Michael Connelly
| Michael Connelly | |
|---|---|
Connelly in 2010
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| Born |
July 21, 1956 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Crime fiction, thriller |
| Spouse | Linda McCaleb |
| Website | |
| michaelconnelly |
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Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 39 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Connelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second oldest child of W. Michael Connelly, a property developer, and Mary Connelly, a homemaker. According to Connelly, his father was a frustrated artist who encouraged his children to want to succeed in life and was a risk taker who alternated success with failure in his pursuit of a career. Connelly's mother was a fan of crime fiction and introduced her son to the world of mystery novels.
At age 12, Connelly moved with his family from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he attended St. Thomas Aquinas High School. At age 16, Connelly’s interest in crime and mystery escalated when, on his way home from his work as a hotel dishwasher, he witnessed a man throw an object into a hedge. Connelly, curious, decided to investigate and found that the object was a gun wrapped in a lumberjack shirt. After putting the gun back, he followed the man to a bar and then left to go home to tell his father. Later that night, Connelly brought the police down to the bar, but the man was already gone. This event introduced Connelly to the world of police officers and their lives, impressing him with the investigators’ hard faces and the way they worked.
Connelly had planned on following his father’s early choice of career in building construction and started out at the University of Florida in Gainesville as a building construction major. After earning grades that were lower than expected, Connelly went to see Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye (1973) and was enchanted by what he saw. The film, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel of the same name, inspired Connelly to want to become a mystery writer. Connelly went home and read all of Chandler's works featuring Philip Marlowe, a detective in Los Angeles during the 1940s and ‘50s, and decided to switch majors to journalism with a minor in creative writing. He was a student of Harry Crews.
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