Empathy is not identification; there is a crucial difference.

[oddmonster]

Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers by Michael Connelly:

Sometimes the killers called me. The phony hit man who was convicted of killing and burying his wife called from jail to say I had been too harsh on him.
Synopsis: Before he began writing Harry Bosch and Mickey Whatnot, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter who took very

Comments

[storyfan]

Boy, sounds like most of the Goodreads reviewers didn't care for the book, primarily because he seems to have repeated the same articles over and over. Sounds like he needed an editor.

I'm always leery of how-to books by famous authors. Stephen King gave us "On Writing," which was excellent, but I think that's unusual. I'll try to get Connelly's book through the library. As a former journalist, I think I'd at least enjoy skimming through his various stories.

I read so many Harry Bosch books so quickly that I can't keep the plots straight anymore.

[oddmonster]

I have to say, as how-to books go, this is one of the better ones I've read, mainly because it's not so much a how-to as it is simply another facet of Connolly's writing. At no point does he start warbling on about his craft (although the dude who wrote the epilogue did, possibly while on his knees in front of his Michael Connelly shrine, oy) but it's definitely possible to make all these connections between the stories Connelly's covered and at the very least the Bosch stories I've read

[storyfan]

Half of "On Writing" is a short but amusing and sometimes horrifying autobiography, the other half is about the craft. His craft warble is easy to read, primarily because he uses examples from other people's work instead of his own. Plus, he does say that not everyone ought to be doing it. Except for him, of course. :)