Michael Connelly talks about 20 years of writing crime fiction

By Jeff Baker
The Oregonian
November 24, 2012

Michael Connelly-

Michael Connelly, the hardest-working crime writer in the business, was taking a break.

Connelly was relaxing before a Thanksgiving gathering with family and resting from a weeklong trip to Turkey, Kuwait and other countries as part of a USO tour of military bases. The experience was inspiring and gave him fresh insight into character, a quality that's all-important in his books.

Harry Bosch, the persistent, brooding Los Angeles police detective, has been the main character in 18 of Connelly's novels since his debut in "The Black Echo" in 1992. Connelly's created other leads -- defense attorney Mickey Haller, reporter Jack McEvoy, FBI agent Rachel Walling, ex-con Cassie Black, serial killer hunter Terry McCaleb -- and moved them through Los Angeles over two decades of sustained creativity.

"The Black Box," a new novel featuring Bosch that flashes from a recent case to the riots of 1992, is the occasion for a tour that brings Connelly to Powell's in Beaverton on Friday. The author spoke from Sarasota, Fla. Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What's going on with the Harry Bosch TV series? 

Things could happen within days. Over the summer I signed partnerships with a production company and a show runner, a writer, Eric Overmyer, who wrote the first episode of the Harry Bosch television show. We went through a couple drafts on it, it's in good shape, I really like it, and it went out to studios and networks on Friday ... I think certainly by next week we'll know what the town's interest is in turning Harry Bosch in a television show.

Are you thinking HBO or network or what? 

We're definitely gearing this toward cable sensibilities. We're not even sending it to networks. We're talking about a 10 to 12 episode season that tracks one or two books. Our idea for the first season is to track "City of Bones" and part of "Concrete Blonde." "Concrete Blonde" has a courtroom drama playing out as a B track in it, and we're taking that B track and adding it to "City of Bones." Definitely something like HBO, AMC, something like that.

I'm personally very intrigued by what Netflix is doing, so they'll get it as well. I think, and other people think, it's possibly the way television is going. They have a show coming out in February called "House of Cards" and rather than put it out episodically they're going to put all 12 episodes on Netflix so you can watch it whenever you want. You can watch in a binge, all in one day, or whenever you want. To me, that's interesting because it matches my own taste in television.

You've been very protective of the Bosch character. 

At the same time I've been very protective I've learned as I go along, and in these initial stages it's about trusting who you give the stuff to. It's what happened on "The Lincoln Lawyer" (movie) and that worked out pretty well. I think I'm moving cautiously but I think I'm moving in the right direction. I was also in a good position where I don't have to make any deals. There were times in my life I took Hollywood deals to finance my writing. I'm not in that situation any more so I had some approvals.

I wouldn't make a deal without certain approvals. People in Hollywood would say there's no way you can get those approvals and I'd say fine, then there's no way you can have Harry Bosch ... Harry Bosch, he is L.A. So you cannot shoot it in Vancouver. I would not make a deal unless it was contractually agreed-to that every shot would be filmed in Los Angeles. That was a no-brainer from the aspect of these stories and this character but in Hollywood that was not a no-brainer. It was a hard-fought battle but I got it. I have script approval and so forth.

When you started out you surely weren't thinking about TV deals and script approvals. 

It's been a whole 20-year process. My first book came out 20 years ago and I often use this description: getting into publishing when I was living in Los Angeles and I knew nothing about this world which is 80 percent set in New York, it felt like I was in a dark room with a flashlight that the batteries were dying. You could barely see a small part of the picture. You learn as you go. The main thing is I always should be able to keep my head down and write and all these business aspects and Hollywood can certainly be a distraction but they can be controlled and should not affect the writing process. That's the biggest challenge I face: to find the time to focus on the books and make sure they are not going down in quality or anything like that. If I'm assured of that I can stick my head up and have a Hollywood meeting or something like that.

Do you think you've improved as a writer even as you've gotten more and more successful? 

