The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly
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Book Reviews of The Scarecrow
Book Review: Jack's back
Summary: 4 Stars
Michael Connelly once worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times but it's nothing more than speculation on my part that the central character of this novel (Jack McEvoy) is loosely based on Connelly himself and his personal working experiences in the newspaper industry. It's the second time McEvoy has fronted a Connelly thriller, the first being The Poet, and once again Jack's involved in the hunt for a highly intelligent and organised serial killer. I so nearly gave this one 5 stars but reluctantly trimmed it by one because, good as it is, it doesn't quite have that special feel to it that many of the Harry Bosch tales provide.
It could easily be one of the best thrillers of 2009, though. Connelly's a far more accomplished author these days and I would say that this is actually a better-told story than The Poet, even if The Scarecrow himself isn't as esoteric or as enigmatic as the earlier creation. Instead we are given a well-structured, pacey thriller that might defy credibility on more than one occasion but it entertains at all times and for that we get our money's worth. As a character Jack McEvoy lacks the magnetic draw of Connelly's main man Harry Bosch but his 'ordinary guy' personality will appeal to many. He teams up with FBI agent Rachel Walling who also featured in The Poet and who has had a relationship with Bosch in the past, although, tantalisingly, this is only hinted at in the dialogue here and Bosch's name is never actually mentioned. The backgrounds to the story are very topical - company downsizing, redundancy, difficulties in selling a property and on-line invasion and identity theft. It's Jack who faces the door as his newspaper faces the inevitable slide towards surrender to on-line news reporting, so he wants to go out with a bang and write a story to remember. What he doesn't realise is that he will be very much part of the story itself.
The reader knows who the killer is from the outset, and this has been a recipe for low levels of suspense in the past (from all crime fiction writers) but there are no such problems here as Connelly is one of the best at putting together a rivetting story that just keeps you turning the pages. I must say though that the one big question that I was asking from an early stage was never resolved, and I suspect that Connelly tried to come up with answers but ultimately decided not to offer any. I won't go into any detail but he does address this question in a kind of epilogue, so it was a relief that he showed an awareness of it, but still slightly disappointing that he couldn't create a solution. Instead I suppose the reader has to draw their own conclusion.
It's been a busy year for Michael Connelly, with The Brass Verdict still fresh in our minds and the eagerly-awaited Bosch outing Nine Dragons later this year; perhaps another topical sign of the times is that even the writers at the top of the tree are finding the going tough in this recession and they find themselves having to publish two novels a year rather than the usual one! Or perhaps Connelly's publishers are under the knife, who knows. But the fact is, The Scarecrow is most definitely not a 'filler' in between two proper Haller & Bosch escapades, no it's a very good crime thriller on its own and more than up to the author's expectedly high standards. If you're a Connelly fan, you'll have this already. If you're wondering if he's as good as you've heard, then buy this with confidence because chances are you'll want more of the same - and there's a treasure chest of a back-catalogue to enjoy. I have read every single one and he continues to rank as one of the very best in the world of crime fiction.
Book Review: "Death is my beat...I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it."
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling, who were the main characters in Connelly's first novel about a serial killer, The Poet, return in this novel, in which they are chasing another serial killer. This killer is a genius with the computer, able to get into any personal account anywhere to deny service, plant phony evidence, close out bank accounts, cancel plane reservations, or spy on e-mails and interoffice communications. What's worse--he works for an internet security agency, and he is so clever that no one is even aware that a seemingly straightforward murder investigation involves a serial killer at all. Jack, a respected and relatively well paid reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has just been given two weeks to finish up his stories before he is laid off from the paper.
Jack (like Connelly), the author of a book about a serial killer called The Poet several years ago, has decided that if he's going to leave the paper, he's going to write a sensational final story. When he receives a phone call from a woman who claims that the police have jailed her juvenile son for a murder he never committed, Jack and a photographer go off to the projects to interview her. Though Alonzo Winslow may have been involved in any number of other crimes, including the sale of drugs, Jack becomes convinced that he did not, in fact, confess to the murder for which he is currently jailed--the torture and suffocation of a woman who was then stuffed into the trunk of a car, a plastic bag around her neck. Jack is soon up to his eyeballs in complications, chasing down leads and looking up old cases.
Connelly keeps the action coming fast and furiously, and when Jack contacts FBI agent Rachel Walling, with whom he solved the case of The Poet, years ago, the action ratchets up even further, providing a complicated love interest at the same time. The author's prose style is efficient and effective as he alternates first-person accounts by Jack McEvoy with third-person narratives involving the computer expert who seems to be pulling all the strings and playing games with his pursuers. Unfortunately, though Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling develop into characters with individuality, Connelly reveals almost nothing about the computer genius at the heart of the mystery.
