I live in NorCal and I’ve made a few Bosch/Connelly trips to SoCal. Kind of nerd out. Heading to Catalina a couple of weeks for a visit before Ironwood is released. Some of these I’d be surprised if people could identify. 🤣
Well, I guess 20 photos is the limit. Gets me about halfway through one trip. 💁🏻.
I have about 20 Michael Connelly books that I have bought used. Every one of them is marked as a first edition. Has he never had a second edition of any of his works?
So, back in February, I picked up The Lincoln Lawyer--just out of curiosity--and I was drawn into Connelly's world like it was full of free cookies and milk. I read all the Haller books I can find on my library's Libby collection, and along the way picked up the first two Rene Ballard books before I realized that Bosch had this long history. Every time he told an old story to Haller or Ballard, I kept thinking that I'd love to know more about that, so eventually I broke out of the other series and read those stories. And in some of those stories, he refers to things that happened to him earlier and so I read those books.
I'm not reading the books in any order. At this point I've read everything with Bosch in it from The Overlook to the Dark Hours. It's like eating peanuts or potato chips, I finish one and find another one.
Right now, I'm reading Angel's Flight, and it's as gripping as any of Connelly's later work. The only problem I have is the cringe-inducing scene where Kiz is explaining the Internet to Bosch and Edgar. I'm in my early 60s and worked in IT in the 90s, and while some of the details were on point-->!people did actually forget to delete default passwords on web servers!<--some of the metaphors and explanations made me wince. I always hated the Information Superhighway metaphor.
I also laugh in embarrassment at the fact that they all have cell phones, pagers, and landlines. We all did, and even at the time I didn't know why. It wasn't until 2005 or 2006 that we got rid of our landline.
I'm loving these books and I will be sad when I have read them all and start having to wait for the next one. In this book, he mentions Trunk Music and The Concrete Blonde, so I have to decide which to read next.
Spoiler tag on a 27-year-old book because you never know. It took me 27 years to read it.
Hi,
I've recently started reading Bosch novels. I'm currently reading A Darkness More Than Night but since I'm reading 1 novel per day I've started to get bored so I was wondering if I could read Lincoln Lawyer without being spoiled on the previous novels.
Particularly I want to know if Bosch has any significant interaction with Haller in any of the previous books.
I’ve finished all the available Lincoln Lawyer audiobooks and was looking for Bosch audiobooks. Spotify doesn’t seem to have the older ones Audible does but I’m not sure if it had all of the older books. Could you please recommend audiobook apps or websites I can stream Bosch audiobooks from? Thanks.
Seems there is some interest in my nerdy vacations. Here are some more photos of Bosch/Connelly locations.
With my time working in Stockton coming to an end, I found myself doing something a little out of the ordinary. On a lunch break, I headed out along the 99 corridor to track down a few real-world locations from “The Black Box.”
Now, the truth is, you don’t go looking for places like this unless the writing sends you there.
And that’s what Michael Connelly does as well as anyone. He doesn’t just tell a story. He places it. Carefully. Intentionally. He roots it in in time and place with such precision that the landscape itself begins to carry meaning. These places aren’t just backdrops. They become part of the story’s structure, part of its weight.
My first stop was the almond orchards off Hammett Road. Standing there, with the rows stretching out in quiet symmetry, water reflecting the sky - there’s a stillness that settles in. Not the kind that feels empty, but the kind that feels like it’s holding onto something. It becomes clear, in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it, that this was not a random choice. It was seen, understood, and trusted to speak for itself.
From there, I drove on toward the Blue-Lite Motel, passing the San Joaquin County line and the Ripon signs, markers of a road most of us have traveled without much thought. And yet, when you arrive, the place feels different than you expect, or maybe exactly as you expect, if you’ve spent time with the book.
The Blue-Lite carries a kind of quiet presence. Whether it’s being renovated or torn down, it exists right now in that uncertain space between what it was and what it will become. And there’s something about that in-between state that gives it a certain gravity. It feels like a place people moved through more than they stayed. A place marked by passing lives, brief moments, unfinished stories. Gritty. Weathered. Real.
What stands out, in both places, is not how dramatic they are, but how ordinary they appear at first glance. And yet that ordinariness is exactly what gives them power. Because what Connelly understands, and what he trusts the reader to understand, is that reality doesn’t need to be exaggerated to matter. It simply needs to be seen clearly.
That kind of restraint is rare. It would be easy to overstate, to heighten, to turn these places into something they’re not. But he doesn’t. He presents them as they are and allows the weight to emerge on its own.
And standing there, you begin to feel the effect of that choice. The story doesn’t just live on the page anymore. It changes the way you see what’s in front of you. Once you’ve made that connection, you don’t quite experience these places the same way again.
I was introduced to these locations through the books. I went to them because of the books. But being there, in the real world, does something more. It closes the distance. These are no longer just settings in a narrative. They become places you’ve actually stood in, places that carry both the story and the reality that has always existed around it.
Next time I’m heading up the 99 from Bakersfield, I’ll stop again. Cope’s Knotty Pine Café. The Belkorp Ag area off Crows Landing Road. The kinds of places that might otherwise pass unnoticed, unless you’ve been given a reason to look.
And maybe that’s the lasting effect of Connelly’s work. Not that it changes the world around you, but that it changes how you move through it. It asks you, quietly, to pay attention to both time and place.
I thought i asked this already but can't find it, I may have done it wrong. I just started Gods of guilt and I'm so confused.
I read the fifth witness, is there a book I'm missing that has the campaign story and Legal's introduction?