I hope so and I think so. I made some changes in my life over the 20 years that have helped to ensure that. Moving from Los Angeles I think helped make me more creative in writing about Los Angeles because I'm writing about it from afar. I think it re-upped my dedication to being accurate about that place. I think those things came together and I think I've also shifted over the 20 years to what's important, and that's these books and the character, exploring character rather than starting out with a plot as an initiation point ... I think that's just a good way to be.

What about stylistically? Do you feel like you're stripping down, or do you just know what you're doing better than you did? 

I think, and this borders on the edge of egomania, but I think I know what I'm doing better with each book. You used that phrase stripping down which is a phrase that's in my mind a lot when I write. This long 20-year journey has led me to a point where the Keep It Simple, Stupid idea of writing is the best way to keep momentum going in a way, and that goes whether you're writing it or reading it.

This book kind of spans a 20-year story and I had to go back and look at some of the earlier books and what I'd written and reference the riots and so forth and I just found there were too many words in those books. I'm using less words now, I guess.

Do you do a blueprint for the series looking ahead or do you write one book and then another? 

You can't help but think about where the story is going in general terms, especially with a character like Harry Bosch, who ages in real time. I'm doing one book at a time but I'm also aware that this life he has with a badge and a gun is coming to an end pretty soon. That infiltrates the book I'm writing but I'm always just writing one book at a time. I'm writing a book right now for next year and after that I have no idea what I'm writing.

I'm really concentrating on writing a lot about Harry Bosch the last few years because I know the time for him as a cop is limited and I wanted to make the best use of it ... Very soon I'm going to have to come out, or I'm going to want to come out with a new character. What that character is, whether it's a cop or a lawyer or a jazz man or a fisherman, I have no idea.

If you thought it was time, would you kill Bosch and not look back? 

I could do it and not look back. I don't think I will. This is the one place where reader response does intrude a little bit in my thinking. I try very hard not to have that happen, to just kind of write for myself, but with social media and the ways to receive feedback on what you're doing, there's a lot of people who have a connection to Harry Bosch because of his dogged desire to keep moving forward despite all the obstacles in his life. I'm the one who's throwing those obstacles and I do feel that Harry's heading toward something and it would be pretty awful of me to rob him of that with a bullet. It would have a great deal of shock value, obviously, but sitting back and thinking about it after the shock would lead to upset. This guy's been on a tough journey and you hope it pays off for him.

The whole series is like a tunnel. There's a lot of metaphoric references to darkness and light and lost lights etc., etc. I'm hoping that at the end of the tunnel there's light and that he finds some kind of ultimate understanding and fulfillment. I think that would be a better way to end the journey that with a sudden death or even with his own hands. 

Egypt's 'moderate' despot

The West has been in denial about President Mohamed Morsi, who has deftly built the apparatus of despotism to consolidate power.

Jonah Goldberg
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com
November 27, 2012

