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"I think maybe I only know one thing in this world. One thing for sure. And that is that the truth does not set you free."

-- The Narrows

Michael Connelly

In 1996, Michael Connelly, award-winning author of a series of highly regarded police procedurals starring ex-Vietnam vet and LAPD detective Harry Bosch, set aside his groundbreaking series for his first standalone novel.

The Poet turned on a series of murders staged to resemble suicides. The suicide notes borrowed heavily from the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

The novel became Connelly's best-selling book to that point and has emerged as a fan favorite. The Poet was also the only one of Connelly's books to end with the possibility of the villain having escaped capture, tantalizing fans with the possibility of a sequel -- a follow-up Connelly vowed never to write.

Although it was a critical and commercial success, and one of the quickest novels he ever composed, Connelly confessed the book was not a particularly satisfying one to write.

The Poet's hero was a journalist -- a character too close to home for the author. Prior to becoming a best-selling crime novelist, Connelly was a crime beat reporter for papers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, as well as for the Los Angeles Times.

"Part of the joy for me of writing is to take a guy like Harry Bosch who is quite different from me and ask 'What would he do in this situation? What would he think about being a father? What would he think about, chasing a murderer?' and so forth," Connelly recently told ThisWeek. "When I was writing The Poet, I couldn't do that. It was like, 'What would I do in that situation?' So it was only six months of writing in the case of The Poet, but even spending that amount of time, more or less talking about myself, wasn't as creatively fulfilling as the other books."

In Connelly's new novel, The Narrows (Little, Brown and Company, 408 pages, $25.95), a direct sequel to The Poet, reporter Jack McEvoy is off-stage. FBI agent Rachel Walling, who worked with McEvoy, is back and partnered with Harry Bosch, recently retired from the LAPD.

Former FBI profiler Terry McCaleb (Blood Work and City of Bones) is also pivotal to the plot.

Despite the apparent wiggle room he left at the end of The Poet for the killer's possible return, Connelly never intended to tie off the loose end.

"I did write that book with the notion of the bad guy getting away at the end because that was closer to the reality I knew as a reporter," Connelly said. "I used to set up files when I was a police reporter on murder cases and have them ready for when they finally caught the guy. When I checked out of journalism, I took all these files with me and there were so many cases that had been unsolved.

"That's the contradiction of movies and journalism -- of writing mysteries and crime novels. Ninety-nine percent of the time, everything is tied up and resolved and the guy has been caught. I wanted to do at least one book where that didn't happen and that's why for years I've been stalling and saying, 'I don't want to write a sequel. I will never write a sequel.'"

Connelly credits "a bunch of different things" for revising his own opinion of a writing a follow-up, including having a child of his own.

"The more I got away from journalism and got into just living in my life and in the fictional life, the more it bothered me that I had set this bad person free," he said. "This book is more of a long time coming than others, not only because it is a sequel, but because it is something I've been thinking about for a while. I can almost trace it back with my daughter's life. When she started talking and wanting stories and so forth. That's when I first started thinking about what I had done in my fictional world."

In order to protect The Narrows' rollercoaster plot -- which includes several unexpected cameos of other Connelly creations and the death of an established character -- Connelly convinced his publisher to take the unusual step of foregoing publication of any pre-release galleys or Advance Reader Copies.

"It's my 14th book," Connelly said. "For 13 previous books, I put out galleys as much as six to eight months ahead of time. There was a valid use in doing that then, but I've reached a point where I don't know what the value is now ... They become the instigators of Internet chatter. Stuff in the book is given away. I've been saying for a couple of years, 'Let's stop doing galleys. And, this time, with this book, I really mean it -- no galleys because there's a lot of interesting, surprising stuff in this book and it's all going to be out there six months ahead of time.'''

Connelly's publishers then began casting around for a way to get the word out about the novel to booksellers, leading to a rather unusual "extra" that many readers who buy The Narrows will receive with their copy of the book.

In 2003, to assist in promotion of Lost Light, his first novel featuring a post-LAPD Harry Bosch -- a novel that moved Bosch into first-person narration (which the author continues in The Narrows) -- Connelly, at his own expense, produced a limited edition CD of tunes reflecting Bosch's own musical tastes.

The CD, Dark Sacred Night, proved a bit too successful.

"There weren't enough," Connelly said. "It was so successful, it became a problem when we could not deliver to every bookstore that wanted to have it."

His publisher looked at that promotion and decided to create a DVD that would feature Connelly talking about The Narrows -- a DVD that would be distributed to booksellers and the media in lieu of the usual advance versions of the finished novel.

That project, however, grew. What emerged is Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly's Los Angeles -- an elaborate DVD featuring a retrospective of Connelly's work directed by fellow author and Connelly friend, Terrill Lee Lankford.

Connelly appears onscreen, explaining the inspiration for many of his novels and visiting actual settings for scenes from the books. Excerpts from the various novels are read by CSI star William Petersen. The DVD also includes outtakes and the original short promotional film created to promote The Narrows.

The disc will be distributed at a number of bookstores with the novel (including several local booksellers -- check the author's official Web site, www.michaelconnelly.com for a complete list of participating stores).

So far, about 72,000 copies of the DVD have been pressed.

"Eventually, I only agreed to do it if I could have a measure of control over it in terms of picking the pieces from the books to read and because I knew I would be on camera sometimes, I wanted to pick the director," Connelly said. "So I chose a friend of mine who is actually a novelist but who also kind of flirts with the movie business. I knew I could feel comfortable on camera if he was the guy holding the camera or at least on the other side of it."

Connelly also secured Petersen's participation in the project.

"It was kind of a shot in the dark," the author said. "I'd met him a couple of years ago because he reads my books, and through a friend of a friend, I ended up watching a baseball game with him. I kept the contact information for him ... Kind of on a whim, I sent an e-mail to Petersen and he -- shockingly -- agreed to do it. That really made it for me -- he's really good."

The CD, and its sequel, the DVD, also begs the question: What do you do to promote the next novel?

While he's pleased with the result, the DVD proved to be "a lark that ended up taking a lot of time," Connelly said. "I'm kind of hoping for the next book we won't do anything but the routine thing: A book tour, something like that."