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The Late Show

 Some writers just "speak your language." I think Michael Connelly is almost incapable of being dull.

"The Late Show," a novel from a few years ago, has three crazy stories. In one, a car salesman assaults a victim in his "upside-down house," a house with the bedrooms in the lower levels, below the kitchen and dining room. It's the phrase "upside-down house" that leads to a break in the case.

In a second story, a bad cop murders an informant who is wearing a wire. An observer understands that a wire was involved--because of the particular scar on the corpse's chest. This is a scar you get only when the battery from your "wire contraption" becomes overheated.

And--third--a man commits robberies with a stolen gun. The theft of the gun was never reported because--earlier--that same gun had been used in a double-murder. A thief is bad; a two-time killer is worse. It's the thief who "saves the day."

Michael Connelly is inspired by the painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights," which seems to be an endless vision of unusual characters. In "The Late Show," you have a thug hiding in "the Batcave," an actual cave in L.A. where climactic moments from TV's "Batman" were once filmed. You have fluffers, porn-star snack tables, and a producer named "Stormy Monday." You have a homeless detective who works all night--"the late show"--then sleeps in a tent on the beach, near her surfboard.

I'm always learning from Connelly; I can't wait for the final season of "Bosch"; and I'm curious about the Bosch/Honey spin-off down the road. (And the next Connelly novel will be a kind of sequel to "The Late Show"--happening some time before Christmas.)
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