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What do you call a leader of a theocratic and cultish movement with a deep and clear disdain for democracy who suddenly assumes dictatorial powers? A "moderate," of course.
Ever since the Muslim Brotherhood broke its promise to stay out of Egypt's presidential election in the aftermath of the revolution, many Western observers have been in denial about what has been going on. In less than half a year, Mohamed Morsi has deftly built the apparatus of despotism.
Much as the Nazis brilliantly cast themselves as reformers sweeping away the corruption of the Weimar Republic, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have been using the effort to clean up the detritus of Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship as an excuse to consolidate power.
In August, when Islamists attacked Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai (in an apparent effort to force Egypt into a confrontation with Israel), Morsi used the incident as an excuse to replace Mohamed Hussein Tantawi — a Mubarak-era holdover who headed the military and guarded its independence — with officers more pliable to the Brotherhood.
"Are we looking at a president determined to dismantle the machine of tyranny," Alaa Al Aswany, a popular novelist and democratic activist, asked at the time, "or one who is retooling the machine of tyranny to serve his interests?" That question quickly became, at best, rhetorical.
Morsi proceeded to purge scores of newspaper editors and publishers, declare himself in charge of the drafting of the new constitution and all but wore a sandwich board with the words "I'm becoming a dictator!" on it.
As if to hammer it home, last week Morsi announced that his rule was immune to judicial oversight of any kind. He used the failure of the courts to adequately punish Mubarak-era holdovers as an excuse. It was just that — an excuse, not an explanation.
Morsi softened his language Monday, but aides insisted his edict stood. And the Brotherhood's position remains clear. "If democracy means that people decide who leads them, then [we] accept it; if it means that people can change the laws of Allah and follow what they wish to follow, then it is not acceptable," the Brotherhood explained on its website in 2005.
Before Morsi was announced the winner of June's election, the Brotherhood massed in Tahrir Square to make its expectations clear. As one Brotherhood member explained to Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "We win or we die." Not a particularly democratic motto.
Morsi did have another excuse for seizing power last week: The timing was good. Because he helped broker a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, the White House lavished praise on him. Morsi immediately cashed in that political capital.
On the New Republic's website, Trager posted a devastating condemnation of Morsi's apologists under the headline "Shame on Anyone Who Ever Thought Mohammad Morsi Was a Moderate." Trager's one error is he assumes that, after Morsi's latest power grab, no one could possibly still think Morsi's a moderate after Thursday's decree.
But that's exactly what many still believe. For instance, on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Time magazine's Joe Klein spoke for many inside the Beltway when he celebrated Morsi's role in the cease-fire as a "wonderful sign for the future" because it showed he and the Muslim Brotherhood are "moderates."
Bear in mind that even as Morsi was pocketing praise from the West, Mohammed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, made it clear that war to liberate Palestine remained its goal, once Muslim unity is achieved. "Jihad is obligatory."
Apparently, "moderation" in the Middle East has been defined down to not wanting to wage war on Israel right now.
On Monday, a Brotherhood-affiliated TV network announced that Morsi allegedly agreed to limit his power grab, while maintaining that the constitution being drafted by Morsi's pet Islamists will remain immune to judicial review. That the Egyptian people aren't lying down for the Muslim Brotherhood's steamroller is heartening, but that doesn't mean Morsi's intended goal is any less obvious.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Andrew Bostom's indispensable book

By David P. Goldman
PJ Media
November 23, 2012

Ten thousand demonstrators filled Tahrir Square to denounce Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s de facto coup — in fact, the second stage of a coup, after the dismissal of Egypt’s senior military leadership in the second week of August. This time Morsi effectively suspended the judiciary by a “constitutional decree” asserting that Egyptian courts could not challenge any ruling of the president. It didn’t take long for Egypt’s supposed Islamist democracy to turn into one-party rule by the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi is on roughly the same timetable towards tyranny that Hitler followed in 1933. Think of it as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP in German) with a crescent instead of a swastika.

That is not to smear the Muslim Brotherhood with the label of Nazism. On the contrary: Dr. Andrew Bostom in his superb new book Sharia vs. Freedom quotes the 20th century’s greatest theologian, Karl Barth, writing in 1939:

Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in the experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill — with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s prophet.

I have been planning to write a proper review of Bostom’s terrific book, but feel obliged to recommend it urgently as an antidote. It’s indispensable for anyone who wants to make sense of the past week’s headlines. The preponderance of enlightened opinion, it should be recalled, was that Hitler was a reasonable man and that the legitimate aspirations of the German people had to be respected (that was the view at the New York Times, and among the German-Jewish establishment). We have been told all along that the Muslim Brotherhood is a reasonable organization and — just this week — that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi is playing a positive role.

We are going to hear this so often that it is hard not to be distracted by the sheer volume of intellectual chicanery and wishful thinking that masquerades as Middle East analysis. That is why Andy Bostom’s book is so important. His encyclopedic documentation of the character of Islam and especially modern Islam should be in the hands of every conservative, and every responsible public official. Send one as a holiday present to your member of Congress (and make sure it gets read).

It would be inaccurate to call Islamism a Nazi-influenced ideology, for Islam itself was there before Nazism. Both ideologies are neo-pagan responses to Judaism and Christianity. Writing two decades before Karl Barth, the Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig characterized Islam as a pagan parody of revealed religion, and Allah as the whole colorful pantheon of paganism rolled up into a single deity.

