The fourth season of the critically-acclaimed Amazon-produced television show Bosch, which stars Titus Welliver as veteran LAPD homicide Detective Harry Bosch, is already being called the best season so far by fans.
For what it’s worth, I couldn’t agree more. The fourth season, sourced mostly from the plot in Connelly’s novel Angel’s Flight, features a timely story arc, some shocking moments, plenty of action, a stunning conspiracy, and several tear-jerking scenes that, without spoiling anything, are really powerful. Welliver, who absolutely should win multiple awards due to his brilliant performance (a scene in episode four, when Bosch is emotionally wrecked but trying to hold it together, is as fine an acting job as you’ll find), is Harry Bosch. . . and he makes everyone around him better.
Just before season four was released to Prime members on Amazon, news broke that Bosch had been renewed for a fifth season, though nothing about potential storylines was mentioned at the time. Now, thanks to Michael Connelly and Titus Welliver breaking the news on social media, we know that season five will be based primarily on Connelly’s most recent Bosch novel, Two Kinds of Truth, which came out last October.
Excited to share that season 5 source will be mostly from Two Kinds of Truth. This is my favorite book!!
— TitusWelliver (@welliver_titus) April 26, 2018
The writers are busy working on @BoschAmazon season 5 now. It will go back into production in August. S5 will be based mainly on the Two Kinds Of Truth. https://t.co/mMa1FcgxdL
— Michael Connelly (@Connellybooks) April 26, 2018
For those who still haven’t read Two Kinds of Truth, you can read my review here or purchase your own copy, which just came out in paperback.
In keeping with timely plots, Two Kinds of Truth makes a lot of sense because in the book, Harry goes after a prescription drug ring. With the opioid crisis dominating headlines, next season has a chance to deal with more current, real-world issues in the show’s universe. But that’s only half of the book’s plot, which also features Bosch trying to clear his name when a killer on death row claims to have proof that Harry framed him for a murder he didn’t commit.
Any type of reversal in that case would have serious ramifications for Bosch and the city of Los Angeles. . . because if one incarcerated bad guy walks free, everyone else Harry helped lock up will start screaming for a retrial on the ground that they, too, were framed by the detective.
The juicy plotlines are perfect for the television show, and there’s no question that Welliver will once again crush his performance. The mystery, then, is how the writers will deal with a number of factors that don’t translate from the book to the Bosch TV universe. For example, in the book, Bosch is no longer with the LAPD, having suffered an ugly split with the police department he worked with for so long. Instead, he’s now working cold cases for the much smaller San Fernando Police Department.
That part of the story should be an easy fix, and I’m betting there’s probably a zero percent chance Bosch won’t be with the LAPD next season. I’m sure the writing team will find a way around it that makes sense and still stays true to the source material. The much bigger issue is that Bosch’s half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, played a prominent role in Two Kinds of Truth, as he represents Harry when the city hangs him out to dry.
Years before Welliver breathed life into Bosch, Matthew McConaughey portrayed Haller in the 2011 movie The Lincoln Lawyer, based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novel bearing the same name. The problem is that Amazon doesn’t own the rights to Haller, which means fans dying to see Welliver and McConaughey sharing the screen together won’t be getting their wish, something Welliver already acknowledged on Twitter.
It’s rare that an author’s characters be cast as well as Welliver and McConaughey were in their roles, which is why it would be so awesome to see them together. During a 2007 interview with SBS, Connelly was asked about this very scenario and admitted then that it would be hard to pull off, but that he’d like to see it happen.
“Now, we’re talking about all these different rights issues – it’s a real morass and it’s very hard to solve, but we are working on that because I think if someone like McConaughey says, ‘I want to do this,’ then a lot of the legal mumbo-jumbo goes away. So there’s an effort. I can’t say for sure anything will happen, but it would be pretty cool.”
Speaking of rights issues, Connelly previously battled Paramount to buy back the rights to Harry Bosch, after they initially purchased rights to the character but failed to ever move a film into production. According to Deadline, Paramount had a fifteen-year option. Connelly, after staying patient for a decade and a half, has hit pay dirt with the Amazon show. . . which brings us back to the question: who’s going to represent Harry Bosch in the fifth season, since Haller won’t (and can’t) be around to defend him?
Hopefully, we’ll find that out soon, as the cast is said to begin shooting sometime in August.
My way-too-early guess is that Honey “Money” Chandler (portrayed by Mimi Rogers), a civil rights attorney who in season four returns after the death of fellow defense attorney Howard Elias, could be the person to come to Harry’s defense. Again, not to give anything away from the most recent season, but with the way things end, it seems possible that Chandler may view Bosch differently. (Longtime fans of the show will remember that it was Chandler who represented the family suing Harry in the first season.)
In the meantime, while fans of the show wait for the next batch of episodes to come out in 2019, Bosch fans can pre-order Connelly’s next novel, Dark Sacred Night, which will feature Detective Renée Ballard (introduced in 2017’s The Late Show) teaming up with Harry to investigate the death of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally murdered. That book is set to come out on October 30th and is available for pre-order wherever books are sold.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.