A great insight in to where Connolly gets his ideas from. Having worked as a police reporter for the LA Times Connolly covered many cases and here he brings together a fascinating collection of true crime stories. This is a must for all Michael Connolly fans.

Synopsis

'Death is my beat.' Those words, spoken by the narrator and hero of THE POET, Jack McEvoy, could also apply to Michael Connelly. Time and time again in these riveting pieces, we make the connection between Connelly the crime reporter and Connelly the novelist:

'On the day I arrived in Los Angeles I sat in the newspaper editor's office being interviewed for a job on the crime beat. The day before there had been a bank heist in which the thieves had gone into the city's labyrinthine storm water tunnel system to get beneath the bank before tunnelling upward.' Years later that story would become THE BLACK ECHO.

'Moments. They kept coming. One morning an editor called me and told me to swing by a murder scene on my way to the office. Just like that, like I was picking up a coffee on the way to work. The murder was on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. I went as instructed and got the story. I also got the place where I would put the home of the fictional detective [Harry Bosch] I had secretly begun writing about ...'

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About the Author

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ending up 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.   After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. The rest is crime writing history.   He lives in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and daughter.   Author photo © Wendy Werri More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation