'Those are the best days of writing': Michael Connelly is still on the beat

October 4, 2024

Nicholas Adams-Dzierzba

Noticing little clues that crack cases wide open is what Michael Connelly's crime fiction turned screen detectives Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard have in common with another of the bestselling author's creations, The Lincoln Lawyer protagonist Mickey Haller.

(Haller, portrayed by Matthew McConaughey in the 2011 Hollywood film adaptation of Connelly's book series, and by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in the recent Netflix adaptation, is a Los Angeles defence lawyer who works from the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car.)

Having devoured two seasons of the Netflix show, another of Bosch and read Connolly's New York Times bestseller Resurrection Walk in preparation for this interview with the crime fiction giant, Review spots telltale evidence too.

"I notice a bit of a tattoo on your wrist. Do you mind if I ask what it is?" Review asks.

"Oh, it's really old," Connelly says, looking down at his arm. "I got it in Bondi Beach 20 years ago. Remember how stickers on suitcases [would show] where you've been? I got an infinity circle. It's all blurred, it used to say 'Hold Fast', my wife 'Linda' and daughter 'Callie'. Three stars for navigation [to] find your way home."

When we meet in Sydney, Connelly, 68, is a long way from his home in the US. Born in Pennsylvania and living in Florida by way of Los Angeles, where his books are set, the author is visiting Sydney and Brisbane for those cities' writers festivals.

We sit at his hotel in The Rocks watching Vivid festival light projections being set up. The week before, he and Linda had celebrated their 40th anniversary. She pops past our table to pick up his laptop – he has just finished a video call about season four of The Lincoln Lawyer.

The former newspaperman is straight-talking and has a gravelly voice. He says he's more of a figurehead in Hollywood meetings, as being a novelist is his first priority. Connelly is set to release his 39th novel, The Waiting, about the hunt for a serial rapist whose trail has gone cold; his previous books have sold more than 85 million copies. They're highly adaptable: screen versions of his books include three seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, plus the McConaughey movie, several seasons of Bosch and now Bosch: Legacy on Prime.

The books are page-turners, the kind where you fall into the story. There may not be as many readers now with young people having so many other ways of being entertained and learning. "But I think we know the secret that reading takes you where you want to go," Connelly says.

The father-daughter relationship is at the centre of his novels; half-brothers Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and Micky Haller each have a daughter the same age as Connelly's own, Callie, 27.

Is Maddie Bosch Callie, is Connelly Harry, Review asks.

"She's more Maddie than I am Harry," he says.

Connelly has not caught a murderer or defended one, but what he does take from his own life is the central core of a relationship with his daughter, then goes into worlds people are fascinated by. "That's the fun part, it's the key, the trick, to hook people. To fall in, as you said," Connelly says. Of course if his characters pick up on little clues that are significant it's because their writer does, too.

Delivering it accurately is half the battle, Connelly says, and that's where his journalism comes in. "The other half is connecting these experiential strike zones where your readers are nodding their heads saying, 'Yeah, I get that. I experienced that in my own life.' "

There's a passage from Resurrection Walk where Bosch's daughter Maddie visits Harry in hospital. Because her father is emotionally unavailable, a battle of wills plays out with Maddie getting information out of his doctor. Review asks Connelly to read the passage aloud, and he does so haltingly, then apologises. Explaining how when there was a vogue for audiobooks and authors reading their work, he went into a recording studio.

"After a half-hour they said, 'Let's take a break' and then they said they want to go in a different direction," Connelly says, laughing self-deprecatingly.

The author experienced a similar hospital scene with his own father, "he died of cancer a long time ago. [It is] awkward and in a weird way it's their life, and their death. And it's hard to intrude upon that, and the kinds of thoughts one would have going through their minds."

There's a Japanese word, komorebi, for the light that streams between trees, which is an apt description for Connelly's storytelling, balancing the shadows of society and with the brighter moments of life.

One of the powers and joys of writing fiction for a living is going down alternative paths that didn't happen but could have. Connelly recounted to Minnesota Public Radio how his father had been an aspiring fine art painter, even getting into a prestigious institute in Philadelphia. But Michael was born and his old man had to go into the family construction business.

Connelly studied engineering, thinking of building houses too. During his second year of university he discovered the books of Raymond Chandler and told his father he wanted to write crime novels.

His becoming a journalist was his dad's idea, Connelly tells Review: "Seems like a simple idea. But it wasn't on my radar, I was thinking I had to do English lit." Connelly went on to become a crime reporter, "so his (his father's) idea paid off".

Connelly senior knew his son was going to be a published author, but he died before he saw any of it. "He knew I had sold a book. Before it came out he passed. I wish I knew him as an older guy, he died pretty young. He was 60."

Whereas women in Connelly's books think outside the box, the great white male crime solvers are stuck in the past. They also handle the toll it takes to catch killers differently.

Across the past 20 years, and in writing The Waiting, Connelly has had a bigger picture in mind, exploring what it costs to dwell in the dark. "There's all kinds of dangers. The danger of flying bullets is the smallest threat, really," Connelly says.

There are moments in The Waiting where Maddie, a patrol officer and the newest member of the unsolved crimes unit, proves herself as someone who's not following established ways of doing an investigation.

