I wrote:
<< Every other L.A. crime book I've ever read makes me
wonder why anyone would stay there for more than a week.
>>
and Jim Blue wrote:
> Michael Connelly's LA is a mix of attractive and
unattractive. >I've
>always thought that the appeal and the problems with
Harry's Bosch's
>mountainside home laid out the yin and yang of LA
life pretty well.
Good point. For all the bad dream feel, and the
mythic/medieval iconography of Connelly's books (taken over
the top in the most recent one, I thought), his series
basically feels the most real and most balanced of any L.A.
novelists I've read. Yin and yang is a good way to put it.
This doesn't necessarily mean he's the best - he doesn't
match Chandler's language, though who does? - but it feels
most like a real place. And "Angels Flight" is definitely the
best L.A. book I've read, maybe the best urban American crime
novel, purely as a portrait of its city - "The Sweet Forever"
is close, and it's got a special tug because I know DC from
real life and mostly know LA from fiction and movies (I've
been to Beverly Hills and Burbank, briefly; saw the inside of
LAX mostly; doesn't really qualify as working knowledge of
the city).
Carrie
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