If the world is in greater need of reminder than instruction, as the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus liked to say, Dr. Bostom has assembled a set of reminders that are chilling, even for those of us who are steeped in these issues. We tend to forget how open, obvious, and uncontroversial the relationship between National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood has been from the 1940s onward. Bostom quotes John Roy Carlson’s interviews with Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna during 1948-1950:

It became clear to me [wrote Carlson] why the average Egyptian worshiped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood].

Sharia vs. Freedom deserves lengthier discussion, but it requires urgent mention right now considering the rising Muslim Brotherhood threat to Western interests.

Another laughable Benghazi lie

 Michael A. Walsh
The New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
November 26, 2012

More than two months after an Islamist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, including US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, we still don’t know what really happened that night — and, thanks to a secretive White House and an incurious Washington press corps, we probably never will. Not officially, that is.

But there’s no real mystery about it. From the evidence that’s emerged in dribs and drabs since the Sept. 11 calamity, it’s clear that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan al Qaeda-affiliated group coordinating with its allies elsewhere in the Muslim world, used the cover of riots in Cairo to launch a preplanned assault on our lightly guarded Benghazi consulate and a CIA safe house that may have been doubling as a secret prison.

That much was clear to our intelligence community almost immediately — and, in any case, should have been the working hypothesis from the jump.

The Arab Spring, falsely painted by a soft-headed US media as a purely pro-democracy movement, has in fact prompted seizure of power by Islamists. Benghazi, an armed hotbed of radicalism, was a fine target of opportunity for a strike at the Great Satan.

What’s also heart-rendingly clear is that our diplomats and security personnel understood the danger they were in, repeatedly requested more resources — and were left to die, as US military and intelligence assets monitored their deaths in real time, lacking the orders to protect them.

Benghazi was a first-class military and moral disgrace, and one that the Democrats paid absolutely no price for in the recent election.

But the questions won’t go away. Who gave the order to stand down as the consulate was under fire? Who came up with the cockamamie story — so eagerly peddled by UN Ambassador Susan Rice and other administration spokespersons right after the event — that the sacking and looting were in response to an obscure video that lampooned the origins of Islam and had been posted on You Tube for months?

And why did President Obama cling to such a risible explanation, and then (with a timely assist from Candy Crowley in the second presidential debate) turn on a dime and claim he knew the assault was terrorism all along?

To turn tragedy into French bedroom farce, the truth was further obscured by CIA Director David Petraeus’ unaccountable public silence — until his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell (which the administration surely had known about for months and was holding over his head for just such an occasion) caused him to resign in disgrace a few days after the election.

Finally, to turn farce into insult, hapless Director of National Intelligence James Clapper scuttled forth from his let’s-pretend lair to claim that his office — nominally, the highest rung of the intelligence-community ladder — had edited the CIA’s early talking points memo to remove all references to al Qaeda and terrorism.

That claim was met with peals of incredulous laughter within the IC, where Clapper (like Petraeus, a retired general) is regarded as a buffoon and his office (created as part of the ham-fisted Bush response to 9/11) as a useless, money-sucking bureaucratic appendage that does nothing to increase national security — but is easily manipulated by a cynical president with a domestic axe to grind.

And here’s where the fog of war collides with the blinding clarity of politics. Obama had already determined to run as the Slayer of Osama bin Laden, and a horde of howling Arabs shouting, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas” as they pulled down the American flag in Cairo and attacked us elsewhere was an inconvenient truth that had to be obscured by any means necessary.

With the election safely behind him, the president and his allies are now trying to rehabilitate Ambassador Rice’s shredded reputation, cheerily tossing around the usual charges of “racism” and “sexism” as they smear conservative opposition to her potential nomination as secretary of state in the second Obama term. They’d rather not reopen the Benghazi can of worms.

But reopen it we must — either by open congressional hearings or during Rice’s confirmation hearings — if Chris Stevens and the others are ever to receive justice.

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