I don’t notice it in Bosch Legacy episodes, but the early Bosch shows did something that I found quickly odd. Odd compared to almost all TV shows & movies that came prior. The locations were real, and street signs were real, with a few exceptions where an actual location was used for a different purpose, such as, a bank and it’s parking lot being used as a restaurant and “shoot out” scene for the story. But, for the most part, if you paused the video and looked at a street sign, then you could actually google for that location in Google Maps (Streetview) and you could usually find it.  I do recall one house that I couldn’t find on my own in this way, but that was because there was only a house number showing on a gaudily painted house, and nowhere in the scene was there a street sign visible. 

So, I have never read a Stephen King novel (that I can recall), but I have watched the myriad of movies which have been made from his writings & novels. Until recently, I could say the same about the author Michael Connelly and his Bosch (and Lincoln Lawyer) novels. I rarely read fiction, and for most of my working life only read technical manuals & industry related items. The exception might have been in reading various works regarding education. 

But, I am now almost 180 pages into reading “The Crossing” by Michael Connelly. I’ve cheated, and looked, and there are 388 pages of the actual novel. Why? Well, this is about the third book that I am reading because of my experience with the Little Community Lending Libraries that I took on as my own project, of being a “book bee” (my term for moving a few books from one location, area or even city to another). I normally don’t take a book or two to actually read, but only to cross-pollinate these little book drops. Two exceptions have been “Fig Pudding” and “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” which was the late Matthew Perry memoir. I will attribute “The Crossing” to these little libraries, but not because I actually found it there, but because I’ve started collecting these Connelly novels to add to these lending libraries starting this coming spring. *I’ve stopped my “book bee” process since it’s gotten colder, because I am guessing that fewer people walk around to these locations in bad weather, and I also don’t want to leave a book, “out in the cold” during stormy winter months. Oh, and I settled on Connelly novels because I had enjoyed the Bosch series on TV. And it was an added bonus that I had independently liked the Lincoln Lawyer series, before I ever knew the connection between Haller & Bosch, and Connelly, the author of both. At the last Cumberland County Library Book Sale, I found a whole shelf of the Connelly-Bosch novels and that was the second day of the sale. No telling how many had filled the shelves on Day One. 

I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, but I am finding The Crossing to be enjoyable. First, I know most of the characters mentioned, and have probably even seen the story line on TV first, but I do see where an event where Haller is “set up” by crooked cops on a DUI bust… so the cops can view the files he is carrying in the trunk of his Lincoln, after he is carted off to jail, actually happens to Honey Chandler in the TV episode. And I’m not sure of how a fictional event in a book, or a fictional event in a TV episode can “actually happen.” I guess it’s just poetic license.

But all of the previous writing above, was just to get me to the point so that I could mention that the novels apparently echo that of the TV series. Places mentioned in the book are many times, actual places that you can find in Streetview. I’ve skipped over a few locations already mentioned in the book but plan to go back and include them in my Streetview searching. 

So, Harry Bosch is meeting another character at a local bar. The book mentions the name of the bar and even describes a large mural painted on the side of the building as being of an old Mariachi. This was the trigger for me to finally go to Streetview searching for this bar & location. Sure enough I put in the bar name, “Eastside Luv” and quickly found it and yup, there was the grizzled old Mariachi musician portrayed on the side of the building.

As another aside, I will miss Lance Reddick, the actor. I liked him in everything I saw him in. Enjoyed his character in “Fringe.”

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I came across the Matthew Perry memoir in one of the little community lending libraries about three days before the actor died. I snagged the book because I thought someone would like to read it. However, less than a week later, as I was viewing one of those online tributes to actors & other famous persons who have died in the current year, I saw a picture of Matthew Perry. My thought was that I didn’t know he was dead, and when did it happen. I quickly found that he had actually died, very recently, and just 3 days after I snagged his book.

So I told myself that I probably will have to read it now. And, I started slowly, but then picked up speed and finished it, except for the last half page, which I superstitiously left unread. He was a tennis player in his youth, so I had that in common, although I started much later in life. He made $80 millions mostly from “Friends” but he also spent $7 millions on therapy. By the end of the book, I was thinking another title might have been “Self-Inflicted Wounds.” Catch-22. Without the holes in his soul, he probably wouldn’t have been talented enough to be on “Friends” and make millions & millions of dollars… and with the holes, he was so “fucked up” that he could never be happy, and would put himself through more pain than almost any enemy would have thought “too brutal” to foist on even the most hated foe. And ironic. From the start of the book he is saying, “I should have been dead by now,” ”many times.” 

I got “Fig Pudding” from a LCL in Benson, NC. It was one of many (perhaps 15 or more copies) in the little hut on a stick. I’m guessing this many copies might have been purchased for a Sunday School class, or other group reading project, perhaps at a school. In any case, the read was quick and enjoyable. Not really religious themed, but a family story with ups and downs, and one of the downs being really down. The sudden death of one of the children. It’s not a real family or story, but an entertaining look, that makes the reader want to participate in that kind of cohesive unit.

[NOTE]: On the actor, Titus Welliver… ”Mullholland Falls” from 1996 is still fun to watch, and in it Welliver, a much, much younger Welliver, plays a letch, who is about to screw a young, naive girl, even if it means doping her up beforehand. The Nolte character, a policeman, steps in hard, and kills the Welliver character with his own dope filled hypodermic syringe. But none of that keeps the bad guys, other bad guys, from throwing the Jennifer Connelly character from an aeroplane. And, I don’t know if Michael Connelly and Jennifer Connelly are any, if even, distant relation.

