Crime Beat

A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

By: Michael Connelly

Narrated by: Len Cariou, Nancy McKeon, Carl Franklin

Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

From #1 best seller Michael Connelly's first career as a prizewinning crime reporter, the gripping, true stories that inspired and informed his novels.

Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat in Florida and Los Angeles. In vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends, and, of course, the killers, to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.

Connelly's firsthand observations would lend inspiration to his novels, from The Black Echo, which was drawn from a real-life bank heist, to Trunk Music, based on an unsolved case of a man found in the trunk of his Rolls Royce. And the vital details of his best-known characters, both heroes and villains, would be drawn from the cops and killers he reported on: from loner detective Harry Bosch to the manipulative serial killer the Poet.

Stranger than fiction and every bit as gripping, these pieces show once again that Michael Connelly is not only a master of his craft, but also one of the great American writers in any form.

©2004 Michael Connelly (P)2006 Time Warner AudioBooks. All Rights Reserved.

Critic reviews

"The author is strongest bringing quiet moments to life, such as the despair of parents hoping that a missing child will still turn up, or the patient, resigned professionalism of weary detectives." (Publishers Weekly)
"This volume works on several levels: as a source of insight into Connelly's craft; as a collection of compelling true-crime stories; and as a great primer for journalists." (Booklist)

Disappointment

I have enjoyed Michael Connelly's fiction and had high hopes that I would enjoy this book as well. The performance is monotone and unemotional, which makes the stories less interesting. Yes, these are stories that he wrote as a reporter in the 80's and 90's. There is some interesting information that the public does not consider. But I think this could have been written and read better. It's a missed opportunity. I did not finish listening due to the performance.

BASICALLY JUST A READING OF HIS JOURNALISM -

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

reporters

What was most disappointing about Michael Connelly’s story?

boring - not a story! just a reading of reports and repetitive

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

no - the narrator(s) were fine
the material is not a subject for a book

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Crime Beat?

most
I just finished HOMICIDE SPECIAL by Miles Corwin - this is a fact bast reporting style no-fiction crime story and it is VERY GOOD

Any additional comments?

I like Mr Connellys work and would like to hear theses stories as stories not just regurgitating his reporting

Not up to Harry Bosch

True Crime is a different kind of writing than crime fiction. The author must hew to the facts as they happen. These true stories lack the sparkle than the reader usually associates with Michael Connelly and instead of giving a fascinating inside look at police work, drag on. The author's own voice narrating the first segment is not a good readers' voice.
Len Cariou is such a genius. he should have read the entire thing.

Repetitious

It was just reading from newspaper stories and each one just kept repeating. I found the first reader very tiresome and boring. The second and third readers put more into it and weren't so bad. I usually enjoy his books very much. (Maybe not the narration so much.)

Worst book

I usually enjoy the author , but this one was random and choppy and repeated itself constantly. I kept thinking, surely it will get better, it did not. It was a waste of a credit.

Wonderful

Michael Connelly is never less than wonderful. This true crime memoir is a fascinating look into crime reportage.

Plain reading of old news articles

I’m a big fan of both the Bosch and Lincoln lawyer series and have listened to them several times, but this is nowhere near as good.

It’s just a reading of old newspaper articles without any commentary or relation to Michaels inspiration from them. In addition there is a lot of repetition as the same material is repeated basically verbatim in follow up articles. Most of the cases are quite mundane and not particularly exciting or interesting 40 years later.

This could have been interesting if it had been curated and with commentary from Michael discussing the case and perhaps inspiration that he drew from them.

Terrible

Complete waste of time. Just assembled news articles. No real investigative writing or journalism involved. Boring narration. Connelly is lazy for even publishing such garbage. Will not read another one of his books again.

Disappointing

No story here - just different people reading newspaper articles from the 1980s and 1990s. Interesting stuff but not worth the price of admission.

Fascinating true crime snapshots in the Sin Cities

A very well written & performed menagerie of crime stories from the newspaper files of crime novelist Michael Connelly. He culls murder, burglary, fear, frustration, shock, and more from crimes he covered in his former life as a crime reporter in Florida then Los Angeles. Shows his writing talent was there from the start. Could be called Front Row To The Shit Show. Who killed the Queen fatter than her photos? Who killed the negotiator to the stars who ended up in his trunk? What kind of headcase commits 350 burglaries in 364 days? Great, understated narration brings the hard-boiled writing to life.