Harry Bosch From Page to Screen: The Long Hello

Adapting a beloved crime series for TV or film is fraught with danger. Of the writers that have had many of their works adapted for the screen, they will say the best way to handle the process is to meet the producer in a parking lot, the producer throws the writer a suitcase full of money and the writer tosses over the book in exchange and never the two shall meet again. If the writer tries to control the adaptation inevitably conflict arises and the project is destined for disaster.


Well, if there were a rule book for screen adaptations, Michael Connelly just tore it up. And in style. In so doing, he has created one of the most compelling and unique police dramas yet seen on our television screens. Don't be put off by the fact that you will watch this first episode of Bosch on Amazon or LOVEFiLM. The quality of the personnel involved and the freedom enjoyed by Michael Connelly in bringing his most famous creation to life has resulted in a slick, addictive, intelligent and emotionally mature cop drama that, for me at least, stands easily beside some of the best episodes of The Wire or The Sopranos.


Michael Connelly's most enduring character is LAPD Homicide Detective, Harry Bosch. Through twenty years of bestselling novels Connelly has crafted a body of work which tracks not only the life of a Detective but chronicles the history of Los Angeles. The Edgar Award winning writer and critic, Patrick Anderson, of the Washington Post, said the Harry Bosch series is the finest crime series ever written by an American author. When you consider that Connelly sits in that category alongside the likes of Chandler, Hammett, Ross McDonald, Parker and others, it's perhaps easier to see the sheer weight of that statement.


So how do you write the perfect crime series?


To answer that question you have to go back to the late seventies and a young Michael Connelly studying at Florida University. Several years after its initial release, Robert Altman's 'The Long Goodbye' played for one night only in a local movie theatre and Connelly caught that screening. He went out the next day and bought the book by Raymond Chandler, discovered it was very different from the movie he'd watched the night before, and then binged on Chandler over a weekend. During that weekend he decided he wanted to be a writer and changed his major to journalism.


It was this journalistic background that would eventually serve Connelly well as a novelist. He wrote two novels that never saw the light of day, because he knew something was missing from them. A week shadowing a homicide squad gave the reporter that missing element. During that week Connelly attended at three murder scenes and saw something unique and unexpected at each one; Sergeant Hurt (who was Connelly's liaison and minder for the week) knelt down beside the body of each victim, removed his glasses and placed the ear piece into his mouth. He remained that way for a few moments, his glasses in his mouth, as if he were communing with the victim. Sergeant Hurt never revealed to the young reporter exactly what he was doing. At the end of a tiring week, Connelly observed Hurt removing his glasses and throwing them onto the table. While Hurt rubbed his tired eyes, Connelly noticed the frames of those glasses had a deep notch, where the cop had bit down on the arm of the frame during his silent communion with victim after victim. Connelly knew then the Sergeant hand been clenching his teeth, hiding his quiet rage at another senseless death. That was the missing element in Connelly first two novels; the heart and the emotion immortalised by the groove in Sergeant Hurt's glasses.


Over 20 Harry Bosch novels the reader can see Harry's progression through the dark tunnel presented by violent crime in Los Angeles. To place even a small element of that character's journey onto the small screen would be an achievement if it was done over the course of a series. Michael Connelly has somehow accomplished this in a single episode.


The TV Pilot opens with Harry Bosch and his partner trailing a suspected serial killer, whom Harry corners and fatally shoots in a dark alley which results in Harry being sued by the family for wrongful death. The viewer questions whether Harry planted the gun on the body after he fired the shot or if the suspect was indeed armed and reached for a gun giving Bosch no alternative but to fire. Instead of lying low during the trial, Harry stumbles upon the possible homicide of a thirteen-year old boy, whose bones are found in the Los Angeles hills. And so the first episode establishes these twin stories (taken from the novels - The Concrete Blonde and City of Bones) and combines the two with new material. Instead of a sixty-year old Bosch, Connelly gives us a younger version of the character and roots the story in contemporary LA. Altman pulled off a similar trick with The Long Goodbye, updating Chandler's Marlowe from the 50's to the 70's, adding new story elements and focusing on the more sensitive and emotionally resonant aspects of Marlowe's character.


