Archives for November 2016

You’re Invited to Dinner with Famous Authors

November 28, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Over the years, I’ve interviewed many well-known authors, and we’ve discussed their writing careers as well as some aspects of their personal lives. One question I sometimes ask has been “food for thought” for many writers, and their answers often reveal much about them. Readers of my blog seem to especially enjoy this query, and the responses it engenders:

Here’s the question: You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any five people, living or dead, real or fictional, from any walk of life. Who would they be?

Here are responses from some well-known novelists:

Alex Kava: I would start by inviting Harper Lee because To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book. It would be amazing to be able to talk with her. Then, I’d invite Alfred Hitchcock because I love using the Hitchcockian approach to suspense thrillers—bringing the readers to the edge and leaving them there. My next guest would be Scout Finch. Can you imagine Scout contradicting some of the stories as Harper Lee would be trying to tell them? Amelia Earhart is fascinating, so I’d invite her. And the fifth would be Jack London, a real ‘dog person,’ because I just loved Call of the Wild.

Michael Connelly: An obvious one would be Raymond Chandler. The other one is easy: my father passed away before I was published and had any success, so I’d like to have a meal with him now. I was very close to a cousin who passed away when we were twelve. I’d like to catch up with her. And maybe I’d like to meet the real Hieronymus Bosch. But, he might throw soup at me for taking his name.

Daniel Silva: Churchill would be there. I’d invite George Orwell who might be coughing and wheezing and not feeling well but I’d love to talk to him. It would be fun to have FDR along with Churchill—to have the two leaders who saved the world sitting at the same table. How about inviting the acerbic Graham Greene? And then, I’d love to have Hemingway join us. Can you imagine the amount of drinking going on with Churchill and Hemingway there? [Laughter]. I’d watch the whole evening explode.

Laura Lippman: I’d invite Stephen Sondheim. I’d love to have Ferran Adrià, the chef from el Bulli, a seminal figure in the world of cooking. My husband would be there because I love him, and he’s great company. I would also invite a friend who’s the most provocative, no-holds-barred person I know, Rebecca Chance; and I’d love to invite Michelle Obama. I wouldn’t invite any dead people because I’d have to spend so much time bringing them up to speed on stuff. Imagine saying to Shakespeare, ‘The other day, I Googled someone…’ and he would look at me like I’m insane [Laugher].

Reed Farrel Coleman: I’d invite Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, Marilyn Monroe, T. S. Eliot, even though he’d hate being with so many Jews. [Laughter]. And then I’d invite my grandfather. He apparently loved me, but I don’t remember him. He died when I was very young.

Tess Gerritsen: I would ask Cleopatra. She’s a fascinating character who could purportedly twist men around with her intellect. I’d also invite Margaret Meade. And then, I’d ask Amelia Earhart. I’m really interested in accomplished and interesting women. [Laughter]. The funny thing is I don’t find writers all that interesting. We writers live in such a world of imagination, we’re too busy to go out and do things ourselves. I’m most interested in people who’ve done things. I would also like to have the young King Tut at the dinner. And last, but certainly not least, I’d invite Genghis Khan.

Robert Crais: I’d probably invite a couple of painters. There would also be a couple of architects. Painters and architects fascinate me. I think we all do the same thing: it’s just that their mediums are different. Their brains work in a different way and I’m fascinated by that. I’d also invite someone like Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein, science fiction writers. They would see the world very differently than I do.

Karen Slaughter: I’d invite Flannery O’Connor. Then, I’d have Margaret Mitchell and Truman Capote, two Southern writers. I’d invite Bill and Hillary Clinton because they could get any one of those other guests to talk and be interesting, even if some of them had a little too much to drink or if they were typically shy writers. I’ve met both Clintons. Bill has an amazing mind, and Hillary really has it together. It’s incredibly impressive when you’re a woman and meet another woman with so much to offer.

Robin Cook: I’d invite David McCullough, a wonderful historian, writer and conversationalist. I’d invite Simon the Magician—the bad boy in the Bible. From St. Peter, he tried to buy the ability to cure. I would have to invite Jesus of Nazareth. If one wants to believe the stories in the New Testament, he was the most amazing healer of all. I’d invite Upton Sinclair whose book, The Jungle, changed something really bad—certain public policy. And, I’d invite FDR. He probably had the best chance of all presidents to get us a rational national health policy.

