Bosch author Michael Connelly on the future for his famous detective - despite series cancellation

After seven series of Bosch, which began in 2014, and three of Bosch: Legacy on Prime Video, Connelly, who also created The Lincoln Lawyer, was told there wouldn’t be another series for Bosch.

Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Connelly, whose books have sold more than 85 million copies worldwide and been translated into 45 languages, says: “I have no complaints about it only lasting 10 seasons. It’s rare that shows last that long.

“I just wish we knew we were ending it when we were writing it and filming it, and I think we would have gone out in a slightly different way. There were a couple of loose ends and luckily the last episode was an introduction to (Renée) Ballard.”

Now he’s working on a new series centring on the Ballard character as she heads up a cold case squad, starring Maggie Q, which is scheduled for summer. So as one door closes, another opens.

And his creation The Lincoln Lawyer (in which lawyer Mickey Haller runs his office from his Lincoln car), which was adapted into a film starring Matthew McConaughey and later a Netflix series starring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, has just been renewed for a fourth season.

Bosch will live on, Connelly says confidently. “I’ve definitely not finished with Bosch. I think we’ll probably see him again next year in a book.”

The former journalist, who has had to cancel his latest US and England tour because of a medical procedure, is now considering how his 40th book might make the screen and says he’s already had some interest regarding adaptation.

Nightshade, a stand-alone thriller, introduces a new detective, County Sheriff Detective Stilwell, who has effectively been put out to pasture on the picturesque Catalina Island off California after a fall-out with a fellow detective on the Los Angeles mainland.

Soon enough, though, he is investigating the death of a young woman who has drowned in the harbour, but comes up against his old LA adversary who is trying to take over the inquiry and hamper Stilwell’s investigation.

Connelly, 68, who has lived in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years but also has a home in Florida, where he grew up, has been to Catalina Island many times and was aware that there was just one detective there assigned to handle everything except homicide, which is left to the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

“I talked to a guy who was an old hand who could tell me about the politics, the place and what it’s like to be the lone detective on the island. He actually retired and now lives in Texas. But I liked the idea of it almost being like a private detective story, a guy who doesn’t have a (police) partner and works cases by himself.”

The former crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times, is prolific, writing at least one book a year – his next is a Lincoln Lawyer book called The Proving Ground which is out in autumn.

His interest in crime was sparked when, at 16, he was driving home after his dishwashing shift at a Fort Lauderdale resort at night and witnessed a man running and hiding a gun in a hedge before fleeing.

After pulling over and finding the gun wrapped in a shirt, Connelly saw police cars arriving. It turned out the suspect had just shot somebody trying to steal their car.

The young Connelly spent the night with detectives in a police station, and ended up looking at line-ups but was unable to identify the suspect, who was never caught.

“I was handled by a really tough guy, a Harry Bosch-like detective, which turned me towards more hard-boiled fiction and true crime and newspaper stories about crime.”

But reporting was always a means to an end to writing detective stories.

Today, he doesn’t support the Trump administration’s take on gun rights.

“I don’t have a gun. I live in a community where there’s a lot of crime but I don’t feel the need to have a gun. It’s a root source of a lot of problems. A lot of the violence in this community is the easy access to weapons.”

Unlike Connelly’s more famous detectives, his latest, Stilwell, has found a happy romantic relationship with his partner, assistant harbourmaster Tash Dano, on the island.

“This is the first main character I’ve ever written who has a reasonably healthy and stable relationship with a partner. If you look back across 39 books before, I didn’t have that.

"Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, Mickey Haller, they all have fraught relationships and are all looking for something, which makes them easier to write.”

Part of the inspiration comes from his own happy marriage to college sweetheart Linda McCaleb, with whom he has a daughter.

They’ve been married for 41 years, as long as he’s been writing books. Linda is his first reader on each new manuscript.

“I was thinking, isn’t it about time I wrote about someone who is more like me in that regard than these characters I’ve dwelled on for 30-plus years?

"It’s about the accommodations couples make, but at the end of the day, they know why they’re in the relationship together. I like that aspect of it.”

With the TV series cancelled for now, will he ever kill off his first hero, Bosch?

“I don’t think so. I mean, never say never. I hope the last book I’m writing has Bosch in it. Now, whether that’s just his final book or his final story, I don’t know yet.”

Nightshade by Michael Connelly, published by Orion, £22