Michael Connelly is behind the literary source material for both Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer and Prime Video’s Bosch, two of the biggest streaming successes of the past decade. That each of the major TV adaptations of Connelly’s work is among the most watched shows of the streaming age, demonstrates his knack for creating compelling crime-thriller characters, and coming up with enough plotlines to span several seasons of gripping drama.
But it’s not just Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch that Michael Connelly writes about. The author has several more novel protagonists whose stories revolve around the investigation of crimes, including Renee Ballard from Prime Video’s upcoming Bosch spinoff. Another brilliant Connelly character who hasn’t yet received his own TV adaptation is Jack McEvoy, an investigative reporter whose stories draw on the author’s own journalistic experiences (via Michael Connelly’s official website). McEvoy’s first novel appearance predates Mickey Haller’s, making him one of the longest-serving central heroes in Michael Connelly’s literary universe.
Jack McEvoy Should Get A TV Show After The Lincoln Lawyer & Bosch
McEvoy Is One Of Michael Connelly’s Longest-Running Novel Protagonists
Jack McEvoy first appeared in Michael Connelly’s 1996 novel, The Poet, which was only the fifth book the novelist had published to that point. It charts McEvoy’s attempts to uncover the culprit of his identical twin brother’s murder, despite being a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, rather than an actual detective. Like he does in the books which inspired Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch, Connelly unravels The Poet’s mystery with his trademark sense of pacing and suspense.
Almost three decades after this first McEvoy novel, the character is set to co-star alongside The Lincoln Lawyer’s тιтular character Mickey Haller in Connelly’s second novel of 2025, The Proving Ground. This book will be the fourth to feature McEvoy, and should demonstrate just how well he’d work in the TV universe that Haller now inhabits. What’s more, The Lincoln Lawyer’s clever workarounds when adapting Michael Connolly’s first-person Mickey Haller narratives illustrate that a TV show about Jack McEvoy should have no trouble overcoming this potential obstacle.
The Lincoln Lawyer & Bosch Prove More Michael Connelly Books Should Be Adapted
Every Michael Connelly Adaptation So Far Has Been A Major Success
The Lincoln Lawyer becoming 2024’s top streaming show in the US, and the overwhelming success Bosch shows on Prime Video, are living proof that virtually any Michael Connelly story would likely find a mᴀssive TV audience. Just as Renee Ballard is the natural successor to Harry Bosch on Prime, it shouldn’t be a mᴀssive stretch to imagine Jack McEvoy showing up in the same streaming universe as these detectives, or as defense lawyer Mickey Haller, some time in the near future.
The economy of plot digression, interweaving subplots, and perfectly-timed twists in Michael Connelly’s novels mean they’re almost ready-made for hour-long TV episodes.
Connelly’s stories are the ideal source material for engrossing crime dramas, with their economy of plot digression, interweaving subplots, and perfectly-timed twists almost ready-made for hour-long TV episodes. It’s scarcely believable that no studio has seized their opportunity to adapt the author’s McEvoy novels while the rights remain available, although it can’t be long before one of the big streaming players makes their move.
Could There Ever Be A True Michael Connelly TV Universe?
It’s Up To Amazon And Netflix To Decide
One of the barriers facing any studio looking to produce a new adaptation of Michael Connelly’s stories is the overlapping character arcs between the different novel series of the author’s various protagonists. Just as Jack McEvoy is about to show up alongside Mickey Haller in Connelly’s upcoming release, Harry Bosch crosses paths with Haller in several novels, and FBI profiler Terry McCaleb appears alongside Bosch in one of the two books in which he features.
The fact that all of Connelly’s characters apparently share a single literary universe and occasionally show up in one another’s story isn’t necessarily a problem for TV adaptations. On the contrary, it should be an ᴀsset to studios that makes the author’s work an even more attractive proposition, since whichever studio gets their hands on the screen rights could, in theory, make a unified TV universe containing not one, but severally, wildly popular literary heroes. Unfortunately, though, things have turned out differently in practice.
The screen rights for Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller have been split up and sold to rival streaming giants Amazon Prime and Netflix, meaning that Michael Connelly’s two most important characters are now mutually exclusive as far as TV universes go. Unless Amazon and Netflix come to an unprecedented deal to override the terms of their respective exclusivity agreements with Connolly’s book publishers, we may never see Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller onscreen together.
With The Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch effectively taking place in separate TV worlds, it could be that Jack McEvoy, Renee Ballard and Terry McCaleb don’t get to exist in the same screen universe, either. Michael Connelly fans will hope that Amazon and Netflix can hash out a compromise to get around this problem at some point, but history suggests that this hope will most likely be in vain.
