Two all-new episodes of season two of Bosch: Legacy dropped yesterday on Amazon Freevee. The series follows retired homicide detective, Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver), who now works as a private investigator, as well as his daughter, Maddie Bosch (Madison Lintz), a rookie patrol cop, and attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers). In the most recent episodes, Ellis (Max Martini) and Long (Guy Wilson) continue to track Bosch while he and Chandler continue to try to thwart the Feds. Meanwhile the upcoming hearing for Dockweiler (David Denman) looms over Maddie, and Mo meets and gets closer to Jade Quinn (Jessica Camacho).

The series, which is a sequel to the Prime Video series, Bosch, is centered around the characters from the novels of Michael Connelly, who also serves as an executive producer on the series. The author recently spoke with SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview about season two of the series.

Watch the interview or read the full transcript below, and stream the series now on Amazon Freevee.



SCIFI VISION:   Having written the book rather than the scripts, how involved are you in the series? I guess, like, what do you have control over?

MICHAEL CONNELLY:  Control? That's a good question. I think I have zero control, but I have a lot of control. I have zero control contractually or anything like that, but I don't think people want to displease me. It's not like that's ever happened or ever been a question. Where I'm involved in is conceptual. I don't know anything about camera angles or - Over ten years of the show, I've gone from being a guy who thinks he knows what good acting is to actually having some skill in that, and I appreciate that, that growth in myself. But for the most part, I'm there when the question is, "What do we do this year? What do we do with this season? Where are we going with these characters?" And I love being in part of that discussion. Then, it gravitates to a full writing room, and I visit the writing room semi regularly, but I actually don't have to be there. I don't have to have control, because of the people that we have in there that revere these characters, and they're not going to deviate from the spirit of what's in the books and what these characters are about. So, I don't have to worry about that. And, you know, if you include the original show, we're in a writing room now for a tenth season. So, there're a lot of aspects that run like a machine. I have a lot of trust in the people running that machine. I don't have to worry about it. I just want to be there at the beginning. So, I have some say in where we're going.

So, how do you all - and I guess this may be partly what [is decided in] the writers room, but how do you guys decide kind of like, not only just what you're taking from the books directly, but what books you're pulling from? Because I'm assuming that to some extent, some of the seasons maybe aren't one complete book. You pull from different places, correct?

Yeah, I mean, there're a lot of books, and Amazon did a pretty unusual deal at the beginning where they just bought anything, everything, anything that comes down the pike, and so that gives us the ability to go into the writing room and say "Take what you need." Like, we usually center on one book as the spine of the series, but then we take other stuff, and then especially with Bosch Legacy, Money Chandler was only in one book. So, what we're doing with Money Chandler, we're borrowing a little bit from the Lincoln Lawyer stories and so forth, but that's all new stuff. And Maddie Bosch, for example, as the head of the of the arc of Maddie Bosch in the book, she was a cop on the show before I made her a cop in my books. So, there's a lot of new stuff that comes out in the shows, and we continue, but the books are always there. We always look for stories from the books that are going to underline what we're doing, trying to do with characters in this new season. You know, Bosch is a longtime homicide detective for the LAPD. He's very reticent to cross the aisle and work for a defense attorney, to work for Money Chandler, and so that was the character journey that we wanted to explore. In this book, how can we realistically and be authentic about having Harry Bosch make that transition?

Is there something particular from the books in the season that you can talk about that maybe was your favorite part brought from the books in the season?… Is there something that was drawn directly from it that you were really happy to get to see?

Well, I think one of the things, [is] this whole thing is surrealistic. You sit in a room by yourself and write about a character. I first started writing about Harry Bosch, believe it or not, like in 1989, and the first book came out in '92. So, to have something you did that long ago - when I was writing that, I didn't even know the book would get published. So, now, twenty some Bosch books later, and then ten years of a TV show, it's just amazing. But there's always something that comes out of a scene in the book that when it's realized on film, I'm almost like a fan. I go like, "Wow, that's pretty cool; you got that right, and you chose that." There're a couple of those scenes. I mean, Harry Bosch takes on this case of the guy that Chandler thinks is falsely accused, and he starts putting together that she might be right. There's a scene where he explores - he's knocking on doors in an apartment building, and he gets a clue that kind of pivots his thinking on the case. That was really cool to see put together, and I'm sorry, I don't remember which episode that is, but we did it. That was like one of those moments where I get this immense rush of surreal fulfillment.

That's got to be really cool. When when you originally wrote this way back then, are the ideas all fictional? Like, is any of this from things that happened in real life?… I'm just curious if anything you pulled is from other than other than your imagination?

This is where my big disclaimer is. I'm not a creative genius. I make up very little. I spend a lot of time with people that do this kind of work. They're all good storytellers. I'm a collector…I collect stories. Then, I think I have a facility to turn that into fiction and figure out how to place it in a story, how it becomes the overarching plot, or is an anecdote or some memory. But almost everything that I put into my books is derivative from something. Like I said, most of the time, it's stories I've been told. I think I'm orally inspired; I hear a story and I am the fervor of - like a detective talks about a case where they got emotionally connected; the fervor of their storytelling inspires me. But at the same time, there'll be stuff that's in the news, and that will pique my interest that I'll find a way of taking part of it, or all of it, and turning it into a fictional story. So, it comes from all over.

What about Bosch himself? Was he partially inspired by anybody in your life? I mean, if so you don’t have to tell me who, I'm just curious.

No, I was a journalist for a long time. I was a police reporter. So, I talked to literally dozens and dozens of different detectives every week. So, I kind of feel like I took from all of them, but I'm also very inspired by my predecessors, writers of crime novels and TV shows and movies. So, he was really a lot of stuff put into a blender mixed up and poured out as, hopefully, a semi-unique character named Harry Bosch. But he's not a single source inspired character by any means.

In your words, talk tell fans what can they expect this season, story-wise? Not necessarily even from the book, but just kind of what can we look forward to?

We spend the first two episodes answering the question of what happened to Maddie Bosch, because we had a huge cliffhanger at the end of season one. We pay that off pretty quickly in two episodes, and with amazing performances from our three main leads. But within those two episodes, we set up the story that comes from the book called The Crossing, and that's where Chandler entices Harry Bosch to cross the aisle and work with her in the defense of someone she believes is wrongly accused of a murder, and it's a very heinous murder, and Harry's diving into that. Hit tips over a lot of dominoes that draw all three of our leads into into the storyline. It always ends or heads towards a pretty riveting set piece out at the Marina del Rey that involves Bosch and his daughter and life and death choices. So, there's some big, big things happening in [the season], and then this case, but we're always mindful of intertwining all our three characters into the same story.