller novel The Fifth Witness was published in 2011.
The Drop, which refers, in part, to the "Deferred Retirement Option Plan" that was described in the novel The Brass Verdict (2008), was published on November 28, 2011. The next Bosch novel was The Black Box (2012). Connelly's subsequent novel, a legal thriller, was a return to Mickey Haller: The Gods of Guilt (2013). His next book returned to Bosch in The Burning Room (2014), and then Connelly used Haller as a main supporting character in the Bosch novels The Crossing (2015) and The Wrong Side of Goodbye (2016).
Film and television
- Connelly was one of the creators and executive producers of Level 9, an action TV series that aired for 13 episodes in the 2000-2001 season on the UPN television network.
- His novel Blood Work was adapted into a 2002 film with a screenplay by Brian Helgeland and direction by Clint Eastwood, who also played the lead role.
- Connelly is the subject of the video documentary Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly's Los Angeles (2004).
- He occasionally made guest appearances as himself in the ABC comedy/drama TV series Castle. Along with fellow crime authors James Patterson, Dennis Lehane, and the late Stephen J. Cannell, he was one of Castle's poker buddies.
- Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer was made into a film in 2011, with Matthew McConaughey playing defense lawyer Michael "Mickey" Haller.
- Connelly is the Executive Producer of Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, a documentary about the late jazz saxophone player, Frank Morgan.
- Connelly is currently producing a TV series for Amazon Studios called Bosch, based on Connelly's Harry Bosch novels. It began streaming on Amazon Prime in early 2015, and was recently renewed for a 3rd and 4th season by Amazon.
Awards and honors
Connelly has won nearly every major award given to mystery writers, including the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, Los Angeles Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), .38 Caliber Award (France), the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière (France) and Premio Bancarella Award (Italy). In 2012, The Black Box won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing worth €125,000.
Writing techniques
When starting a book, the story is not always clear, but Connelly has a hunch where it is going. The books often reference world events, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the September 11 attacks. Even events that might not be considered as world-changing are included in some of the books, because they are of personal interest to Connelly. For example, in City of Bones, Detective Bosch investigates the murder of an 11-year-old boy. This was written during Connelly’s early years as a father of a daughter, and it hit close to home. According to Connelly, he didn’t mean to write about the biggest fear of his life; it just came out that way.
Detective Bosch’s life usually changes in harmony with Connelly’s own life. When Connelly moved 3,000 miles across the country from Florida, Bosch had some life-changing experiences that sent him in a new direction in the book written at that time, City of Bones. According to Connelly, his "real" job is to write about Bosch, and his purpose in bringing McCaleb and Bosch together in A Darkness More Than Night was to use McCaleb as a tool to look at Bosch from another perspective and keep the character interesting.
Recurring characters
Every character in the list below, with one exception, has appeared in a Harry Bosch book. All of Michael Connelly's novels occur in the same fictional universe and character crossovers are common.
Main characters
- Hieronymus “Harry†Bosch â€" a Los Angeles Police Department detective
- Michael "Mickey" Haller â€" criminal defense attorney
- Terrell "Terry" McCaleb â€" former FBI agent
- Jack McEvoy â€" crime reporter, brother of one of the Poet's victims
- Rachel Walling â€" FBI agent
- Cassidy "Cassie" Black â€" burglar and ex-con. Lead character in Void Moon. Has a cameo in The Narrows'
- Henry Pierce â€" Chemical scientist and entrepreneur. Lead character in Chasing the Dime. Pierce is the only Connelly character who has never appeared in a Harry Bosch novel (in fact he has not appeared in any other Connelly novel). However, Bosch was referred to by a character in ‘‘Chasing the Dime,’’ although not by name.
- Renée Ballard â€" a Los Angeles Police Department detective
Other characters
Each of these characters has appeared in at least two novels of Connelly's.
- Abel Pratt â€" LAPD Open-Unsolved Unit supervisor
- Steven Vascik â€" A process server in Angels Flight, and also someone Mr. Connelly apparently knows. Vascik is credited with photos of Hong Kong on the author's website (photo gallery 15â€"17).
