Michael Connelly Books in Order – Complete List of Novels

Last Updated on October 18, 2023

New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly is an amazing American author best known for his Harry Bosch series, which was recently televised by Amazon, with Titus Welliver playing the main character. The Harry Bosch novels in order are the perfect read for anyone who loves heart-stopping thrillers with lots of action and great characters, as well as for readers who enjoy the novels of James Patterson.

Here are all the Michael Connelly books in order in reading and publication order for the Harry Bosch novels, followed by Connelly’s other series including The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller, Terry McCaleb, Jack McEvoy, and Renée Ballard.

New Michael Connelly Books

Desert Star
Resurrection Walk (Lincoln Lawyer series #7), 2023

Harry Bosch Books In Publication Order

  1. The Black Echo, 1992
  2. The Black Ice, 1993
  3. The Concrete Blonde, 1994
  4. The Last Coyote, 1995
  5. Trunk Music, 1997
  6. Angels Flight, 1999
  7. A Darkness More Than Night, 2001
  8. City Of Bones, 2002
  9. Lost Light, 2003
  10. The Narrows, 2004
  11. The Closers, 2005
  12. Echo Park, 2006
  13. The Overlook, 2007
  14. The Brass Verdict, 2008
  15. Nine Dragons, 2009
  16. The Reversal, 2010
  17. The Drop, 2011
  18. The Black Box, 2012
  19. The Burning Room, 2014
  20. The Crossing, 2015
  21. The Wrong Side of Goodbye, 2016
  22. Two Kinds of Truth, 2017
  23. Dark Sacred Night, 2018
  24. The Night Fire, 2019
  25. The Dark Hours, 2021
  26. Desert Star, 2022

Harry Bosch Short Stories

Lincoln Lawyer Series in Publication Order

  1. The Lincoln Lawyer, 2004
  2. The Brass Verdict, 2008
  3. The Reversal, 2010
  4. The Fifth Witness, 2011
  5. The Gods Of Guilt, 2013
  6. The Crossing, 2015 (#5.5)
  7. The Law of Innocence, 2020
  8. Resurrection Walk, 2023

Terry McCaleb Books in Publication Order

  1. Blood Work, 1998
  2. A Darkness More Than Night, 2000

Jack McEvoy Books in Publication Order

  1. The Poet, 1996
  2. The Scarecrow, 2009
  3. Fair Warning, 2020

Renée Ballard Books in Publication Order

  1. The Late Show, 2017
  2. Dark Sacred Night, 2018
  3. The Night Fire, 2019
  4. The Dark Hours, 2021
  5. Desert Star, 2022

Standalone Novels in Publication Order

Other Author Contributions – Anthologies and Collections

Non-Fiction Books

Should We Read the Michael Connelly Books in Order?

I’ve read all the LAPD detective Harry Bosch books in chronological order so far (including the related legal thriller Lincoln Lawyer books, the Renée Ballard books, and all the rest) and personally, I think reading them in order is best. Granted, each novel has one mystery that Harry solves, however, the character really grows from book to book.

You can see in each of the novels that the author gets more and more attached to Harry Bosch and really writes about him with a passion. It is a pity to miss out on that.

About LAPD Homicide Detective Harry Bosch

Harry Bosch is a fun and multidimensional character with a real-life story of his own. In the first novel, he is accused of killing a Vietnam “tunnel rat” whom he happened to know many lifetimes ago. I remember the book was full of atmosphere and a fast read. It literally hooked me on the series and I have read everything he has written since then.

Harry Bosch is a Los Angeles Police Department detective who retired and went on to become a private investigator for a couple of books, following which he returned to LAPD’s Open Unsolved Unit. He is about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with a wiry frame and a small but strong build, sports a moustache and has dark eyes. His mother was a prostitute and his father a defense attorney.

In Two Kinds of Truth, published in 2017, Harry Bosch is a volunteer cold case cop at SFPD and is asked to help with a case involving a pharmacy where a young employee was murdered.

At the same time, he gets involved in a case started by the newly created LAPD Conviction Integrity Unit, which tells him that signs are showing that he mishandled some old cases back when he was working for the police.

Since he left the police on relatively bad terms, his old colleagues are not overly eager to help him save his reputation. Now Harry has to work the murder case while trying to get to the bottom of who framed him and how he can clear his name and reputation as well.

In Desert Star, published in 2022, Detective Harry Bosch teams up once again with Renee Ballard.

Are Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller related?

Yes, indeed they are. The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller is Harry Bosch’s half-brother. Both have the same father, J. Michael Haller, however, they have different mothers.

Mickey Haller’s mother is a Mexican-born B-level actress about whom very little is known from the books or the TV series.

