I dropped into one of my two favorite genre bookstores today, M Is For Mystery in San Mateo. (The other is Borderlands Books in San Francisco. There used to be wonderful genre bookstores all over the United States, but they're dying out in favor of selling strictly over the internet, which really isn't the same for the browser.) I was intent on buying a signed copy of Michael Connelly's newest Harry Bosch mystery, The Overlook. Connelly is one of my favorites, and has been ever since I read his first Bosch novel, The Black Echo.

To my delight, when I arrived I discovered that John Connelly was there speaking with a small audience. I loved his most recent book, The Book of Lost Things. I also own a few of his Charlie "Bird" Parker thrillers, but somehow haven't gotten to them yet. If I'd known Connelly was going to be there, though, I'd definitely have brought his first book, Every Dead Thing, for him to sign. This is my penalty for not watching the M Is For Mystery events calendar!

Connolly was very casually attired in frayed jeans and a t-shirt, under which he appeared to be wearing a rather large cross on a strip of leather around his neck. The most definite impression he gave was one of passion for his work, difficult though it is for him (it takes him, he said, a good two years to write a book from beginning to end, and much of that two years is consumed by revising, revising and revising). He feels that there is a natural end to the Parker series, but can't predict how many more books there will be before he begins working on something totally different.

He also spoke about the one "totally different" book he's written, The Book of Lost Things. He mentioned that the recent film, Pan's Labyrinth, dealt with some of the same issues as his book, and both were set in fairy tale worlds. (I loved them both, and recommend them to you whole-heartedly.) Many of his readers were disappointed with The Book of Lost Things because it didn't fit his usual paradigm. Me, I think more writers ought to write outside their ordinary comfort zone more often, even if booksellers can't quite figure out where to shelve the books. (I had the same problem in my own home library: does The Book of Lost Things go with the other fairy tale books, with Connolly's mysteries in order to keep his work altogether, with the general literature, or in the special collection of fiction about reading? Things get very complicated around here sometimes.)

Rather to my surprise, Connolly stated that he does not read science fiction, mystery or horror, despite the fantasy and horror elements of The Book of Lost Things. He does feel that more experimentation is possible in those genres than in the mystery genre -- where he notes that not only will some readers not read anything else, but they won't even read mysteries that are not part of a series. He struck me as restless to be getting on with writing whatever bubbles up in him, regardless of whether it's a Parker thriller.

I am now the owner of an inscribed edition of Connolly's latest novel, The Unquiet. Oh happy accident, that brought me into that shop on this day!