Empathy is not identification; there is a crucial difference.
Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers by Michael Connelly:
Sometimes the killers called me. The phony hit man who was convicted of killing and burying his wife called from jail to say I had been too harsh on him.
Synopsis: Before he began writing Harry Bosch and Mickey Whatnot, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter who took very detailed notes and then fanficced his own articles.
I think it's fair to say that if you start your adult career as a crime reporter in 1980s Southern Florida, which to all extents and purposes appears to have been an epicenter of drug-induced weirdness that continues to this day, there's a 100% likelihood of you winding up in L.A. at some point. And not because you're looking for your own reality show.
L.A. and Southern Florida always feel very linked in my mind, maybe due to loving both Miami Vice and crime fiction set in California, but in my defense I'd like to point out that in the only book in which Serge A. Storms leaves the Sunshine State, it's to go to L.A. Exhibit B, of course, is this book.
When he was 16, Connelly was the only witness to the flight of an escaping gunman in Fort Lauderdale. When he went to the police they refused to believe him, and the teenage Connelly spent some quality time with Fort Lauderdale's finest, doing line-ups and then being grilled by them as to the veracity of his story. The gunman was never caught. But it sure seems like Connelly became addicted to the inside view of catching criminals.
And he went on to write a ton about real-life crime capers, on which he later cheerfully and admittedly based several of the Bosch's I've read: the bank robbery in Black Echo; the extradition mission in Black Ice where L.A. cops had to bring gifts of guns and ammo to their Mexican counterparts; the mob guy stuffed in his trunk in Trunk Music. And of course the death of the cop-suing lawyer in Angels Flight.
Maybe there are more, but I'm only up to #8 in the Bosch series. Also as far as I can tell, the lawyer wasn't killed in real-life, just in Connelly's book, and I can't tell whether that's just creative license or a form of wish fulfillment by an author who very clearly empathizes with the cops he profiles in these articles. Even the corrupt ones.
Connelly even wrote an article about a murder that happened in the school district of my Vermont hometown, of which I was entirely unaware until now. A teacher allegedly killed another teacher, then fled to L.A. Which explains a ton about how the district office is currently set up.
Connelly's non-fiction is every bit as good as his fiction, although it appears he has a template for articles that he's determined to stick to without any deviation whatsoever. I'm sure that made reporting under a deadline a whole lot easier, but when the articles are all pulled together in one collection, the rigid structure makes for a kind of tik-tik-TICK. tik-tik-TICK. tik-tik-TICK. rhythm that detracts from some of the pretty fascinating subject matter. My advice is to read the book in multiple sittings, not, as I did, over the course of one day.
But if you enjoy Bosch and L.A., and the muggy, neon-lit weariness of South Florida (which Connelly captures perfectly), I strongly suspect you'll enjoy this collection. If nothing else, y'all can tell me which other cases he fan-ficced.
Sometimes the killers called me. The phony hit man who was convicted of killing and burying his wife called from jail to say I had been too harsh on him.
Synopsis: Before he began writing Harry Bosch and Mickey Whatnot, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter who took very detailed notes and then fanficced his own articles.
I think it's fair to say that if you start your adult career as a crime reporter in 1980s Southern Florida, which to all extents and purposes appears to have been an epicenter of drug-induced weirdness that continues to this day, there's a 100% likelihood of you winding up in L.A. at some point. And not because you're looking for your own reality show.
L.A. and Southern Florida always feel very linked in my mind, maybe due to loving both Miami Vice and crime fiction set in California, but in my defense I'd like to point out that in the only book in which Serge A. Storms leaves the Sunshine State, it's to go to L.A. Exhibit B, of course, is this book.
When he was 16, Connelly was the only witness to the flight of an escaping gunman in Fort Lauderdale. When he went to the police they refused to believe him, and the teenage Connelly spent some quality time with Fort Lauderdale's finest, doing line-ups and then being grilled by them as to the veracity of his story. The gunman was never caught. But it sure seems like Connelly became addicted to the inside view of catching criminals.
And he went on to write a ton about real-life crime capers, on which he later cheerfully and admittedly based several of the Bosch's I've read: the bank robbery in Black Echo; the extradition mission in Black Ice where L.A. cops had to bring gifts of guns and ammo to their Mexican counterparts; the mob guy stuffed in his trunk in Trunk Music. And of course the death of the cop-suing lawyer in Angels Flight.
Maybe there are more, but I'm only up to #8 in the Bosch series. Also as far as I can tell, the lawyer wasn't killed in real-life, just in Connelly's book, and I can't tell whether that's just creative license or a form of wish fulfillment by an author who very clearly empathizes with the cops he profiles in these articles. Even the corrupt ones.
Connelly even wrote an article about a murder that happened in the school district of my Vermont hometown, of which I was entirely unaware until now. A teacher allegedly killed another teacher, then fled to L.A. Which explains a ton about how the district office is currently set up.
Connelly's non-fiction is every bit as good as his fiction, although it appears he has a template for articles that he's determined to stick to without any deviation whatsoever. I'm sure that made reporting under a deadline a whole lot easier, but when the articles are all pulled together in one collection, the rigid structure makes for a kind of tik-tik-TICK. tik-tik-TICK. tik-tik-TICK. rhythm that detracts from some of the pretty fascinating subject matter. My advice is to read the book in multiple sittings, not, as I did, over the course of one day.
But if you enjoy Bosch and L.A., and the muggy, neon-lit weariness of South Florida (which Connelly captures perfectly), I strongly suspect you'll enjoy this collection. If nothing else, y'all can tell me which other cases he fan-ficced.