Quiz : what have you missed?

1) What is the digit sequence the Code Killer left at his crime scenes?

1. 814537906
2. 548102967
3. 903472568
4. 873029614

2) Who has not been shot in the novel?

1. Mikhail Bolotov
2. Gloria Torres
3. James Cordell
4. Donald Kenyon

3) What is the link between the three victims mentioned in the novel?

1. They all knew the killer.
2. They all have the same blood type.
3. They all were criminals.
4. They all were killed for their money.

4) What is the relationship between James Noone and the Code Killer ?

1. They are friends.
2. James Noone killed the Code Killer.
3. They are the same person.
4. The Code killer shot Noone as he was getting money from an ATM machine.

5) How did Noone end up?

1. Terry killed him and made it look like a suicide.
2. Terry arrested him.
3. The FBI arrested him.
4. Terry locked him in a room and set fire to the place.

6) Who is the "Good Samaritan" ?

1. A Mexican immigrant who witnessed Gloria Torres' death.
2. The Code Killer.
3. Bonnie Fox.
4. James Cordell.

7) In the novel, what sentence did the killer say in front of the cameras that filmed his crimes?

1. "Happy Valentine's day".
2. "Don't forget the ravioli".
3. "Don't forget the cannoli".
4. "Merry Christmas".

8) Did this sentence have a particular meaning ?

1. Yes, it was a warning for his next victims.
2. No, it was just to disturb the inquiry.

9) What is James Noone's real name?

1. Daniel Crimmins
2. Bradley Connelly
3. Buddy Lockridge
4. Jeff Daniels

10) In the film, only one of these assertions is true, which one ?

1. Terry McCaleb is not a retired FBI agent.
2. Bolotov is not McCaleb's first suspect.
3. Winston is the killer.
4. Buddy is a criminal.

11) What happened to Bolotov in the novel ?

1. He was killed.
2. He was arrested by Terry McCaleb.
3. He spread evidence of the crimes on Terry's boat.
4. He fled to Russia.

12) How did Terry McCaleb realize that Noone is the killer he is looking for?

1. Noone told him.
2. Noone's son was waiting for a heart.
3. There was incriminating evidence in his home.
4. Noone pretended to be under hypnosis while he was being questionned by McCaleb.

13) Why did Terry McCaleb hire Buddy as a driver ?

1. Because he feels Buddy can help him find the killer.
2. Because Buddy is a good driver.
3. Because he can't drive.
4. Because Bonnie Fox told him to not drive.

14) Where did Buddy find the crime weapon?

1. On Terry's boat.
2. In the water, under Terry's boat.
3. In a washing machine.
4. He didn't find it.

15) Why do police departments prefer not to hypnotize witnesses?

1. It is not reliable.
2. People who have been hypnotized can't witness in court anymore.
3. It is forbidden by law.
4. It is risky for the one being hypnotized.

16) What is Playa Grande ?

1. Where the final scenes of the novel took place.
2. The marina where McCaleb's boat is docked
3. The name of a restaurant where Terry and Graciela had dinner.
4. Where James Cordell's widow lives.

17) Why did Noone describe this place during the hypnosis session ?

1. It's easier to lie while describing something you know well.
2. Arrango told him to do so.
3. Because it is the place where Cordell was killed.
4. He didn't describe it.

18) The Code Killer told McCaleb he had killed Graciela and Raymond. How ?

1. He poisoned them.
2. He stabbed them.
3. He buried them alive.
4. He drowned them.

19) Why did Bonnie Fox threaten McCaleb she'd stop being his doctor ?

1. Because she knows he loves Graciela.
2. Because he is fully healed.
3. Because he keeps doing things that put his health in danger.
4. Because she is overbooked.

20) What is Graciela's blood type ?

1. AB with CMV negative.
2. AB with CMV positive.
3. O with CMV negative.
4. Not mentioned in the book.

Book vs. Movie

Anyone with the slightest interest in how badly Hollywood can botch a book adaptation has to take in account Clint Eastwood’s 2002 take on Michael Connelly’s Blood Work. While I’m sure this is hardly a unique case of a screenwriter savaging an original work, BLOOD WORK has the particularity of featuring not only a completely new ending (a common enough event in cinematic adaptation) but a brand-new villain!

Indeed, the identity of the serial killer is switched from one character to another from book to movie, along with the villain’s family name just to make things even more confusing. The result, as you may expect, is a bit of a mess, bringing down a rather good novel to the level of a predictable crime thriller.

In light of this, reading the novel after seeing the movie can be a very interesting experience.

The initial premise stays the same, mind you: A convalescent detective (Terry McCaleb), recuperating from a heart transplant, is asked to investigate the murder of his very own organ donor. Mix in a romantic entanglement with the client, (the sister of the donor), a steady accumulation of clues as well as a sadistic serial killer who just won’t quit and you’ve got yourself a delicious little crime thriller.