Harry Bosch’s mother is Marjorie Lowe, who was basically a prostitute in Hollywood who got pregnant after having sex with Harry’s father once. She died in 1961 (was murdered).

Harry Bosch was already an adult when he first met Mickey Haller and their father. At the time, Mickey was only five.

There are a few books in the Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller series that also have Harry in them but not as the main character. While some Haller books only mention Harry in passing, some feature the two of them working together, like in The Crossing.

Harry is the ultimate detective. Initially, all the cases seem hopeless and unsolvable, but Harry is the one who finds something small that belongs to the case.

Once he finds that short thread, he follows it until he uncovers more threads, and follows there too, just like a dog following a strong smell, right until he solves the case. I really like his reluctance to give up on a case because he knows it will unravel in front of his eyes if he only keeps at it a bit more.

Harry has a daughter, Maddie, who initially was mostly living with her mother, Eleanor, the ex-wife of Harry. The two lived in Hong Kong and only meet Harry a couple of times a year until eventually Eleanor was killed while trying to save Maddie from Chinese gangsters. After the funeral, Maddie went to live with her father.

Where else has Harry Bosch appeared in books?

LAPD detective Harry Bosch has made several cameo appearances in books by other crime and thriller authors. He appeared in books by Robert Crais, Joe Gores, and Paula Woods.

Michael Connelly Biography – About the Author

Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly was born in 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to  Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There he enrolled at St. Thomas Aquinas High School.

The author’s introduction to the world of crime happened in an entirely random way. One evening he was going home from his job as a dishwasher at a hotel. He suddenly noticed someone throw something into the bushes. Curious as he was, he checked out those bushes and found a gun wrapped in a shirt.

He got even more curious, so he decided to follow that person, on a trek that took him to a nearby bar. He then went home to tell his dad about the guy in the bar. Together, they went to the police, and he led them to the hidden gun. By then, the suspect was gone from the bar.

However, he was thoroughly fascinated with the way the police handled that case, and he couldn’t get that event out of his mind.

He continued his studies and enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville with a major in building construction, as he wanted to follow his father’s job. His grades were, however, not up to par. After watching Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s book The Long Goodbye, he decided that he wanted to become a crime fiction book author. The movie was based on Raymond Chandler’s books, so he began reading everything the author has written and it inspired Connely even more to start his own author journey.

Thus, the author switched his major from construction to journalism. His minor was in creative writing, which helped him develop as a book writer. After he graduated from the university in 1980, he became a crime-beat writer at the  Daytona Beach News Journal. Next year, he moved to work for the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel again as an investigative reporter.

In 1985 he was one of the reporters to interview the survivors of the Delta Flight 191 plane crash. The story he wrote thereafter made him a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1987 he moved to Los Angeles, California with his family, where he began working for the Los Angeles Times as a crime reporter.

He had been working for the newspaper for three years when he wrote The Black Echo, his debut novel. The book was published in 1992 by Little, Brown. That book earned him the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The book is also the first in the Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch series.

While working for the Los Angeles Times, Connely wrote three books, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, and The Last Coyote, all part of the Harry Bosch series. Soon after, he resigned and became a full-time author.

The author continued his series until 1996 when he wrote The Poet. It was to become the first book in his Jack McEvoy series. The next year he wrote The Trunk Music, which went back to the popular Harry Bosch book series.

After that, the author once again diverged from his main series when he wrote Blood Work, the first book in his Terry McCaleb FBI Agent series. This was in 1998. Four years later, in 1992, the movie made based on Blood Work starring Clint Eastwood was released, where Eastwood played Terry McCaleb and also directed the movie. Other notable acctors were Jeff Daniels and Anjelica Houston.

A second movie adaptation was for the book The Lincoln Lawyer. The movie featured Matthew McConaughey as the main character Mick Haller next to Marisa Tomei and Ryan Phillipe as co-stars.

For his numerous books, Michael Connelly received several awards, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, the Macavity Award, the Shamus Award, and the Barry Award, as well as several international awards from countries like Italy, France, and Japan.

Many of his books are written surrounding actual, real-life events, including the 9/11 attack. Most characters in the series appear in the same universe and often crossover from series to series. In the latest series, LAPD detective Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch work together in solving cases.

In 2004, a video documentary titled Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles was released in the form of DVD. This was accompanying the author’s book The Narrows (which also features FBI agent Rachel Walling). In the feature film, Connelly shows some of the Los Angeles places often featured in his books.

Besides his several mystery and thriller series, the author also wrote a nonfiction book called Crime Beat, which was published in 2006.