[ A LATER NOTE ]: ”I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, but I am finding The Crossing to be enjoyable.“ Funny, since now I am on my fifth Bosch novel, “the 9 Dragons,” and may read more. I am finding “9 Dragons” to be a little slower reading than the previous four Bosch novels I have read, and enjoyed. I think this may be the novel where Harry has to fly to Hong Kong to rescue his daughter, Maddie. Not sure if his ex-wife, who Maddie lives with all but two weeks of the year, (is it Eleanor Wish) is killed in this story. In the TV series, his ex-wife is gunned down in an L.A. parking lot, and I don’t think that Harry flies to Hong Kong in the TV series.

*I enjoyed the first Bosch TV series, and the latest, “Bosch Legacy,” but having started to read Connelly’s Bosch novels, I really like the author’s stories better than the TV adaptations, and part of that is because I like the Mickey Haller, his Lincoln Lawyer half-brother, character. I think I read that it is licensing agreements that limit the Bosch-Haller interaction on the TV series, and that is probably why the Honey Chandler character was prominent in the TV series. I haven’t read if she even exists in the novels, or if she does, probably plays a much smaller mentionable role there.

[AN EVEN LATER NOTE 04/02/24]: Having mentioned above that I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, I am now reading “The DROP,” and I have already read about 15 other Bosch novels, and have a couple more ready to be read after the current one I am reading. I haven’t read them in order, and there have been some interesting insights because of the timing & order of reading that I have made. That is one reason for why I wrote a brief article called, “Harry Bosch, that lying sack of shit.” [end of NOTE]

[NOTE 07/04/24]: The 4th of July, 2024, and I am at home watching part of the “Twilight Zone Marathon” on the SyFy Channel. And the current episode is, “Time Enough At Last,” which stars Burgess Meredith. This is the episode in which Henry Bemis, a bank teller, who is a voracious reader with thick glasses is repeatedly stymied at both work and home by “non-readers.” One day, while reading on his break, in the bank vault, an H-Bomb goes off killing everyone else on Earth. Bemis emerges from the bank vault into a world of twisted metal and ashes. He walks the earth and finds that there is enough canned goods and other food in a demolished grocery for him to survive. (I know that canned goods, most of them, have a shelf life, and eventually will spoil, even in a well sealed can. So, eventually he would need to figure out how to reproduce food by “tilling the soil.”) And then, just before deciding to put an end to his aloneness with a bullet, he spies a fallen pillar with the words “Public Library” written on it. And here he finds and starts to compile his readings, sorted by months, as stacks of books on the front steps of the demolished library. And here’s the twist. While bending down to pick up a tome, his glasses slip from his face falling to the concrete steps and completely shattering the lenses. He cannot see to read, which seems to be the most important obstacle for the rest of his life. And the episode ends, “in the Twilight Zone.”

So, I’ve read all the Bosch novels except for “The Burning Room” and “The Wrong Side of Goodbye.” I am a little over 50 pages into “The Burning Room,” which I thought would be a story about the death of a young girl, killed by smoke inhalation during an apartment fire started by a fire bomb. The “bad guys” were trying to get tenants out of this apartment complex so they could build something bigger. *That storyline was from several Bosch episodes on TV. **But that hasn’t happened yet, and we are focused on a Mariachi player, who having been shot ten years prior has suffered and finally died of blood poisoning, due to his original injury. Thus this becomes a homicide which is now handed off to Harry Bosch and his novice Spanish speaking protege, Soto. This is Harry’s last year, not many more cases left in his LAPD detective career before the DROP (not the Bosch novel).

Mariachi Plaza

The shooting occurred at the crowded Mariachi Plaza and was for 10 years thought to have been a “drive by” shooting. But now, with the player’s death, an autopsy has produced a rifle slug that had been lodged into his spine. And the bullet, having been fired from a rifle, was proof (if not positive) that the shooting had been deliberate and not just random.

There is a description, from a store security camera located across the street from the Plaza, of the actual shooting. I suppose from the current Google Street View that that store no longer exists.

The Corner of Boyle and 1st Street at Mariachi Plaza.

As I explored Mariachi Plaza via Google Maps & Street View, I came upon a surprise revelation. I was just looking to find a concrete table, like the one described from which the Mariachi player had fallen after being shot. I found several concrete outcroppings, not quite where I thought they should be, but that made me go to Street View to get a different angle on Mariachi Plaza. And, that is where I looked in the opposite direction from the Plaza. There it was, a view that I was familiar with, from a long ago Bosch novel, “The Crossing.” And here it is,

Eastside Luv Wine Bar

I just checked the publishing order for the Michael Connelly’s novels and see that “The Crossing” was published directly after “The Burning Room.” But, I read “The Crossing” a good many books ago, so it seems at a much different time. ***There has also been a description of a drive-by shooting regarding the “White Fence” Gang. Not sure which novel this other vignette comes from, but there was a shooting into the walls of a garage, in which, at a much later time, LAPD tried to recover the slugs, but unsuccessfully. ****I mention this because I put “two and two together” between two other novels, that I had read, “out of their order.” I read about an Oriental shop/store keeper (wine shop?) who had been shot and killed in his store. Bosch finally reveals that the store owner’s daughter had actually killed her father. But, now I was reading another novel in which Harry drives a crooked detective into hostile territory, during the LA Race Riots, and this detective is pulled from the car and beat to death, while Harry managed to drive back to safety. On safe ground, Harry walks over to a looted wine shop to get cigarettes and some matches and finds the Oriental store owner cowering down behind his cash register. There was something about this description that made me look further, and I realized that this was when Harry first met the store owner that some years later was killed by his, the owner’s, daughter.

Another note. If you look in the opposite direction from the Eastside Luv Wine Bar, up 1st Street, you are looking a short distance to downtown LA.

[end NOTE]