Bish, Bash, Bosch
I read a lot. It’s not uncommon for me to sometimes read two novels in one day. So I get through a fair few books.
Quite a while ago, I came across a book by a chap called Michael Connelly called ‘The Poet’, which covers an FBI investigation into a serial killer. It was all right, by which I meant that the book didn’t really grip or engage me very much, but nor was it hard going.
So I read it, stuck it on my shelf and then pretty much forgot about it.
Until I picked up another book by the same author, on the grounds it was reduced in price, and I’d forgotten about the first book. This one looked at the LAPD detective Hieronymus ‘Harry’ Bosch. And I enjoyed it.
So much so that in the last six months, I’ve bought pretty much all of the Harry Bosch novels.
The bizarre thing is that I don’t know why I like them. I’m going through a crime fiction phase at the minute, and sometimes it’s like playing ’spot the detective cliche’. Come on, you know how it goes:
- detective has failed marriage(s)
- detective is ‘married to the job’
- detective has trouble with superiors, usually resulting in suspensions
- detective will continue to work case, even when specifically instructed not to
- detective has addiction (usually alcohol)
- detective takes each case personally, and cannot be persuaded that certain things are ‘for the greater good’ of the force
- detective is a loner (or at least prefers to work alone)
- detective does not have a stable family background (i.e. troubled upbringing)
Most crime stories fit this bill in a number of ways. I could list them, but if you’ve read any crime fiction, you’ll recognise them yourself.
I’m a fan of Stephen Booth’s peak district series and Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne series because they tend to offer slightly more rounded characters: ones who sometimes actually do what their superiors ask, are capable of working with other people and — shock! horror! — seem capable of forming relationships with other people.
Detective Harry Bosch hits just about every cliche in the book. He’s also, as a US cop, done the obligatory ‘war service in Vietnam that left him a little mentally scarred which he doesn’t like to talk about’.
Yet despite the character seemingly being put together from a selection of cliches, you can’t help but like him. You can’t help but get sucked into his cases, and despite the fact that one of his mottos “everyone matters or no one matters” is taken straight out of the cliche book of ‘takes each case personally’, Michael Connelly has managed to assemble a collection of cliches into a living breathing character that you actually care about.
And that’s pretty impressive. As a reader, I can recognise that Hieronymus Bosch (yes, named after the painter) is a simply a big pile of detective cliches with a name, but the stories are still good, exploring means, motive and generally carrying some kind of significant twist.
The twists are usually good too: sometimes, I am able to spot them, sometimes not, but it’s done fairly — looking back after the fact you can spot clues that could have lead you down the correct path earlier.
Harry himself might be a cliche of the ‘hard-boiled detective’, but the books aren’t. They are well written, draw you into the case, the potential suspects, the incidental characters, the clues and the red herrings.
I heard someone ask Stephen Booth once at a crime/reader event why crime novels were always about murder. He didn’t really give much of an answer, but I volunteered an opinion in the discussion. It’s simply because it sells. After all, who would want to read a book about PC Smith who manages to solve the problem of the thefts of car stereos on her estate, if it just turns out to be some ‘young punk’ wanting to raise money for drugs?
No interest. But if the thefts of stereos were linked to the criminal looking for a specific stereo which held a clue to a murder they had committed and were trying to hide from the police… now you have intrigue. You’ve got the puzzle. And that’s what crime fiction is about.
And that’s what Michael Connelly does very well: handing you pieces of the puzzle and seeing if you put it together the same way Harry Bosch does…
Hello. I am 
