Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is an American crime novelist and former journalist whose Harry Bosch series and The Lincoln Lawyer rank among the most acclaimed detective fiction in American literature.

Michael Connelly spent years as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times before publishing The Black Echo in 1992, the debut of detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. That novel won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and launched one of the most sustained and critically admired series in American crime fiction. Bosch — a Vietnam veteran, LAPD homicide detective, and obsessive seeker of justice for the dead — is one of the genre’s great characters: driven, difficult, morally serious, and rendered with a specificity of psychology and place that makes the Los Angeles of the novels feel as real as any city in crime fiction.

The series, which now runs to over twenty volumes, maintains a remarkably consistent level of quality. Connelly understands police procedure from his reporting days, and he deploys that knowledge with evident care — the investigations in the Bosch novels feel authentic in their complexity and their frustrations. The Lincoln Lawyer, which introduced defence attorney Mickey Haller, proved Connelly could build an equally compelling series character from the opposite side of the courtroom. Both series have been successfully adapted for television, and the Bosch streaming series in particular has drawn praise for its fidelity to the books’ tone.

Connelly’s narrative craftsmanship is exceptional: his plots are intricately constructed without feeling contrived, his prose is clean and propulsive, and his sense of Los Angeles — its geography, its racial politics, its law enforcement culture — gives the books a social texture that lifts them above genre routine. For readers new to the series, starting with The Black Echo or, alternatively, The Concrete Blonde (the third Bosch novel) is recommended. Connelly is simply one of the best working practitioners of American crime fiction.