RARA-AVIS: deconstructing Hieronymus, part 2

From: BaxDeal@aol.com
Date: 03 Mar 2008


Connelly had landed on a system that worked for him. another episode in the Bosch series. and then another stand alone. his seventh novel continued his hot streak. BLOOD WORK, about a former FBI agent who receives a heart transplant and then solves the murder of the woman who donated it was the first and so far only one of the author's extremely cinematic tales to be adapted to the big screen. but the film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood didn't live up to the excellence of Connelly's thriller. in an interview for SHOTS e-zine in 2004, the author expressed his generally positive experience in the making of the film, but correctly pinpointed its problems as "the changes they chose to make- different bad guy, different ending- made it suffer from obviousness and logic difficulties. I would not have been disappointed by these changes simply because they were changes. I do not hold my work up to the idea that it cannot be changed. Change is expected in the transition from page to screen. I just think these changes were detrimental to the story."

ANGELS FLIGHT, the 6th in the Bosch series was next. and it was clear that the happiness and hope Connelly had bestowed on his creation was to be short lived. the melancholy the detective feels as his personal life unravels is palpable and heartbreaking, yet emotionally satisfying for the reader. the sad turn also insured that the series wouldn't be settling into domestic stagnation as the character aged in real time

VOID MOON, Connelly's next stand alone took him in a new, if not necessarily better direction. featuring a female cat burglar doing one last job that naturally goes wrong, the story seemed conceived and constructed as a shameless pitch for another movie deal. it was also in this general time period that the author did some actual Hollywood work himself, creating and working on a television series for the now defunct start-up network UPN called LEVEL 9, about a cyber crime task force

working his fulltime gig as a journalist while writing the first 3 Bosch novels must have been a good training in discipline. because as time consuming as working on the television series must have been, Connelly didn't fall off his pace, publishing A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT in 2001. Bosch was back, but this time as a suspect in a case featuring Terry McCaleb, the protagonist from Blood Work. but as compelling a concept as this would seem to long time Connelly fans, it's doubtful that few actually believed the character had crossed the line into vigilantism. the author had to be aware of this, as this angle was used more as a set-up to team the two investigators

Connelly had reached another milestone. he had opened the door to a universe of cross-over characters from his stand alone thrillers to his mystery series. a universe he would continue to exploit in his effort to keep his work fresh and original to both himself and his rapidly expanding audience

TO BE CONTINUED...

John Lau

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