How mega-successful author Michael Connelly juggles his ever-expanding creative universe
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On the Shelf
Nightshade
By Michael Connelly
Little, Brown & Co.: 448 pages, $30
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At a time when many people his age are retired or considering it, bestselling author Michael Connelly is leaning into the third act of his career.
“Nightshade,” his 40th novel, arrives May 20 from Little, Brown, an engrossing first entry in an intended series of books about a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective sergeant who runs a substation on Catalina Island. Filming on the fourth season of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” the Netflix series based on Connelly’s books, is underway with Manuel Garcia-Rulfo once again returning as Mickey Haller. And a new Lincoln Lawyer thriller will hit bookshelves on Oct. 21, two decades after the character’s debut.
Mix in “Ballard,” Amazon Prime’s upcoming “Bosch: Legacy” spinoff starring Maggie Q, and you have the recipe for a literary MCU — Michael Connelly Universe — that has garnered sales of 89 million books in 45 countries and is ever expanding.
And to think it might have come to an end. (More on that later.)
It’s been five years since I interviewed Connelly, just before the publication of “Fair Warning,” the third thriller in the book series featuring reporter Jack McEvoy. We agree this time to meet at Joe Jost’s, a legendary Long Beach beer bar where “Nightshade’s” Det. Stilwell meets a former colleague. There’s much to talk about, including how, at age 68, he envisions the third act of a long and storied career that began almost four decades ago, when he was a part of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated team of reporters in South Florida, with a six-year stint as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times along the way.
Connelly slips into the bar a few minutes late, dressed down in nondescript casual clothes that blend in perfectly with Joe Jost’s come-as-you-are patrons and the bar’s décor: Joe Jost’s commemorative merch, empty beer bottles (some dating back to the bar’s opening a century ago) and huge schooners waiting to be filled from the bar’s extensive menu of draft and bottled beers.
As he settles into a mahogany booth and the sandwich he ordered, Connelly explains that he’s on deadline, adding the finishing touches to the next Lincoln Lawyer thriller, “The Proving Ground,” which Connelly reveals will feature Haller teaming up for the first time with McEvoy. “I actually hired a car, so I could write while coming down here,” he confesses, adding the car is a Lincoln Town Car, an unintended parallel to Haller’s preferred mode of transportation.
“The Lincoln Lawyer books take the most time to write,” he explains, when asked about the number of projects he’s juggling this year. He usually has lawyer friends look at his works in progress, “but when you ask a lawyer a question, you get a complicated answer, then you have to figure out how to make that understandable for the reader.”
It’s much easier with novels revolving around LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, alone or in combination with other Connelly characters. Was it a challenge to write about the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, with its different jurisdictions and command hierarchy, depicted so realistically in “Nightshade”?
“I’ve known sheriff’s deputies over the years, including a guy who’s retired now in Texas who had the job on Catalina for 20 years,” the author says. “But I have to say that I only asked him a few questions because, for me, Stilwell’s job felt almost like being the small-town sheriff in a western. He’s that one guy out there and he has to take care of whatever comes up. And with reinforcements 22 miles away, he and his small group of deputies sometimes have to take some shortcuts.”
Listening to Connelly, it’s clear that his reporter’s skills of observation make “Nightshade” come alive. Readers can envision Joe Jost’s signature pickled eggs on pretzels, the sheriff’s substation in Avalon, and Stilwell’s tiny office, or, as Connelly recalls with a smile, “a judge who takes his boat over to hear cases, moors it, then jumps into the water in his wetsuit and swims to the dock, then gets dressed in clothes and a robe he keeps at the sheriff’s substation. After he’s done, he fishes on his way back to Long Beach. When I see something like that, or meet someone like that, I think, ‘Yeah, that’s going in the book.’”
Pickled eggs and charcuterie bowls at Joe Jost’s, the 100-year-old bar in Long Beach.
Sometimes the details are immediately useful, sometimes they go into his back pocket. The writer had first visited the setting for his latest novel on a busy Fourth of July weekend in the 1990s. “I can’t remember why I knew or how I found out that Catalina has one detective on the island,” he says. “But it hit me immediately that that would be an interesting story — the guy who has to handle everything.” But he didn’t act on this thought until he was asked to write a short story for “When a Stranger Comes to Town,” a 2021 Mystery Writers of America anthology. That story, set on Catalina, was very different but planted a seed in Connelly’s mind that eventually led to “Nightshade.”
