I’ve been off work due to injury for a little over a month
now. And during that time, I’ve had half dozen x-rays, an MRI, and CT scan.
I’ve been to the ER, an orthopedic surgeon, magnetic imaging lab, and physical
therapy. Seems like I’ve spent the past 30 days in exam rooms waiting for the
doctor, tech, or therapist to walk in and ask with a sigh, “Now what, Brian?”
But as any “patient” knows, if your appointment time is 10:00,
you can count on seeing that medical professional somewhere around 11:45. So it helps to have a good book with
you.
My literary wingman on this adventure has been crime-writer Michael Connelly. I’ve already burned
through “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Brass Verdict,” and am now reading both “Nine
Dragons” and “Crime Beat,” Connelly’s memoirs of his days as crime reporter for
the Los Angeles Times.
We’re talking about more than a thousand pages of reading since
late last month.
Detective novels are not my usual fare, either. I admit that
when it comes to fiction, I’m something of a snob. Having read Chaucer’s “The
Canterbury Tales” in the original Middle English as part of my Master’s degree
requirements, I can be a bit high-minded about contemporary lit. But my go-to
authors, Cormac McCarthy, Tom McGuane, and Richard Ford didn’t seem to be a
good fit for waiting room distractions. So on my way to the orthopedic
surgeon—my left arm in a cast—I stopped in at a book store for a fast read, saw
a Connelly novel on an end-cap display, thumbed through the first few pages and
was immediately sold.
I think what separates Connelly from pulp fiction writers
and other best-selling detective novelists is his sharp prose and passages of
particular insight and poignancy that go well beyond average for the genre. This
excerpt from the “The Brass Verdict,” for example, resonated with me:
I went outside to the deck,
hoping the city could pull me out of the abyss into which I had fallen. The
night was cool and crisp and clear. Los Angeles spread out in front of me in a
carpet of lights, each one a verdict on a dream somewhere. Some people lived
the dream and some didn’t. Some people cashed in their dreams a dime on the
dollar and some kept them close and as sacred as the night. I wasn’t sure if I
even had a dream left. I felt like I only had sins to confess.
Good stuff.
As I said, he got his start in newsprint journalism, and in “Crime
Beat” his reflections on reportage and nonfiction prose also struck a chord:
The irony of crime beat journalism
--- maybe all journalism --- is that the best stories are really the worse
stories. The stories of calamity and tragedy are the stories that journalists
live for. It gets the adrenaline churning in their blood and can burn them out
young, but nevertheless it is a hard fact of the business. Their best day is
your worse day.
In some ways, that’s what I attempted to do through my own
writing on the now defunct blog site, Switch 2 Plan B. As a veteran fireman
turned amateur writer, I sought to capture and convey the pathos, irony, and even
dark humor I found in people’s most desperate hour: Those uniquely public,
and deeply private moments of grief, fear, and resignation which attended the countless scenes
of suffering, death, or catastrophic loss I witnessed over the years.