I like to listen to Harry Bosch novels on my endless commute. They don’t require deep thinking, and the narrators are really good. One problem with audio books, though, is you can’t skim. And there are lots of times in a Harry Bosch novel where I really want to skim.
I won’t bother discussing the endless descriptions of Bosch listening to CDs of jazz performances. These are by definition boring. Instead I want to talk about the endless descriptions of the restaurants he goes to and what he orders and what toppings he has on his pizza and how much macaroni and cheese is left over after dinner with his daughter and ARGGH! Make it stop!
There is, I’m sure, a rationale for this obsession with Harry Bosch and food. Presumably Connelly wants to show us how cops live in present-day LA. Here are their hangouts. Here’s where they eat when they go to court or the shooting range or the forensics lab. And here’s the kind of food a typical cop likes to eat. But I don’t care. Just tell the story.
I have a personal rule for writing that says I don’t put in anything that I’m unlikely to read in someone else’s novel. Five hundred words about a sunset? No thank you. How well a certain Merlot goes with steak tips? Spare me. Nothing about women’s shoes. And, of course, nothing about jazz. Never, ever, anything about jazz.
