Talk:Michael Connelly

Untitled
Connelly surely knows that Hieronymus Bosch made up his surname (from a placename); Harry probably realizes that fact as well, in fact it's quite unlikely that he doesn't, and he may feel that having a nickname for his given name is poetic justice. But the question is this: do Connelly's readers know about all these name games (beyond being named after someone famous, and having a weird and awkward official given name).

If the readers have learned it from the books, it needs mention; if they have to learn it on their own, then it can't be mentioned: doing so would be annoying without what is forbidden, original research speculating on what Harry or Connelly feel about the parallel or counterpoint the fact provides. --Jerzy·t 08:57, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * In A Darkness More than Night, having investigated the matter at the Getty, McCaleb explicitly describes to his cop friend that the painter Bosch used his birthplace as a surname. It's not possible, I don't think, that the cop Bosch does not himself know this. In fact, since he has a print of the painter's most famous work on his living room wall, a print he says he has had for many years, it's apparent he has learned a good deal about his namesake over the years. --Michael K. Smith (talk) 03:35, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Harrys' original parner in the series was Jerry Edgar - an obvious play on J. Edgar Hoover. (There's also a name game where a word appearing in one context appears in a very different context in another book - the word 'Eidolon' is used as an online pseudonym by a villain in _The Poet_, only to turn up in the name of a film company 'Eidolon Productions' in a later book. (It's a reference to an Edgar Allen Poe poem.) Autarch 18:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

any addition to an article mentioning 'Richard & Judy' is doing its subject a great disservice. (Paulo Fontaine 16:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC))

Adding the spoiler warnings on the recurring characters was an excellent idea. Without it, I thought that "deceased" on Terry McCaleb might be saying too much. But now that the disclaimer is there, should The Poet be listed as a recurring character?Awesley 04:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Navbar
Seeing that work has started on separate articles for the novels, I've created a navbar: Template:Michael Connelly Bibliography. What do you all think? [[User:Kms|KmsgbfT5fX

Character List/Spoilers
Do we really need for the character list to contain so many spoilers? I first came across this page as a reference to see which books Connelly had wrote so I could read them all. Read through it all & instantly found out who "The Poet" was without lifting the book up & found that a character in the first book I read by Connelly ends up murdered! Read all the early Bosch books first but once I got round to the Poet I remembered straight away who the bad guy was, hence ruining the experience for me! Surely this page should be a reference point for people like myself who are interested in Connelly's novels, if people want to click on the book's page and read the whole plot before reading the book then so be it but don't spoil it for the rest of us by putting it on Connelly's page!

(RC4282 01:45, 02 November 2009 (UTC))


 * Although as an inveterate book reader and big Connelly fan I can certainly sympathise with what you say, unfortunately Wikipedia isn't the best place to come for book or author information from the perspective of a reader. Expanding on what WP:SPOILER has to say on the matter, WP has too much information and by its very function as an encyclopaedia it would be remiss of us to not reveal plot twists etc. There are far better resources on the net for 'spoilerless' bibliographical information, one perfect example would be Fantastic Fiction. Unfortunately one shouldn't complain about coming to a place like WP and finding out too much information. Sorry. --Fred the Oyster (talk) 09:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Fact error
I´m sure I cold have corrected this myself, but: "Bosch also has to investigate the death of FBI agent Terry McCaleb, something that at first seemed to be a natural death turns out to be murder." In fact, it was suspected by Bosch that it was a murder, but it turned out McCaleb just stopped to take his medicines (he had his reasons). --Bep (talk) 22:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

How to handle books in more than one series
Connelly has numerous recurring characters. The most familiar, of course, is Harry Bosch, and 15 of his books are listed here as "Harry Bosch Series". Three other books are listed here as "Mickey Haller Series". But when both characters appear in a book, where should it be listed - in both lists, or in only one list, and if only one, which one?

The reason I raise the question is that there are three books which include both Bosch and Haller, and the three are treated differently. The Brass Verdict (2008) was previously listed under both series, but I see the page has been recently edited so that book only appears under the Haller Series. 9 Dragons (2009) is listed only under the Bosch Series. And his next book, The Reversal (to be released later this year), is listed under both series.

I don't know what is the best way to treat such cases, but it seems like it should at least be consistent. My personal preference is to list each book only once, not twice - and, since Bosch is really his major ongoing series, to list Bosch books there, and all other books under Other Novels. But I'd be willing to live with any other way to treat the issue, as long as all such books are treated consistently. Nsxtasy (talk) 19:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Since almost all the books occupy the same universe, I think it would make sense to list them all in one chart, with the characters in each one listed beside the name of the book. Right now the page gives the impression that Mickey Haller is a separate series from Harry Bosch, and it's really not. Mickey Haller is a new character in the Harry Bosch universe, not a separate series. If I'm reading the books, I would want to read them in order of publication so they would make sense. Rodmarcia (talk) 21:53, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I messed up my order reading the books again since the books are not listed in chronological order. Since almost all, if not all, the books occupy the same universe, I am going to change the bibliography to one big table listing the books in chronological order with the characters indicated. This should be useful to everyone, since if you are looking for books about just one of the characters, they will be easy to pick out using the chart. If you have objections or think this needs to be discussed further, feel free to weigh in before I change it. Rodmarcia (talk) 00:57, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Since all of Connelly's fiction books occupy the same universe, I put them in one table in the order published, rather than having them separated into series. It doesn't make sense to separate them into series, since characters from different "series" interact with each other and share one timeline. However, if someone is interested in only Harry Bosch books, and not Mickey Haller, they can still easily pick out the books where Harry Bosch is the main character. Rodmarcia (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Method
I don't know any-thing about this writer, except for an aritcle from the L.A. Times by Th. Curwen (reprinted in the Korea Herald, May 15~16, 2010, p. 13) and this Wik article. Still, this statement seems to me to be wrong: "Connelly does not like doing any research on his books, he prefers to just write." Both the Powell URL cited at the end of the sentence and the Curwen article say that the author does 'research,'* checking on fine details. Maybe I missed some-thing in the Powell interview (the print is hard to read on my computer), though; so I'll leave it to others to make a change if need be. Or maybe it's a matter of what "research" is. Still, the modifier "any" seems truly misleading here.Kdammers (talk) 01:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous Similarities
I was going to change this;


 * Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch,[2] a man who, according to Connelly, shares few similarities with the author himself.[5] 

to shares “a few” similarities (meaning “a noteworthy few”, not “few” meaning “hardly any”)

But after trying to check the [5] reference and being told the server won’t allow me to see it, I found this;


 * I think that starting off Harry had very little in common with me, other than left-handedness. Over the course of the books I have written with him, though, I think that my “world view” and his are becoming more closely aligned.

At https://www.michaelconnelly.com/about/faq/.

So it sounds like “very few” to me; but I’ll let someone else decide – “a few” or “very few”?

MBG02 (talk) 17:02, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Full-time novelist section ends in 2017?
Is someone working to complete that section? Connelly continues to write at the top of his game, and Renee Ballard is a very likable protagonist. Harry and Renee make one hell of a team! 72.69.143.47 (talk) 18:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)