Michael Joseph Connelly was born on July 21,1956 and is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller.
29 Facts About Michael Connelly
2.
Michael Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
3.
Michael Connelly's mother was a fan of crime fiction and introduced her son to the world of mystery novels.
4.
At age 12, Michael Connelly moved with his family from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he attended St Thomas Aquinas High School.
5.
Michael Connelly decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt.
6.
Later that night, Michael Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone.
7.
Michael Connelly had planned on following his father's early choice of career in building construction and started out at the University of Florida in Gainesville, at the Rinker School of Building Construction, studying construction management.
8.
The film, based on Raymond Chandler's eponymous 1953 novel, inspired Michael Connelly to want to become a mystery writer.
9.
Michael Connelly went home and read all of Chandler's works featuring Philip Marlowe, and decided to transfer to the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, major in journalism, and minor in creative writing.
10.
Michael Connelly stayed with the paper for a few years and in 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of the 1985 Delta Flight 191 plane crash, which story earned Connelly a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
11.
Michael Connelly moved to California in 1987 with his wife Linda McCaleb, whom he met while in college and married in April 1984.
12.
Michael Connelly got the manager of the building to promise to phone him if the apartment ever became available.
13.
Michael Connelly sold The Black Echo to Little, Brown to be published in 1992 and won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for best first novel.
14.
The book is partly based on a true crime and is the first one featuring Michael Connelly's primary recurring character, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, a man who, according to Michael Connelly, shares few similarities with the author himself.
15.
Michael Connelly named Bosch after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his paintings full of sin and redemption, such as the painting Hell, a copy of which hangs on the office wall behind Michael Connelly's computer.
16.
Michael Connelly describes his own work as a big canvas with all the characters of his books floating across it as currents on a painting.
17.
Michael Connelly received a good deal of publicity in 1994, when President Bill Clinton came out of a bookstore carrying a copy of The Concrete Blonde in front of the waiting cameras.
18.
In 1996, Michael Connelly wrote The Poet, his first book not to feature Bosch, instead the protagonist was reporter Jack McEvoy.
19.
In 1997, Michael Connelly returned to Bosch in Trunk Music before writing another book, Blood Work, about a different character, FBI agent Terry McCaleb.
20.
The book came together after one of Michael Connelly's friends had a heart transplant and he saw what his friend was going through with survivor's guilt after the surgery.
21.
Michael Connelly wrote another book featuring Bosch, Angels Flight, before writing Void Moon, a free-standing book about Las Vegas thief Cassie Black.
22.
In 2001, A Darkness More Than Night was published, in which Michael Connelly united Bosch and McCaleb to solve a crime together, before releasing two books in 2002.
23.
In 2001, Michael Connelly left California for Tampa Bay, Florida, together with his wife and daughter, so that both he and his wife could be closer to their families.
24.
In October 2008, Michael Connelly wrote The Brass Verdict, which brought together Bosch and Haller for the first time.
25.
Michael Connelly followed that with The Scarecrow, which brought back McEvoy as the lead character.
26.
Michael Connelly's subsequent novel, a legal thriller, was a return to Haller: The Gods of Guilt.
27.
Michael Connelly received the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2018 from the Crime Writers' Association.
28.
When Michael Connelly moved 3,000 miles across the country, Bosch's experiences sent him in a new direction in City of Bones, written at that time.
29.
All of Michael Connelly's novels occur in the same fictional universe and character crossovers are common.