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Mix in “Ballard,” Amazon Prime’s upcoming “Bosch: Legacy” spinoff starring Maggie Q, and you have the recipe for a literary MCU — Michael Connelly Universe — that has garnered sales of 89 million books in 45 countries and is ever expanding.

He credits his change of heart, in part, to the charge he gets from writing about jacks-of-all-trade detectives like Renée Ballard, and now Det.

Or, as Renée Ballard says, dig down.

Connelly was a bit more involved with “Ballard,” debuting in July.

“For two decades, I wrote about a guy whose every case involved a murderer because he was a homicide detective. Just the idea of someone who has to handle everything gives you a lot of freedom as a writer. That’s why I loved Renée Ballard initially, because when I first wrote about her, she had the midnight shift in Hollywood, where she covered everything. And for somebody who for 20 years wrote homicide, homicide, homicide, that’s refreshing and exciting. ”