Connelly's usual hallmarks of red tape and politics play heavily in the story. Where Harry would probably stick in his nose and push through bureaucracy, Maddie finds a way around, new ways of getting to where she has to without duelling so obviously.

"She's not just her father's daughter but she's her own person. She does some stuff that if Harry found out, he'd be proud and impressed," Connelly says.

Review asks the writer what he's reading at the moment. "SA Cosby has written three novels in three years, and they're really quite good. He would be a new voice. Another guy I'm excited about, Jordan Harper's Everybody Knows is a crime novel about a publicist in Los Angeles, a bold new take."

Connelly was a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times and there's a lot of journalism in his books contained in the fictional story. He now creates and hosts podcasts, which have come to replace his nonfiction writing needs. His latest podcast is The Wonderland Murders and the Secret History of Hollywood.

In a video for his former broadsheet, Connelly described his collaboration with detectives including Mitzi Roberts, with whom he has worked for over a decade.

She's the inspiration for one of his core characters, Renee Ballard, the LAPD detective who is hunting the serial rapist in The Waiting. "I think she (Roberts) is fierce when she sees some kind of injustice, that really gets her going. I see that and it inspires me." He has always found the small details interesting, the little cases that Roberts remembers, not just the victims of serial killers, Connelly says.

"Once you start to put more value on one person's life than another, then you're not as effective as an investigator," Roberts responds in the Los Angeles Times. The way she sees it, a lot of female detectives have preceded her and she's a continuation of that lineage.

The second season of Connelly's Murder Book podcast is about the women who stopped serial killer Sam Little. In a final Q&A episode Connelly discussed with Roberts how she, as well as her colleagues, prosecutor Beth Silverman and journalist Jillian Lauren, cope with the heavy weight and darkness of their jobs.

They handle it by looking for the light; rescuing dogs, travelling to remind themselves the world is beautiful beyond the tunnel of their murder investigations.

"Where I've gone astray with Harry is he doesn't rescue dogs. He doesn't really have anything else," Connelly tells Review. But Bosch still doesn't look at the world as bleak. Connelly sees his hero as the hopeful cynic.

Harry has Maddie and he listens to jazz as a coping mechanism. In The Waiting he's passing the baton. It's about Harry, It's about Maddie, and it's about Renee Ballard.

"Before I'm finished writing, I will write a Maddie Bosch only book, that will be the real completion of the passing of the baton," Connelly says.

We leave the hotel to take Connelly's photo with the photographer and publicist, scouting for a location around The Rocks. Review asks what he thinks the difference is between quality crime reporting and the schadenfreude of so many true-crime podcasts that make entertainment out of suffering.

Connelly takes a beat and threads the needle in the same way he did with a work that saw him become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize – he co-wrote a news feature sensitively reconstructing an aeroplane crash. He looks for an elevated story, "where society is somehow responsible. [In the] Sam Little case, he was committing crimes for five decades. So there's the detective, and the prosecutor, but what's wrong with society that it wasn't picked up?"

Review tells Connelly about reading Resurrection Walk on the train the day before our interview, sitting down next to a retired couple, Irene and Terry.

"I read that one," ventured Irene. What ensued was a 10-minute conversation covering Titus Welliver's portrayal of Harry Bosch on screen, Irene and Terry's former careers, and each of us sharing reading and watching recommendations, all of which made Review glad to read hard copy books.

Does Connelly converse with strangers on trains?

"Less since the e-book. It can be a fraught situation. I remember one time I was on a plane and the lady next to me was reading one of my books. And I just said: 'How's that?' I didn't say I wrote it, thank god. And she said: 'Oh, it's just something to pass the time with.'

"I learned a lesson. Just leave people alone. If you ask the question, you might not like the answer."

It's hard to imagine Connelly needs such little moments of validation. But his rebuttal is that you always need reinforcement, no matter how many books you've sold. Where does he find it?

"It's really about the work. On a day you've written something you know is going to work for the reader, for yourself, within the plot and for the characters, those are the best days of writing. Whether you've sold 80 million books or 8000, you sit in a room by yourself and have to either do it or not."

It can be isolating and lonely, which is why you have to have a good editor. Connelly has had only two fiction editors over his career. Sometimes they may not see what you're getting at and there's a little bit of struggle. He turns his manuscripts in when it's the best he can do, but they have usually been able to get something better out of him through their interpretation of what he's doing.

The times he has objected or instinctively felt he has had to go a certain way have been few and far between.

Nonetheless, more than 25 years ago Connelly wrote a book called The Poet, a work of autobiographical fiction about crime reporter Jack McEvoy. It was the first book he wrote after retiring from the LA Times. The opening line was: "Death is my beat."

His editor didn't like that line and wanted it changed, but Connelly wouldn't relent. "Well, I did this for 14 years. And that's how I always felt. So I'm not changing that line," he said. A couple of years later horror master Stephen King said of The Poet in an interview: "That book got me with the first line, 'Death is my beat'."

Connelly chuckles. "I sent that interview to my editor. And we still laugh about it."

The Waiting is out on October 15.