On December 10th, Michael Connery stood on the patio behind his house in Hollywood Hills, staring at the generous slices of the city he has written for 38 years. Universal Studios had a Hogwarts spire. There was a 101 highway and it was steadily flowing in both directions. There was a Hollywood sign and he presided over the wood and scrub slopes.
Connery said he could smell the smoke from the wildfires in Malibu, depending on the direction of the wind. Then, in Pinto, his Chihuahua mix, he went through the kitchen and family room to the office where he began writing at 5 or 6 each morning.
“The sun comes into those mountains,” Connelly said. “I love the moment, and it gives me the feeling that I'm the only one who's waking up in town.”
The 68-year-old Connelly writes 40 books, including a large number of bestsellers, and sells more than 89 million copies worldwide. He is the executive producer of Netflix's “Lincoln Lawyer” and the executive producer of Amazon's “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy.” (Bosch: Legacy will begin its third and final seasons on March 27th.) He is also a podcaster. Ah, he has two novels planned for 2025 – “Night Shade” coming out on May 20th introduces a new detective, and yet another Amazon show, “Ballard,” will launch this summer.
Most of Connery's stories feature police officers, lawyers and the shady underworlds they infiltrate and reveal. While you may not imagine him for someone who makes time for the sunrise, or for a Chihuahuas, his work includes certain kindness, especially around Los Angeles. Connery returns to town again and again after the book.
“There's tension here,” Connery said of Los Angeles. “It's where everyone comes and they're looking for a big break, but not everyone gets what they want. I'm one of the lucky ones.”
Connery has acquired the land from detective novels by Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Joseph Wanbaud. His father recommended that he enter journalism instead. By the late 20s, Connery had acquired a chop as a crime reporter in South Florida. He also wrote two unpublished books.
“We had postponed the idea of having a family, and I had a contract with Linda” – his wife of 40 years – “I was going to work on novels for four nights a week, a weekend day,” Connelly said. “It lasted for 10 years.”
Before he took the “last swing” in writing a novel, Connelly decides to shake things up with his work. He applied to newspapers in Chicago, Denver, Orange County and Los Angeles. “I was going to go with the first one that hired me, and fortunately it was the LA Times,” Connelly said.
In 1987, the weekend before he began his new gig, the robber took $91,000 from his local Bank of America branch by tunneling into a vault from a stormy drain on Lasienega Boulevard.
After his explanation of the crime, Connery began to imagine “The Black Echo” (1992). In his first published book, a similar robbery is investigated by a Maverick LAPD murder detective named Harry Bosch. Critics from the New York Times described the book as “police procedures, some big boys adventure books.”
Connery was awarded the Edgar Award, but he was not ready to give up on his report.
“I stayed at the LA Times more than I needed because I thought my press pass had what I needed,” he said. Eventually, Connelly discovers that his informant is getting closer when his informant has to worry about what he is writing for his paper.
His press pass is still hanging on his desk. Some of the Connelly articles have been published in Crime Beat (2006). This is the only work of non-fiction that begins with a quote from “The Poet” (1996). “Death is my beat. I'll make a living from it.”
Like Bosch, who grew older in the course of the series, other major characters in Connery grew from meeting people who crossed their paths in real life. Lincoln's lawyer, Mickey Haller, realized after the Dodgers game, and Connelly hit a conversation with the defense attorney who worked in his car.
“He said, 'That's not because I'm a bad lawyer,'” Connelly recalls. “'LA County, 400 miles of highway, 40 courthouse, I'm covering the waterfront.” The light bulb went out. ”
A few years later, Connery met Mitzi Roberts, the inspiration for René Ballard, and had breakfast in a restaurant across the street from Lampert station in LAPD. Roberts, a detective in the Cold Case Unit at the time, joined her partner, one of Connery's go-to sources. Connery asked about the challenge of being a woman in law enforcement.
“The only occupation I've seen was bad as long as sexism is Hollywood,” Roberts said. “It's still a struggle for women to succeed.”
Connelly's first ballad book, The Late Show, was published in 2017, about detectives who are not working in cemetery shifts.