An early but fleeting scene from the man's childhood is not explained or developed until the last pages of the book, and his motivation for these grisly murders is never explained. While this may increase the tension and drama as Jack is pursuing the killer, it makes the ending much less satisfying than it would have been if we had been allowed entrée into the "whys" his behavior. Ironically, Connelly himself anticipates this criticism when Jack McEvoy eventually decides to write a book about this case, announcing that his editor has told him that "The record of grim deeds [the man] committed cannot overshadow the motivations behind it...I must be able to tell more than what happened. I must tell why." It is too bad that Michael Connelly did not heed the same advice during the more than four hundred pages of this novel. n Mary Whipple
The Brass Verdict: A Novel (Harry Bosch)
The Lincoln Lawyer
Book Review: RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "A CASE OF ABASIOPHILIA AND THE IRON MAIDENS."
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack McEvoy is a seasoned "cop-shop" reporter at the Los Angeles Times... who also had a best seller based on his harrowing personal experience with a serial killer a number of years ago... but despite his experience and pedigree... he has just been notified that he will be canned in two weeks. If being unceremoniously removed from the payroll isn't bad enough... in order for Jack to get an extra two weeks pay... he has to train his replacement... the attractive young Angela Cook. As Jack shows Angela the ropes... and introduces her to all his hard earned connections at police headquarters... he gets a strange phone call from a woman saying she's the mother of Alonzo Winslow a black gang banger from South Central L.A. who's already been arrested for the murder of Denise Babbit... and according to a small "filler" article in the L.A. Times... Alonzo has already confessed to the murder. The murder was being called a "TRUNK-MURDER" since the body of Denise Babbit was found "asphyxiated with a length of commonly purchased clothesline used to tie the plastic bag around her neck" in the trunk of Denise's deserted car in a parking lot at Santa Monica beach. The autopsy showed that she had been repeatedly raped with a foreign object. Alonzo's "mother" says it's a lie! Alonzo didn't do it. As Jack and... under his direction... Angela look into the case... many questions immediately arise. Such as what was a South Central gang banger doing at the Santa Monica beach... and how did he get back to the ghetto? The car was wiped clean... except for Alonzo's finger print on the rear view mirror. Jack also gets his hands on information he wasn't authorized to see... and among other things... Alonzo never admitted he killed her.
An internal battle between Jack and Angela ignites over who will research what... and the L.A. Times management makes the situation tenser by their decisions as to how the byline will be distributed. During the research a similar "TRUNK-MURDER" is uncovered on the internet... Jack heads to Las Vegas... and so many things happen so quickly and conveniently... it's a little hard to believe. Credit cards are cancelled... cell phones are shutoff... the email accounts of EVERY single employee of the world famous... super hi-tech L.A. Times is penetrated with impunity... and all of a sudden a person close to Jack is missing.
The author introduces the killer almost immediately... and as Jack's last two weeks as a Times reporter is enveloped in twisted murders and depravity... he must call in his long lost love... FBI agent Rachel Walling... to help save his life... but don't worry... he makes up for that by saving hers. It's almost like watching a super-charged tennis match. He's getting fired... she's getting fired... she's offered her job back... Jack's offered his job back... and then there's their rekindled romance... where there are so many lines drawn... that the reader and participants need some type of human GPS to gauge who can do what... to whom... when. Can we hug? Can we kiss? Can we make lifelong plans? Can we not make lifelong plans? The reader needs to make a personal decision on how much you'll buy into... and that will ultimately determine how much you'll enjoy this book. The most accurately depicted parts of the story are the ones that relate to present time layoffs and the downsizing of the newspaper business.
Book Review: You're Not In The Emerald City Any Longer SCARECROW!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I added this up last night and discovered that I have read more books by Michael Connelly (15) than any other author I've read. So I guess one could say I'm a huge fan. The amazing thing is that they were all five star books (except for Chasing The Dime, of course). I find this almost hard to believe but it's true. And I'm actually one of the readers who started reading Connelly before his real fame came into being with the publication of The Poet.
I guess it's only fair then that his latest offering features journalist Jack McEvoy....the same Jack McEvoy who appeared in The Poet. Connelly's true fans have been awaiting a reappearance by one of their favorite characters for years now and in The Scarecrow, Jack's return does not disappoint for one minute. I loved this book from the beginning to the end.