- Carmen Hinojos â€" LAPD psychologist; first appears in The Last Coyote, Bosch later contacts her upon returning from Hong Kong to help Maddie cope with the events of 9 Dragons
- Larry Sakai â€" Coroner technician with the LAPD
- Teresa Corazon â€" Bosch's love interest in the Black Ice, appears later in City of Bones and A Darkness More than Night; medical expert examiner
- Howard Kurlen â€" detective in Van Nuys Division and frequent opponent of Haller's on the stand
- Irvin S. Irving â€" former LAPD Deputy Chief and Bosch's chief nemesis in the department; now an L.A. city councilman
- Francis "Frankie" Sheehan â€" Bosch's original partner in Robbery-Homicide Division
- Jerry "Jed" Edgar (aka J. Edgar) â€" Bosch's former partner in Hollywood Homicide squad; now a detective leader there
- Kizmin "Kiz" Rider â€" Bosch's former partner in Hollywood Homicide squad and the RHD Open-Unsolved Unit; now an aide to the L.A. chief of police. When introduced, she was in a same-sex relationship with her commanding officer, Lt. Grace Billets
- Lucius Porter â€" Hollywood Homicide Detective (The Black Echo and The Black Ice)
- Ed Thomas â€" Hollywood Homicide Detective (mentioned in The Poet, appears later in The Narrows)
- Ignacio "Iggy" Ferras â€" Bosch's former partner in the RHD Homicide Special Unit, killed during the events of 9 Dragons
- David Chu â€" Bosch's partner in RHD Special Homicide. Was with LAPD's Asian Gangs Unit (AGU) during the events of 9 Dragons
- John Chastain â€" former LAPD Internal Affairs detective, killed during the events of Angels Flight.
- Harvey "Ninety-Eight" Pounds â€" Bosch's ex-supervisor in Hollywood Homicide squad, murdered in The Last Coyote.
- Lieutenant Grace "Bullets" Billets â€" Pounds' successor as Bosch's supervisor in Hollywood Homicide squad. When first introduced, she had a husband, but was in a same-sex relationship with Kiz Rider.
- Eleanor Wish â€" ex-FBI agent, ex-con and Bosch's ex-wife, mother of Bosch's daughter Maddie; moved to Hong Kong. Killed during the events of 9 Dragons.
- Roy Lindell (aka "Luke Goshen") â€" FBI agent
- Janis Langwiser â€" former prosecutor, now a criminal defense attorney
- Keisha Russell â€" Los Angeles Times reporter, started on the Los Angeles crime beat, Now based in D.C., and occasionally provided information for Bosch. Jack McEvoy's ex-wife.
- Joel Bremmer - Keisha Russell's predecessor on the LA Times crime beat. In The Concrete Blonde, it is established that Bremmer wrote a novel about a string of murders committed by a serial killer known as "The Dollmaker." Bremmer used this pattern to as a cover to commit several murders of his own.
- John Iverson - Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detective in Trunk Music, appears later in Void Moon.
- Thelma Kibble â€" Cassie Black's parole officer
- Maddie Bosch â€" daughter of Bosch and Eleanor Wish; Mickey Haller's niece
- Buddy Lockridge â€" McCaleb's friend and business associate
- Jaye Winston â€" Detective, works alongside both Bosch and McCaleb in Blood Work and A Darkness More Than Night
- Maggie "McFierce" McPherson â€" A prosecutor in the Van Nuys Division, Haller's first ex-wife
- Lorna Taylor â€" Mickey Haller's current secretary and second ex-wife
- Hayley Haller â€" Mickey Haller's daughter with Maggie McPherson; Harry Bosch's niece
- Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski â€" Mickey Haller's private investigator. Formerly associated with the Road Saints motorcycle gang who bestowed him with the nickname Cisco in reference to The Cisco Kid. (Wojciechowski is named after Connelly's real-life investigator, who, like Bosch, is a Vietnam veteran.)
- Raul Levin â€" Mickey Haller's private investigator in The Lincoln Lawyer. Killed during the events.
- Graciela Rivers-McCaleb. Terry McCaleb meets Graciela and her nephew Raymond at the beginning of Blood Work. In A Darkness More Than Night they are married, living on Catalina Island and have a young daughter and they have adopted Raymond. In The Narrows she moves back to the mainland with the children.