Catherine Coulter: Georgette Heyer, a British author who died in 1972. She’s the one who invented a sub-genre called the Regency romance. Then, I’d love to have Agatha Christie for dinner. I would love to have dinner with Charles II. And I’d want to meet the modern Plato—the same philosopher, but brought into contemporary times. And then, maybe Edward I. He’s very much alive in my books—he’s a character for me—and I’d just love to ask him questions about how he deals with my other characters. He lives on in my own private little realm of ideas.

David Morrell: Thomas De Quincey would be high on my list as would Benjamin Franklin. My mentors, Philip Young and the screenwriter Stirling Siliphant who wrote Route 66 would be there, too. If we’re talking about the great minds, I think St. Thomas Aquinas would be at the table.

Patricia Cornwell: I’d love to have dinner with Dickens. And with Agatha Christie. I’d love to have met Lincoln. I’m so sorry I never got to meet Truman Capote. I think In Cold Blood is one of the greatest true-crime books ever written. I think dead people might be my specialty [Laughter]. And then there’s Harriet Beecher Stowe because she and I write basically about the same thing: abuse of power, whether it’s slavery or anything else.

Harlan Coben: Well, I’d love to have my parents with me. If I chose writers, I’d invite those I’ve known personally, who have passed away: David Foster Wallace, Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, and Ed McBain. They were writers whose work I admired greatly, and whom I personally admired enormously.

James Rollins: I would love to sit down with Michael Creighton. When I wrote Subterranean, the book right above me on the shelf was Jurassic Park. I had no formal training in writing, so I used Jurassic Park as a template. I’d love to meet Howard Carter, the archeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Mark Twain would make for some very entertaining conversation. It’s a poorly kept secret that I have written fantasy novels under the pen name of James Clemens. Plato or Socrates would round things out and we’d have a great mix of people.

Let me ask you, the reader, the same question: whom would you invite to dinner. I’d love to read and share your responses.

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‘Chaos,’ A Conversation with Patricia Cornwell

November 22, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Patricia Cornwell, known to millions of readers worldwide as a bestselling author, has won many prestigious awards. She researches cutting-edge forensic technologies that inform her Kay Scarpetta novels.

Chaos is Patricia Cornwell’s twenty-fourth Scarpetta novel. Kay and her investigative partner Pete Marino receive a call about a dead bicyclist whose body reveals very strange clues. An anonymous cyberbully named “Tailend Charlie” has been sending cryptic communications to Scarpetta, and when a second death occurs hundreds of miles away, it becomes clear that something more dangerous than Scarpetta has ever imagined is at work.

At the outset of Chaos, you quote Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, ‘There is love in me the likes of which you’re never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape.’ Tell us how this relates to the novel.

What I’m hinting at is that Scarpetta is reaching a stage in her life where the inner quality of her character is emerging. Referring to the quote from Frankenstein, I’m saying Kay Scarpetta is the most loving and healing human being you will ever meet, but you don’t want to mess with her. And you certainly see that at the end of this book where Kay takes matters into her own hands in more ways than one, especially when the FBI takes over her medical examiner’s office. Kay’s gloves are off and we won’t know from one book to the next how far Kay Scarpetta will go if she’s pushed to do what she must. This character quality makes writing the books a lot more fun for me since I’m not constricted by the conventions I thought were in place when I first started writing these novels. I’m going to let Kay Scarpetta do whatever she wants to do.

Speaking of a character evolving, how has the relationship between Kay and Pete Marino evolved over the course of the novels?

Scarpetta and Marino went from having a rather adversarial relationship to one of being compatible partners, except for the times they find themselves at loggerheads over some issue.

In The Book of the Dead, published in 2007, the pair entered a very dark phase when Marino went off the rails and acted very badly. Everything they had built together had to be torn down, and they needed to start all over again.

Over the last nine years, they’ve matured and there’s no bitterness or edge to their working together, harmoniously and with great synergy.