If you don't know that Connelly is a bestselling author, you might mistake him for a high school teacher who lights up the moonlight as a baseball coach. Plaid, polar fleece and half zip sweatshirt stand out in his wardrobe. He's shy and a bit gross, communicating between the men in pork pea hats in clipped staccato, which you would expect to hear in Bogart's movies.
For example, “My book starts when someone tells me a story. Defendants. Detectives. Sometimes they are tied to bigger cases. I try to disguise them as much as I can.”
Some of Connery's books include non-fiction events. For example, “The Waiting” (2024) addresses the infamous case of the black dahlia, while “Dark Time” (2021) covers the aftermath of black life protests. Some mysteries have been solved, some not, others have flowed into future books. The only constants are crime, punishment, and the city itself.
The day before our meeting, Connelly was interviewed for the PBS show “Lost LA” at Angels Flight, the historic downtown funicular featured in his sixth Bosch book, when a passerby cried out “I love your work!” After all, she was referring to Nathan Masters, the program's host, rather than Connelly, who looked slightly sick in relief in front of the camera.
“I live a completely anonymous life,” Connery said later. He likes it.
“The 20-year editor of Connery is a great opportunity to see the world,” said Asya Muchnick, “The 20-year-old editor of Connery. He doesn't use a ghostwriter. He does not use co-authors. He writes and researchs all his own books and examines them by field experts. ”
These experts include two lawyers, a retired judge and several people working in law enforcement, including Roberts. He is currently an Amazon ballad adaptation consultant, starring Maggie Q. His wife, Linda, is an early reader. They meet at a journalism school and have one daughter with “night shades” dedicated to.
“There's never a word or a page,” Connelly said. “What I want to do is to move the story one step per day. It could be a chapter. It could be a good exchange of dialogue. It's very amorphous. Whether I write every morning or not, I know I write a book a year.”
Michael Corita, a fellow bestselling crime writer, was 21 years old when he met Connery at the convention. “Mike is always working,” Korita said. “I traveled with him. I was on the plane, leaning backwards to watch a movie or take a nap, and you have a microphone on his laptop.”
Korita proceeded as follows: “He's a gold standard, as a writer and as a person. Each of his books is the way he holds the mirrors to Los Angeles, especially the way he holds the mirrors up to Los Angeles.”
In December, Connelly launched a new book on Lincoln Lawyers. He shared the basics of the plot – the timely one – said, “I'm worried that real events might pass me.”
They did, but not for the reason Connery was hoping for.
On January 8th, Connelly was in Palm Springs for the event when Wildfire descended onto a large sash in Los Angeles. His neighborhood was evacuated. His beach house in Malibu was burnt out.
“On the right, we saw smoke from the Eton fire,” Connelly said in a follow-up interview. “To the left, we saw the sparkle of the Palisade.”
Despite this, he added, “We've become lucky.” The pain in his voice was called to remind me of Bosch's motto.
On January 13, Connery reflected on the city's losses in a newsletter that emailed more than 100,000 subscribers. “Is this new?” he wrote. “Do we need to face the possibility that we are heading towards nature again and again in these extreme ways? Are we now paying the price to build a city in the desert a long time ago?”
Missib finished: “I still love LA, where we always bounce back.”
Of course, there was a problem with Connery's ongoing novels. This happens the week the fire begins.
“How can I set up a book without mentioning fires in Los Angeles in 2025?” Connelly said. He wanted to incorporate destruction in a meaningful but not exploitative way. The prospects were difficult, he said: “I just froze.”
He took a week off. Forever it seemed enough to wonder if he was suffering from the writer's block for the first time. He spent time with his family, walking through Pinto, looking at the helicopter and smelling smoke. He lamented for Los Angeles.
“No one knows anyone who's not affected,” Connelly said. “Twenty-two people on my TV show have lost their homes.”
He found a way to remake his novel by layering new stories on top of what he began: “I still don't know if I did the right thing.”
This book is called “The Proving Ground.” It'll be released in October.
In the meantime, Connelly has returned to watching Sunrise. He texted a photo of the technicolor and heavy smoke, taken on January 10th.
He wrote, “This is from my office window.”
