The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly
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Book Reviews of The Scarecrow
Book Review: Reality Show
Summary: 4 Stars
Reporter Jack McEvoy is back. We first met him in The Poet. Now he is working for the big LA paper and is about to be fired. He is about to be fired because, get this, he is good at his job. Since he is good at his job he commands a higher salary than somebody less qualified.The paper wants to go with the less qualified to save some bucks.
So McEvoy, who covers the crime beat, has a very limited shelf life. He writes a fairly routine story about a kid who confessed to murdering a woman. But McEvoy discovers there was no confession, and the murder has a MO that is similar to another. Could the two killings be conncected. Well, of course. So McEvoy, and the young reporter he is training to replace him, start poking around.
Now the real fun begains because the poking around comes to the attention of the real killer and the real killer starts poking back. Pretty good but standard mystery stuff, you say? Well there is the extra dimension that Connelly brings.
And that extra dimension is the sensation of reality that permeates this book. I may be wrong but it seems the author has incorporated clues from real life LA cases into this story. For instance, a finger print on a car's rearview mirror is what initially connects the above mentioned kid to the murdered woman. If memory serves, it was that exact type of print that led to the capture of The Night Stalker.
Connelly's descriptions of the so called news media (which should be renamed the noise media), the FBI, the police and the serial killer (who he may have modeled on The Hillside Strangler) are dead on.
So that's what makes this book something special. It sounds and feels real. Which is more than you can say for the typical so called news media story.
If you want to read a police procedural mystery that feels real, this book is for you. On the other hand, if you want to read about some X Army super hero who solves crime by never changing his undershorts, check out one of those Jack U. Reeker books by Lee Child.
Book Review: One of Connelly's best
Summary: 5 Stars
A remarkable trait of Connelly's skill as a writer is that he doesn't have to rely on tricks or past success. He is primarily known as the author of the Harry Bosch series, but his greatest books have been, in this reviewer's opinion, the non-Bosch books. This is not to denigrate the Bosch books by any means, as they are all excellent, but merely to point out that Connelly isn't a formula writer, he doesn't stick to the familiar, and he's not afraid to take chances.
Beginning with The Poet, the novel that introduced Scarecrow's own Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling, Connelly began to step away from Bosch on occasion. That book was not only one of Connelly's best, but one of the scariest books I've ever read. Scarecrow may not top it, but it comes close to matching it. With the title character, we are given a villain equal to anything Connelly has conceived before, a criminal mastermind of the most striking manner. Particularly remarkable is that you never see him commit any killings. His manipulation of everyone involved, his extraordinary capacity for self-preservation, is mind-numbing. The idea of someone like The Scarecrow actually being out there in the world is enough to keep me up at night.
As a page turner the book succeeds remarkably. This may be the fastest I've read any Connelly book, finishing it in two days. I was worried that Connelly may have rushed this, coming out so soon after The Brass Verdict, but those fears proved unfounded. I'm not sure Connelly would know how to write a bad book.
Whatever you do, don't start this before you go to bed. Either you'll have trouble putting down the book to go to bed, or you'll have trouble sleeping cause it's just too disturbing. You may just have to stay up to find out how it ends.
Book Review: Not Quite Top Shelf Connelly
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Scarecrow," Michael Connelly's twentieth crime novel is far from his best, and it has the feel of having been dashed off. Another one, "Nine Dragons," a Harry Bosch is due out in October of this year. Slow down, Michael, and put a little more care into them. Connelly is probably America's finest crime novelist, and it seems impossible for him to turn out a real stinker. It put me off for the first eighty pages or so and then got rolling. His villains in this one seem inauthentic and phony to me.
Jack McEvoy, writer for the L.A. Times and Rachel Walling of the FBI are together again. Remember them from "The Poet"? This book, mostly narrated by Jack, has a little too much stuff about Jack as a reporter and the way the print medium is going down the tubes in 2009. He's been canned by the paper, and has to retrain a young woman as his replacement.
