The Scarecrow

By: Michael Connelly

Narrated by: Peter Giles

Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paperto write the definitive murder story of his career.

He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. The kid might actually be innocent.

Jack is soon running with his biggest story since The Poetmade his career years ago. He is tracking a killer who operates completely below police radar--and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. Including Jack's.

Critic reviews

"Narrator Peter Giles delivers the crisp and compelling copy with a deadpan tone and a pace that advances like Patton through Italy. Scenes involving the stalking of McEvoy and Walling raise hairs at the back of the listener's neck. Great characters and a satisfying ending cement Connelly's place as one of the best crime novelists working today."—AudioFile

another hit for Michael Connelly

I enjoy Michael Connelly's books on audio - while not too deep, they are fast moving and keep my interest while I walk or drive or do other boring tasks. I like the way he brings back characters from other books. This is another fast paced mystery with a great reader!

The Poet without the twists

Just finished voting for this book in the Tournament of Audio Books, not so much because it was a great book but because its competition, The Lost Symbol, was a bad book. To me this was a rehash of the first McEvoy book, The Poet. Unappreciated newspaperman has relationship with attractive FBI agent, gets embroiled in a serial killer caper and ultimately becomes so involved that he can't write about it for his own newspaper. The major difference is that the readers know who the bad guy is early on. I also thought Connelly was filling up pages with his verbatim transcripts of e-mails. I began to wonder if Connelly was inspired to write this story after reading Jeffrey Deaver's The Broken Window. The plots were similar and the e-mail transcripts reminded me of the frequent use of fact summarizations by Deaver in his Lincoln Rhyme novels. Neither this book or Deaver's The Broken Window are the best examples of both authors' works. I also though the the narration by Giles was uninspiring. Connelly fans will tolerate this book but will be looking for something better next time. I've gone back to read The Narrows, which is a Bosch novel that precedes this one and should fill in some holes.

Okay with a few rough patches

The narrator seems to have difficulty pronouncing some words and his lisp is a little distracting. The story itself is okay, but I wish I'd used my credit for something else.

Vintage Connelly

Not a boring second in this book.

Richly drawn characters, relentless plot, crisp dialogue.

Outstanding work.

Fast-paced if somewhat thin

"The Scarecrow" is not Michael Connelly's best work, but is a quick moving and will entertain (even if just a little) fans of the author and genre. It's obviously been written to go to Hollywood as many of Connelly's more recent works seem to have been. If it does, it will make a B-grade thriller. It's an action flick in novel format. The character development is rushed and Connelly relies too much on his previous novels to back fill the relationships between the main characters. It's quite glaring at times.

The narrator had a lot of difficulty with proper emphasis and prosody. At times, I found myself asking if he had even read the novel prior to recording the narration. He spends too much time trying to make the novel darker than it already was by reading with a very phony tone of urgency. The effect comes off as inappropriately campy.

All in all, it's a worthy download if you want something quick and easy to digest. If you want more than that, then you likely aren't even reading this review.