At least two real-life LAPD detectives, Tim Marcia and Rick Jackson, have been sources for Connelly and have appeared in numerous Bosch books.
Works
Novels
Editor
- The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 (2003) â€" collected short stories.
- Murder in Vegas (2005) â€" collected short stories.
- The Blue Religion (2008) â€" collected short stories.
- In the Shadow of the Master (2009) â€" collected short stories by Edgar Allan Poe with observations by current mystery writers including Sue Grafton and Stephen King
Short stories
- "Two-Bagger" â€" in Murderers' Row (2001) and The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (2002).
- "Cahoots" â€" in Measures of Poison (2002)
- "After Midnight" â€" in Men from Boys (2003)
- "Christmas Even" â€" in Murder...and All That Jazz (2004); a Harry Bosch story (partner: Jerry Edgar)
- "Cielo Azul" â€" in Dangerous Women (2005); a Harry Bosch and Terry McCaleb story (backstory to A Darkness More than Night)
- "The Safe Man" - published anonymously in The Secret Society Of Demolition Writers (2005)
- "Angle of Investigation" â€" in Plots with Guns (2005) and The Penguin Book Of Crime Stories (2007) â€" continuation of The Closers; with Harry Bosch (partner: Kiz Rider)
- "Mulholland Dive" â€" in Los Angeles Noir (2007), Prisoner of Memory (2008), The Best American Mystery Stories (2008), and A Prisoner of Memory and 24 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (2008)
- "Suicide Run" â€" in Hollywood and Crime (2007); featuring Harry Bosch
- "One Dollar Jackpot" â€" in Dead Man's Hand (2007); featuring Harry Bosch
- "Father's Day" â€" in The Blue Religion (2008), and The Best American Mystery Stories (2009); a Harry Bosch story (partner: Ignacio Ferras)
- "Blue on Black" â€" in Hook, Line & Sinister (2010); a Harry Bosch story, with Rachel Walling
- "The Perfect Triangle" â€" in The Dark End of the Street (2010); a Mickey Haller story
- "Blood Washes Off" â€" in The Rich and the Dead (2011); a Harry Bosch story
- "Homicide Special" â€" in The Drop (2011); a Harry Bosch story written exclusively for copies of The Drop sold in Waterstones stores
- "A Fine Mist of Blood" â€" in Vengeance (2012); A Harry Bosch story
- "Switchblade" â€" an ebook companion to The Gods of Guilt, published on 14 January 2014; a Harry Bosch story
- "Red Eye" â€" in "FaceOff" (2014), co-written with Dennis Lehane; a Harry Bosch story, with Patrick Kenzie
- "The Crooked Man" â€" published in "In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon" (Nov 2014); a Harry Bosch story
- "Burnt Matches" - published in "The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drives and Dark Roads" (Oct 2016); featuring Mickey Haller
- "Nighthawks" - published in "In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper" (Dec 2016); featuring Harry Bosch
Short story collections
- Angle of Investigation (2011), includes "Christmas Even," "Father's Day" and "Angle of Investigation"
- Suicide Run (2011), includes "Suicide Run," "Cielo Azul" and "One Dollar Jackpot"
- Mulholland Dive (2012), includes "Cahoots," "Mulholland Dive" and "Two Bagger."
Non-fiction books
- Crime Beat (2004), collected journalism from the Sun-Sentinel and Los Angeles Times
Filmography
Television
- Level 9 (2001) â€" co-creator and co-executive producer
- Castle (2009â€"2011) â€" actor (cameo)
- Bosch (2015) â€" co-creator and producer
Features
- Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story (2014) â€" executive producer
References
External links
- Michael Connelly's Official Web Site
- [1] Michael Connelly's Twitter page
- [2] Michael Connelly's Facebook page
- Michael Connelly's UK website
- "Connelly's Hieronymous Bosch Moonlightsâ€"In Other Authors' Books," The Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2006.
- "Newspaper Noir," The Washington Post, June 22, 2009.
- "Final Deadline," BookPage.com interview with Connelly about The Scarecrow.
- Connelly Interview by identitytheory.com
- Michael Connelly on IMDb
- As essay on Michael Connelly