Actually, don’t wait until then! If you’re in your thirties or forties or whatever, read Michael Connelly’s Desert Star now…and then read it again when you’re in your seventies. It will be a different book.

Of course if you’re already in your seventies, this advice is too late for you. Just read it now.

The great Michael Connelly is one of today’s best writers of mystery fiction. His long Harry Bosch series of police procedurals (25 books and counting) merged early on with his Lincoln Lawyer series and was then enhanced by the addition of Renée Ballard, protagonist of this volume and (I predict) the next one. I am even told that Bosch has become a television series, as has the Lincoln Lawyer, though I know nothing about either.

As you see from the cover, Ballard comes before Bosch this time. That’s clue #1 to what’s important about this novel. I’m being a little mysterious here, but that’s appropriate.

Clue #2 is Bosch’s mantra that provides a through-line throughout the entire Bosch series: “Either everybody counts or nobody counts.” I think about that every day when I read the political news, and I’m not talking about ballots. Although Bosch is a cop, he has the attitude of the traditionally independent private eye in detective literature .

Writers of any long series have to decide whether their characters are going to age in real time. If so, the implications of aging and of what’s happening outside the world of the book loom large: how to preserve what needs to be preserved and change what needs to change? The late, lamented Sue Grafton famously solved both problems by keeping time from moving forward; it is always the ’80s. But Connelly lets characters grow with the years. They do that organically and convincingly. Their perspective on the world changes, as does your perspective as a reader. And that’s why you should read Desert Star in your ’70s, so you can see whether Connelly and his characters change the way you have.

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