THE WORD : Bosch of the Boulevard

Michael Connelly writes about Hollywood’s underside. No movie stars pop up in his mystery novels. Instead, there are pushers and prostitutes, runaways and cops gone bad. Trying to make sense of it all is homicide detective Hiernoymus “Harry� Bosch.

A chain-smoking, hard-driving son of a prostitute, Bosch is a loner who takes solace only in saxophone music and his little house in the Hollywood Hills. If only he could keep from punching out the LAPD brass, his career might get back on track.

Connelly, 38, invented his troubled hero while working as a police reporter--first at the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun Sentinel, then at the Los Angeles Times. “The character just kind of jelled. A lot of what I’d heard over the years--the day-to-day lingo of cops talking--I guess I just kind of stored it.�

Connelly’s debut novel, “The Black Echo,� won a prestigious Edgar Award. His second, “The Black Ice,� won a prestigious Edgar Award. His second, “The Black Ice,� won the praise of President Bill Clinton, who in 1933 even summoned Connelly for a brief meeting on the Tarmac at LAX. (“He said, ‘Hey, I just read your book...I like the saxophone.�’) Connelly’s third book, “The Concrete Blonde,� is being turned into a screenplay by Daniel Petrie Jr. (“Beverly Hilss Cop�).

Now comes “The Last Coyote,� due for publication in June, in which Bosch tries to solve the murder that has haunted his entire life: the strangulation of his mother.

Connelly, who now writes fiction full-time, is completing his first book sans Bosch--a thriller about a Denver newspaper reporter on the trail of a killer. But Bosch fans need not worry. “I kind of can’t wait to get back to Bosch,� Connelly says. “He’ll definitely be back.