News

Harry Bosch wasn't quite on life support, but he was in critical condition. Through 11 novels, Michael Connelly's Los Angeles-based fictional detective had survived bullets, growing older, the discovery that he was a father and a stint as a private detective.

The latter factor was particularly worrisome to his author.

"It came to me very quickly that I may have doomed the series to an earlier end than I wanted by making him a private detective," Connelly says. "After only two books, I was feeling a routine to it, and I felt that routine would make me lose interest and the series would die."

The problem was how to rescue Bosch from Connelly's impending sense of doom. It wasn't as if he could snap his fingers and allow the fictional detective to rejoin the LAPD.

Until it happened in real life.

A detective Connelly knew, Tim Marcia, was assigned to a new cold-case squad. The detective's new partner, Rick Jackson, had retired in frustration a few years before, dismayed by the culture of the force. But when the new police chief, William J. Bratton -- who had teamed with mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York City to significantly reduce crime in the mid 1990s -- set a new tone, Jackson returned.

Connelly's first thought was "You can do that?"

"It was coincidental," Connelly says, "but just what I needed right when I was struggling and was told Harry could come back."

In "The Closers," Bosch is born again in circumstances that seem familiar, but different. He's back with the LAPD, assigned to a cold case squad and reunited with his longtime partner, Kizmin Rider, feeling renewed and reinvigorated -- just like Connelly.

"It seems like everything I do is involved in the question of how to keep him alive," says Connelly, noting that tricks such as changing the way he writes or even changing computers are only superficial fixes. "What that question really means is, how do I stay excited and interested in him? Reading a book takes just a few days, but writing one takes much longer. And so, I have to make sure when I'm standing at the bottom of the mountain, I have the fuel and the desire to climb it again. That can be hard if it's a character that is feeling routine and has a been-there, done-that feeling to it."

The department Bosch returns to is not called Cold Case -- like the CBS television series, which Connelly references -- but the Open-Unsolved Unit. It's a fitting position for Bosch, who has more than his share of personal issues that need to be resolved. The Open-Unsolved Unit will allow Bosch the opportunity to set things right -- perhaps not in his life, but as a reflection of his personal issues.

Noting that he renamed the unit for the purpose of the book, Connelly admits he's not forging a new path.

"Law enforcement trends dictate entertainment trends, and that's why you have the 'Cold Case' TV show and other cold-case books that have been out long before mine," he says. "I felt I needed to acknowledge that, but not act like I'm plowing new ground."

The plot of "The Closers" is, initially, straightforward: Bosch and Rider open a case involving the death of a 16-year-old girl in 1988. The girl's death is first ruled a suicide, but the investigating officers quickly backtrack and declare it a murder.

No victim was apprehended in the case. But 17 years later, there's evidence of a hate crime -- the murdered girl was biracial -- and more disturbingly, reasons to suspect the investigation might have been suppressed by one of Bosch's former adversaries, Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.

Connelly unveils the story deliberately and methodically, mirroring Bosch's steadfast determination not to overlook any possible clue or thread.

"I've gone out and talked about writing at schools," Connelly says, "and then find I'm putting the same kinds of thoughts about writing into Harry's thoughts about investigations. It all kind of revolves around momentum, keeping a velocity. At one point ... in one of the books, he says an investigation is like a shark, it has to keep moving or it dies. That's the same thing I feel when I'm writing. I have to keep the story with an urgent velocity.

"I know I do this. I'm thinking in terms of writing, and I put what I'm thinking into the terms of the investigation."

Capsule review

Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch is one of crime fiction's most complex characters, his moral certitude often causing him to trample procedure in the name of justice. So what happens when Bosch, just returned to the Los Angeles Police Department, is put on a strict leash by the new chief?

Of course, he strains at the restrictions. And part of the appeal of "The Closers," the 11th book featuring Bosch, is following the character in a new setting. Now working in a cold-case unit and reunited with longtime partner Kizmin Rider, Bosch is given a case that seems impossible: the murder of teenage girl 17 years ago, with much of the evidence missing.

Connelly seems to have been reinvigorated by the challenge of reinventing Bosch. "The Closers" is another solid addition to one of the best ongoing crime series.

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News