I think the decision I made to have Marino return to working for the police department rather than as a death investigator was crucial to the series. He derives a sense of power from being a cop. Their relationship is stronger because of that development.

Chaos depicts some frightening possibilities about technology and the use of weapons. Tell us about that.

In the first decade of my career, the main character in the novel was the forensics. In my writing, I spent a great deal of time showing readers things with which they were totally unfamiliar. For example, in the mid-nineties when Unnatural Exposure was written, no one gave a thought to the possibility of biological terrorism involving the idea of weaponizing a plague like small pox. Now, we worry all the time about this kind of scenario.

When I started writing, I seized upon the idea of having some malevolent person or organization exploit the wonders of technology by perverting them to achieve catastrophic ends. That kind of situation puts the characters through unimaginable stress to try to figure out how to prevent a cataclysmic event from happening.

This formula has served me well; and I’m even more inspired now than ever before because technology is proliferating at lightening speed. I can barley keep up with all the developments and advances. In fact, the weapon used in Chaos is already in use, albeit not in the manner it’s employed in the book.

There’s a technology war going on, and that’s what I use in my stories.

Speaking of technology, especially concerning weapons, does anything about the future frighten you?

Everything about the future frightens me. The possibility of creating weapons for which we have no defense is immense. There’s no end in sight for the creative things people can do to wreak havoc on civilization. Whether it’s cyberattacks on an election or on the power grids, these are vulnerabilities that if creatively exploited, would be devastating to our society. I sincerely believe that if you allow yourself to think about it, someone will try.

Reading Chaos and your other books makes clear that you’re well-versed in science. What scientific resources do you use to stay so current about forensics and technology?

People don’t know that I have a whole team of consultants available to me. Over the years, I’ve amassed a network of the best and the brightest people out there—whether its expertise on DNA, medical examiner’s techniques, microscopic or trace evidence experts, I’ve had the privilege of being in the company of some of the best and most skilled professionals in the world. They’re also my friends, and even when we’re just hanging out, having dinner, we talk “shop.” Many of them have one foot in the military and a good deal of the latest technology is born during warfare. A decade later, it trickles down and pops up in law enforcement. So, fortunately, I hear about some things before some people in criminalistics and forensics hear about them. I try to run with it in my writing.

You’re producing a Kay Scarpetta novel each year. How do you remain so prolific?

It’s not easy. The actual sitting down and writing a novel requires intricate work, and can be painstakingly exhausting. I can do it when I have the time, but occasionally, something else comes up, like book promotion, and finding time to research and write becomes more difficult.

What’s coming next from Patricia Cornwell?

In January, 2017 Ripper, the Secret Life of Walter Sickert will be published. There are also a couple of potential Hollywood projects you may be hearing about. And, I’m in the early stages of researching the next Scarpetta book.

Congratulations on writing Chaos, another high-stakes Kay Scarpetta novel melding psychology, technology, forensics and suspense in an un-putdown-able novel sure to be another bestseller.

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‘Into the Lion’s Den,’ A Conversation with Linda Fairstein

November 15, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

‘Into the Lion’s Den,’ A Conversation with Linda Fairstein

Linda Fairstein, internationally bestselling author of the Alexandra Cooper novels and former Manhattan assistant district attorney for more than two decades, has combined her considerable talent, knowledge, and imagination to write Into the Lion’s Den, the first novel in a series for kids between the ages of 8 and 12.

Into the Lion’s Den introduces us to 12-year-old Devlin Quick, the daughter of New York City’s first woman police commissioner. Someone has stolen a page from a rare book in the New York Public Library, an act witnessed by Devlin’s friend, Liza. Devlin knows she must bring the perpetrator to justice, so the two girls begin piecing the clues together and uncover a mystery far bigger than they could ever have anticipated.

What made you decide to begin writing a series for young readers?

The Nancy Drew series hooked me as a kid and made me love reading. I distinctly recall finding Nancy Drew books had an aspirational quality. I always had the idea of writing a series of books about a smart young girl, and have a file going back fifteen or twenty years about writing what would be a tribute to Nancy Drew.