At the time, Connelly was considering retiring. “When I was maybe 64,” he recalls, “I wrote letters to my researcher and manager that I was going to retire in a couple of years, and since they were younger than me, they should be prepared to find other places to work. But I never did it. I just didn’t quit.”
‘Fair Warning,’ Connelly’s latest, sends ex-L.A. Times journalist Jack McEvoy into a nonprofit news-gathering organization. The author talks shutdown.
He credits his change of heart, in part, to the charge he gets from writing about jacks-of-all-trade detectives like Renée Ballard, and now Det. Sgt. Stilwell. “For two decades, I wrote about a guy whose every case involved a murderer because he was a homicide detective. Just the idea of someone who has to handle everything gives you a lot of freedom as a writer. That’s why I loved Renée Ballard initially, because when I first wrote about her, she had the midnight shift in Hollywood, where she covered everything. And for somebody who for 20 years wrote homicide, homicide, homicide, that’s refreshing and exciting. ”
In “Nightshade,” Stilwell is exiled to Catalina because of a beef with a former homicide colleague named Ahearn. One Memorial Day weekend, Stilwell investigates the death of a female whose body is found anchored beneath a ship docked in Avalon Bay. The discovery sets up a grudge match with Ahearn and his partner, who are assigned to investigate the death, sidelining Stilwell to a minor role in the process. While Connelly has previously explored the dynamic of a principled detective fighting for victims against hostile colleagues, “Nightshade” features Stilwell’s dry wit, fresh perspectives and the character’s one major distinction — he’s involved in a stable relationship.
“It’s my 40th book and it’s the first time I’ve ever done that,” Connelly says. “Hopefully, it shows my maturation as a writer because it’s a lot easier to write about characters who are wanting or are looking for something. And I was of the school of mind that once they find it and they open the door and say, ‘Honey, I’m home,’ what else is there to say about them?”
Plenty, which gives “Nightshade” added layers. “I’m very much aware that I’ve been in a relationship with my wife since 1980 and have been married 41 years,” Connelly adds. “So, while part of what I’ve been writing about was experiences different from my own, it kind of startled me that I’d written 39 books about people who went home alone at night.”
From “Black Echo” to his latest, “The Waiting,” Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books keep taking readers to the dance — partnered with a detective you can’t help but root for, in an L.A. of risks and second chances.
As he was exploring new storylines, changes were afoot in his Hollywood MCU. Amazon Prime’s “Bosch” series had just wrapped up what Connelly believed would be its seventh and final season; “Bosch: Legacy” had yet to be greenlit. Connelly had been intimately involved in that original series starring Titus Welliver, working on it and the first season of “The Lincoln Lawyer” full time before leaving the projects in the hands of its writers. COVID gave him an opportunity to “refocus on my love for writing books.”
Or, as Renée Ballard says, dig down.
“It looks like I’m super busy because of the TV stuff, but I’m not that involved,” he says of his participation in the two television series these days. “I get involved in the setups of the characters in the series, so I go to the first writers’ meeting,” he says. “I can get my characters going and then I let them run with it.”
Connelly was a bit more involved with “Ballard,” debuting in July. “It’s really, really good,” he says, “and I’ve seen all 10 of the episodes. I went to set maybe once a week for a couple hours. But the key to the show is the writing room. And I visited that writing room only twice.”
Another key to the show is Maggie Q, whose temperament and Hawaiian heritage mirrors the character she plays in uncanny ways. “Maggie’s great,” Connelly says of her performance. “She just has this kind of defiant aspect that plays well when she’s dealing with the sexism of the department. She doesn’t step back. And it really helps that Maggie has Mitzi Roberts, the now-retired LAPD detective who inspired the Renée Ballard character, on set. Mitzi’s lived this stuff and it helps when Maggie or the writers have questions or need advice. Maggie and Mitzi have really bonded.”
With the 10-episode first season of “Ballard” wrapped — including some surprises for “Bosch: Legacy” fans — Connelly is now mulling over another Stilwell story that he may tackle next. “I have a two-book contract, but it’s kind of open-ended on when I deliver another Stilwell,” he says. “But, because it’s a new character, I’m just really into writing more stories to set him up.”
With that, I let Connelly get back to his Town Car and finishing that Lincoln Lawyer book. He makes his way through the bar, calling for his car, eagerly leaning into a dynamic third act. Which one hopes includes another Stilwell, and soon.
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