Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

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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