Neil Cross hearts Michael Connelly

After bolting one Michael Connelly book, Neil Cross read 14 back to back, and “he’s still the only writer whose novels I buy on the day of publication”.

APN/Ross Setford

The kids were very young. My wife and I were juggling work and childcare. There wasn’t enough sleep or enough money. I’d started writing scripts and didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was also writing a memoir, which is the equivalent of spending all day on your knees with a hand stuffed down the U-bend. All day, I wrote about being a kid; all night, I dreamed about it. It got so I couldn’t derail my own train of thought. I was pretty stressed.

At times like that, there’s only one way I can relax: by immersing myself in a new and truly engaging piece of fiction. But nothing caught my imagination. Not in the bookshops, not in the piles of unread novels that bloomed in my house like giant fungi.

I hadn’t paid much attention to Michael Connelly, not least because his British publisher had slapped somewhat average “headlights at night” covers on his backlist. But The Poet was half-price and had an admiring introduction from Stephen King. I disliked the title … but, man, I was in the mood for a book half as good as Stephen King said this one was.

About 20 pages in, I knew he was right. I bolted The Poet like a dog bolts kibble. I hurried to the bookshop and bought The Concrete Blonde. Then came Void Moon.

I read 14 Connelly novels back to back. I only stopped because I ran out of books. He’s still the only writer whose novels I buy on the day of publication; he’s the only writer whose website I check to see what’s coming next, and when.

Connelly’s not a stylist – he’s far too good a writer for that, with too much respect for the reader. But he’s a subtle and fabulously deft craftsman, happy to step back and conceal his guiding hand. This allows his prose to do what only the best prose can do: get out of your way and let you enjoy the book you’re reading by letting you forget you’re reading a book.

His characters step in to fill the apparent vacuum left by his disappearing act; you care about them, you want them to make good. All this within a physical landscape and a moral universe that belongs as uniquely to Connelly as Graham Greene’s did to him, or Patricia Highsmith’s to her.

I’m on record that Lieutenant Columbo was a major (if tangential) inspiration for my own fictional detective, DCI John Luther. But I’ve been less vocal about the influence of Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, who until now (with Matthew McConaughey’s turn as Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer) has been Connelly’s most famous character.

I’m inspired by Bosch’s bullishness, his moral indefatigability, the quiet audacity with which he sometimes does stuff he really shouldn’t. But here’s something I also love about Bosch: when he jumps to the wrong conclusion or says the wrong thing … he gets embarrassed. Does Sherlock Holmes blush? Does Philip Marlowe? Bosch does. That’s because if you cut Bosch he bleeds real blood.

Connelly’s written 23 novels. Not all of them are perfect; I think he’s sometimes tempted to throw in a twist too many, and I think a couple of Bosch’s outings were slight missteps. But I challenge you to read The Black Echo, The Scarecrow, The Brass Verdict, Angels Flight, A Darkness More than Night, Blood Work or The Lincoln Lawyer and tell me with a straight face this isn’t the finest crime writer working today.

Neil Cross is a novelist and film and television scriptwriter living in Wellington. His BBC series Luther recently screened on UKTV.