Some of our story choices are by relatively unknown writers (like many of those published in the 2022 anthology), but occasionally we have a story by a current heavy hitter. This week we read the work of renowned mystery writer Michael Connelly, who some of you might know from his Harry Bosch series (as well as other of the 39 novels he has published).

“Avalon: When a Stranger Comes to Town” was selected as one of the best mystery short stories of 2022.  Would you agree? How does this story compare to others we’ve read?

Similar to last week’s crime solving scenario (“El Cuerpo en el Barríl”), this story involves a murder investigation, but from quite a different angle. Back on our home soil, right away we can notice a certain expectation of honesty and by-the-books following of legal code (and consequences for not following). It’s not the first time this semester a story involves a hit man, but it’s the first time we see the legal system (LA Sheriff as well as FBI) collaborating to understand the reason for the murder in question… which is not, initially, what we expected.

Read on to learn more about Michael Connelly and his unique brand of mystery fiction.

CLICK HERE to download or print a pdf version of this lesson.

Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. He chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars.

In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

Interesting aside: After moving to Los Angeles, Connelly went to see High Tower Court where Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe had lived (in his 1942 novel The High Window), and Robert Altman had used for his film The Long Goodbye (1973). Connelly got the manager of the building to promise to phone him if the apartment ever became available. Ten years later, the manager tracked Connelly down, and Connelly decided to rent the place. This apartment served as a place to write for several years.

Today Connelly is the bestselling author of 39 novels and one work of non -fiction. With over eighty-five million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty-five foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992.

On a personal note, he married his wife Linda in 1984, and they have one daughter.

After three years at the Los Angeles Times, Connelly published his first novel, The Black Echo (1992)--which won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best first Novel. The book was partly based on a true crime and is the first one featuring Connelly's primary recurring character, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, a man who, according to Connelly, shares few similarities with the author himself.

Connelly named Bosch after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his paintings full of sin and redemption, Connelly describes his own work as a big canvas with all the characters of his books floating across it as currents on a painting. Sometimes they are bound to collide, creating cross currents. This is something that Connelly creates by bringing back characters from previous books and letting them play a part in books written five or six years after first being introduced.

Connelly went on to write several more novels about Detective Bosch—The Black Ice (1993), The Concrete Blonde (1994), and The Last Coyote (1995)—before quitting his job as a reporter to write full-time. Altogether, he has written more than 20 novels featuring Bosch, several stand alone novels with protagonist Jack McEvoy, another with FBI agent Terry McCaleb (Blood Work was made into a movie by—and starring—Clint Eastwood). Another free standing book was about Las Vegas thief Cassie Black.

Connelly’s work has been adapted to numerous screenplays, television dramas, films, Netflix series, and even a documentary about the jazz musician Frank Morgan (a favorite of fictional hero Bosch). He also writes short stories and has edited short story collections.

Great NPR Piece on Connelly....

When starting a book, he says, the story is not always clear, but Connelly has “a hunch” as to where it is going. The books often reference real-world events, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the September 11 attacks. He also includes minor news stories that interest him. David Geherin states that Connelly "deliberately avoids ornate language, the kind that makes the reader stop and savor the choice of words or elegant phrasing. He doesn't want anything to inhibit the forward momentum he is working to create."

Detective Bosch's life usually changes in harmony with Connelly's own life. When Connelly moved 3,000 miles across the country, Bosch's experiences sent him in a new direction in City of Bones, written at that time. According to Connelly, his "real" job is to write about Bosch, and he brought McCaleb and Bosch together in A Darkness More Than Night in order to look at Bosch from another perspective and to keep the character interesting.

Connelly often changes perspectives between characters in his novels. In Void Moon, Connelly frequently alternates between following protagonist Cassie Black and antagonist Jack Karch. In Fair Warning, Connelly outright changes the overarching perspective of the book on occasion, regularly following protagonist Jack McEvoy in a first-person point of view while occasionally branching away from his story to follow the antagonists in third-person.

