#1503 The Poet by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly published The Poet in 1996. He had already written four books about his great detective, Harry Bosch of the LAPD. Connelly went on to write at least 23 books about Bosch, and this was the first of three books about Jack McEvoy. McEvoy was a writer for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, and he wrote about real murders. This story began with the murder of McEvoy’s twin brother, Sean, who was a Denver police homicide detective who was obsessed with solving the murder of a young boy which had occurred a few months before his own death. Initially, Sean’s death was attributed to suicide and his inability to come to grips with the mystery of the boy’s death, but it was Jack who was also obsessed with his brother’s death which he thought, despite the overwhelming evidence of suicide, that his brother would never have taken his own life. 

 

As McEvoy began his own investigation, he came to believe that his brother’s suicide had been faked by a serial killer who was targeting homicide detectives around the country. With the multi-state dimension of multiple murders, the FBI became involved, but since McEvoy was a writer, no one in law enforcement was willing to trust him. However, he does develop a love interest with a female FBI agent. The action moves quickly from Denver, to Florida, and then to L.A., all sites of more murders. 

 

This story was as dark as any that I remember from Connelly. My fellow reviewer East Coast Don remembers having read this book, but that was before we began this blog in 2009. (We recently wrote our 1,501^st post.) In addition to grisly murders, it was the description of terrible child pornography which could be ordered on the internet which took the story to it’s darkest moments. 

 

But keep in mind that Connelly is a master mystery writer, and this story is no exception. I literally could not put the book now. Even though I was looking for the storyline twists for which Connelly is famous, I was surprised once again where he took this story, double twists in the last pages of the novel. This dark novel was evidence of Connelly at his best. 27 years after it was published, this story still has legs. Although it was previously reviewed in the blog by ECD (with an A+ rating), I’m now going to read the second book in the series, The Scarecrow.

 

West Coast Don