What We're Reading
BOOK
The Scarecrow
By Michael Connelly
Orion, £18.99
3/5
IN A NUTSHELL
In this neatly executed crime caper, an old school hack facing redundancy fancies one last bash at a Pulitzer. But when he picks up the trail of a serial killer with an inside track on the digital world, the story becomes personal.
REVIEW
Author Michael Connelly is a former police reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His hero, in this by-the-numbers serial killer chase caper, is a police reporter for the Los Angeles Times. So right there you have the authenticity.
And if you want more authenticity, Jack McEvoy is working out his last days on the Times as the newspaper downsizes and welcomes the cold embrace of the internet.
In this by-the-numbers caper, grizzled Jack decides he wants to go out on a high and plans himself an in-depth feature about how a dysfunctional society created a 16-year-old Projects gangbanger called Alonzo Winslow who killed, raped and strangled one of his crack clients.
Only Jack doesn't have to travel too far to figure out that Alonzo - although deeply unpleasant - is innocent and has been the victim of an elaborate set-up. And the real killer doesn't have to Google through the night to figure out that this
hack-on-a-mission threatens his cosy little murder racket.
This is because the killer works on a server farm. He's a scarecrow, fending off attacks on sensitive data which, of course, gives him access to sensitive data, including pretty much all of Jack's troubled private life.
The two are heading for a showdown and Connelly, with swift prose and whip-crack dialogue ensures you're going to stay up half the night to experience.
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