Liars and Saints

Where did Michael Connelly come from? He was a reporter--just as Laura Lippman was a reporter. And Jane Harper. At some point mid-career, Connelly decided to write a novel, and it won a major prize, right off the bat. Connelly values art; he bought a home just because it had played a role in another writer's work, and he also has a large print of Bosch's "Hell," a painting from the 1490s, in his office. The painting "Hell" is an example of world-building. It has many fantastical characters--bumping into one another, pursuing idiosyncratic agendas. Connelly thinks of his own work in the way Bosch may have thought of "Hell": Connelly has invented a world, and he returns to it again and again, adding complications. (This is also how Louise Penny views her work. Three Pines, the fictional town she has invented, serves as a kind of escape for her. Part of the fun of her books--which I find intermittently irritating--is knowing that you'll in...

A story is nothing without great characters; "Bosch" delivers a real story. Why? There's Bosch himself. Struggling to raise a teenager (who is neither an angel nor irredeemably bratty). Wrestling with the death of his ex-wife, whom he still loves. Bending rules. Talking suicidal criminals off the ledge. Sitting silently in his cliff-side palace, studying Los Angeles. Finding himself forced to work with a lawyer who once tried to derail him. Ending romantic relationships in a clumsy way, because he is a man, and so he is, by definition, a little bit silly. There's J. Edgar, who torpedoed his own marriage with his infidelity, but who now finds himself in a pseudo-marital arrangement with his ambivalent ex-wife. J. Edgar, who doesn't fully trust his professional partner (despite feeling a great deal of almost-fraternal love). J. Edgar, who can't give up his career, and who nevertheless realizes that that same career is sort of ruining his life. And there...