Garden of Earthly Delights

Michael Connelly is regarded by some--by "The Washington Post," for example--as the greatest American crime writer alive today. His fans include Bill Clinton and Tom Perrotta.

Connelly named his detective hero after the painter Bosch, and there's an "Earthly Delights" aura about Connelly's writing. So many weird, twisted characters. You have the sense you're absorbed in a lurid, fully-realized world.

One of Connelly's great gifts is his level of observation. He pauses to notice an arrogant boss sitting on an employee's desk, and to notice the coffee stain forming on the boss's butt, and to notice that no one bothers to point out the coffee stain to the boss. Connelly notices Bosch worrying about his teenaged daughter eating too many pizza dinners alone. Connelly notices when someone uses a last name as a greeting, and when that choice of greeting is not received well.

Another gift: Even with this level of detail, Connelly always seems to keep the plot moving. There's an unpretentiousness and a sense of total authority in his writing. As a reader, you don't have any trust issues.

And: Connelly smartly notes, over and over, that people generally aren't who they seem to be. An apparent trickster is really an ally. A supposedly reformed kid is--in fact--not reformed. You sometimes feel you're reading a really great fairy tale: You're waiting for the various witches to reveal themselves (even though you're in L.A., and not in an enchanted forest).

This weekend, I suffered through the final pages of Pullman's new Lyra Silvertongue novel, which I mostly loathed, and I was so grateful to plunge into Connelly's world--specifically, to plunge into "The Black Box." I have the sense this isn't his most revered novel, but it's still terrific. You have the pleasure of seeing a master do what he does very, very well. It doesn't matter that I'm not a cop. Or that I don't live in L.A. When I read Connelly, I feel an instant connection, and I'm hooked.

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