Photo Credit Robert Azmitia
While he was attending the University of Florida, Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler. He chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing. Time would prove he'd major in and become a master of both.
After graduating in 1980, he worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, primarily on the crime beat, during the height of the wave of murder and violence that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. Then, in 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. Their story on the crash was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, and it raised Connelly's profile as a first-rate journalist. Talent doesn't sit idle for long, and soon after, Connelly headed west to Los Angeles — to Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles — where he landed a prized job as a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times.
There's no way he could have known then just how fateful a move this was. Just three years into the job covering crime in L.A., Connelly set to work on The Black Echo, the first of many novels to feature LAPD detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. Published in 1992, the book won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and raised Connelly's profile again, this time as a first-rate author. His debut novel was partly based on a crime that occurred in Los Angeles around the time of his early days at the Los Angeles Times.
The Scarecrow, Connelly’s 20th novel, will be published in May 2009—Jack McEvoy, the hero of The Poet is back in this terrifying new thriller! In October 2009, the next Harry Bosch novel, 9 Dragons, will be published.
Connelly's books continue to win numerous awards. While Harry Bosch continues to live in and solve cases in L.A., Connelly now resides with his family in Florida.
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