Michael Connelly on True Crime, Cold Cases and Murder Books.

Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles crime roots run deep. For the better part of the last three decades, his Harry Bosch novels have been detailing the life and times of that quintessentially American city through the stories of one dogged homicide detective with a well-known penchant for jazz and a constitutional inability to leave any case, no matter how small or sensitive, behind.

The Bosch novels have earned Connelly as wide and devoted an audience as any author working today, but they’re not his only contributions to the world of crime writing. Through Mickey Haller, Terry McCaleb, and Renee Ballard and their sometimes overlapping series, Connelly’s work has radiated outward to touch new corners of Los Angeles, laying out new stories of corruption, bureaucracy, and occasional heroism from professionals and citizens alike.

Connelly’s newest project, the Murder Book podcast, tells the true story of a 1987 carjacking murder. The case would unfold over the next thirty years, as witnesses dropped, new evidence emerged, and new techniques for analyzing that evidence were developed, all playing out as the defendant, Pierre Romain, attempted to pursue a law enforcement career of his own. The podcast relies on Connelly’s vast and diverse knowledge of Los Angeles crime, but also on the detectives who actually investigated the case against Romain, men and women with whom Connelly has worked closely over many years, first as a crime reporter for the L.A. Times, then as a novelist, and also as the co-creator behind the hit Amazon series, Bosch. These detectives—Rick Jackson, Tim Marcia, and Mitzi Roberts—and their stories form the backbone of the podcast, taking listeners into the gritty details of a long-running homicide investigation and the difficult business of keeping a case together for thirty years. That case is still unfolding today—Connelly has been granted access to record portions of the trial, and week-to-week listeners are waiting to hear the case’s fate. It’s a process that, Connelly says, takes him back to his days in journalism, breaking news and waiting for the ripple effects the next day. It’s a captivating story and a compelling new chapter in the life of one of crime literature’s most important voices.

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