Alas, other aspects are decidedly less endearing. The various nauseous double-entendres about hearts, blood, love and whatnot are tiresome, and so is some of the romance between McCaleb and “the client”. Feel free to be queasy as you see fit.

Also less successful is the exasperating ending, which was thankfully shortened in the movie. Rather than wrap up the book in a timely fashion, we get an entirely new act in isolated Mexico. The movie’s wrap-up may have been indistinguishable from dozen of other movie shoot’em ups, but at least it had the merit of being over in five short minutes.

Fortunately, Connelly’s writing is fluid enough to make even a padded ending still feel interesting. His writing is crisp, flows well and has an eye for detail. The novel usually hits its stride whenever it turns to the purely procedural elements of the plot. Our protagonist’s forays in the workings of the organ donor system, his careful examinations of crime evidence, his intuitive leaps of logic are easily the most fascinating elements of the book.

It adds additional interest that McCaleb is a convalescent detective. Unlike the usual manly, two-fisted private detectives that usually drive crime thrillers, McCaleb needs a driver, can’t get too worked up and has to consult a medical specialist before engaging in strenuous activities. I’ll bet you haven’t seen that elsewhere in crime fiction. The biggest difference between the book and the film, and the biggest mistake made by the film, isn’t the ending or the different identity of the serial killer, but the nature of the changes made to McCaleb. Whereas he’s a portly forty-year-old in the novel, production concerns dictated that the protagonist of the film became none other than seventy-years-old Clint Eastwood. (It’s hard to say no when he’s also directing the film) This completely modified the impression left by the story on-screen, where we’re more liable to worry about Eastwood slipping and breaking a hip than having a heart attack. The various action scenes gratuitously thrown in the script also didn’t help the film’s credibility given the condition of the protagonist. One thing is for sure: you won’t read about McCaleb firing a shotgun at a speeding car in this novel, no sir!

None of this matters, of course, if you’ve never seen the film. All in all, you’re still better off reading the book. The story slowly gives way to a pretty cool twists (which most seasoned readers will see coming, but is still pretty nifty nonetheless) and the wealth of procedural details is fascinating in its own right. Blood Work is worth a look regardless of the movie tie-in. After all, it surely doesn’t come across as any surprise to learn that the book is usually better than the movie, right?

Christian Sauvé

This article was originally posted on http://www.christian-sauve.com/2003/03/blood-work-michael-connelly/

And as a bonus for reading all that, a scene from the movie!

An aggregation of Q&As with Michael Connelly

Q: What about your non-series novel Blood Work?

A:  Blood Work was inspired by a good friend of mine who had a heart transplant in 1993. I was aware from spending time with him how much his life had changed, how much he was relying on the medical machinery, and how he had to take fifty-two pills a day. The main thing, however, that inspired it was that after he got the new heart he started exhibiting many of the emotions that I saw years earlier when I was working on that plane-crash story and talking to the survivors. The thing that touched me so much about those survivors was their survivor guilt--their emotional upset at surviving a crash where many other people didn't and the happenstance of it. You know, like one person walks away without a scratch where the person in the seat next to them is killed. Though it's no fault of their own, it delivers a burden to them. My friend, Terry, who had the heart transplant, had the same thing happen to him. It took him a long time to work it out and to reach a point of acceptance. Of all the things that he was going through, that touched me the most and inspired me to write a story that had someone in his situation where he felt beholden to the person who provided his heart.

Source:  http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/angelsflight/


Q: What is your relationship to Los Angeles -- are you still discovering it?


A: It pretty much heated up by my being a reporter. My job took to me many corners of the city. LA is many distinct communities, and there's not a lot of movement between them. In the 12 years I've lived here, I've had the opportunity to see a lot more of these communities than most people who've lived here a longer time.

It's a hard city to get a handle on. I have a good feel for the physical geography, but I'm not sure I have a good feel for the social geography.


Q: Do you feel you have a responsibility to Los Angeles, or at least its image? A lot of people are getting a feeling for contemporary Los Angeles from reading your books, the way they got a feeling for it in the 1940s from reading Chandler.


A: I had that feeling when I wrote The Last Coyote, which was post-earthquake. Two things have really shaped the city: one was the earthquake and the other was the Rodney King incident and the riots in 1992. I felt a responsibility to write about what it's been like to live here after the place has been shaken -- by an earthquake or by a riot.

I didn't write about the racial tensions too much until Angels Flight, and that had sort of bothered me, because I wanted my writing to reflect contemporary Los Angeles.

Source: http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/connelly.html


Q: You have within the last few years introduced another character, Terry McCaleb (Blood Work, Darkness Greater Than Night) and also written The Poet.

