you’ll love Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels.
Just got done reading the final book in the Harry Bosch series, and now I’m starting again.
If you like detective novels, check out Michael Connelly’s site…
www.michaelconnelly.com
good stuff, good times to be had by all! 
Tyler
I read crime fiction all the time and have read all of Connelly’s books. Without playing the part of the spoiler is the reason to think there will not be any more Harry Bosch novels? I wait for the paperbacks as they’re easier to haul around on the train, so I haven’t gotten to the Closer yet.
Current Bosch-like favorites are Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen, also Andrew Vachss
I believe there will be more Bosch novels to come…Connelly has his pattern of doing a few Bosch novels and then one or two “off-series” books, so I think we’re seeing a regular rotation in the cycle with The Lincoln Lawyer
I take it you’ve read The Poet and The Narrows?
I thought it most appropriate that Bosch catches the Poet…
My favorite ones are the Bosch novels that MC writes in first person from the perspective of Bosch…I hope that he’ll do more like that.
I discovered Bosch earlier this year after hearing an interview when his latest book came out.
I’ve long been a fan of “hard-boiled” detective fiction–Chandler, Archer, Mosley, et al., but Raymond Chandler in particular. Go re-read the first page of the Big Sleep. I rank it up there with the first pages of Moby Dick for setting tone and mood.
Don’t spoil anything for me–I’m working my way through them as I find them, out of order too, so it comes together like a trendy movie shown from lots of points of view.
But as soon as I heard “Harry Bosch,” I thought “the surrealistic painter!” How nice to be right sometimes. 
M
I don’t read a large number of detective mysteries, but after seeing the movie Mystic River and then reading the novel, I tried one by it’s author Dennis Lehane. He’s written several featuring an oddball detective pair and his writing is quite literate and descriptive. I’m on my second one now, and am enjoying it immensely.
I do read a lot of detective fiction. Go out and read every Dennis Lehane book you can find. He’s special.
Mike
Nice comparison.
I’m just getting to the C’s at the library, so I’ll keep an eye out for Connelly.
[quote="burnsbyrneI do read a lot of detective fiction. Go out and read every Dennis Lehane book you can find. He’s special.
Mike[/quote]
Yeah-- there’s always a lot more going on in his books beyond the actual story. Many penetrating observations on the human condition, and a lot of laugh out loud humor.
By luck the first of his detective books I read was his first, and the one I’m reading now is the second. Beyond the first which gives a lot of backround on the characters, does the order of those really matter, or can I read them as I find them?
If you like lawyer / detective fiction, Bill Deverell writes a tight story. His first novel Needles is pure '70’s pulp glory with a darker hero than Bosch, and his latest ones like Kill All The Lawyers have humour that has fermented in the Canadian legal system for decades.
Bill lives down the road, but it’s hard to argue with an Edgar award.
Yeah-- there’s always a lot more going on in his books beyond the actual story. Many penetrating observations on the human condition, and a lot of laugh out loud humor.
By luck the first of his detective books I read was his first, and the one I’m reading now is the second. Beyond the first which gives a lot of backround on the characters, does the order of those really matter, or can I read them as I find them?[/quote]
Try to do them in order. As I recall there are comments in some of the later ones referring to events in earlier books. They would be “spoilers”.
Lehane is a pleasant guy, family man, grew up in the neighborhoods he writes about, now probably in his late 30s. We liked him because of the detective series and he did a reading of mystic river at the local library prior to it’s publication. At that time he said he was pretty sure he gotten everything he could out of Angie and Patrick and was not sure we’d see them again.
Add George Pelancanos to your reading list. Set in DC. Crime, race, urban life, outstanding lesson. Hard Revolution is a great story set in DC in 1968.
“Rhymes with Anonymous…” 
Ramond Chandler is another of my favs too…unlike a lot of Chandler fans, I really like the contrast between the book and the movie versions of The Long Goodbye.