By JANET MASLIN writing in The New York Times, Published: May 20, 2009
“The Scarecrow” involves the serial killing of women who are abducted, violently assaulted, asphyxiated and then stuffed in car trunks. The perpetrator of these acts is a kinky beast even by the standards of novels about serial sex crimes. But the trunk murders aren’t the scary part of Michael Connelly’s new story.
Photo by Robert AzmitiaMichael Connelly
THE SCARECROW
By Michael Connelly
419 pages. Little, Brown & Company. US$27.99.
These killings are just business as usual for a crime writer as seasoned as Mr. Connelly. They seem almost humdrum in comparison with the larger fears that “The Scarecrow” summons. This book’s main character is the newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy, who was at his professional prime when he triumphed over evil in “The Poet” (1996). At that point Jack was a reporter for The Rocky Mountain News. The death of that newspaper and the slow collapse of The Los Angeles Times, where Jack has now spent seven years, create an unusually ominous backdrop. 
And in “The Scarecrow,” as in “The Poet,” the insidious powers of computer technology are part of the overall menace. This time the source of evil cyber-mayhem is the Farm, an underground desert bunker that Mr. Connelly makes frighteningly plausible. The sci-fi phantoms that once sprung from the imagination of Michael Crichton have become realities in this tale of spying, trolling, hacking, identity theft and other spookily disembodied privacy violations.
Read the full review at NYT.
Footnote:
Red cover on left US edition, darker cover on right UK (Orion) edition. Can they never agree on a cover that suits both sides of the Atlantic?
No comments:
Post a Comment