Book Review: The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

When a skilled writer gets lazy, the result is a novel like The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly.

When you have built up a solid fan base and are guaranteed a fat payoff for every book you are commissioned to write, it must be tempting to churn out a top-of-the-head, subpar effort that is full of clichés.

The plot is basic here. A sexual deviant, who also happens to be a skilled hacker, butchers women and frames up other people using his computer skills. Planted evidence on other people's computers, and hacked e-mail and credit card accounts are some of the tricks he uses. A journalist, Jack McEvoy, becomes a major part of the story after he and a new reporter discover that the suspects taking the fall for these crimes are innocent.

In the first sign of pure laziness on the part of the writer, we have that at-first omnipotent bad guy, who can do absolutely anything to anyone because of his computer hacking skills. But we are never told how he does all these things. A criminal hacking into e-mail and credit card accounts, planting evidence on other people's computers, and accessing other personal information stored online is, of course, plausible. But at least give us a semblance of an explanation as to how this is being done. Here there is nothing of the sort.

No Character Development

The major problem with this book is that the characters are paper-thin. As a reader, you give not a damn about what happens to them, because you have absolutely no sense of who they are. There is no character development, of either the good guys or the bad guys.

Oh wait, there is a few paragraphs-long, laugh-out-loud bit of tripe that is supposed to inform us about why the central creep does the things he does. Pure, well-used cliché here—the individual's mother was a stripper. Take a wild guess what the result is—yep, he hates women and starts butchering them.

Books with a serial killer of some sort always hinge on the fact that everything the killer does has a significant meaning which then allows the cops (or journalists) to cleverly figure everything out due to the references that the killer drops along the way. As if the killer really wants this to be a cat and mouse game, and/or wants to give the cops a legitimate chance to find him. This is something that readers of crime fiction put up with to a degree. But when there are so many other weaknesses in a novel, this kind of boiler-plate becomes even more annoying.

Tells

Connelly is either aware of the third-rate book he is offering up to his readers, or he subconsciously lets on through the words spoken by the characters. There are numerous "tells" in the book in which the characters try to head off the inevitable reactions that readers will have.

"It was strange, sometimes, how life worked out." Strange too how a line like that will make an implausible plot twist easier for readers to swallow.

"She said it so matter-of-factly. There was probably nothing in this world that surprised her or horrified her any longer." The flat, meaningless reaction of this character to the discovery of a corpse just doesn't wash. That's what happens when characters aren't developed. The things they say sound strangely inappropriate and unbelievable.

In the section that attempts to give the killer some back-story: "He wondered what had made him go down the hallway to look. He knew the answer was tangled down deep in his darkest roots. In a place no one could go." And in a place that no reader will go, because there is no reasonable insight into his personal history or psyche, and hence no understanding about why he turned into a killer.

"I didn't know exactly where I was going but I drove with subconscious purpose, as though the hands on the wheel and the foot on the pedal knew what my brain didn't" I.e., a meandering, unfocused arc to the book that indicates a lack of planning.

"This doesn't sound like a plan, Jack. It sounds like you're making it up as you go along."
Bingo.

Other Weaknesses

A huge hole in the plot appears as the two main characters, McEvoy and his FBI agent girlfriend Rachel Walling, head to the organization where the killer works. At this point in the book, the story about the serial killer has received huge publicity, with McEvoy's name part of the story, his face on CNN etc. Yet they blunder in to the office and use their real names.

Another major absurdity involves the FBI agent first being fired and then reinstated.

Another failing, and what brings so many books down, is the lack of resistance that is developed in various situations. Things just happen without the requisite opposition from situations or characters.

And in another crime novel cliché, there is the false ending, where the journalist and cop believe that the case is wrapped up but the real killer is still on the loose. As a reader, it is unlikely you will care at this point.

The book isn't a total write-off: there are some reasonably interesting passages. However, these sections involve McEvoy and Walling discussing the case and telegraphing the main plot twists. Another sign of a weak novel.

Are there any themes at play in this novel? I doubt it. And even if there were, they wouldn't salvage this substandard effort.

There is no flesh on the bones of The Scarecrow. Save yourself some time, and give this book a miss.

The LA Times Homicide Report

The LA Times Homicide Report is fascinating for a number of reasons.

The sheer, non-stop parade of senseless murders is probably what brings most people back to the blog. It's hard to comprehend that such violence plays out so consistently in one geographic area. But there it is, every day, with new reports of lives ended.

Ostensibly, as mentioned in its About page, one of the motives behind the Report is to chronicle the deaths of every single person murdered in LA county. In the past, many murders would go unreported. The race and socioeconomic background of a victim often determines how much play a murder gets in the Los Angeles media (and many other jurisdictions as well).

Desensitized to Violence

So, the Report tries to address that failing of the mainstream media. And it makes a pointed effort to include the race of everyone murdered within LA county. If one goal is to give a name to every single murder victim, then the Report succeeds in that respect. But unfortunately, just as with the thousands slaughtered every year in various conflicts around the globe, you feel desensitized to the overwhelming nature of it all. I just can't force myself to feel for most of the victims, as much as I would like to.

This sense that a person should feel something but isn't quite able, is what drives people to set up those sad tributes to high profile murder cases, or the deaths of famous people. It's as if the act of leaving a teddy bear for someone you never knew will convince yourself and others that you are a caring person.

The narrative that surrounds the murder of a stranger is what determines whether or not you feel something. Which is an indication that, despite the humanity that should exist between fellow humans, it doesn't. Unless of course you know the individual who was killed. Or the script contains all the necessary elements so that it elicits empathy.

Which is why we should all recognize the importance of the arts in helping us to feel something about people whose deaths would otherwise be meaningless to us. Books, movies, music, paintings—they are not just distractions, they help us to feel. Which is also why the homicide report posts that include the most detail and use narrative elements more common in fiction are also more likely to make readers feel something.

Bathos and Nastiness

The occasional homicide report victim does get to me. There is usually some kind of bathetic element in the write-up that makes it real. Something that makes an image rise up in my mind of this person as a living, breathing individual who was cut down for some meaningless slight.

Or an extremely despicable incident that robs someone of their life for no other reason than they were at the wrong place at the wrong time in the vicinity of a murdering piece of filth:

Gomez, 92, was a neighborhood fixture, still spry enough to walk the streets for exercise in the mornings, picking up recyclables for extra cash as she went along. On Feb. 2., 2006, she left home dressed in a layer of clothes topped with a red jacket, and pushing a cart to carry cans and bottles, as was her routine.

Somebody stabbed her repeatedly and left her body in front of an apartment complex at 9034 Willis Ave. just south of Nordhoff Street and west of Van Nuys Boulevard.

Of course, there is another reason the report is so popular.When you read about tragedy befalling others, it has the odd effect of increasing your sense of well-being by making you realize that something horrible hasn't happened to you. Yet.