Connelly’s “Scarecrow” a Must for Crime Lovers

By Lesha Porche Denega
June 25, 2009

In a relatively short time after The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly delivers his latest, The Scarecrow. Returning from long hiatus are two characters featured rarely—L.A. Times reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI agent Rachel Walling, who teamed up in Connelly’s The Poet. Jack stumbles upon a link between a local killing and two other slayings, discovering a similar gruesome method of torture and death.† The recently laid-off reporter is determined to go out with a bang by writing a groundbreaking story uncovering a serial killer's secret.

The Scarecrow is written from two points of view, Jack's and the killer's.†The reader is aware of the killer's identity, but not his moves, and the first-person accounts of Jack feel like news reports from a demilitarized zone.†It can make for choppy but fast-paced reading. That's one of the great things about Connelly. His prose is straightforward and gritty. The narration is to the point and matter-of-fact. The difference in language and syntax between the killer's narration and Jack's is well established, and Jack and Rachel’s relationship is somehow—circumstances considered—plausible.

For fans of Connelly's Harry Bosch series, this is an excellent stand-in until Harry returns. Connelly himself was a crime beat reporter, so this is comfortable ground and it shows in the book's structural ease.

WITCHY WOMAN
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe is an excellent modern day mystery and historical novel rolled into one. The premise is simple. Connie Goodwin, a graduate student, plans on spending the summer working on her dissertation in American History, but the plan changes when her mother calls and asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s house near Salem.

As Connie cleans out her grandmother’s house, she finds a key and a piece of paper with the name Deliverance Dane written on it. Slowly, Connie begins to research Deliverance Dane and her connection to the Salem Witch Trials.

Howe seamlessly mixes the true history of Salem during the witch trials with a mystery story. A little trivia about the author—her ancestors were Elizabeth Howe and Elizabeth Proctor, two women accused of being witches in Salem.
- Nicole James

LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FASHION
Warning—if you pick up Jen Lancaster’s latest memoir, Pretty in Plaid, be prepared to do nothing but read for the rest of the day. From her Girl Scout adventures to life on the corporate ladder, Lancaster provides plenty of laugh out loud moments.

Choosing fashion and decades as her guide for this book, Lancaster takes a hilarious walk down memory lane. The ‘70s section covers her childhood as a Girl Scout and plans to become Mrs. Arthur Fonzarelli. The ‘80s section steals the book with the Jordache jeans trilogy featuring Lancaster’s escape from Cow Town, Indiana to Europe, where she finds her self worth. Rounding out the book is the ‘90s section, which leaves the reader wondering if Lancaster will ever graduate from college.

With fashion as the backdrop for Lancaster’s story, you may fear the writing will be nothing but shallow. Behind the fashion musings, however, are Lancaster’s reminiscing about all of the embarrassing things one would tell only a close friend. She does it masterfully—with humor comes tender moments of tough life lessons.
Tara Manson

JUST EXACTLY WHY DO WE NEED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?
Greg Kot’s Ripped does a good job of explaining how the Internet turned the music industry on its head in the last decade. Take a gander at the latest and best in crime fiction, and you’d still be hard pressed to find a villain as despicable as the Recording Industry Association of America. And talk about clueless. Kot doesn’t come right out and say it, but the obvious RIAA response to the original Napster and “illegal” file sharing should have been lowering CD prices, not suing potential customers. Duh.

Elsewhere, Kot charts the rise of Net favorites like Death Cab for Cutie and Arcade Fire, spends a little too much time detailing the smart-assed music Web site Pitchfork, and looks at some of the artists who have told the big record labels to kiss their collective arses—Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, even Paul McCartney. This is fascinating stuff, and finds true heroes in forward-thinking musicians and music lovers.
C.M.

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