Like Raymond Chandler; read Michael Connelly.

Both these American master storytellers principally write about Los Angeles and its boulevards of broken dreams and toil in the so-called hardboiled streets. Their respective heroes, Philip Marlowe and Harry Bosch act as avenging knights decades apart but the sense of anger at corruption and the spread of evil is the same, alongside carefully-tuned plots and galleries of wonderful characters, full of colour and pathos.

Chandler created the model for modern crime fiction, Connelly takes over the relay and brought it into the 21st century.

Recommended:

Raymond Chandler - THE LITTLE SISTER. Not his most known, but a fascinating and tender glimpse into the intricate webs of deception that bring people together and then destroy them.

Michael Connelly - THE POET. A stand-alone novel that does not feature Harry Bosch, but follows a group of FBI agents on the trail of a terribly devious serial killer. A breathless masterpiece.

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Winner of the Best Novel at the Anthony Awards 1997.

Not part of the Harry Bosch series, this is a one of Connellys ‘stand alone’ novels, although he subsequently wrote The Narrows, which is the sequel to this.

Fast paced with great twists and turns this really is one of those books that keeps you on the edge of your seat and racing to get to the end to discover the identity of the elusive ‘Poet’.

Synopsis

The apparent suicide of his policeman brother sets Denver crime reporter Jack McEvoy on edge. Surprise at the circumstances of his brother's death prompts Jack to look into a whole series of police suicides and puts him on the trail of a cop-killer whose victims are selected all too carefully. Not only that, but they all leave suicide notes drawn from the poems of writer Edgar Allan Poe in their wake.

More frightening still the killer appears to know that Jack is getting nearer and nearer. An investigation that looks like being the story of a lifetime, might also be Jack's ticket to a lonely end.

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