Brook and Sarah are doing another Clued In Book Club. This time, we’re reading The Black Echo (1992) by Michael Connelly. Join the Cartel to join us for this three-part series where we discuss the books.
Discussed and mentioned
The Black Echo (1992) Michael Connelly
The Poet (1996) Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) Michael Connelly
Bloodwork (1998) Michael Connelly
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to a Clued in Bonus episode. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. I love doing read-alongs with you. |
| Sarah | I enjoy them too. I think it’s really fun to take a deeper dive into a book. And this time we are doing The Black Echo by Michael Connelly. And this is the first in his Bosch series. |
| Brook | Yes, our newsletter subscribers got a short list of choices, and this was their pick for us to read along. |
| Sarah | So why don’t we start, Brook, by just describing how we’re going to approach this read-along. |
| Brook | In past books that we’ve read together, we typically mark out various sections of the book, and then we don’t read ahead. We just read what our assignment is for the week, we discuss it, and then we go back. And a lot of times we’ll share some of our suspicions or our thoughts about what might be coming next. |
| Sarah | The first episode where we talk about the book in detail will be parts one and two. The second will be parts three, four, and five. |
| Sarah | And the final episode will be parts six, seven, eight, and nine. And those are all shorter parts. We’ve tried to divide it more or less equally in terms of page count for each of those sections. So listeners can read along with us. |
| Brook | And we hope that you will. I mean, this is a fantastic book to go to your library and grab or your favorite used bookstore because it’s been out since 1992. Sarah, I have not read any Michael Connelly before. |
| Sarah | So I have, I’ve read a few of the Lincoln Lawyer books. I’ve read one of his standalone books called The Poet, which was quite dark. |
| Sarah | Ah, and then I actually have read one of the Bosch books um from much later in this series, but it was a while ago. So, this is more or less fresh for me as well. |
| Brook | Yeah, I’ve definitely seen like we’ve watched the Lincoln Lawyer, both the TV adaptation and then um the movie. ah And then I actually had in my head that the Clint Eastwood movie from the early 2000s, it’s Michael Connelly’s Bloodwork story. |
| Brook | And I had it in my head that that was a Harry Bosch story, but it’s it’s not. It’s not a Bosch story. But I will um just to give you a heads up that very likely because of that movie, when I read this book, a 40-year-old Clint Eastwood is probably going to be Harry Bosch in my head. Because Clint Eastwood, right? |
| Sarah | Right, right, right. I love it. One of the things that I think is really interesting is that the Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer series are loosely connected. |
| Sarah | I don’t know if we’re going to see any of that in this first book. But I, you know, he’s created this world where those two characters exist together. |
| Brook | Oh, I didn’t know that. But you and I love it when an author does that and creates, you know, connections between their characters. So that’ll be fun. I agree. May not be something we see here since this is Connelly’s very first novel, but it will be fun to explore further. |
| Brook | You know, he won an Edgar Award for this and it was his first novel. So I think that we’re in for a treat. |
| Sarah | Absolutely. And I think as well, it’ll be really interesting because as you said, this was published in 1992. There was, I think, a big cultural shift starting to happen or or happening in the early 1990s, right? um I think a ah shift politically to President Bill Clinton, ah grunge music was starting to emerge, the Cold War was ending. It’ll be interesting to see if any of that is reflected in this book, because it would have been written ah in 1991 or maybe even earlier. So, you know, it may not. And we may have to wait um for a few books before we see any of that reflected. |
| Brook | That’s right. I will date myself ah unabashedly. 1992 is the year I graduated from high school. So I’m all about this era. |
| Sarah | Fabulous. Well, I can’t wait to start reading it, Brook. |
| Brook | I’m so excited, Sarah. So next time you’ll want to come back being prepared and having read parts one and two. And I will say that this will be exclusive content just released to our Cartel members. So if you are not already a Cartel member, you’re going to want to join that group in order to get these special bonus episodes. And Sarah, do you want to tell people how they can become a member? |
| Sarah | Absolutely. So we’ve got a link on our website and there’s a couple of different options for people to choose with respect to payment. The cheapest option is $12 a year. That’s only available as a single one-time annual payment. |
| Sarah | The full price, if you want to fully support us, is $12 a month or $120 a year. There’s a slight discount if you do the annual payment. And all of those prices are in US dollars. But when you pay, it um automatically shows up in your local currency. |
| Brook | Thanks, Sarah. Well, we hope that you come and join us in this really fun read-along of The Black Echo. and Until then, I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
