In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper - Lawrence Block, ed.

I have to admit that before I read this anthology edited by Lawrence Block, I wasn’t that familiar with the work of Edward Hopper, other than the painting “Nighthawks”. I came away quite impressed with Hopper’s work showcased here, as well as many of the stories inspired by those paintings.

Seventeen authors contributed stories for this volume. As they’re listed on the cover: Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Olen Butler, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Craig Ferguson, Nicholas Christopher, Jill D. Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Justin Scott, Kris Nelscott, Warren Moore, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Gail Levin, and Lawrence Block. Naturally, I enjoyed some stories more than others. My favorites are Megan Abbott’s period yarn “Girlie Show”, Michael Connelly’s “Nighthawks” (a Harry Bosch story), Craig Ferguson’s oddball “Taking Care of Business” (inspired by the painting “South Truro Church”), Jonathan Santlofer’s tricky “Night Windows”, Lawrence Block’s “Autumn at the Automat”, which reminded me of some of his early crime digest stories, and my pick for the best story in the book, Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Projectionist” (inspired by the painting “New York Movie”).

A few words about those last two: I’m old enough to remember automats, although there weren’t many still around by the time I was a kid. I recall buying sandwiches and pieces of pie in them, however, so I felt a personal connection with Block’s story. There’s even more of a personal connection with Lansdale’s story, because I spent a great deal of time between 1970 and 1975 in the Worth, Palace, and Hollywood Theaters in downtown Fort Worth, and by then they were the sort of shabby movie palaces in which Joe’s yarn is set. This one really kicked up a lot of nostalgia in my mind.

All in all, IN SUNLIGHT OR IN SHADOW is an excellent anthology whether you’re familiar with Edward Hopper’s work or not. If you are, you’ll probably find it a veritable feast. If you aren’t (like me), it’s a very entertaining education. Either way, it gets a high recommendation from me.

Lost Light - Michael Connelly

You have to give Michael Connelly credit for not writing the same book over and over again. After establishing his Harry Bosch series, he’s made a habit of alternating Bosch novels with stand-alones (although all the stand-alones eventually tie in to some extent with the Bosch novels). Nor is he averse to trying something different within his most successful series. In LOST LIGHT, the ninth Harry Bosch novel, the narration switches from third person to first person, and Bosch is no longer a cop but rather a private detective, having retired from the LAPD. He doesn’t really have a client in this novel. Instead he’s working for himself, trying to solve a case in which he was involved four years earlier, the murder of a young woman that eventually tied in with a daring armed robbery that netted two million dollars being used in the making of a movie.

Of course, if you’ve read Connelly’s work before, you know things are going to get even more complicated than that before Bosch untangles everything. The FBI gets involved. There’s a terrorism angle. Bosch wrestles with some personal dilemmas. While all this is going on, Connelly gradually peels back the numerous layers of plot, throwing in some particularly ingenious twists, until he comes to a satisfying conclusion.

I think I like third person cop Bosch a little better than first person PI Bosch, but either way the books are top-notch, and LOST LIGHT is no exception. It ends in such a way that I want to read the next book in the series right away, but I’m probably going to hold off for a while so that I won’t get burned out on the series like I did a couple of years ago.

The Blue Religion - Michael Connelly, ed.

I’ve been reading this anthology from the Mystery Writers of America for a while, a story or two here and there between novels, the way I like to read anthologies. Usually in any book like this, there’ll be a story or two (or three) that I don’t like and don’t finish. That’s not the case here. Although some are better than others, all the stories in THE BLUE RELIGION are good.

Michael Connelly is a fine choice to edit an anthology of cop stories, and in addition to a short but effective introduction, he contributes a nice Harry Bosch story. Other stories I particularly liked are by relative newcomer John Buentello and old pro Edward D. Hoch, as well as some well-known authors I haven’t read before such as Laurie R. King, Peter Robinson, and Alafair Burke. I’ll have to try some of their novels. Two stories are historical pieces, the moody and atmospheric Western “Burying Mr. Henry” by Polly Nelson and “Oaths, Ohana, and Everything” by Diana Hansen-Young, set in 1898 Hawaii, which manages to get a novel’s worth of plot into novelette length; I thought both of them were very good. But you really can’t go wrong with any of the stories in THE BLUE RELIGION, which is why it comes highly recommended by me.

City of Bones - Michael Connelly

I continue to read my way through Michael Connelly’s series about L.A. cop Harry Bosch. CITY OF BONES is the eighth book, and the best since the fourth one, THE LAST COYOTE.

This novel begins with Bosch catching a call on New Year’s Day. A dog has found a human bone in a wooded area on a hilltop in Laurel Canyon. At least at first, this is more of a straightforward police procedural than some of the Bosch books, as the various units of the LAPD converge to find the rest of the bones and start investigating who the victim is and what happened to him or her. Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar head things up, and Bosch, always a man on a mission, finds things more complicated when he begins an affair with a rookie female cop who’s also part of the investigation.

As always in Connelly’s books, there are layers upon layers of plot, and he peels them back with his usual skill. He combines the procedural aspects of the case with the personal life of his main character as well as anybody and better than most. Most of the time I’m pretty good at spotting the killer in Connelly’s books, even if I don’t know all the details of the plot yet, but I didn’t in CITY OF BONES. It’s a fine novel that ends with some changes in Harry Bosch's life, and I’m looking forward to the next book to see where he goes from here.

A Darkness More Than Night -- Michael Connelly

Longtime readers of this blog may recall that a few years ago, I read quite a few of Michael Connelly’s novels in a fairly short span of time, and predictably enough burned myself out on his work for a while. But I’ve continued to read one now and then, and since this is Connelly Month on the excellent Rara-Avis mailing list, I thought now would be a good time to try another.

A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT is a crossover novel, pairing Connelly’s regular series protagonist, LA homicide detective Harry Bosch, with Terry McCaleb, the former FBI profiler who’s the hero of the novel BLOODWORK. It’s a natural enough move, and I thought it worked very well. I also like the way Jack McEvoy, from Connelly’s novel THE POET, makes an appearance as well. I’m a big fan of authors who try to create a consistent shared universe within their work, and with this novel it becomes clear that there are no real stand-alones among Connelly’s books. Any of them can tie up at any time with the others, and I like that. It’s also a good reason to read them in order, rather than skipping around.

(To digress for a moment, I do this myself in my own work, crossing over characters from one series and one pseudonym to another. For example, some of the characters from my Revolutionary War series PATRIOTS, written under the name Adam Rutledge, show up much later, story-wise, and play important parts in one of my Wagons West prequels written as Dana Fuller Ross. These somewhat obscure connections add some fun to it for me as a writer, and I hope they do for the readers who recognize them, too.)

But to get back to A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT, nobody is better than Connelly at slowly peeling back the layers of a plot, and that quality is very much in evidence here. Unfortunately – and this is the book’s only real flaw as far as I’m concerned – the plot here winds up being a little thin and easy to figure out early on. However, Connelly’s prose is readable enough, and the characters of Bosch and McCaleb are compelling enough, to keep the reader’s interest. There’s a great action scene near the end, and as usual there are unexpected bursts of beauty and poetry in the midst of Connelly’s mostly lean, unadorned prose.

In my opinion, Michael Connelly’s first four Harry Bosch novels – THE BLACK ECHO, THE BLACK ICE, THE CONCRETE BLONDE, and THE LAST COYOTE – are quite possibly the best four-book run in all of mystery fiction. A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT doesn’t rise to that level, but it’s still highly entertaining and well worth reading. I plan to read more of Connelly’s work soon, but I’m going to try not to burn myself out on it this time.