Best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly on Los Angeles

[The Guardian, 25 october 2014]

The creator of the Harry Bosch series of detective novels looks beyond LA’s freeways to bring us a piazza full of mariachi musicians, historic bars, gorgeous views and tiny jazz clubs

Robert Hull

Los Angeles sprawls beyond the heights of Griffith Park, one of the city’s many superb green spaces. Photograph: Alamy

A major part of LA’s appeal is its variety. Within a day you can go from a snow-covered mountain to a beach. The people are so diverse; everyone comes here from somewhere else, looking for some kind of fulfilment, which makes it feel like a giant airport.

Before I arrived I envisaged the LA of Raymond Chandler: the sun-bleached streets, the dark romanticism. But what I found was a sprawling city with so many people and cars. I came here as a journalist, on the crime beat. You get sent to corners most people don’t see.

Hit the Pacific Coast highway, then get on Sunset Boulevard and take it east all the way to downtown. It’s one of the few roads that goes all the way through the city. You’ll see every geographic and social stratum. Sunset Boulevard runs past the great mansions of Beverly Hills and on to the barrios of east LA; you’ll see it all and don’t even have to take a turn … though the traffic’s going to kill you.

Driving the length of Sunset Boulevard is a must for visitors to LA. Photograph: Alamy

I’ve done research for my most recent novels by taking the subwayto neighbourhoods I want to explore – from east LA to Hollywood and beyond. It’s a fledgling system but a great way to see a different culture. At times, you might even think you’re in another country. There’s a subway station by Hollywood & Vine, and that area has its own personality, as has the plaza around the beautiful and wonderful Union station.

It’s wrong to assume that LA is a concrete jungle. One of the surprising things is all the green space. I like Griffith Park, which is huge, and the Santa Monica mountains, which run along the spine of the city.

If I could only show someone one place, I’d take them to a promontory above the Hollywood reservoir and Mulholland Dam to see the city sprawled in front of them. The daytime view can be crystal clear, or come and see it at night, with the city lights shining. It can even be beautiful when it’s smoggy, because the smog these days is white, not the yellow-brown haze it was 20 years ago.

If you’re an avid collector of crime fiction and thrillers, you should visit Mystery Pier on Sunset Boulevard. You can find obscure collectables, mystery and genre books here.

A lot of restaurants I go to end up in the books I write. I send the characters to them. My favourite place to eat in Hollywood is Chi Spacca on Melrose Avenue. It’s the place to go for great heavy food such as porterhouse steaks, lamb shoulder chops and roasted chicken.

Musso & Frank’s, in Hollywood, is a historic restaurant – Charlie Chaplin was a regular. Photograph: Alamy

If you want a really good drink go to the bar at The Musso & Frank Grill for a martini. It’s on Hollywood Boulevard, where it has been for nearly 100 years, and some of the waiters look like they’ve been there the whole time. It’s not big – 10 stools at the most. You’ll be sitting where Charlie Chaplin sat – it has history.

Mariachi Plaza is a cool place that not many people know about.It’s where mariachi musicians who are waiting to be hired at bars and for parties congregate. There can be 40 or 50 guys in Mariachi outfits, some duelling music back and forth. Look beyond them and you can see the towers of Downtown, so you know you’re in LA, but you just have to check yourself. To top it off there’s a cool little bookstore there called Libros Schmibros.

I share my character Harry Bosch’s love of music. I gave Harry my father’s taste in music: jazz. I had listened to some as a kid but had to get reacquainted with it. Now I love it. My two favourite venues to listen to it are the Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood, not far from where I live, and, downtown, a place called The Blue Whale. Both are pretty small but they get good acts. Even smaller is the Baked Potato on Cahuenga Boulevard.

• Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch thriller, The Burning Room (Orion, £19.99), is out on 6 November. To order a copy for £16.99 including UK p&p, visit bookshop.theguardian.com