Connelly, Walling, and McEvoy: from “The Poet” to “The Scarecrow”

The Scarecrow – Michael Connelly

It’s bad enough to be laid off because your employer wants to bring in cheaper staff, but an even greater indignity is to be kept around just to train your replacement. That’s exactly what happened to Jack McEvoy, though: the L A Times crime beat reporter might’ve known the local cops inside and out and he might’ve been one of the best writers on the staff, but he was being paid well to write for the Times and the new generation of MoJos – “mobile journalists” – were hungry and a whole lot cheaper. Besides, this bunch didn’t just call in their stories on their phones, they wrote their stories on their phones.

But two weeks’ pay was two weeks’ pay, so Jack took the deal and began showing his replacement – the very young and very pretty Angela Cook – the ropes. All the while, though, Jack Mack had every intention of going out on a high note; and Alonzo Wilson’s story looked to be just the angle he needed. The LAPD had the teenage gang-banger set to take a fall for murdering a young stripper and stuffing her in the trunk of her car… which happened to be one of the few crimes ‘Zo hadn’t committed.

And then Cook horned in on his story, passing him the results of her google search on “trunk murder.” Hoping to stay one step ahead of his in-house competition, McEvoy took off for Vegas… and The Scarecrow took off after McEvoy. Only an out-of-the-blue phone call to Jack’s one-time lover, former FBI profiler Rachel Walling, saved him… and the battle was joined: a short-timer reporter and a disgraced Feeb, up against an unknown subject who can destroy their credit – even their lives – on a whim. Jack McEvoy is about to feel more like a dinosaur than ever – and dinosaurs are extinct.

The decline of newspapers in the age of the internet is no secret, but even though he’s decades removed from his last stint at a daily author Michael Connelly still feels the pain of his former brethren. The reasons are all there in The Scarecrow: declining ad revenues, plummeting readership. Jack McEvoy and his ilk are like the dinosaurs, their habitat destroyed and their niche filled by smaller entities. As Jack’s co-worker said, “corruption will be the new growth industry without the papers watching.” Connelly’s tale is so up-to-the minute that it includes the demise of McEvoy’s former paper, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which published its last edition at the end of February.

The Scarecrow, however, is not about the death of newspapers. It’s about the death of young women, tortured and brutalized by one sick sonuvabitch. It’s about a couple of the good guys fumbling in the dark while a very bad guy watches their every move. It’s about the newspaper business and profiling and psychopaths and two people who went through hell once before and haven’t been able to get each other out of their heads since.

Michael Connelly leaves behind both Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller to re-enlist the heroes of 1994’s The Poet, but – as long-time fans well know – it doesn’t make much difference who his protagonist is, Connelly shines. The Scarecrow has, however, irritated some Connelly “purists” (feel free to read that as “people who are uncomfortable with change”) for revealing the identity of the titular villain almost from page one. Somehow, they think that kills all the suspense. To that bunch, I must say, “au contraire!” Knowing the villain’s identity does not in any way lessen the suspense as the intrepid duo close in on their quarry.

That doesn’t mean that The Scarecrow is Connelly’s best, however – it’s not. Though heartfelt (and understood in this quarter, at least), the early focus on McEvoy’s layoff is long and drawn out. The reunion between McEvoy and Walling is pretty much by the numbers; and though the “single-bullet theory” is a nice touch, it still doesn’t make up for the predictability. Connelly’s foray into the world of internet predation, identity theft, and hacking is sadly superficial – but then he’s of Jack McEvoy’s generation himself; an old-style journalist who knows what -30- means when typed at the bottom of a page.

Most Michael Connelly fans will happily welcome The Scarecrow to their bookshelves; except perhaps for a few grumps who think he should never write anything beyond the Bosch series. Ignore them and read it anyway. I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it again: even when Michael Connelly is not at his best, he’s still a lot better then most of the competition.

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“The White Gates” – Do Kids Really Talk Like That?

The White Gates – Bonnie Ramthun

When Torin Sinclair finds himself uprooted from sunny Southern California and dropped unceremoniously in a little Colorado mountain town – in early December, no less – he’s certain that life as he knows it is over. The frigid cold is bad enough, but the dying snowboarder his Mom (Dr. Sinclair, the new town doctor) is called to treat on his first night in town gets things off to a creepy start. It’s little comfort when he learns that an old Ute woman had cursed the town ‘way, ‘way, ‘way back in 1952; and the curse was that the town wouldn’t be able to keep a doctor.

Though Tor thinks his new life will be a mess, Dr. Mom has the solution up her white sleeve: his first snowboarding lesson is tomorrow! And not only is Tor a natural, he makes two friends at the snowboard shop! Raine, Drake, and Tor become Snow Park’s answer to the Three (Twelve-Year-Old) Musketeers!

Musketeers or no, the three outcasts – the multiple-greats-granddaughter of that curse-giver, the neglected son of a world-class snowboarder, and the son of the curse-target doctor – have full lives. There’s school, riding their boards, removing the curse, and, oh yeah – solving the mystery. Why did a seemingly healthy teenager die of pulmonary edema? And why did the rest of the high school snowboard team blame Tor’s Mom?

The answer awaits, but first Tor will have to blunder through The White Gates.

“Road Dogs”: Elmore Leonard May be an Acquired Taste, but He’s One I Haven’t Acquired

Road Dogs – Elmore Leonard

Jack Foley had been called the “Sweetheart Bandit” in the days when he was robbing banks at the rate of about one a month. He’d tallied 126 (or was it 127?) of them before US Marshall Karen Sisco¹ plugged him in the leg and sent him back to prison. Good ol’ Maximum Bob (the judge) sentenced him to rot for thirty years. So much for being a sweetheart…

It was in Florida’s Glades Correctional Facility that Foley and Cundo Rey, Marielito made good, became Road Dogs; cons who watch each other’s back in yard and cell block. One day, Rey made a phone call, and suddenly his buddy’s thirty-year fall had been cut to three – and three was up next month. After he walked out those gates, Jack headed for Venice (California, not Italy) to wait for his buddy-slash-benefactor’s release with Cundo’s wife, Dawn, and his business manager (all the while looking over his shoulder for the FBI agent who’d sent him up – and perhaps a glimpse of Sisco as well).

Take a Quick Look at “Look Again” (Lisa Scottoline)

Look Again – Lisa Scottoline

Ellen Gleeson reached the mommy track via an unconventional route: after writing an article about a sick boy in a Philly hospital, the thirty-something single reporter ended up adopting little Will when his birth mother relinquished him. Now three, Will’s the apple of his Mommy’s eye, and there’s no way she could conceive of her life without him.

No way, that is, until the card comes in the mail. You know the ones: white cardboard advertising circulars with the words “Have You Seen Me?” printed beside a picture on the back. Little Timothy Braverman, kidnapped two years ago in Florida, looked exactly like Will. And he was the same age. And some strange form of “adoptive-mother’s intuition” let Ellen know that the two were the same child…

Even though there were layoffs in the wind at her paper, Ellen knew it was up to her to prove that Will was not the missing boy. If doing so placed her job in jeopardy – not to mention maybe never seeing hunky Marcelo, her Brazilian editor, again – there was no comparison. And so Ellen began doing what good reporters do: she started her own investigation. But a strange thing happened along the way: people connected with the adoption kept dying…