In 2014, I had an ill friend who underwent twelve hours of surgery. I sat at the bedside in the hospital, and began writing the first chapter on my iPad.

Your Alex Cooper novels are in the voice of a sophisticated adult. How difficult was it to assume the voice of a twelve-year old girl?

One of the fears both my agent and publisher had was that capturing a twelve-year-old’s voice would be difficult. If I couldn’t nail the voice—get inside the head of a contemporary twelve-year-old, it wouldn’t work.

I’ve never had so much fun writing a novel as I did with Into the Lion’s Den. Kids today are very smart, and because a good part of this novel takes place in the New York Public Library, it has many literary references, and was great fun to write. It was also less intense than writing an adult novel.

I must admit, contemplating assuming the voice of a twelve-year-old was daunting at first. I had to go back in time and remember certain forms of language. In my extended family and among my friends, I know a lot of kids in that age range. If I was at a Thanksgiving dinner, I found myself with a notebook writing down certain phrases. For instance, the word “fiblet” meaning a little lie, is one of the words with which I became familiar. Hanging around today’s kids is almost like referring to an urban dictionary.

Also, my editor was incredibly skilled. Every twenty-three pages or so in the manuscript, she would write, ‘Not a twelve-year-old word.’ So, it was a reminder to adjust my thinking.

If you strip away the differences in the eras of Nancy Drew and Devlin Quick, what qualities of Devlin’s are similar to those of Nancy Drew’s?

I think the main similarity between Nancy and Devlin is that both of them want justice to prevail. Devlin wants to set things right. Another parallel is that in Into the Lion’s Den, no adult takes Devlin and Liza seriously when they report a crime. It’s the same quality as when Nancy would get her friends together and they would take it upon themselves to solve a crime or mystery. Both Nancy and Devlin are young people with a keen sense of justice. Nancy was the child of a single parent; her father was a district attorney. Devlin is the daughter of a single mother who’s the police commissioner.

Kids have their own subculture. How do you plan on keeping up with the trends?

I’ve been so conscious over the last three years of the subculture in which kids live. If one of my friends with children invites me to a school event, I definitely attend. My two grandsons are now in college, but throughout their adolescence, they spent time with me each summer. For years, I’ve focused on the language and activities of kids. I was a high school swimmer, so I know first-hand, the atmosphere of team sports. I also read what kids that age are reading. I stay current with the subculture. It’s a very different kind of research as compared to what I do for the Alex Cooper books. In a sense, it’s a constant surround, or perhaps, an immersion in the world of kids.

Will Devlin grow up and mature in real time?

She will not. [Laughter]. It’s a matter of the dictates of the publishing world. There’s a clean break between middle grade books and YA (Young Adult). YA today would get me into the same issues I write about in my adult books: sexual abuse, date rape, and sex trafficking. Devlin Quick has just turned twelve; the minute she becomes thirteen, she gets shelved in a different place in the library—with the YA books. The second book in the series is set about three weeks after the first one. So, she’ll age very slowly and stay on the same library shelf. [Laughter].

As you do in the Alex Cooper books, do you plan on using a New York City landmark as a focal point in each Devlin Quick novel?

Into the Lion’s Den has many scenes in the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The beauty of the Devlin Quick books is that she’s not tethered to Manhattan the way Alex is because of her work as a district attorney. People have been so responsive to my using New York city landmarks in the Alex Cooper novels, I would love to find a way to do that in the Devlin Quick books. I’m sure Devlin will find her way to the New York City DNA lab, the Museum of Natural History, and other locations, but she’ll also get to locations outside of Manhattan.

Do you plan on alternating Devlin Quick and Alex Cooper novels?

Alex Cooper will come out once a year on a summer schedule. Devlin will come out, most likely, each November. I’m planning on writing two books a year.

What’s coming next from Linda Fairstein?

Next July, an Alex Cooper book is coming. It’s called Deadfall.

Congratulations on writing Into the Lion’s Den, the first in a mystery series about a smart, edgy, young sleuth who drew me into her world and will undoubtedly win the hearts of young readers everywhere.

