Michael Connelly: 9 Dragons

Bosch pushed the vision and the thoughts away. He sat up and looked at his daughter. He saw the burden in her eyes and knew what was coming.

“Dad?”

“What is it, baby?”

“I made a bad mistake, too. Only I’m not the one who paid for it.”

“What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“When I was talking to Dr. Hinojos, she said I have to unburden. I have to tell what’s bothering me.”

Tears started to flow now. Bosch sat sideways on the lounge chair and took his daughter by the hand and guided her to a seat right next to him. He put his arm across her shoulders.

“You can tell me anything, Madeline.”

She closed her eyes and held a hand over them. She squeezed his hand with the other.

“I got Mom killed,” she said. “I got her killed and it should’ve been me.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re not respons-”

“No, wait, listen to me. Listen to me. Yes, I am. I did it, Dad, and I need to go to jail.”

Bosch pulled her into a crushing hug and kissed the top of her head.

“You listen to me, Mads. You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here with me. I know what happened but it doesn’t make you responsible for what other people did. I don’t want you thinking that.”

She pulled back and looked at him.

“You know? You know what I did?”

“I think you trusted the wrong person…and the rest, all the rest, is on him.”

She shook her head.

“No, no. The whole thing was my idea. I knew you would come and I thought maybe you’d make her let me go with you back here.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

Bosch shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that you couldn’t have known what Quick would do, that he would take your plan and make it his.”

She bowed her head.

“Doesn’t matter. I killed my mother.”

“Madeline, no. If anybody is responsible, it’s me. She got killed in something that had nothing to do with you. It was a robbery and it happened because I was stupid, because I showed my money in a place I should never have shown it. Okay? It’s on me, not you. I made the mistake.”

She could not be calmed or consoled. She shook her head violently and the force threw tears into Bosch’s face.

“You wouldn’t have even been there, Dad, if we didn’t send that video. I did that! I knew what it would do! That you would be on the very next plane! I was going to escape before you landed. You would get there and everything would be all right but you would tell Mom it wasn’t safe for me there and you would take me back with you.”

Bosch just nodded. He had put roughly the same scenario together a few days before, when he realized Bo-Jing Chang had nothing to do with the murder of John Li.

“But now Mom is dead! And they’re dead! And everybody’s dead and it’s all my fault!”

Bosch grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her in toward him.

“How much of this did you tell Dr. Hinojos?”

“None.”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to tell you first. You have to take me to jail now.”

Bosch pulled her into another hug and held her head against his chest.

“No, baby, you’re staying here with me.”

He gently caressed her hair and spoke calmly.

“We all make mistakes. Everybody. Sometimes, like with my partner, you make a mistake and you can’t make up for it. You don’t get the chance. But sometimes you do. We can make up for our mistakes here. Both of us.”

Her tears had slowed. He heard her sniffle. He thought maybe this was why she had come to him. For a way out.

“We can maybe do some good and make up for the things we did wrong. We’ll make up for everything.”

“How?” she said in a small voice.

“I’ll show you the way. I’ll show you and you’ll see that we can make up for this.”

Bosch nodded to himself. He hugged his daughter tightly and wished he never had to let her go.

Q &A with Michael Connelly

Nine Bullets About Nine Dragons

“Eight bullets, eight dragons. And then there would be him. Bosch would be the ninth dragon, as unstoppable as a bullet.” Where does the title Nine Dragons come from?

Hong Kong has many sections. One of the biggest is called Kowloon, which means ‘Nine Dragons.” It comes from a legend. During one of the old dynasties the emperor was chased by the Mongols into the area that is now Hong Kong. He saw the eight mountain peaks that surrounded the area and protected him and wanted to call the place Eight Dragons. But one of his guards reminded him that the emperor was a dragon too. So they called it Kowloon, meaning nine dragons. I was told this story by a researcher who was showing me around Hong Kong the first time I visited. I loved the story and immediately started thinking of using Nine Dragons as a title. This dictated that a lot of the Hong Kong portion of the story take place in Kowloon, including the most significant moment of the whole novel.

What inspired you to write Nine Dragons and to set a third of the book in Hong Kong?

Nine Dragons is a book long in the making. It is a pivotal story in Harry Bosch’s journey-and his most personal one. While I think it is a book with more action than usual for me, it is also a deeply driven character story for which the inspiration was set about seven years ago when I was writing the novel Lost Light (2003) . I think with a series you have to be very careful with what you do with your character. Harry Bosch is built to be of and about L.A. So I have to be careful about taking him out of this environment. Usually when I do, it is never for a whole book. I have him follow a case to Mexico and back. Or to Las Vegas or Florida. Nine Dragons starts in Los Angeles, goes to Hong Kong, and then comes back to Los Angeles. Sending him to Hong Kong came out of me wanting to do that again but to really put him in a fish-out-of-water situation. So I planted the seed five or six books ago when I had Harry’s young daughter move there with his ex-wife. When I did that, I knew that I would eventually write a story that would take Harry there and give me the opportunity to explore the character in completely different terrain. So the book has been sort of waiting to be written. In writing, you rely on your instincts in terms of what to do and when to do it. Somehow, I felt it was time to write this story now.

Did you actually spend time in Hong Kong researching the book?

About five years ago I stopped in Hong Kong on my way home from a book tour in Australia. I immediately found what I was looking for; an intriguing new place with a sense that anything could happen. So I’ve made two trips to Hong Kong to research Nine Dragons . One was a general knowledge trip. I then refined what I was looking for, had a general sense of the areas the story would take me through, and I went back to more specifically research the story, to more or less follow the trail Harry follows in the book. As it turns out, only about a third of the book is set in Hong Kong, and that segment takes place in one day. There is a lot of movement and action. Like Hong Kong itself, it never slows down.

Why did you wait so long to explore Harry Bosch’s relationship with his daughter Madeline?

In Lost Light (2003), Harry got the surprise of his life. He found out he was a father and met his daughter Madeline for the first time. Over the years and stories that followed their meeting, Harry’s relationship with his daughter never moved to the forefront because I wasn’t ready to explore it yet. I wanted her to grow up some and be a character who could communicate with Harry (and the reader) as a young adult before I wrote the story that explored the relationship and what is Harry's ultimate vulnerability.