The book was published in 1949, and his descriptions of LA are still accurate. He’s able to cut away to the basic things about LA. At the time I read it, I’d never been in Los Angeles, but I instinctively knew that he had grabbed the character of place and connected it to the character of his protagonist. Wonderful. Years later I did make it to LA, and I started writing novels, and I would religiously re-read chapter 13, and I still do, to this day, before I start writing a novel about LA. I have to read chapter 13.

Tell me about creating recurring characters, like Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch. At what point does the character feel like one you’d like to return to, and how much do you “know” about your characters before first introducing them?

When I wrote Harry Bosch, it was my first novel. I’d come to the idea of writing crime novels, because I thought I’d like to do a series. I was hoping that a publisher would realize that the character could go some distance. But I came in knowing a) nothing about writing, and b) nothing about publishing. About 7, 8 years ago I was writing a book about a lawyer in LA who would work out of the backseat of his Lincoln Towncar. It was inspired by a real lawyer in LA who worked this way. I went into that booking thinking it was a one-off. I usually write about cops or reporters—people who society expects to go investigating things, to dig out evil and expose it, eliminate it, etc. So this was a year’s holiday writing about someone on the other side of the coin. But somewhere in that process I realized, through the character’s voice, since it’s in first-person narration, I liked what he was saying. His sardonic take on the legal system.

It occurred to me, as I was finishing a first draft, that I was not finished with this character. In subsequent drafts I changed his name so the character could be connected to a Bosch story, and I started adding things to link it into my ongoing Bosch series that was going pretty well. So it was almost like a TV show, where they make a spin-off from a successful series into a new show. This was a little different, because you’ve not seen Mickey Haller in any of the Bosch books yet, but I connected him to the Bosch world. That was my way of planning things so I could come back to him and explore the character further.

Did your approach differ in any way, when you wrote your first legal thriller (The Lincoln Lawyer) after focusing on police procedurals?

Yeah, it definitely was, cuz I’m not a lawyer. And the big successful writers of legal fiction, for the most part, are lawyers. I’ve been interested in legal stories since I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 12. E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime has a great trial in it. For a long time I wanted to do this, but I didn’t think I had the credentials. But when I met this guy who worked out of the backseat of his Lincoln, and when he explained to me why it was the best way for him to operate as a lawyer in Los Angeles—it was just an idea I could not deny. So I went through a long process of gathering string, meeting with lawyers. So the Lincoln Lawyer books take much more time to research. Not that I’ve ever been a homicide detective, but the law can be complicated. It’s subjective, not objective. It needs me to spend more time researching until I feel that the books feel of authority and have some realism to them.

There are a lot of Michael Connelly novels. For a reader new to your work, which of your novels would you recommend they begin with, and why?

I firmly believe that you get better at whatever you do in life, the more you do it. I feel that I’m a better writer now than I was when the first Harry Bosch novel came out, so I’m not going to send anyone back to the beginning. I think a good book where you get a good sense of who this character is, his relentlessness. Echo Park. It’s a more current book, and I think it would be a good introduction to all of my work. But if you’re into legal thrillers, the novel called The Lincoln Lawyer, introduces this new character. But my latest, Gods of Guilt, is the first time that I feel it’s really a character-driven story, as opposed to a trial-driven or plot-driven story. So I think this is the best of my Lincoln Lawyer books.

Describe your morning routine on a day you’d be writing.

It definitely changes depending on where I am in a book, because for me writing is all about finding momentum and keeping it. When your word count is 0, it’s much harder than when your word count is 60,000. I get up to write while it’s still dark, 5 or 5:30. I start by editing and rewriting everything I did the day before, and that gives some momentum for the day. I get to new territory when the sun is coming up. I take a break to take my daughter to school—actually she just started driving, so I take a break to have breakfast with her. Then I get back to it. If it’s early in a book, I’ll only write til lunch, because it can be hard for me to get that momentum going. If it’s late in a book and really flowing, I’ll just keep writing and writing, until I’m either too tired or have been called to dinner.

