Echo Park

So, now I’ve started to read another Bosch novel, “Echo Park.” This is jumping back several volumes from the later ones I have been reading, pre-Bosch/LAPD retirement. *Oh, I am doing this because I bought several Bosch novels at the last Cumberland County Library Book Sale. They were only a dollar each, and I was really buying them, not to read, but to incorporate into the Little Lending Libraries that I have been shifting various books between. I’m currently “on hold” as far as driving around to the various LLL locations because it is winter, but I plan to start back in spring, when it starts to warm up. I’ve probably got about 12 Connelly novels, mostly Bosch, but some Ballard & Lincoln Lawyer, and a few duplicates. But, as I said, I was going to leave one in each LLL I visit.

I’ve written about finding the Matthew Perry memoir in one of the LLLs, a few days before he died unexpectedly. That started my reading, and once I finished that volume I had made reading a habit, and I then started reading a Bosch novel. I put a novel in the little basket by my toilet, and because I go so many times during the day, I read several pages, sometimes a whole chapter, each bathroom visit. I have a Panera Bread gift card that I use as a bookmark. The face of the card is distinctive, and I am able to mark which page I stopped reading by putting the face of the card facing either the left or right page, and whether I need to start at the top of the page, or half way down, by the direction I turn the card, up or down.

Echo Park starts with LAPD having responded to a call of an abandoned vehicle, which ends up being the car that belonged to a recently missing young woman/girl. The auto had been left in an unused garage of one of the apartments of High Tower. Funny, but I didn’t immediately recognize the name High Tower, but as Connelly began to write the description of the small elevator, I began to envision the elevator and apartments that were filmed for “Elliott Gould’s portrayal of the private detective Philip Marlowe, in Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye…” The elevator is iconic, and from the movie, I think Marlowe had several attractive girl neighbors, who in various stages of undress, would exercise on their balcony. Marlowe also had a finnicky pet cat that he attempted to fool into eating “just any old brand” of cat food. The cat wasn’t fooled. How cat like.

So I’m using the Google Street View and moving up High Tower Drive toward the tower, and there are the extremely small garages on each side of the street, dead ending at the entrance gate for High Tower apartments. I’ve written about this before, that the Bosch series did for Los Angeles what Morse did for Oxford. If a location was being filmed, the street signs weren’t hidden or blurred out, but they were distinctively displayed, and I could go to Google Street View and find the exact location and look around.

I now attribute this “location realism” to Michael Connelly and it is recognizable in both the TV series and the novels. Connelly’s description of the small garages is spot on.

And “Eastside Luv” Cafe/Bar from another Bosch novel:

[NOTE 01/17/24]: I happened to see that I could watch “The Long Goodbye” last night, so I started watching. The High Tower Apartments & elevator are prominently displayed, Marlowe renting the apartment, to the right, as you come off the elevator. I’m not sure if there have been structural changes to the layout, since the 1973 filming of the movie, but it looks like the apartment across from Marlowe’s has changed. The current photo doesn’t show a balcony. The one his neighbors were exercising on.

Gower, Franklin, Beachwood Ave – Google Maps

Beachwood Cafe Menu