But here, the parallels between the two adaptations diverge. Where Altman deliberately shaded Marlowe in a more favourable light with Elliot Gould, Michael Connelly perfectly distils the heart of his character onto the screen through Titus Welliver. At first I thought there was merely a physical resemblance between the Gould of the early seventies and Welliver's Bosch, but then it became clear that the similarity lies within their astonishing skill as actors as they capture the humanity and compassion of their characters. In almost every scene you can see Bosch struggling with the burden of empathy and the righteous anger that threatens to overwhelm him, taking him closer to being enveloped by the dark abyss through which he must travel.


All the exciting technical and procedural police elements are here, as they are in a lot of police shows. The dark, funny and healthy cop humour is here too, but the show is really a character study as well as a riveting police drama and this is testament to the actors and to Michael Connelly who created, produced and co-wrote the series with Eric Overmyer (The Wire).


So go and watch Bosch, for free, vote to see the whole series, pray that Amazon picks it up and then go buy a Harry Bosch book while you're waiting for the next instalment.

I saw the spark of something special and unique in Bosch. I saw the beginnings of what could be the finest American crime drama ever produced for television. I saw an actor embody Michael Connelly's Bosch and during some of those quieter moments, behind Welliver's eyes, I saw Sergeant Hurt's glasses. A Bosch fan cannot ask for more.


This blog post originally appeared on Orion's Murder Room. 

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Write What You Know: Rebus, Bosch, Cannibals and Kebabs.

 

 When I first started writing again in 2011, after a break of 15 years, I heard people use the phrase – ‘write what you know,’ and until recently I don’t think I ever fully understood it. I do now, but the real meaning behind that nugget of writing advice is better put another way;

          To be a good writer you should practice cannibalism.

Let’s take Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and John Grisham.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these writers are cannibals, but not in the modern, everyday sense of the word. Nor do I mean it to be a derogatory term – in fact I consider it to be one of the finest qualities of a writer.

I do want to be clear about this ‘cannibal’ business. So I should say, straight away, that neither Michael Connelly nor John Grisham have ever consumed human flesh. There is simply no evidence to suggest such a terrible thing.

Unfortunately I cannot say the same thing for Ian Rankin. In Mr. Rankin’s case, and indeed my own case, neither of us has ever KNOWINGLY consumed human flesh. I feel compelled to add this caveat in light of the recent horse meat scandal and one further factual set of circumstances that applies both to Mr. Rankin and myself (and a good many others I might add). Those circumstances are well known. We’re both Celts (Northern Irish and Scots share a common heritage), both of us have been known to enjoy the occasional beer, both of us have been known to sample the particular culinary delights so unfairly labeled ‘junk food.’ So picture the scene – it’s late, Mr. Rankin leaves the Oxford Bar suitably refreshed, I leave the Crown Bar in a similar state of refreshment, we both find ourselves in our home cities with an abundance of fast food outlets and, by contrast, not a single taxi in sight. Well, you don’t need me to draw you a picture. Suffice to say that I feel the majority of cannibalistic peril derives from the humble kebab. I mean, what is it? It’s supposed to be lamb; it could easily be elephant, it could be processed mongoose or, for all we know, the succulent ingredient could in fact be a sixty-two year old, retired civil servant named Geoff.  I have to confess that as long as it’s covered in garlic sauce I try not to think about it too much.

Incidentally, if you're a kebab shop owner, I love you and your lovely kebabs and I know, they do have a high quality 100% lamb content. I was only jokin 

So, what do I mean by cannibalism in the context of writing?

I suppose that I really mean cannibalisation – the removal or utilisation of a part of something to create a new entity. In this case, the new entity is a novel and a damn good one at that if it comes from either Messrs Rankin, Connelly or Grisham.

What Ian Rankin has achieved, in his best works, is to take a bite out of the arse of Edinburgh; a bite that includes sex trafficking, drugs, alcoholism, a little bit of religion, the oil industry, Scottish nationalism and to chew it up and remake it on the page. To give it an arc, a shape, as he says himself. When I say a bite, it is often a polite nibble as Edinburgh has prospered and grown proud of the Cardenden lad whose portrayal of the city is tinged with genuine affection and yet, he can take a scalpel to every social class of the city with his most famous creation, Rebus, a detective whose work can let Ian Rankin loose on every cultural, social and political facet of Scotland. At the heart of every Rebus book is a crime, a mystery to be solved, and yet because Ian Rankin has the ability to take his surroundings, his people, his hates, his loves and inject that reality into the novel it adds immeasurably to the weight and importance of the work. And not just what’s going on in the wider picture. Ian Rankin gives much of himself to his work. In his breakthrough novel, Black and Blue, Rebus becomes his creator’s punch bag and the punishment that Rebus is subjected to in the book is mirrored in the difficult time that the writer experienced in his own life during the writing process. It doesn’t have to be an outpouring of joy or pain in every work, even the most subtle of life’s daily influences can be writing gold.

