When Michael Connelly was 16 years old, he spent an evening in a police station being questioned as a witness to a robbery. The experience led him to the realization that he wanted to write about cops. More specifically, he wanted to write about detectives. And that’s exactly what he’s done. Before becoming a wildly popular crime novelist, Connelly actually earned his literary sea legs as a crime reporter for papers in Southern Florida and California. He covered his beat and forged relationships with police detectives and later drew on these experiences and relationships for inspiration in his fiction franchise.
CRIME BEAT begins with an introduction by the author, detailing his transformation from a teenage observer to award-winning reporter. He recalls while paying the bills with reporting, he was beginning to dabble with fiction during his off time. The remainder of the book is a compilation of some of the articles Connelly wrote as a journalist.
True crime fans expecting blood, guts and gore should look elsewhere. Remember, these pieces were written for family-friendly periodicals. Don’t assume that the articles aren’t compelling, though. One of the best involves the murder of a Japanese man by his son, who was never seriously considered a suspect due to the rarity of patricide in the Japanese culture. The son enlisted the help of a buddy and after stabbing dear old Dad to death, the pair buried the corpse in the desert. The buddy stayed quiet until two months later when he learned that the son dug up the body and cut a finger off of it so that a gold ring he wanted could be recovered. The buddy was granted immunity for spinning off the young Japanese be-ringed murderer.
Clearly, the crimes were items of local interest only and never made national headlines (not to my recollection, anyway). But Connelly seemed to understand that the victims of the crimes he wrote about deserved his best. Many of the stories read more like short stories than the typical “just the facts, ma’am” crime reports. The articles are proof positive that news reports can be readable while still adhering to the basic tenets taught in any Journalism 101 class.
Instead of a straight compilation, I would have loved to have had more insight into the behind-the-scenes aspects of newspaper journalism. Were competing journalists back-stabbers? Were his editors hard-nosed pricks? Did he ever tap any copywriter tail? My only other criticism is that reading a series of back-to-back articles about the same incident grew redundant at times. But other than that, Connelly proves he knows his stuff. –Ken Davis
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