An interesting trivia note, one of his biggest fans is the ex-US president Bill Clinton, who was seen reading The Concrete Blonde. The two men met at an airport later on.

The Harry Bosch series order includes all the rest of the author’s books as well since they are all part of the Harry Bosch universe. In fact, even the standalone books are part of the same universe.

Michael Connelly has written so far two main series, the Harry Bosch series, and the Mickey Haller series, and a few smaller series including the Terry McCaleb, Jack McEvoy and the newer LAPD detective Renée Ballard series. Most of these series also intersect with the author’s main one, so I have added them to this page as well. Thus reading the Michael Connely books in order is recommended, along with all the related stories in the same universe featuring other main characters.

62 Comments

  1. I’ve read so many of your books, but Bosch is my favorite character.
    I watched the Bosch shows including Bosch Legacy, and hope to see more episodes about him, the Lincoln Lawyer and hope you will have more stories/shows about Maddie.
    Your books bring so much joy to my because of my less than active lifestyle (I’m older). Please keep entertaining us with your stories and hopefully more shows.

  2. Brilliant books, discovered Michael Connelly novels in our village English red phone box that has been repurposed as a free library.

  3. Once I discovered a Michael Connelly novel I was hooked and totally in love with Harry Bosch. I started with the first book and have read them all, regardless of main character, but am partial to Harry Bosch. After reading the Lincoln Lawyer and watching the movie, I became a real fan of Mickey Haller as well. I do know that if Michael Connelly writes it, it will be worth reading.
    Was very happy to see the Bosch series and Bosch:Legacy .
    Looking forward to seeing Jerry Edgar again soon.

  4. Being a fan, I was hooked on the TV series. I thought I had read all or most of the Bosch books, however, I am now reading The Dark Hours and there is reference to Harry having been diagnosed with Leukemia. There are also other references I am not familiar with. Looking over the list, I see I did not read The Night Fire or The Law Of Innocence.
    I will definitely go back and read those 2 hoping it will fill in the answers I am looking for.

    Hoping there will be more Bosch TV series.

  5. Love the Harry Bosch books, am trying to read in order, have read the first 4, starting 5 as soon as it gets here from the used book store I used online, Watched one of the series, not my idea of what Harry looks like, have to get used to him or just read the books. Want to read the Lincoln Lawyer books now.

    1. Message for Linda Martin

      I noticed with interest your comment about TVs Bosch and him not looking like you imagined. I felt the same way. Just as a matter of interest how or who did you imagine him as.

      Regards – Paul

      1. In book one of Harry Bosch Eleanor wish at the end of a conversation about them thinking he was a suspect in the heist. But then realizing that he was actually on suspension and in Mexico. Eleanor which does ask him one question as he gets it from the table to leave she asks him if The prostitute was right about him knowing that the guy didn’t have a gun. How could that even be talked about in book one when that didn’t take place until book 3 can somebody please help me out with this because I’m not understanding this and I’m listening to book three on audiobook and I’m trying to understand how they’re discussing anything like this when it was first talk about in book one but this is now telling me that it hasn’t taken place yet this is happening now for the first time in book 3 so book 3 is starting a whole new story but it’s been talked about in book one which doesn’t make any sense at all this is in order wish they say it is how can this be an order if he’s discussing things previously in book one that are happening for the first time in book three unless I wasn’t supposed to notice that sorry I notice things that people don’t ever seem to notice

  6. The first of anything I read Michael Connelly’s books was a thin little book that had a couple of chapters of his first 3 books. It was located at the checkout register in a small book store in Ohio. When I got home to California but they weren’t available yet. I eventually found them in 1994. I’ve read all but the latest

  7. You really need to read the book in sequential order. I saw the actual list once but can’t remember where. The list above is the order they were written in

    1. Can someone tell me the Oder of these books with Harry , Renee,etc.? I really enjoyed Desert Star and later became aware that it was part of a series

  8. Just finished my first Harry novel “ The Black Echo” and absolutely loved it…. if you like this series you should read the Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbo. They just made the Snowman movie which is from the series…. I haven’t seen it so I can’t comment on it but the books were outstanding.

    1. Void Moon is listed at the end of the page under the Standalone Novels section. It is not part of the Harry Bosch series.

  9. Harry Bosch is my favorite fictional detective, No other character in print has his moral principles. I realize it is unrealistic for someone is as good as he is. I wish I had the ability to tell you how much I admire him. Please write more Harry Bosch, maybe including his daughter as a central character. I saw the first book on Netflix. I feel it was very miscast. I did not watch the others. If Tom Selleck were younger he would be perfect. I am 82 and cannot always call up names, but the man who played the Boy from Oz on Broadway would be a very good choice.

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