Michael Connelly

It's a well-trod place.

So on one hand, I'm so lucky that I write about Los Angeles because it seems to have a worldwide interest, maybe because it's the entertainment capital of at least my country, if not the world.

And there's this sense that if there's going to be some kind of

upheaval or tear or something new in the social fabric of my country, at least it's going to start there in Los Angeles.

So there's this building in interest that I have to admit, when I started writing about Los Angeles, my first crime novel, I didn't know that.

But then I quickly found that out when

Like people in Australia were interested in the books and people in France and so forth.

And so that's fantastic, but it comes with a duty and it comes with a burden in that you can't, you know, it is a great and wide city with so many different things from the sand to the mountains to the desert.

Um, you know, there's, there's darkness in terms of crime.

There's also nature is against you, as we know from the fires in the last few weeks in Los Angeles, earthquake, mudslide, you can go down the line.

So there's all this stuff that you can draw on, but you, but there's been people there before.

So you got to try to find a unique way of capturing the city.

And the best way to do that is through a unique character.

Um, because it just seems like every straight, every, um,

mountain, every beach has already been written about before you.

So the only way you can separate yourself is with your characters.

Yeah, I'm old and new.

I think I'm a student of Los Angeles.

I became a writer largely because of the works of Raymond Chandler, and he had a way of capturing the city that has never been – it's often copied but never topped.

I think he's the best guy at capturing the sense of L.A., and some of his books are now –