“My father was a builder. During my high school years, I worked for him. One summer, I was working with a guy who had just come back from Vietnam and had been a tunnel rat. He wouldn't talk about the experience, but it sounded really scary to me.”

American author of detective novels and crime fiction

Michael Connelly is an American author of detective novels and crime fiction. He is best known for creating LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller, characters who appear across much of his work. He has written 42 novels and one work of non-fiction, and his books have sold more than 74 million copies worldwide and been translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2003 and 2004, he served as president of the Mystery Writers of America, and several of his novels were adapted for film, including Blood Work and The Lincoln Lawyer.