“The Black Echo” (post 1) by Michael Connelly: Protagonist Harry Bosch “whispered to no one”

Detective Bosch is in the empty apartment of a man whose body has just been found in a drainpipe of Mulholland Dam in Los Angeles. And Bosch does not want that death to be just another statistic. So how does he prepare his mind to find clues?

“Tell me something,” he whispered to no one (1, p. 41).

Comment: I doubt novelist Michael Connelly would have his protagonist “whisper to no one” (a nonperson person?) unless that made sense to him. So what kind of nonperson persons do novelists consult? I would say their creative alternate personalities. But will there be any evidence of that kind of psychology in the rest of this 500-page novel? I’ll see.

1. Michael Connelly. The Black Echo. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 1991.