Book Review: The Poet

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

The Poet     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Michael Connelly
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural

Mystery readers are often asked by authors to suspend disbelief. It's a mark of a very good author's skill when the suspension is particularly ambitious, the situations extraordinarily improbable, and the story still works and hold's the reader's attention.

This is the case with "The Poet." Jack McEvoy is a reporter for a large metropolitan newspaper and receives the horrific news of his twin brother's suicide. Unable to accept that his brother would have killed himself, Jack begins to persue his unanswered questions. Before long he is part of a top flight FBI investigating team traveling across the US, privy to all their investigative steps. He manages to talk himself into this unlikely situation by withholding information he has learned about a nationwide string of suicides by homicide cops. He persuades the FBI to let him join their agents in return for his help, with the eventual exclusive scoop for his newspaper.

And the improbabilities continue. Jack ends up in bed with one of the female agents. The pedophilic mastermind behind the entire scheme is a highly placed law enforcement official who has managed to keep secret his far flung travels to dispatch cops in staged suicide scenes. And on and on.

But Connelly is good at what he does. And even while moaning "Oh, please!" I was held by the tension of the book, and kept reading until I knew the entire answer.

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM