Posted in: Amazon Studios, Movies, TV | Tagged: amazon studios, Bosch, casey affleck, crime fiction, crossovers, dennis lehane, ebook, Face/Off, Gone Baby Gone, harry bosch, Michael Connelly, Patrick Kenzie, short story, Titus Welliver
When Harry Bosch Teamed-Up with "Gone, Baby, Gone" PI Patrick Kenzie
Michael Connelly's LA cop Harry Bosch once teamed up with Dennis Lehane's private eye Patrick Kenzie in the crossover short story "Red Eye."
Crossovers in crime fiction are not uncommon – and a very popular topic, considering how many of you responded to our look at Lee Child's Jack Reacher and his previous literary crossovers. Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch also had a notable team-up with Dennis Lehane's working-class Boston private eye hero Patrick Kenzie in a short story in the anthology FaceOff. In "Red Eye," Bosch flies to Boston to track the suspect in a murder case in LA and teams up with local private investigator Patrick Kenzie when they end up going after the same suspect.
FaceOff was a short story anthology edited by Jack Reacher creator Lee Child where crime authors were invited to collaborate on short stories where their popular characters met up. Thus, we had Jack Reacher team up with Bones' Temperance Brannan in a story by Child and Kathy Reichs. The interesting part of "Red Eye" is that both Connelly and Dennis Lehane place great importance on the inner lives of their heroes. Harry Bosch and Patrick Kenzie are both constantly beset by their private wounds and moral dilemmas in how far to push their actions to get justice for the victims they want to avenge. Bosch is a Los Angeles cop bound by laws he might bend but must never break. Patrick Kenzie occupies the moral grey areas of his working-class Boston neighbourhood, where he has to walk a fine line because he doesn't have the authority of a badge. It doesn't get better than two angst-ridden crimefighters bumping into each other.
In the literary crossover, Harry Bosch makes his way from his normal stomping grounds of LA and heads east, landing at Boston's Logan Airport and hot on the trail of a lead in a fifteen-year-old unsolved murder. Meanwhile, local P.I. Patrick Kenzie has his sights set on the same suspect that Bosch is zeroing in on – but for a different reason. The recent disappearance of a seventh-grade girl is being labeled as a runaway by the lead detective in charge of the case – but Kenzie isn't buying into the idea that the girl went willingly out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night. Soon, Bosch and Kenzie find themselves meeting one-on-one outside the suspect's house – could they each hold the key to solving each other's cases before it's too late?
Casey Affleck played Patrick Kenzie in the 2007 movie adaptation of Gone, Baby, Gone, the only adaptation of Lehane's novels so far. Here's one interesting bit of trivia: Harry Bosch himself, Titus Welliver, played a supporting role as the man who hires Patrick Kenzie to find his missing niece.