<<He is a celebrated author of suspenseful police
procedurals (a series
featuring L.A. cop Harry Bosch), the serial-killer novel "The
Poet", and
a recent book whose title I forget (I haven't read it). He is
one of the
finest and most consistent mystery authors to appear in the
past decade
on this side of the Atlantic. My favorite Connelly book is
"The Concrete
Blonde" - but all of his books are excellent.>>
The above is, I think, a fair description of this writer's
work.
However, I did not say that he is a great writer, and I did
not
associate him with the "hardboiled" genre. To my mind, he
still lacks an
original voice. His books have strong plots and I find them
quite
suspenseful. They are also very well researched. His dialogue
and
characterization, however, are only middling, and his books
fall
squarely within the police procedural (even in The Poet, in
which the
protagonist is a newspaper reporter). There is very little
humor in
these stories. Further, the attempt to make Harry Bosch into
an
existential hero of independent interest to the stories has
not so far
succeeded. I understand that Connelly continued with the
series somewhat
reluctantly - well, as reluctantly as one can be when one's
pockets are
beginning to show some coin.
An anecdote: immediately after finishing Connelly's "The
Poet", I read
for the first time a totally different, much older novel,
Joseph
Hansen's "Fadeout". The latter is not only a very fine
example of the
P.I. mystery (Brandstetter is, strictly speaking, an
insurance
investigator, but he functions as a P.I.), but by contrast
made me see
Connelly's book as a somewhat mechanical creation. On the
other hand, in
Hansen's first novel I could already hear a strong and
original
authorial voice.
So, as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on
Connelly, though I
have a generally favorable impression of him despite the
limitations
pointed out above. The man must be doing something right -
for my
critical faculties are shut off while I'm reading his
suspenseful
tales...
I'll comment on Ross Macdonald in another post.
Best regards,
Mario Taboada
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