MICHAEL Connelly is best known for his novels featuring LA detective Harry Bosch. In The Scarecrow, however, crime reporter Jack McEvoy is at the centre of the action.
Connelly fans will be familiar with Jack, last seen in Connolly’s truly chilling serial killer thriller The Poet.
Jack is now star crime reporter of the LA Times: but another serial killer has him in his sights. This time it is The Scarecrow, an IT genius who uses his job at a Nevada data storage facility to track potential victims – young women dancers. He then kidnaps, tortures and sadistically murders them, before leaving false trails that lead to innocent men taking the rap.
Jack stumbles across the killer while reporting on the death of a young woman found abandoned in a car boot on an LA ghetto estate. Before long the two are engaged in a lethal cat-and-mouse game – with Jack’s life the prize.
As ever, the plot is twisted, and chilling, the characterisation spot on, the dialogue sharp. And few crime writers capture the realities of life as a reporter the way Connolly does. A riveting, page-turning read, with The Scarecrow a genuine monster at its heart.
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