If you get a chance to watch the fantastic arena programme – ‘Ian Rankin and the Case of the Disappearing Detective,’ you will get a brilliant insight into the creative process of one of the worlds most talented authors. When Mr. Rankin is talking to Alan Yentob about writing the opening scene of ‘Standing in Another Man’s Grave’ he recounts that he had very recently attended a funeral. The opening scene of the book is of course a funeral, with mourners watching the coffin being lowered into the grave and one of those mourners, who doesn’t want to get too close to the grave, is Rebus. This scene marks the return of one of the most popular characters in crime fiction and what a way to do it! The juxtaposition of the formality, inevitability and ritual of death next to a very much alive and kicking (and gasping for a cigarette) Rebus is about as perfect and potent a re-introduction/resurrection as one could imagine.

Write what you know, for me, is to be able not only to cannibalise the conflicts and issues of society but to cannibalise your own past. Just ask Michael Connelly. When he was a kid he often played near a storm drain that in effect looked just like a big dark tunnel to the neighbourhood boys. Connelly describes it as a ‘right of passage’ for kids to go into the tunnel and crawl through to the other side. He never did it and developed something of a phobia. As the went through High School, kids a few years older than him got caught in the Vietnam draft. Some never came back. Of the men that did come back, a former Tunnel Rat, who wore a long beard to hide his scars, worked with Connelly's father in construction. Is it any wonder then that Harry Bosch was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, that the crime at the heart of Connelly’s debut (The Black Echo – thought by many to be the best crime debut ever) revolves around a gang of bank robbers tunnelling beneath a vault containing safety deposit boxes and, is it any wonder that the overreaching arc of the Bosch character, across the books, is a personal journey through the darkness, towards the light. He used his life experience to give depth to his work. Michael Connelly wanted to be a writer from the first moment he picked up a Raymond Chandler novel. He didn’t exactly have the tools to be a cop, so he became a crime journalist, and through that career he came into ‘the know,’ working alongside detectives, many of whom were veterans of Vietnam. But not everything can be planned. Probably over ten years ago now, Michael Connelly sat at a baseball game and got talking to the guy beside him. The guy said he was a lawyer. Mr. Connelly asked where the guy’s office was located. He said he didn’t have an office, per se, that his office was in the back of his Lincoln town car. Five years later The Lincoln Lawyer began what, in my opinion, is the best series of legal thrillers ever written.

Fate had a large hand in the destiny of the foremost legal thriller writer of our time – John Grisham. As a small town lawyer he wasn’t making much money and sometimes didn’t have a lot of work on. While sitting in court one day, he became a spectator in a rape trial and heard a little girl describe her horrific ordeal. Grisham recounts that moment as one of the most harrowing and inspiring he ever witnessed. The details were harrowing, the grace and dignity with which the victim gave her evidence was inspiring. He got thinking what he might do to a man who had perpetrated such an act on his own daughter. How far would he go? He thought he might kill them. He thought a good many people might think the same thing. Without ever having a desire to write before that moment, he took a few years and bashed out what became ‘A Time to Kill.’ You know the story, it was accepted by a small publisher who went bankrupt pretty soon after Grisham’s debut was published and he ended up selling copies of the book out of the trunk of his car. His next book was The Firm. That book spent 47 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List and sold 7 million copies.

 So writing what you know can be writing what you feel, what you understand and want to say about something. Just don’t get caught on a soap box.

I should just say, that this cannibalisation of yourself and your surroundings isn’t unique to modern writers. Dickens explored the social strata and the pain of poverty before most other popular writers. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was inspired by the reports of the sinking of The Essex. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is believed to be inspired in part by stories of a famous ship sinking at sea and the crew finding themselves marooned on an island. In addition, the use of marriage in the play as a political weapon reflected the machinations in the Royal Court at the time.

One of the central characters in The Tempest is of course Caliban.

 An anagram of ‘Canibal.’ The old translation from the French - Canniballes.

Which brings us neatly back to kebabs. Now, how do I work a kebab into my narrative?

Hhhmm….

Is there a little of me in my work? Of course. There should be. You should put something of yourself into everything you write.

Just don’t put yourself into a kebab.

Best,

Steve.

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