Fast-forwarding from Raymond Chandler and The big sleep, I’ve already praised the crime novels of Michael Connelly, starring the dogged LA detective Harry Bosch. They’ve always seemed to invite representations on the Silver Screen, and now, thanks to Amazon Prime (don’t ask…), I’ve been bing-watching all seven seasons of the film adaptation Bosch (wiki, with episode guide), the first season airing in 2014.

Whether TV and film versions of novels satisfy is a matter of taste. But I found Bosch entirely gripping, with the characters most convincing—Bosch (Titus Welliver in an iconic role) and his nuanced relationships with his daughter Maddie, partner J. Edgar, sympathetic boss Lieutenant Grace Billets, and Chief of Police Irvin Irving, as well as the whole labyrinthine rigmarole of station procedurals.

With Connelly’s active involvement, the TV adaptations are creative variations on the books, combining various plots from different novels. Amply reflected in the soundtrack is Bosch’s passion for jazz, which led me to several great finds (e.g. Tomasz Stańko, Frank Morgan, Art Pepper). * Against the backdrop of a dystopian LA landscape, the jargon, and the dark humour of their exchanges, is fascinating.

My immersion in the novels was never affected by not having a firm visual image in mind; when I return to them it’ll be interesting to see how much this new input colours my reading.

Note also Michael Connelly’s website.

Other posts introduce crime fiction set in China, North Korea, and Germany, Weimar Berlin—Stasi—Russia—Hungary, Tibet, Ottoman Istanbul, and among the Navajo. You might even try Robert van Gulik‘s Judge Dee mysteries, set in Tang China… And for crime drama on screen, see under Saga and Sofia, and French slang.

* Just one more track, somewhat off-piste: the bleak finale of Season 6 plays out with Chris Botti’s 2012 cover of What a wonderful world, with Mark Knopfler. I always felt bad about not quite warming to Louis Armstrong’s 1967 original—maybe it’s just over-exposure. But this is great, both (in Bosch) as a sad commentary on the cemetery scene, and here, enhanced by the Georgian artwork: