Over eighty million copies of Connelly’s books have sold worldwide and he has been translated into forty-five foreign languages. Connelly has followed that up with over 30 more novels. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.Īfter three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars.

Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing - a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.Īfter graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name.

The Burning Room by Michael Connelly