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Quote of the Day: Loose Ends
I’m a big fan of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch crime series. Ever since my wife suggested I try his books, I’ve read them all and always wish they were longer; I tend to rip through them in a day or two. We also binge-watch each installment of the “Bosch” series on Amazon Prime.
The books are good reading for many reasons: the characters, the plotlines, and Harry’s never-ending quest to ensure “everybody matters or nobody matters” as he relentlessly pursues the lawbreakers. But in each book, Connelly also seems to have a line that jumps out at me so much that I have to remember it. In his latest, The Night Fire, he offers this one when Harry is told his case has too many loose ends:
Published in Group WritingBosch knew there were always unanswered questions in every murder, every investigation. Those who were naïve called them loose ends, but they were never loose. They stuck with him, clinging to him as he moved on, sometimes waking him up in the night. But they were never loose and he could never get free of them.
My wife asked me the other day if I was depressed. I am never depressed,in fact just the opposite. But my answer was yes. She was shocked . Why? I had just finished the new Bosch and Jack Reacher books and have to wait a year to get new ones. She understood. The Reacher book was very good as was the Bosch.
We still don’t know who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep. Raymond Chandler didn’t know, and he wrote it.
Just got the new Bosch! The Amazon series is terrific though different.
Yeah, for the TV series, they have to combine plots from several books to come up with a 7- or 8-hour series. The supporting cast is great, too.
Also, in the book series Harry goes from a fresh-from-Vietnam street cop to a nearly 70-year old retired detective with a knee replacement who is well past the physical aspect of police work. In the TV show they made him a Gulf War vet, so he can still manhandle perps when he needs to.
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The Bosch books are great. I have my Ricochet family to thank for the recommendation to read them.
I got my start based on the strong recommendation of Bill Kristol, who is a huge fan of both the Bosch and Reacher series.
The copycat that is quite amusingly transparent is Baldacci’s John Puller (vs. Jack Reacher). You can almost hear Baldacci muttering to himself as he makes up the character, essentially, as a clone. Plus some mild lefty preaching, of course.
I’m still traveling on my way back to Arizona after going to D.C. for the World Series. I like Bosch and I’ll pick up the new one as soon as I can get it secondhand. Right now I’m reading Ross MacDonald’s ‘The Galton Case’. Some of the steps in the plot seem so familiar that I feel sure I have already read this novel. But so little of the detail is familiar that I think I’m reading this novel for the first time. I’ve heard a number of people say that they read books more than once, consciously. I have never thought to do that so the experience I’m having with this one has gotten my attention because, even if I have already read it, I’m enjoying it just as if it were absolutely new.
Anyone have something to say on this?
I’ve read many books more than once, mostly non-fiction, but sometimes fiction like the novels of George V Higgins and plan on rereading the Aubrey Maturin novels. Have never reread a Bosch book and probably would not – feel the same about most detective fiction.
Yeah, I get that. I pulled out ‘The Mind of God’ by Paul Davies a few weeks back to read parts I know I’ve read several times over. I never have thought I would be able to enjoy re-reading detective fiction either.
Good fiction can hold up to being read more than once. I have reread the books of Rex Stout, John D. MacDonald, and George MacDonald Fraser more than once. Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, Travis McGee and Meyer, and Harry Flashman are all old friends. It’s nice to visit once in a while.
Besides, some of the writing is worth reading again just to savor it.
I’ve probably read Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy a half-dozen times over the last 40 years.
Anything by H. Beam Piper, I have read at least four times.
You know, I’m thinking this might be a function of how any given individual’s memory handles the details of their experiences. I think in my case I have a more permanent place for those details I judge important and maybe a throw away box for for what I consider more trivial. I seen the opposite in others or at least a memory for things I don’t remember while having experienced the same events.
There also might be a similar phenomenon at work in people who make up things and are then labeled liars.
Chandler was in on it from the start and covered up for the guy.