Having started his career as a journalist, I'm sure this book is close to Connelly's heart as he watches the slow demise of the newspaper industry. The fact that technology is killing newspapers becomes only too clear as the book starts off with Jack getting a pink slip from the LA Times. But "our" Jack is intent on going out with a bang and makes it his business to come up with one last story that will be Pulitzer prizeworthy. He will set out to prove that a sixteen year old gang member is not guilty of the murder for which he is being accused. The good news to Jack's fans is that he will need to ask FBI agent Rachel Walling for her help as he starts to get too close to the answer to the mystery and much too close to The Scarecrow. Their "coupling" in this book is well worth the wait as they make such a great team.
We learn at the beginning of the book who the real villain is and I enjoy when an author does this because I then get to follow the thoughts of the "bad guy" right up front. As Jack is closing in on The Scarecrow, we get to view this villain as he becomes a bird being scared by a scarecrow as opposed to the opposite way around. I enjoyed all of the Wizard of Oz references in the book as well. At one point, music is playing in the background and it's Eric Clapton in concert singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." In addition, the city editor of the LA Times where Jack works is "Dorothy" Fowler and guess where's she originally from....you guessed right...Kansas. I also love when an author references one of his other books within the book I'm reading. In this case, Jack mentions reading a series of stories about a lawyer who did his business out of a Lincoln. Nice shoutout to Mickey Haller of The Lincoln Lawyer fame.
Unlike other authors who don't have Connelly's talent, he doesn't have to make his stories so convoluted that you can't even understand them. He also doesn't resort to having the villain be one of the investigators as so many other authors "cop out" and do. He writes a clear-cut story from start to finish and it's always one you can't put down. I always comment that I read very few books in a given year that would get a "10" rating from me. In the mystery/thriller category, this is one for 2009, a "Big 10". The only other two books in this genre that I've read this year and have also received a "10" rating from me were The Lincoln Lawyer and The Brass Verdict. Surprise, surprise, they were also written by Connelly. This is obviously one satisfied fan.
Book Review: A good look at a journalist, but the pace suffers
Summary: 3 Stars
This is not the sort of book I would normally read. However, because it's about a journalist who's been RIF'd from his newspaper (The Los Angeles Times), a newspaper where I worked briefly, I had to give it a look. Connelly has the journalist character, Jack McEvoy, down to a T, from his haphazard way of checking in at the office to his mad desire for bylines. Although Jack is one crackerjack crime reporter, he's also too well paid, so the Times is letting him go, to bring in a cute, recent journalism-school graduate who will probably make half his salary. To make things worse, he has to train her. It's odd that Connelly never mentions the Times' erstwhile lord and master, the Tribune Company (as in Chicago Tribune), which brought the Times to these financial straits. The Tribune Company has since cut its losses and sold off the L.A. Times. I would think this would afford pages of vitriol, but Connelly is silent.
Meanwhile, McEvoy has two weeks before he's history and he wants to go out in a blaze of glory. He grabs onto a murder story that doesn't smell right, noses around in Watts and soon discovers he's jumped into a trash heap that is way over his head. As he joins forces with a sexy FBI agent who is an old flame, it turns out that they are really jousting with a serial killer who is also a computer wizard.
I had my doubts about the computer genius' methods. My computer nerd husband always laughs when I describe these plots to him, so I didn't even try this time. I have no doubt that the nasty killer, known only as Carver, could get into other computers, learn passwords and control their software. High-school kids can do that. But Connelly has Carver infiltrating all of the L.A. Times mainframe computer, and no one at the newspaper's I. T. department has a clue. I know times are tough, but newspapers still spend money on information technology security. It's highly implausible that Carver would have gotten that far for so long in the Los Angeles computer. For heaven's sake, at least the reporters would get new passwords.
Technology concerns aside, Connelly's thriller plot really has the reader hanging by his/her fingernails in the middle section of the book, when McEvoy is zipping around Nevada just steps ahead of death. Death waits for him at home when a reporter is killed. Connelly ramps up the tension nicely and defies the reader to put the book down.
McEvoy is confounded by what is happening. Suddenly, he's not allowed to write the stories anymore. He *is* the story.
I wish Connelly had kept up that pace throughout the entire book. Unfortunately, the thrills go up and down, with too much explanation and time wasted on secondary characters. The ending, which should be a real spine-tingler, never really seems particularly dangerous, so the bad guy's takedown, quite oddly, is pat.
McEvoy ends up a real hero, however, when he turns down the Times' cheesy offer to rehire him. He's moved on. But, as he says in a close-to-the-bone passage near the end, even writing a book in a coffee shop doesn't replicate the noise and clatter of a newsroom. It's no longer "us against the world," he says. That feeling he will never get back.