The book has a lot of computer jargon and computer-savvy material. It's fascinating to watch how The Scarecrow, Carver, a computer wizard and bad guy working at "The Farm", is able to break into websites and e-mail to track people down and keep tabs on investigations. The social networking sites and personal blogs prove full of dangerous information. And talk about identity theft! Some of the things The Scarecrow does just don't ring true.
One of the villains makes contact with McEvoy, a device we've seen before. Jack wants to get embedded in the FBI investigation, but they're not having any of that nonsense which of course isolates him and forces him to go it alone with Rachel's assistance.
Connelly uses the computer wizardry, technical palaver, to move his plot along. Complex plots have always been his strong suit producing suspense and surprises. Sometimes his plots are like roller coasters careening out of control. He's a very street-smart writer.
Loose ends are a little too neatly tied up at the end of the book as if this package had to get out for overnight delivery.
Book Review: Good, but not great, Connelly novel
Summary: 3 Stars
In Scarecrow, recycles two key characters from his previous books, reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI agent Rachel Walling. Jack is being ousted from the LA Times and picks his last two weeks to profile a black kid charged with murdering a white woman. When Jack reads the kid's confession, he sees the kid only confessed to stealing the woman's car (she was dead in the trunk).
So, who really did kill her? His investigation uncovers a murder with the exact same m.o. in Nevada. He notifies old friend and lover Walling and the two are off and running on the trail of a serial killer. Their probing trips a cyber trip wire and now the killer knows they are coming.
Thus begins the latest standalone (Harry's not in it) from Connelly, who I consider the best crime fiction writer working today (Laura Lippman's a close second, with Lawrence Block in third. All three do their best work in standalones.
But he does a bit of jumping that old shark here.
First of all, this is not a "who" novel, but a "how" novel, basically a police procedural. The evil one is identified fairly early, and then it's a cat and mouse game. This is what John Sanford does all the time, and I think it makes him a lesser writer.
The ending is a race against the clock in an underground bunker with horns blaring, canisters spewing deadly gas, a secret escape hatch, etc. Bond. James Bond.
Connelly has learned a lot about internal FBI stuff, including jargon, which he shares with the reader, over and over. He's learned alot about computer server systems, which he also shares over and over.
One thing he nails, though, is an inside look at the slow death of the newspaper business. Of course, we have the Web, but Connelly makes it clear that the Internet is inferior in a watchdog role. I am a newspaperman who has already dodged the downsizing bullet.
Harrry's back in October. Can't wait.
Book Review: A Scarecrow Lurks in Cyberspace
Summary: 4 Stars
Anybody who peruses my reviews will see that Michael Connelly is one of my favorite authors. I enjoy his developed and evolving characters, reasoned plots, interesting backgrounds and sub-stories, and above all, the often surprising endings. Connelly has set a high bar for himself and The Scarecrow meets all of my criteria with the exception of the last, but it is still a very good book. Following Los Angeles Times reporter, Jack McEvoy, as he tries to come up with a final great story before his lay-off takes effect in two weeks and also train his replacement, the reader is first treated to a portrait of the sad state of newspapers in this new Cyber-world. Being a resident in the Los Angeles area, I have been dismayed with the recent decline and down-sizing of that once wonderful newspaper. Starting with the investigation of alleged murder of an exotic dancer by a sixteen year-old gangbanger, McEvoy inadvertently finds himself on the trail of a serial killer who is a master of the cyber world. The killer's ability to extract supposedly secret and secure information makes me think twice about much of my participation in the internet. Connelly tells the story in the first person from McEvoy's viewpoint and third person from the killer's. This is an excellent technique that keeps the suspense going, but gives the reader insights into a serial killer's mind and methods before the truth is learned by McEvoy. Coupled with the entry of FBI agent Rachel Walling, McEvoy's flame from The Poet, he gets some excellent assistance and many steamy interludes. There are even a few references to the unnamed Harry Bosch, who has a history with both McEvoy and Walling in prior books. The pace and characters of The Scarecrow made it hard to put down. The ending, although a letdown, was perfectly fine, but resulted in four rather than five stars from me. Still, The Scarecrow is definitely worth the time and will more than satisfy most readers.