A: A lot of that is in deference to Bosch. The more I write about Harry Bosch, the more I need to take a break from him. The character can not remain static. From book to book he has to evolve and change and you have to peel of the layer of onion. That’s getting hard because I have written about him eight times. So invariably when I am done writing about him I want to forget about him for a little bit. So I have dropped into this cycle of alternating between him and other books. I have one done now; it doesn’t have him in it. It’s a "one-off" thriller. Since we are talking about classifying I’m thinking it will be classified as a "techno-thriller" because of some of the subject matter.



Q: Is Blood Work the first of your novels to be made into a movie?

A: Yes. As they came out, I did sell the first four Harry Bosch books in order to the same studio, the same producer. It’s all very legal but I could technically sell a Bosch book now because they have had Harry Bosch, the character, for over 10 years. And they were 10-year deals. So in a way he’s reverted back to me. They are still working very hard to make a movie out of Harry Bosch so I wouldn’t pull the rug out from underneath them and sell him to a competing studio. I’m still happy with their efforts. There has been no movie but it’s not for lack of trying. There have been seven different scripts written on four books. They just have not captured the character. They are about to start an eighth so we’ll see what happens.
[...] I don’t want to act like I write everything with Hollywood in mind. When I don’t write about Harry Bosch or when I am writing a "one off" there is the aspect that there could be a pot of gold at the end of this book if Hollywood comes calling.


Q: Did Clint Eastwood come to you on Blood Work?

A: I believe he was leaked an unfinished manuscript [...]. He made a preemptive strike on it before I was done with the book. And we met and even talked about things he thought I might want to consider changing before I finished it because they would not be the way I had them in the book in the movie. It was an interesting conversation.


Q: I’m sure. You write the book and then somebody else writes the screenplay. You didn’t write it did you?

A: No. So Eastwood and I had this meeting almost five years ago. And he told me in that all-morning-long meeting that I wouldn’t hear from him again until he made the movie. That’s the kind of filmmaker he is. He has his own team and so forth, and he was true to his word. Four years went by and I never heard anything and then the script was delivered to my house. I read it and it was quite good. I got excited about it after four or five years of anxiety about what would happen. Eastwood is 25 years older than the guy in the book is and that was a big thing about how that would be dealt with. The script catered to his age now as opposed to him trying to pass for a much younger man. That was a relief, but I did have some very minor thoughts and notes. But I didn’t think I would have the opportunity to voice them. Then he [Eastwood] just called me out of the blue and asked me what I thought of the script. I ended up by sending him four pages of notes and he responded saying he agreed and liked the notes and as he said, "I’m going to use them all." So after not being in the loop it felt like, maybe out of courtesy, I was at least somewhat involved.

Source: http://www.identitytheory.com/michael-connelly/

The movie's trailer

Oh, I found a link too, I wonder where it would take you: the link.

Major themes in Bloodwork

Connelly's Bloodwork  does highlight a few issues that are worth a minute of our time. So let's take a minute of our time to think about these issues that are worth this minute of our time.

Evil
One can't deny that this James Noone guy is not terribly warm and cuddly, he is a twisted evil cold blooded maniac. His portrait is so evil that you end up wondering whether such extremes exist in real life. Let's hope they don't, otherwise we'd all be in deep trouble.

Internet
Connelly clearly points to computers and the internet in Bloodwork as a potential source for trouble as well as solace: McCaleb makes a major breakthrough thanks to the BOPRA online database and the killer uses that same database to choose victims and convey messages to McCaleb. In an interview with Bob Cornwell, Connelly says he believes that the internet "has fundamentally changed the relationship between writer and reader".

Blood-bonds
McCaleb feels compelled to help Graciela (She may also have been a pain in the backside) solve this mystery because he has her sister's heart. He feels indebted to her and does whatever he can to repay his debt. But did he really have to? Granted, he was the major beneficiary from this murder but he didn't know that when Graciela first came, he could have simply blown her off, and then we wouldn't be here discussing all this. Do we really owe anything to people with whom we share blood?

Camaraderie and professional confrontations
This is an area where Bloodwork excels. The professional bonds between Terry, Winston, Arrango Walters , Uhlig and co. are thoughtfully researched and well described in Connelly's words. We can clearly see how the local authorities (here the LAPD) are bummed by federal authorities' interventions (here the FBI), how Arrango is infuriated by Terry's involvement in the case and how Terry himself regards Buddy Lockridge, who was arguably essential to his work, as a mere servant.

Of course, other topics are mentioned in the novel, so feel free to share those that interested you the most.

What I think about Bloodwork

Let's make one thing clear before we proceed: I, in no way, claim to be a book critic nor do I present an objective perspective. This is not a book review, this is what I think of Michael Connelly's book.

