Michael Connelly Books in Order

Harry Bosch investigates the death of a fellow Vietnam tunnel rat whose body is dumped in a drainpipe, uncovering a link to a daring tunnel robbery and a dangerous alliance with an FBI agent who may not tell him everything.

A narcotics officer is found dead in a motel room beside a note and rumors of a new drug called Black Ice, and Bosch ignores orders to follow the trail into Mexican border towns, dirty cops, and cartel violence.

While being sued for killing an alleged serial murderer, Harry Bosch watches a new victim turn up in the Dollmaker’s signature style, forcing him to question his own casework and hunt a killer who may have been hiding in plain sight.

Suspended and sent to therapy after lashing out at a superior, Bosch turns his attention to the unsolved murder of his mother, digging into old files, Hollywood power brokers, and a long buried cover up that has shaped his entire life.

Crime reporter Jack McEvoy refuses to believe his detective twin brother died by suicide and uncovers a pattern of dead cops linked by eerie Poe quotations, drawing him into an FBI hunt for a serial killer known only as the Poet.

A man is found executed in the trunk of his Rolls Royce near the Hollywood Bowl, sending Bosch from Los Angeles to Las Vegas as he unpicks a money trail involving the mob, corrupt cops, and a former lover he never quite forgot.

Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is still recovering from a heart transplant when he learns his new heart came from a murdered woman, and his search for her killer suggests a calculated series of crimes staged to look like random robberies.

When civil rights lawyer Howard Elias is gunned down on the Angels Flight funicular, almost every cop in Los Angeles is a potential suspect, and Bosch is ordered to solve the case before the city’s fraught racial tensions explode again.

Ex con Cassie Black has built a quiet life selling luxury cars, but when the secret she lives for is threatened, she returns to high stakes casino heists in Las Vegas and collides with a lethal fixer who once destroyed everything she loved.

Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is asked to read a baffling murder file and finds a pattern that seems to implicate Harry Bosch, even as Bosch testifies in a Hollywood murder trial, pulling both men into one terrifyingly intricate case.

Nanotech entrepreneur Henry Pierce keeps getting calls meant for a woman named Lilly, an escort who has vanished, and his attempt to trace her pulls him into a world of online sex, violence, and corporate sabotage that could ruin his work and his life.

A dog uncovers a human bone in Laurel Canyon, leading Bosch to a shallow grave and the decades old murder of a boy, a case that forces him to confront institutional indifference and speak for a victim who never had a voice.

Sixteen tales by Edgar Allan Poe are paired with twenty original essays by mystery writers on Poe’s influence on their reading and work. Edited by Michael Connelly, the volume includes an essay by Nelson DeMille and commemorates Poe’s bicentennial.

Newly retired and working as a private investigator, Bosch reopens the unsolved killing of a young production assistant on a movie set, clashing with post-9/11 federal priorities while the case reconnects him with his past and an unexpected future.

Guest editor Michael Connelly and series editor Otto Penzler assemble a yearly selection of mystery short fiction. The volume mixes established crime writers and newer voices, with stories by Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.

This nonfiction collection gathers Connelly’s crime reporting from Florida and Los Angeles, following real detectives, victims, and killers and showing how those cases later influenced the plots, settings, and characters in his novels.

Bosch agrees to look into the death of his old colleague Terry McCaleb and soon collides with FBI agent Rachel Walling and the return of the serial killer known as the Poet, drawing together dangerous threads from several earlier cases.

Back on the LAPD in the Open-Unsolved Unit, Bosch and his former partner Kiz Rider use new DNA evidence to revive the 1988 murder of a mixed race teenager, a politically charged case watched closely by old enemies inside the department.

Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller runs his practice from the back seat of his Lincoln, and thinks he has landed an easy payday defending a wealthy realtor accused of assault, until the case exposes a predator connected to an earlier wrongful conviction.

Thirteen years after a young woman vanishes from a Hollywood parking lot, a serial killer offers to confess to her murder, forcing Bosch to relive the failed investigation and decide how much of the blame he and his old partner must carry.

Bosch catches the late night murder of a doctor who had access to radioactive cesium, then finds himself pushed aside by federal agents who fear a dirty bomb plot, so he works the case his own way before the city faces disaster.

After a colleague is murdered, Haller inherits a high profile double murder trial involving a Hollywood mogul, only to discover the killer may be targeting him next, so he teams up uneasily with Harry Bosch to survive and find the truth.

After a convenience store owner Bosch knows is shot dead in South Los Angeles, the trail points to a Hong Kong triad, and then his daughter Maddie is kidnapped overseas, forcing him into a frantic rescue mission far from his home ground.

Facing a layoff from the Los Angeles Times, McEvoy decides to go out with one last big story and reexamines a teen’s murder confession, only to stumble onto a technologically savvy killer who uses a data center job to stalk and trap his victims.

Two women have disappeared, and Bosch is sure an avid fisherman named Denninger is responsible, but with only a handful of photographs as evidence he turns to FBI profiler Rachel Walling, whose reading of the images may finally crack the case.

Frustrated with defense work, Haller agrees to lead the prosecution in a retrial of Jason Jessup, a convicted child killer recently freed by new DNA evidence, and brings in Maggie McPherson and Harry Bosch as they battle a ruthless defendant on bail.