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‘Ruler of the Night,’ A Conversation with David Morrell

November 15, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

David Morrell is known to millions of readers worldwide as the “Father of Rambo,” the protagonist in his debut novel, First Blood. The recipient of many awards, David has authored 29 works of fiction that have been translated into 30 languages. A former literature professor at the University of Iowa, he now presents us with the last in his Victorian trilogy, Ruler of the Night.

Set in 1855 London, Ruler of the Night once again features the brilliant Thomas De Quincey and his daughter Emily who this time must solve a murder which occurred aboard an English train. Set against the background of the Crimean War, the story details the tormented De Quincey’s confrontation with his most ruthless adversary.

Central to the novel is the building of the British railway system. How did this impact England?

The impact occurred over a brief interval of time. In 1830, the first railroad in England ran from Liverpool to Manchester and was only thirty-five miles long. By 1855, the railroad tracks covered six-thousand miles. It sped-up Victorian life from moving at ten miles an hour during the mail-coach era to fifty and sixty miles an hour. A newspaper at the time predicted the railway would “annihilate time and space.”

Before the railway existed, individual villages had their own times, based on sundials. The trains needed a uniformly reliable way to keep the schedules accurate, so each morning, the time (which was measured by the Greenwich Royal Observatory) was telegraphed to each train station. Thus, Britain had unified time. This was pivotally important in organizing and promulgating the Industrial Revolution.

The real-life Thomas De Quincey said “there was no such thing as forgetting, that the mind was like a page upon which words were constantly inscribed and then erased and then inscribed again.” Tell us about that.

De Quincey invented the term “subconscious.” As an opium addict, he suffered intense nightmares. Awakening from them, he would try reasoning where they came from in a way comparable to what Freud would do years later. De Quincey felt the human mind was filled with ‘chasms and sunless abysses and layer upon layer in which there were secret chambers where alien natures could hide undetected.’ His idea was that once an emotion or thought had been registered in the mind, it drifted downward into the subconscious where it remained, and we cannot forget anything. Another quote of his was ‘Memories are like the stars. They disappear during the day, but come out at night.’

Thomas De Quincey’s drug use parallels Sherlock Holmes. Drugs seem to be a classic element in mysteries of the era. Will you tell us about that?

There’s a direct link from De Quincey through Edgar Allan Poe to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Poe admired De Quincey’s work. In short stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” you see that drug-like impression, where Poe imitates that aspect of De Quincey’s work. Of course, Poe invented the detective story in “The Murders of the Rue Morgue” where we have an eccentric private detective who has a sidekick recording his adventures. Conan Doyle acknowledged having taken that format from Poe and used it in the Sherlock Holmes stories. So, we can trace back Sherlock Holmes’ drug use through Poe and back to De Quincey.

Throughout the trilogy, and more so in Ruler of the Night, De Quincey is haunted by his past. How inescapable is our past?

De Quincey’s past is constantly bubbling up, and in a sense, controlling him. De Quincey sort of invented our notion of the autobiography. His best work is his writing about his own life and his attempts to understand himself, especially in Confessions of an English Opium Eater. In a sense, he was performing psychoanalysis on himself, and his thoughts about memories and one’s past are one of his major contributions to literature.

You’ve described the Victorian De Quincey trilogy as your “version of a nineteenth-century novel.” How did this differ from your other novels?

I was trained to think of a novel as consisting of form matching content. If you’re writing about something, you need to find a way for the form and content to match each other. With this trilogy, I did intense research about London in the 1850s. I wanted to convince readers they were truly on those fog-bound streets. I felt it would add to the atmosphere if I wrote the books as if they were Victorian novels. For years, I read extensively about 1850s London, and nearly hypnotized myself into that period.

I wrote the three books using techniques associated with the Victorian era—such as using the omniscient narrator and mixing the various viewpoints—I felt it would add authenticity to the way I was presenting the Victorian world. It would thrust the reader into the milieu I was creating on the page.

The De Quincey trilogy was a departure for you. What was your goal in writing these novels?