Having gotten that out of the way, let us now give credit where credit is due. In about thirty or so pages, Connelly managed to hook me into reading his book. It sets off with a few nice scenes and intriguing exchanges between McCaleb and Graciela Rivers that entice the reader's intellect and lure him into reading the next few pages, and those pages con the reader into the reading the following ones until you've finished the book (or at least came close to its end). Not many authors can do that.

In essence, it's a nice little thriller you'd read your kid before he goes to sleep. Ok, it's not that nice, but still, it doesn't exactly shatter your world either. It's nice, yeah "nice" is just about the right word for it. It, reasonably, keeps you on your toes, ie you can still eat and sleep without obsessively rushing to the book to read a few pages, and manages to provide you with a few "aha" moments. But does it fill the "one of Michael Connelly's best books" shoes? I believe not, because I don't consider Michael Connelly as an average writer.

You have surely noticed that what you just read is some kind of PG13 mix of compliments and blows to Bloodwork. Well, from now on, it's full on war.

Start reading the book, you're introduced to McCaleb. Ok, fine. Then comes Graciela Rivers. Hmm. First off, the godforsaken name... Graciela Rivers? Seriously? Why didn't Connelly go all the way and give her a Phoenix's name (You know Joaquin Phoenix? His siblings are called Rain, River, Liberty and Summer). Then he talks about how she is dressed lightly, as if she is there to seduce McCaleb. How, on god's green earth, does a woman who just lost her sister and is seeking help to find the killer, dress like a woman on vacation (for lack of a better word, if you know what I mean)? Do you see where I'm going? Either she is sad because her sister died, and then she'd look normal or perhaps awful, or she isn't, which means she'd dress well and not go to McCaleb's boat. Yet, as Connelly expects us to believe, she is sad and well dressed to lure Terry into taking the job. I think Connelly's trying to lure us into reading his book. You know, sex sells. Oh and the Mikhail Bolotov lead? What was that for? To spice up some otherwise dull novel unfortunately.

Let's talk now about the unfolding of the story. McCaleb successfully joins the puzzle pieces and finds out that the killer is targeting potential organ donors who could save McCaleb's life. Then, with some crafty witchcraft he manages to find out it's James Noone, aka the code killer, the code that doesn't have a 1, hence the name "No one". I mean come on, am I to believe that the killer has been hiding in plain sight all along? This is way too unrealistic for my liking. Then, adding insult to injury, the code killer sends McCaleb messages on computer screens and tells him, to put it simply, "I gave you life, so you're mine now". Well, first of all, given that the novel was released in 1998, this screams "I'm gonna cram some computers into this, kids'll dig it"; I believe that computers had no role to play in the storyline and were just put in for some bizarre reason. Secondly, Connelly expects us to believe that the killer is so sick and twisted that instead of killing McCaleb, he saved him. Man, you lost all credibility.

What does Clint Eastwood's "Bloodwork" film have to do with all of this? Keep in mind that it was a commercial flop: it cost 50 million dollars and grossed 26 million. Not exactly spectacular, and it's easy to see why: the book's a flop, Eastwood is chiefly an actor,and he failed miserably trying to act in and direct this film. The camera angles were simply bad, the effects, particularly McCaleb's dream, are amateur at best and the music too dull. Yet, all in all, it managed a 6.3/10 on IMDB, which is good (bad movies hover around the 5/10 mark), and that's because Eastwood radically changed the plot to make it more realistic so it suits the silver screen: the code killer is no longer James Noone, some random killer, but McCaleb's neighbor Buddy. Some characters were changed for the movie, Graciela was a waitress in the movie, others were axed and a few sequences from the book did not make it onto the silver screen, notably the all important hypnosis session since the man being hypnotized did not exist in the movie.

I'll quote a few IMDB reviews of the film so we can all see what the average viewer thought about it:

"Clint Eastwood's direction sadly loses its way late in this otherwise suspenseful drama [...]. "Blood Work" does do well for the majority of its running time, but the punchline comes way too fast and the finale is unsatisfying to say the least. Eastwood is pretty good as usual and Daniels is excellent in a comical supporting turn. Everyone else though ends up struggling to keep their intensity up as the production progresses. The "Hardy Boys" routine and the unnecessary blossoming romance between Eastwood and De Jesus make "Blood Work" play more like a television movie of the week than a theatrical release. With all this said, "Blood Work" does do enough good things to keep the audience watching and intrigued---most of the time anyway. 4 stars out of 5." - tfrizzell

"[...]This is not a bad movie, it's just not a particularly good one. If you're hoping for another Unforgiven, or even a Dirty Harry, look elsewhere.
But even Clint can't bat 1.000." - Bryce Rumbles