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The Scarecrow - Michael Connelly - 01/07/09
The Scarecrow is a crime thriller which fails to deliver on just one count ... the bad guy just isn't quite bad enough!
Apart from that, Michael Connelly's novel does everything right.
Well written and gripping from start to finish, the plot moves along at a cracking pace. And best of all, the reader does not have to suspend disbelief, a pleasant surprise for this increasingly sensational genre.
Even when the hero, crime reporter Jack McEvoy, finds his missing colleague dead under his bed, we don't have to raise a cynical eyebrow.
McEvoy, who works for the Los Angeles Times, tracks a perverted serial killer across America, with leads taking him to the Nevada desert and Arizona. But soon he turns from being the hunter to the hunted.
There is no doubting the author's credentials ... this is an extremely polished work written by someone who knows what he's talking about. In fact, Connelly was the crime reporter at the LA Times for three years in the 1980s.
The Scarecrow falls short of being a classic because the antagonist is rather two-dimensional compared to other fictional serial killers, particularly those created by Thomas Harris.
However, he successfully crams his novel with details about life on the crime beat and the frustrations of dealing with cops and, perhaps even worse, the news desk!
The story also deals with the job cuts and falling sales which newspapers across the world are currently experiencing.
McEvoy, a victim of newspaper downsizing, has been told he has just one month left at the LA Times before being laid off, so he sets out to find the story of a lifetime.
A 16-year-old black drug dealer's arrest for the murder of a white girl seems a good place to start, especially when the teenager's grandmother calls him to protest the boy's innocence.
It leads McEvoy into a web of intrigue and a story bigger than he could ever have imagined ... hunting The Scarecrow, a hi-tech serial killer who tracks down his victims through the internet before torturing them on video.
Using his extensive knowledge of journalism and police work, Connelly has come up with a gritty and intelligent thriller.
(Orion, hardback, 18.99)
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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