This collection gathers three Harry Bosch stories in which he reopens a Christmas Eve burglary with echoes from his past, confronts a child’s suspicious death on Father’s Day, and revisits one of the first homicides he ever worked as a rookie cop.

In these three Bosch stories, an actress’s supposed suicide, the long ago murder of a teenage girl whose killer now sits on death row, and the death of a poker pro all test Bosch’s need to keep digging after others move on.

Given only a few years before forced retirement, Bosch juggles a cold case revived by a troubling DNA hit and the suspicious fall of a councilman’s son from a hotel balcony, exposing both a long running predator and ugly city politics.

In the middle of the foreclosure crisis, Haller defends Lisa Trammel, an angry homeowner turned protester accused of killing a bank executive, and must pick apart organized crime ties, financial fraud, and his own client’s lies in front of a skeptical jury.

Three non series stories explore Connelly’s darker corners: a back room poker game that turns lethal when a cheat is exposed, an accident expert who reads a fatal crash on Mulholland Drive, and a cop obsessed with the ex con he believes is a hired killer.

A shell casing from a recent crime links back to an unsolved killing during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and Bosch reopens the murder of a foreign photojournalist, hunting for the one missing piece of evidence that will finally unlock the case.

Safecracker Brian Holloway makes his living opening other people’s locked boxes, but a job involving an antique safe in a famous writer’s house reveals something that should have stayed sealed, turning a routine callout into a quietly chilling haunting.

Haller takes on the case of a so called digital pimp charged with murdering Gloria Dayton, a sex worker he once thought he had helped save, and the trial forces him to reckon with the way his past choices might have put her back in harm’s way.

Harry Bosch flies to Boston chasing a lead in a long-cold murder while local PI Patrick Kenzie hunts the same man over a missing seventh-grader. When their paths collide outside the suspect's house, each detective must trade information and instincts to solve both crimes.

An anonymous tip pushes Bosch toward a decades old stabbing of a teenage boy in an abandoned restaurant, where new DNA evidence points to a convicted killer and Bosch has only one chance to draw out a confession that will stand up in court.

Working cold cases with young detective Lucia Soto, Bosch investigates a man who dies from complications of a long ago shooting, only to uncover political secrets, botched police work, and a separate unsolved fire that haunts his partner’s past.

Newly retired from the LAPD, Bosch reluctantly agrees to help his half brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, investigate a client who swears he was framed for murder, sending Bosch across the aisle to probe corrupt cops and planted evidence.

Splitting his time between volunteer work for a small police department and private investigations, Bosch is hired by a dying billionaire to find a possible heir while also tracking a serial rapist, two cases that test his sense of legacy and justice.

Banished to Hollywood’s overnight shift after filing a complaint against a superior, detective Renée Ballard works multiple cases in one sleepless stretch, then quietly keeps investigating a brutal assault and a homeless woman’s killing long after other cops move on.

Volunteering with a small city’s cold case unit, Bosch looks into the murder of a pharmacist caught in a prescription drug scheme even as a long imprisoned killer claims Harry framed him, forcing Bosch to defend both his reputation and his past cases.

Working the graveyard shift, Ballard catches Bosch rifling through case files about Daisy Clayton, a murdered runaway, and ends up partnering with the retired detective to chase the long cold killer while still handling whatever the night throws at her.

After his old mentor dies, Bosch inherits a stolen murder book about a young man shot in an alley and asks Ballard to help him see what was missed, even as both detectives juggle an arson death and the killing of a prominent judge.

Now working for a consumer watchdog site, McEvoy becomes a suspect when a woman he once dated is murdered, so he digs into the unregulated world of DNA testing companies and an incel serial killer called the Shrike, teaming again with Rachel Walling.

Pulled over and arrested after a dead client is found in the trunk of his Lincoln, Haller must prepare his own murder defense from jail, relying on Bosch and his team to uncover who framed him and why before a jury becomes the ultimate judge.

On New Year’s Eve 2020, detective Renée Ballard catches a street party shooting that appears tied to one of Bosch’s old cases while also hunting a pair of serial rapists known as the Midnight Men, all against the backdrop of a battered LAPD.

Renée Ballard returns to the LAPD to rebuild its cold case unit and invites Bosch to pursue the family annihilation that has haunted him for years, while together they balance that obsession against other victims who still need answers.

In this brief nonfiction portrait, Connelly looks back at how he built Harry Bosch, tracing the detective’s roots in his own journalism, childhood fears, Vietnam tunnel rat experience, and love of jazz, and explaining why Bosch’s moral code anchors so many books.

After freeing a wrongfully convicted man, Mickey Haller starts sifting through letters from prisoners claiming innocence and asks Bosch to help, and together they focus on a woman imprisoned for killing her deputy ex husband in a case that never quite added up.

Ballard’s cold case squad gets a DNA lead tying a recent arrest to an old serial rapist dubbed the Pillowcase Rapist, while the theft of her badge and gun forces her to investigate under the radar and draw in both Bosch and his daughter, Maddie.

Exiled from the mainland homicide desk to Catalina Island, Detective Stilwell expects routine calls until a woman’s body is found wrapped and anchored at the bottom of the harbor, pushing him to defy orders and expose the island’s carefully hidden secrets.

After a drug drop at Catalina’s mountaintop airstrip goes violently wrong, Stilwell is sidelined by an internal inquiry but keeps digging, following a hiker’s long missing backpack all the way to Renée Ballard’s cold case unit and a taunting, far reaching criminal.