The Scarecrow

I've read a few of Michael Connelly's novels (review of The Lincoln Lawyer and Void Moon can be found on this blog) but not enough of them. Every one I've read has been tough and exciting, and I wasn't disappointed by The Scarecrow, a tale of a serial killer who is also a cyber-criminal.

Connelly dusts off his character Jack McEvoy, the crime reporter last seen in his excellent novel The Poet. McEvoy is the victim of a very contemporary problem--he's been downsized from the L.A. Times, given two weeks notice and asked to train his replacement on the crime beat, a perky blonde who is clearly interested in future work on television. In a bid to go out with a flourish, he gets interested in a teenage gang-banger who's been arrested for the murder of a white stripper. At first he thinks he'll write a feature on how the young blacks of L.A. end up living a life of crime, but then he stumbles upon a similar crime committed in Las Vegas. He suspects a serial killer is at work.

Chapters of first person narration by McElroy are alternated with the perspective of the killer--we know who he is right away, and he's a baddie. I read parts of this book white-knuckled, as identify theft through manipulation of computers is pretty scary stuff--scarier even then murderers. The killer (the "Scarecrow" of the title) is an expert in preventing hackers from infiltrating storage-servers, therefore he knows how to do things like cut off someone's credit cards or download child porn onto someone's laptop. When McEvoy and his friend and lover, an FBI agent named Rachel Walling, get on to him, the killer knows it and is constantly one step ahead of them. By the end of the book it's not clear whether the killer will be abducted.

The writing here is just about perfect, with Connelly's great ear for dialogue and a horror writer's knack for suspense. I'm a bit leery in believing that the FBI would allow him as much access as he has, and at times he enters into the story for the sake of the narrative, and not because it would be realistic, but this is a work of fiction after all. I was also surprised to learn about a sexual fetish I'd never heard of before--abasiophilia, the use of leg braces in sexual fantasy. It takes all kinds.