Books: The Poet by Michael Connelly (1996)

Jack McEvoy specializes in death. As a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, he has seen every kind of murder. But his professional bravado doesn’t lessen the brutal shock of learning that his only brother is dead, a suicide. Jack’s brother was a homicide detective, and he had been depressed about a recent murder case, a hideously grisly one, that he’d been unable to solve. McEvoy decides that the best way to exorcise his grief is by writing a feature on police suicides. But when he begins his research, he quickly arrives at a stunning revelation. Following his leads, protecting his sources, muscling his way inside a federal investigation, Jack grabs hold of what is clearly the story of a lifetime. He also knows that in taking on the story, he’s making himself the most visible target for a murderer who has eluded the greatest investigators alive.

This was the first book I read by the prolific Michael Connelly. And while I enjoy a good thriller, the sensational type that comes out today –the endless serial killers of that fake James Patterson, the ever growing trend in true crime books- is very disturbing. Serial killers fascinate us, and unlike the cop shows or books of the past, which seemed to keep the more horrific details hidden, today we are given every detail, no matter how disturbing it is. And thanks to procedural shows like the CSI franchise, the Law & Order franchise and Criminal Minds the camera gets right in there; we see the knife, the bullet tearing into flesh. And we see how disgusting human beings can be. Maybe that’s why I like fantasy so much? Real versus make believe?

The Poet is well written, and Connelly knows how to pace the book so you have to continue reading, and he is a million times better than James Patterson, but I still thought he brought way too many twists in the novel. And like all crime thrillers of the last 2 decades, it’s an outside force that puts the puzzle pieces together. Am I really to believe that the FBI failed to pick-up on trails that killer was leaving? 

One thing I found interesting was this novel was released in 1996 (probably written in ’95) and how 15 years has changed in technology. The internet was there, but in its infancy. No one had mobile phones, and fax machines were how the FBI got their info when not in the office. It’s a reminder on how police work was difficult then (there is a part set in a Santa Monica police station where they fingerprint a suspect, but because it’s not set up with a data base, he goes free. That would not happen today). It seems amazing how the police and the FBI could find people; it seemed to come down to pure luck and a lot of coincidences.

Connelly wrote a sequel called The Narrows a few years ago. I might eventually pick that up. Maybe.