There Ain’t Nothin’ Like Him Nowhere*

There’s an interesting and not wholly sycophantic profile of Michael Connelly in Canada’s National Post newspaper. Its author, Robert Fulford, provides lots of background on Connelly’s best-known protagonist, Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, and explains how the latest paperback release from Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer, fits neatly into Bosch’s world (at least neatly for those who’ve read and remember early Bosch books). He also marvels at how much Connelly can write, including a new novel (Echo Park) due out in late September and a coming Bosch novella to be serialized in The New York Times Magazine. And though Fulford was signficantly less than impressed by Crime Beat, a recent hardcover collection of 22 of Connelly’s old newspaper stories (“only an obsessive Connelly aficionado will bother with these mostly tiresome pieces”), he seems thoroughly charmed by this novelist’s fondness for the City of Angels:

Connelly once called his novels love letters to Los Angeles. In Angels Flight (1999) he briefly forgets the crime story so that Bosch can ruminate on a remarkable 1883 [sic] building now partly used by the LAPD’s Internal Affairs division and famous for its Italianate exterior, wrought-iron filigree interiors and grillwork-cage elevators. It’s a kind of architectural masterpiece, designed by George Wyman, a $5-a-week draftsman without a formal degree who did nothing else of interest, before or after.

The building does nothing for the plot, but it draws us a little closer to Harry Bosch, whose character is Connelly’s long-term project. Bosch identifies with Wyman, a humble designer who seized on one grand opportunity and carved a place in history. Bosch loves the idea of a man who leaves his mark when given a great chance. Has Bosch had such a chance? Did he miss it? He hopes his glowing moment still lies in the future, waiting for him: “He had yet to take his one shot.”

It’s worth raising the question with Connelly in an interview sometime, whether he really believes in this concept of the one shot, and if so, whether he thinks he has taken his own one shot yet. As hard as it is to believe that he wouldn’t think he’s already made a mark, that sort of query is just the sort to draw out some new side of a thoughtful guy like Connelly.

* Adapted from a line in Randy Newman’s song “I Love L.A.”