I wanted to escape the modern world. I started the research on Murder as a Fine Art in 2009, shortly after my granddaughter Natalie died at the age of fourteen from a rare bone cancer, Ewing’s sarcoma. Many years earlier, that same disease had killed my son at age fifteen. Unstrung by this double grief, I was seized by the notion to escape into 1850s London and try to hypnotize and protect myself from the reality of what had occurred. It was my attempt to escape from grief by disappearing into that world. A friend of mine said to me, “It struck me that Emily, De Quincey’s daughter is a version of Natalie. Whether you knew it or not, you were reincarnating your granddaughter in these novels.”

After having immersed yourself in Victorian England and the De Quincey saga, what feelings do you have about moving on to something else?

It’s been difficult. For years, I’ve been immersed in Victorian London. I feel as though I’ve come out of the depths of the ocean back into the modern world. Looking around at the vitriol of our current election cycle, it reinforced for me how much more pleasant it was to be in 1850s London. I must admit, I feel somewhat adrift right now.

What’s coming next from David Morrell?

I don’t know. I’m suffering from Victorian withdrawal. I’m catching up on my contemporary reading, and we’ll see where that leads me.

Congratulations on having written Ruler of the Night, the last of an exquisitely rendered and atmospheric trilogy reminiscent of Poe, which the Associated Press called “A literary thriller that pushes the envelope of fear…”

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‘The Wrong Side of Goodbye,’ A Conversation with Michael Connelly

November 7, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Michael Connelly, the author of twenty-eight previous novels, including his internationally bestselling Harry Bosch and the

Photo: Mark DeLong

Lincoln Lawyer series, started his writing career as a newspaper reporter. His award-winning books have sold more than sixty million copies worldwide.

In The Wrong Side of Goodbye, Bosch, retired from the LAPD, is now a private investigator who does some part-time work for the San Fernando Police Department. He’s contacted by Whitney Vance, a reclusive billionaire, who’s near the end of his life. The old man has one regret: as a young man, he had a love affair with a Mexican girl who after becoming pregnant by Vance, disappeared. Vance wants to know whether he has an heir, and this dying magnate hires Bosch to find out. An enormous fortune is at stake and the mission could be perilous. At the same time, Bosch is involved in tracking a serial rapist who may be the most dangerous foe he’s ever faced.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye is an intriguing title. It reminds me of the noir novels of the 1940s. Tell us about the title.

You’re right. I set out writing this book with a couple of goals in mind.

The first was to open the story without there having been a murder committed for Harry to solve.

And as for the title, I wanted to pay homage to my literary elders. I wrote the novel as a bit of a throwback to the private eye novels from the forties and fifties. These were the stories that made me want to become a writer when I read them years ago.

The title could just as easily been affixed to a Raymond Chandler novel.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye tells two stories simultaneously, and as you mentioned, neither involves a murder. What made you decide to write the novel this way?

This time, I wanted to do something different.

When Harry was an LAPD homicide detective, the story had to begin with a murder. Now that he’s retired, I wanted to give myself a writing challenge and see if I could tell a compelling story with somewhat of a more mundane opening premise. Could I still create a narrative with momentum and high stakes, but without a corpse; and would it give the readers the kind of satisfaction they derived from my previous books?

All of us writers must stretch ourselves to be better storytellers; that’s what I challenged myself to do with this book

I know there was a real-life serendipitous event that brought Harry to the San Fernando P.D. as a part-time volunteer. Tell us about that.

This book was already in progress and it was a throwback to the kind of private eye novel I’ve always loved. As I was writing it, I realized this would be a somewhat shorter book than my usual target of about one-hundred thousand words. While I was struggling with the prospect of writing a shorter novel, I met a guy who was a police officer with the San Fernando Police Department. It’s a tiny two-square mile enclave encircled by Los Angeles. He’d read my last book and knew Harry Bosch was retired. He told me ‘We have a great volunteer department in the San Fernando P.D., so if Harry wants to keep his hand in something like cold cases, he can work part time for San Fernando.’ So, out of the blue, this materialized as a way to blend this new development in Harry’s life with what I was writing, and keep the book at the usual word-count I have for my books.

I found Harry’s search for a potential heir to the Vance fortune intriguing. Did you do much research to get that aspect of the novel down so perfectly?

