L.A. is a long shot city, and those who make that shot - you can tell. You can see very clearly who's made it and who hasn't.

When I lived in L.A. full time, I moved often - fourteen different neighbourhoods in sixteen years.

My entire career writing novels was wrapped up around Harry Bosch. This character was too important to me to just hand off.

In 1995, I sold the rights to Harry Bosch to Paramount. They had several screenplays written, but a movie never happened. Harry Bosch went on the shelf, and I had to wait 15 years to get him back.

What brought me to the table was Raymond Chandler and, to a lesser degree, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett. I was basically inspired to want to write like the classic private-eye writers.

Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn't have that in me.

When I was at a newspaper, I knew what an opportunity that was, and I religiously protected my time on the cop beat.

In writing on the page, you can be a bit elliptical, but on TV, you can't dance around stuff. You either show it, or you don't.

I'd seen Titus Welliver in a few shows and felt he had some inner demons in his portrayals, as does Harry Bosch.

I trust the readers to build their own visual images. To me, that's part of the wonder of reading.