Is there anything distinctive or unusual about your workspace?

I have an office where I have blackout shades, where I created an environment where you don’t know what time of day it is. You don’t know if it’s light or dark. I just try to put everything else out of focus and look only at the screen of my laptop. I don’t write at a desk, I sit on a couch.

What is a distinctive habit or affectation related to the writing process?

On the food front, I’m addicted to ice tea. I like it straight. I have different brands, but what’s notable is that I drink so much of it, and I’m so particular about it, that I brought a restaurant-quality brewer. I have it here in my office. And once or twice a week, I will brew three gallon batches of iced tea, and put it in refrigeration. I use that all day. I always have an ice tea with me—I have an ice tea right now, within a foot of me.

Do you have any superstitions?

I used to tape over the top corner of my computer screen so I couldn’t see what time it was. I like the idea that I’m just with the words, and not knowing what’s going on with the world, when it’s lunch or dinner.

What would you like carved onto your tombstone?

You know, of all the times that you get asked questions, it seems like you hear the same ones over and over. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that! Huh. I’d grab Harry Bosch’s code: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” A good message for the planet.

From The Best Mystery Stories of 2022:

The assignment was simple: A stranger arrives in town and disrupts the fabric of the community. My initial reaction was to think of Jack Reacher and Lee Child. They want a min-Reacher story. I decided to go the other way and have the protagonist part of of the town and have the stranger be, well, a stranger—a villain. So next it was a question of location. I usually write about Los Angeles and that is hardly a town where strangers would get noticed. A thousand or so arrive every day. So I decided on an island; Catalina, just off the coast of LA, and the town would be Avalon, a place where most people arrive by boat. I was all set to go. I just needed a story. Raymond Chandler—at least I think it was him—said that if you are stuck writing a story just have a blond come through the door with a gun. I decided on having a stranger getting off the boat with a gun. I was good to go.

Now that you know much more about Connelly and why how he wrote this story, let’s take a closer look.

To begin, a comparison. I commend last week’s author, Tom Larsen, and his complicated tale, “El Cuerpo en el Barríl.” Yet reading Michael Connelly’s story, I noticed the writing of a more experienced author. Can you tell what I mean?

Let’s run through all those literary elements and how they work together to create the feel and suspense of a good mystery:

Setting: Keep in mind Connelly’s rationale (above). What makes Avon/Catalina a sort of character within the story? What details stand out for you that help you experience this setting?

Point of View: From the first sentence we realize we’re seeing through the main protagonist’s eyeballs. In fact, the narration even sets up our viewpoint through a set of binoculars “on the windowsill if needed”.  So the point of view also introduces us to Deputy Nick Searcy.

Characters: But it takes quite a few pages to dig into Searcy’s story. We learn he is a detective from the LA County Sheriff’s Department, assigned to the Avalon substation.

We meet several other characters and learn their stories (red herrings?).

It’s not clear to Searcy why Deputy Randy Ahern was transferred to Avalon, but he suspects it has to do with his work in the LA County jail (“where scandal was always rife, usually from use-of-force complaints”). What does it mean that Ahern “brought his jail persona with him to the island.” What, exactly, does this mean?

Then there is the story involving Ricky Galt, the city manager’s son and his shoplifting. What does this sub-plot add to the larger story?

Plot: See if you can untangle each story/back story and show how they connect to each other—and how they weave together the overall fabric of “Avalon.”

Theme: A classic case of…. Justice served? What other deeper meanings come to mind?

Enjoy our story this week, and maybe you’ll be motivated to read more of Michael Connelly’s work.

Charney, N. (2017). How I Write: Michael Connelly. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-i-write-michael-connelly

Michael Connelly Website. (2024). Retrieved from https://www.michaelconnelly.com/about/

Michael Connelly. (2024). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connelly