9 Dragons

thinking of using Nine Dragons as a title. This dictated that a lot of the Hong Kong portion of the story take place in Kowloon, including the most significant moment of the whole novel.
    What inspired you to write
Nine Dragons
and to set a third of the book in Hong Kong?
    Nine Dragons
is a book long in the making. It is a pivotal story in Harry Bosch’s journey-and his most personal one. While I think it is a book with more action than usual for me, it is also a deeply driven character story for which the inspiration was set about seven years ago when I was writing the novel
Lost Light (2003)
. I think with a series you have to be very careful with what you do with your character. Harry Bosch is built to be of and about L.A. So I have to be careful about taking him out of this environment. Usually when I do, it is never for a whole book. I have him follow a case to Mexico and back. Or to Las Vegas or Florida.
Nine Dragons
starts in Los Angeles, goes to Hong Kong, and then comes back to Los Angeles. Sending him to Hong Kong came out of me wanting to do that again but to really put him in a fish-out-of-water situation. So I planted the seed five or six books ago when I had Harry’s young daughter move there with his ex-wife. When I did that, I knew that I would eventually write a story that would take Harry there and give me the opportunity to explore the character in completely different terrain. So the book has been sort of waiting to be written. In writing, you rely on your instincts in terms of what to do and when to do it. Somehow, I felt it was time to write this story now.
    Did you actually spend time in Hong Kong researching the book?
    About five years ago I stopped in Hong Kong on my way home from a book tour in Australia. I immediately found what I was looking for; an intriguing new place with a sense that anything could happen. So I’ve made two trips to Hong Kong to research
Nine Dragons
. One was a general knowledge trip. I then refined what I was looking for, had a general sense of the areas the story would take me through, and I went back to more specifically research the story, to more or less follow the trail Harry follows in the book. As it turns out, only about a third of the book is set in Hong Kong, and that segment takes place in one day. There is a lot of movement and action. Like Hong Kong itself, it never slows down.
    Why did you wait so long to explore Harry Bosch’s relationship with his daughter Madeline?
    In
Lost Light
(2003), Harry got the surprise of his life. He found out he was a father and met his daughter Madeline for the first time. Over the years and stories that followed their meeting, Harry’s relationship with his daughter never moved to the forefront because I wasn’t ready to explore it yet. I wanted her to grow up some and be a character who could communicate with Harry (and the reader) as a young adult before I wrote the story that explored the relationship and what is Harry's ultimate vulnerability.
    Are you saying in this book that being a father is Harry’s greatest vulnerability?
    Nine Dragons
is about Harry and his daughter. It’s about his hopes for her, his guilt over his poor performance as a father, and most of all it is about his vulnerability as a father. Putting this young person in Harry’s life was done with a lot of thought. Up until Bosch became a father, I had been creating a character who viewed himself as being on a mission. He was someone who was skilled enough and tough enough to go into the abyss and seek out human evil. To carry out this mission, he knew he had to be relentless and bulletproof. By bulletproof, I mean he had to be invulnerable. Nobody could get to him. It was the only way to be relentless. And this idea or belief bled into all aspects of his life. He lived alone, had no friends, and didn’t even know his neighbors. He built a solitary life so that no one could get to him. All that suddenly changed in one moment (one page) when he locked eyes with his daughter in
Lost Light
. Harry suddenly knew he could be gotten to.
    Nine Dragons opens with Bosch investigating the murder of the owner of Fortune Liquors, a small L.A. package store he’s known for years. He still carries in his pocket a matchbook he picked up there on a case years ago. Its motto inside-
Happy is the man who finds refuge in himself
-has been a guiding light through some of his darkest days. How did you come up with this “fortune?” Is it significant