Will 'Bosch' and 'The Lincoln Lawyer' writer Michael Connelly kill off his detective hero?

Bestselling author Michael Connelly is grappling with real-life woes (his Siesta Key, Fla., house was pummeled by Hurricane Milton).

So are his characters.

"The Waiting," Connelly's 39th book and the sixth featuring cold-case cop Renee Ballard, finds Ballard's team tackling multiple mysteries, including two that are ripped from the headlines: the Pillowcase Rapist, who assaulted more than 40 Californians beginning in the 1970s. And the Black Dahlia, a starlet who was murdered and dismembered in 1947, a crime that has never been solved.

Connelly's most famous character, former LAPD cop Harry Bosch, also makes an appearance in "The Waiting" and continues to feature in the Amazon series "Bosch" (but not yet in "The Lincoln Lawyer" series on Netflix). In a chat with Connelly, 68, he reveals that Bosch, who's about a decade older than Connelly, isn't going anywhere soon:

Q: With both Harry Bosch and Mickey "Lincoln Lawyer" Haller so popular, what was the impetus to create the character of Ballard?

A: Harry ages in real time and he was getting up there to a point I knew he could still do stuff — and there's a whole thing in law enforcement of retired guys working cold cases — but his age was becoming a creative issue, so I was looking around for someone new.

For a long time, I've had a little cadre of homicide detectives who helped me with my books. One I met through the others, Mitzi Roberts. One day when I had lunch with her and was shooting the breeze, I asked how she got into detective work. She was pretty young and I asked how she did it. She said, "I volunteered for a shift no one wanted, the midnight shift in Hollywood."

Q: And a light bulb went on?

A: Well, I had known her five or six years at that point. But I had never asked her about herself.

Q: That must be a huge gift for a writer, a new character who arrives fully formed?

A: It's the gift that keeps giving. I feel like I write with Mitzi on my shoulder. I definitely am always sending her texts and questions about what would she do in this situation? She reads my manuscripts, marks them up, tells me how to do it better/more accurately. And then, to top it off, she retired in April. She was running the cold case squad for the LAPD and now she works as a writer/producer on the [untitled] Ballard TV series, which is being filmed now for Amazon.

Q: More than your other books, "The Waiting" captures what I imagine is the messiness or chaos of a cop's life, that they're not just solving one case at a time but always in the middle of a bunch. Did that come from Roberts?

A: That's a very good insight. That's what I'm trying to do, and chaos might not be a bad word for it. It's a balancing act of several things. As I started writing about Ballard and spending more time with Mitzi Roberts, I knew that was what was going on. She was in charge of a ragtag crew of volunteers, all working cases and wanting her help. She was like the conductor of an orchestra and not everybody plays on key.

Q: Since you're adapting your work for three TV series, do you ever look back at earlier books and wish you had done things differently?

A: Usually, I do the smart thing and rarely reread my books, so there's no, "Oh, crap, this didn't work. I wish I did that better." So, one negative of having these TV shows is, if I'm going to be involved, I have to reread my books. I prefer to write like a shark: Keep moving forward.

Q: Does writing and producing TV shows influence your books?

A: It does. Maddie Bosch [Harry's daughter, a new cop in "The Waiting"] is definitely the influence of the TV show, echoing back to me. She was definitely the part I liked writing the best. Up until the last 10, 12 years with the TV shows coming into play, every page of my books, you saw the world through the main character's eyes, whether it was Bosch or Haller. But when you make a TV show, you can't do that. You've got to spread the storytelling out. The actor can't be in every scene, so that led to the TV show developing characters beyond what I had done in my books. And that bounces back to developing more characters in the books, too.

Q: You've said that developing the character of Ballard was rejuvenating for you. Do you foresee any new protagonists with their own series?

A: I'm always looking to challenge myself. Writing about the same characters, there are things that are easy and things that are difficult. But there's nothing like the pleasure and fulfillment of coming up with a whole new person and world. There will be one more [new one]. I'm actually writing one now. That will be out next year.

Q: Can you say anything about it? What's it called?

A: I don't have a title yet. It was inspired by a short story I wrote a long time ago about — off of L.A., there's an island called Catalina that falls under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department of L.A. County. That idea stuck in my head, so now I'm expanding on it.

Q: Your fans are going to be psyched that Ballard and her team take on the famously unsolved Black Dahlia murder in "The Waiting." Is that where you started with the book? It's a big swing!

A: No, the starting point was to write about the Pillowcase Rapist, which I wrote several stories about when I was a reporter. The last thing to come in was Maddie and the [Black Dahlia] case she stumbles upon. I was thinking, "How do I bring Maddie into the story?" She's young and the only way to get her into a working situation with Ballard is she'd have to bring in something. So, I went with the most notorious unsolved crime in L.A. history.

Q: It's great to have Harry Bosch around for parts of "The Waiting," even if most of his detecting days are behind him. Do you think you'll ever kill him off?

A: That is undecided. I like the idea of him fading into the background and passing the baton, which kind of happens some in "The Waiting." Again, we're talking about a fictional character, not someone who is alive, so I hesitate to kill him. I also feel like I'm 68 years old, I don't know how many more years I'll be writing. But I hope that whenever I write my last book‚ Bosch is in it.

The Waiting

By: Michael Connelly.

Publisher: Little, Brown, 416 pages, $30.