Michael Connelly’s fictional world is often a small one. His latest novel revisits journalist Jack McEvoy, lead protagonist from THE POET and occasional cameos in some of the Harry Bosch novels, and FBI Agent Rachel Walling, also from POET and co-star of THE NARROWS with Bosch. And while these earlier novels are highly recommended, they are not required in order to enjoy THE SCARECROW.
Indeed, Connelly latest stands securely on its own as the kind of taut, cleverly constructed and completely absorbing mystery/thriller we’ve come to expect from him.
LOS ANGELES TIMES journalist McEvoy finds himself victim of the imploding fate of newspapers across the country when he receives his pink slip — or “RIF: Reduction In Force” notice, as they now call it — and learns he has two weeks to train his fresh-from-journalism-school replacement. But the local crime-beat star and former best-selling true-crime author doesn’t plan to go quietly into that good night. Instead, he plans to write the final and definitive murder story of his career, and maybe afterward get to work on that novel he started long ago.
McEvoy chooses the case of Alonzo Winslow, a teenaged drug dealer who confessed to the brutal murder of a young woman found in the trunk of his car in a deserted beach parking lot. While examining the case documents, McEvoy gets the strong impression that Winslow’s confession was coerced by the investigating L.A. police officers under pressure to quickly close the case. Then McEvoy connects the murder to an earlier and strikingly similar one in Las Vegas, and concludes that Winslow is innocent.
Soon, strange and disturbing things happen to McEvoy as he arrives in Las Vegas to continue his research. His credit cards are canceled and his ATM cash disappears. Then his password access to his e-mail account and the newspaper’s database has been denied. Before he can figure out how this all happened, he is both shocked and surprised to find Agent Walling waiting for him in his hotel room.
Walling and McEvoy previously worked together chasing the serial killer known as The Poet, and had an intense love affair during the investigation. But when McEvoy called Walling in a panic as his identity was being corrupted, she dug a little deeper and discovered what looked like a serious threat to McEvoy’s life.
The reunited pair is soon on the trail of another murderer. But this one is a master at utilizing the Internet to stay completely under the radar, while keeping a few dangerous steps ahead of McEvoy and Walling.
Dual tensions drive Connelly’s narrative here. There is, of course, the frightening ways by which a skilled criminally minded hacker can not only eliminate identity and essential resources, but learn every intimate detail of his victim and keep him in his constant sights.
More notable is the inner tension expressed by McEvoy at the declining influence and traditional methodologies of newspapers and journalism in today’s world. With revenues shrinking, the equally shrinking news-minded audience gets most of its information from online editions (if at all). So city newsrooms, once a daily beehive of activity, are now reduced to a few lonely cubicles.
The remaining reporters must be, as McEvoy calls them, “mojos” — mobile-journalists, able to write and submit copy from their laptop and cell phone as well as the computer on their desk. Connelly, himself a former crime-beat reporter, knows this sad decline firsthand and describes it in heart-breaking personal and professional detail. Yet, the author never forgets his audience, and skillfully keeps THE SCARECROW from becoming a love letter to a dying profession.
That awareness is also what prevents the shifting narrative focus from diluting the suspense. Connelly occasionally breaks away from McEvoy’s first-person narration to a third-person observation of the murderer and his high-tech associates. But knowing that McEvoy’s perspective is the more involving and important, he keeps the breakaways brief and to-the-point, thereby avoiding most of the traps of this overused technique.
The one unfortunate failing in this otherwise excellent work is Walling. Connelly keeps her character totally on the surface with no perceptible depth. She functions mainly as a source of detail and information during the hunt for the killer. Even though her career and life are threatened, we never get much emotion from her, but this drawback is highlighted only because everything else in the novel works so damned well.
Bottom line: THE SCARECROW is another winner in a long list of them from Connelly. It’s recommended most highly, especially while the countdown for the next Harry Bosch novel, NINE DRAGONS, continues. —Alan Cranis
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BRASS VERDICT by Michael Connelly
• CRIME BEAT: A DECADE OF COVERING COPS & KILLERS by Michael Connelly
• ECHO PARK by Michael Connelly
• MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA PRESENTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER: CLASSIC TALES BY EDGAR ALLAN POE edited by Michael Connelly
• MURDER IN VEGAS: NEW CRIME TALES OF GAMBLING AND DESPERATION edited by Michael Connelly
• MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA PRESENTS THE BLUE RELIGION: NEW STORIES ABOUT COPS, CRIMINALS, AND THE CHASE edited by Michael Connelly
• THE OVERLOOK by Michael Connelly
Related posts:
- The Overlook
- Echo Park
- Dead Man’s Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table
- The Brass Verdict
- Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation
