Crime fiction writers Michael Connelly and Joe Ide will join Republic reporter Robert Anglen for what’s sure to be a thrilling discussion of their new novels Nov. 2 in Scottsdale.

Here’s the rundown on their latest efforts, featuring established detective Harry Bosch and up-and-coming PI Isaiah Quintabe.

Harry Bosch has a new mission and it’s a killer

Harry Bosch is hunched over a makeshift desk in the back of an old city jail cell. His new office.

The retired Los Angeles homicide detective is hunting through a cold-case file. This one is infamous. A woman who vanished from her home 15 years ago, leaving her infant in a crib.

He gets a warning text. Investigators from the LAPD and the District Attorney are coming for him.

They have questions about a murder case Bosch put down years ago. New facts have emerged along with allegations that Bosch planted evidence.

All of this and you haven’t even finished the first chapter of Michael Connelly’s new breakneck thriller, “Two Kinds of Truth.”

By chapter two, Bosch is wading through the gore of a double homicide at a San Fernando family pharmacy that will send him into the world of prescription drug abuse, pill mills and opiate addiction. 

This book continues the evolution of Bosch since leaving the LAPD. He now splits his time between private investigations and volunteer work at the tiny San Fernando Police Department.

It is a reflection of Connelly’s talent that after 19 books chronicling Bosch’s career, this iteration feels fresh and authentic. This is Bosch at his F-you best, pursuing his mission, seeking justice and speaking for the dead.

Unlike most of Connelly’s Bosch books, “Two Kinds of Truth” has an expository quality that almost begs a “ripped-from-the-headlines” promo line.

Connelly, perhaps tapping his former life as a reporter, pushes Bosch into an undercover investigation that provides a top to bottom examination of the nation’s opioid crisis.

Or make that bottom to top. It starts with his infiltration of a clinic as a pill shill, moves to his recruitment by a criminal syndicate and ends with his discovery of secret drug camps on the edge of the Salton Sea.  

As Bosch chases the pharmacy killers, the allegations of corruption chase him. The stakes are high. If the conviction is overturned, a vicious sexual predator will be set free. 

LAPD brass and the DA’s office seem willing to believe Bosch set up the frame and are prepared to feed him to the media as a cop gone bad. In vintage Bosch fashion, he launches his own counter-offensive to clear his name and keep the killer behind bars.

A lot of familiar characters from previous Connelly books reappear here, including Bosch’s half brother, Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller and one of his oldest partners, Jerry Edgar.

Some of the best, most nuanced scenes involve Haller and his subtle manipulations of the law—and the truth. Haller is Bosch’s dark half, his alter ego, and he chews up pages in his legal battle against the department. 

But make no mistake, this is a Bosch story. He only knows one way to play it, straight. For Bosch, the consummate good guy, there’s good and there’s bad and little in between.

So it should come as no surprise that Connelly avoids wrapping up his tale with a cynical ribbon. Certainly, he must have been tempted. You can see the disillusion coming. And yet.

Maybe that’s the secret to Bosch’s universal appeal. Despite the horror of homicide, the banal ignominy of sudden violence, the pain of victims and the wrecked lives of those left behind, Harry Bosch is an optimist. 

In the end, “Two Kinds of Truth” is about Bosch and his mission. He best sums it up: “You know what I mean. I want in. Let’s go get him.”

 Joe Ide’s characters are flat out ‘Righteous’

There are some places where even the most relentless detectives can’t go. Neighborhoods where police are background specters: The knock on the door, the cutting night siren, the hard stare at an intersection.

They are urban-scapes of gangs and graffiti, poverty and crime, despair and distrust. A badge won’t find truth here. That requires an insider’s understanding and empathy—and IQ.

IQ is Isaiah Quintabe, the genius, self-styled detective who has crafted a reputation in East Long Beach as a man who can help.

Sure, he once took a rooster as payment, and he has been known to trade his insight for a home-cooked casserole. But he also has rescued a child snatched off the street and stopped a vicious contract killer.

Quintabe was introduced last year in Joe Ide’s superbly crafted, award-winning thriller, “IQ.” Now he’s back in “Righteous,” an equally impressive and even more tightly controlled story. 

“Righteous” opens where “IQ” left off, with Quintabe burning for revenge and tracing a new lead in the death of his beloved brother, killed by a hit-and-run driver 10 years earlier.

Marcus’ death made 16-year-old Quintabe an orphan, shattering any hope he had of college and escape from the grid of Section 8 apartments, fast food joints and liquor stores wedged against the Los Angeles River and Highway 1. 

Quintabe escaped his grief by shutting himself off emotionally and using cases to take refuge inside his mind. He has built a reputation as an unofficial private investigator, able to navigate the tribal territories of rival gangs and neighborhood warlords. 

But now he’s resumed his hunt for his brother’s killer and he is determined that nothing will stop him. Except, perhaps, a new case.

It comes in the form of an entreaty from his brother’s old girlfriend. Her sister needs help in Las Vegas, and it’s not the kind of help you can get from police. Janine Van is an up-and-coming DJ in the Vegas club scene. But she and her degenerate gambler boyfriend are in deep to loan sharks.

Quintabe, aided by career-criminal and sometimes-friend Dodson, arrive in Las Vegas to find Janine is being hounded by a vicious Asian street gang. In an effort to get out from under her debts, Janine has unwittingly stolen information that could expose an international human trafficking ring. If that isn’t bad enough, her boyfriend attempts to blackmail a Triad accountant.

Ide is anything but conventional. He alternates chapters between Quintabe’s quest to find his brother’s killer at home and his efforts save Janine in Las Vegas without pinning either case in time. The result is a double-helix of storytelling that winds tighter and tighter.

He shifts perspective as well, giving us insights into a panoply of carefully crafted characters; pimps, prostitutes, gangbangers, hoodlums, victims and heroes.

Ide’s books are marketed as a kind of urban take on Sherlock Holmes. But that is an unfair and cheap comparison. Ide’s thrillers are more heart than style, more “The Caveman’s Valentine” than “A Study in Scarlet.” And, man, are they funny.

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Quintabe’s deductions are not flights of self-aggrandized fancy but immediate and relevant. And while his life might tragic, it is grounded by a deeply felt connection to real people and places. 

Comparisons to Walter Mosley and Easy Rawlins are inevitable. Like Mosley, Ide is building a new kind of detective series from the ground up.

Quintabe is not confined by the restraints of a traditional PI novel. His backstory is being honed with each book, He could go anywhere.   

It’s going to be pure pleasure watching him get there.

Michael Connelly and Joe Ide

What: Join reporter Robert Anglen in a discussion with crime writers Michael Connelly and Joe Ide, who will sign and discuss their new books

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2 (doors open at 6 p.m.).

Where: Doubletree Resort Hilton Paradise Valley, 5401 N Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale.

Admission: Free, $29 for Connelly’s “Two Kinds of Truth”, $26 for Ide’s “Righteous”. 

Details: 480-947-2974, poisonedpenevents.com.

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