I’ve always had real-life LAPD Homicide detectives helping me. One of them is much like Harry Bosch: he’s retired and now has a PI license. He was the backbone of the research. I could call him up and get accurate information about the next step in this kind of investigation. The word ‘research’ always sounds like heavy lifting, but for me, I shoot a text or send an email or make a quick phone call and have someone look into whatever I need to nail down while I keep writing. So for me, research is not really a chore. I pass that chore onto other people. [Laughter].

One of the great things about The Wrong Side of Goodbye is that Harry and Mickey Haller are working together. Will that continue into the future?

I think so. With Harry now doing a lot of private work, the field is wide open for him. I’m not complaining, but for the first eighteen books he was a homicide detective. Now, I can start a story anywhere. I think pretty often he’ll have to reach out for help, and one of the first guys he’ll call upon will be Mickey. So, you’ll see these guys working together—even if a book is Bosch-centric, Mickey will show up, and vice versa.

It seems Harry’s and Mickey’s relationship has been changing. Is that true?

Yes. They’ve been showing up in each other’s books for about ten years. I think some of the earlier tension between them was a result of Bosch being in law enforcement and Haller being a defense attorney. They now have a measure of each other and know each other’s strengths and where each can help the other.

Harry’s relationship with his daughter Maddie is evolving. Tell us more.

You’re a writer, so you know…you throw out a net for all kinds of things but you also mine your own life and experiences.

Harry, Micky and I all have daughters the same age. [Laughter] Obviously, it’s by design. I take a lot of my own experiences as a father, and the relationship with my daughter, and they become part of these characters’ relationships with their daughters. Lots of it narrows down to a texting relationship. There’s a lot of love between the lines of the texts, as well as some discomfort. To me, the moments between Bosch and his daughter are not only the fun part of the book, but those moments and the feelings they engender are what stabilizes Harry. Maddie keeps him grounded, just as in my own life, my relationship with my daughter does the same thing.

These are universal experiences. And that’s where I connect with readers. After all, most of us have never ventured into a homicide investigation, but when a reader finds a character has a basic human emotion similar to the reader’s, the protagonist and reader form a deeper connection. The reader ends up subconsciously nodding, and once that happens, you’ve succeeded in what you’re trying to do as a storyteller.

Since Bosch has been on Amazon TV, do fans tell you that when reading a Harry Bosch novel, they envision Titus Welliver as Harry?

It’s interesting because Titus Welliver in real life and on the show, is about twelve or fifteen years younger than the Harry Bosch about whom I’m currently writing. So, for me, there’s still a distinct separation. As I’m writing, I don’t see Titus. Then, when I watch the show, I totally see Titus as Harry.

When I write about Mickey Haller, I see Matthew McConaughey. It has nothing to do with the acting. It’s a function of the fact that when McConaughey appeared in The Lincoln Lawyer, he was the same age as Mickey was in the book. So, perhaps by osmosis, the image filtered into my creative thinking. I assume it will happen with Titus, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Also, I’ve been writing about Harry Bosh for more than twenty years before Titus was ever in the role, so my image of Bosch has been deeply cemented in my head. Titus has a hammer and chisel and is knocking down that image.

Speaking of Bosch on TV, I understand there’s a third season coming, and even a fourth season in the works.

We’ve almost completed filming the third season which will be out in February or March. Amazon is very confident about the show and gave us the fourth season about a month ago. That’s an important development because before this, after each season, we had to close the studio, then when the show was renewed, we’d hire actors and in a sense, would have to re-tool. Now, we can just proceed.

What’s coming next from Michael Connelly?

When we’ve talked in the past, I always knew what I would do next. I usually start writing a new book on December first of each year, so I have nearly a month to decide what to do. I have an idea for a Bosch book and another for a Mickey Haller book, but I have this growing notion tugging at me and telling me to do something new. I don’t want to keep writing only about Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller and would like to come up with something new before my storytelling days are over. So, I might be putting a new character on the page.

Congratulations on writing The Wrong Side of Goodbye, another intriguing Harry Bosch novel opening new doors and pathways for this enduringly fascinating character.

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