Rating:  Summary: Guaranteed Page-Turner Review:
Like most Michael Connelly novels I immediately got hooked into The Poet's storyline and started turning the pages at a rate that belied its 434 pages. The book just flew by. At the end I felt like I had just taken a terrific ride and immediately started looking for the next Connelly novel I could get my hands on.
This time it's newspaperman Jack McEvoy who begins probing the circumstances surrounding his policeman brother's death. Unwilling to accept it as an official suicide, McEvoy's persistent inquiries begin to uncover an oblique pattern that hints at a serial killer. Joining forces with law enforcement officials McEvoy assists in the manhunt for this killer, dubbed The Poet, before he can kill his next victim.
Superbly told, the manhunt becomes a fast-paced psychological thriller that will keep you riveted until the end.
Rating:  Summary: Great novel from an Edgar Award Winner Review: Connelly is an Edgar Award winner (an award for great mysteries that is named after Edgar Allen Poe, the creator of they mystery genre) and, for me, that is usually a great recommendation as an author.
The book concerns Jack McEvoy, a reporter whose specialty is covering murders for his newspaper. This time, the story is about his twin brother, a cop and a presumed suicide who left a disturbing note consisting of a single line from Poe. McEvoy does a lot of digging and discovers that there have been a string of police suicides across the country with "Poe" suicide notes. Soon, he's on the case with an FBI task force and the chase is on to catch the killer they've nicknamed "The Poet."
This really is a well-written book. The first 100 pages are slow and wallowing in self-reflection and insecurity, as is appropriate for those left behind in the wake of a suicide. Once McEvoy finds the clues leading to a different conclusion, the book picks up in pace until it races along. The ending is full of cliffhangers and I was surprised.
Rating:  Summary: Unfulfilled potential Review: I had been hearing great things about this book for years, so I finally decided to go ahead and read it. I expected it to be much better than it turned out to be. As it started out I was completely enthralled, and thought I was in for a really great story. As the story progressed it began to drag, and there were a few too many far-fetched twists and turns. By the last 1/4 of the book, I had to force myself to keep reading.
I'm going to give The Narrows a shot; hopefully it's an improvement.
Rating:  Summary: Read this in one sitting! Review: I waited SO LONG for this book to finally get into my hands that I thought 'this has got to be great' and I was not disappointed! The thing that I like most about Connelly is the way he can write excellent crime thrillers without having to rely on one character throughout his books. I do love Harry Bosch but Connelly is such a talented writer that every book of his is better than the last, Bosch or no Bosch!'The Poet' centers around the apparent suicide of a cop, Sean, who has left behind a note that is written on his windshield, it is a line from an Edgar Allen Poe poem, and nobody can quite figure it out. Enter his brother, Jack, a reporter, who is convinced that his brother definately did not committ suicide and soon learns of other cops that died exactly the same way. Jack gets involved with the FBI and soon everybody his trying to hunt down 'The Poet'. With insight into the killers mind & life throughout the book, this makes a truly excellent and riveting read for those who love Connelly's work or love crime fiction. There are a few twists in the ending to keep you the reader guessing and coming back for more Connelly!
Rating:  Summary: Going in the "donate" pile Review: Luckily, this was not my first Connelly book, or I wouldn't bother to read any others. I know he writes a better book. This one was engaging up until the end, at which point Connelly must have put his manuscript aside for awhile, then realized that he was about to miss a deadline so shot off a few final twists and chunked it to his editor. The ending is so contrived it could have been cribbed from a high school English paper.
Additionally, in the edition that I have there are so many typos and grammatical errors that it became distracting to read, and leads me to think Connelly has become a book-a-year writer, and isn't putting in that much effort.
Rating:  Summary: The Ultimate 'Cop'-out again! Review: Stephen King gushes in his promo for this novel but after navigating 500 pages to a "Cop"-out of an ending, I wondered if we had read the same book. Besides the problems with the ending, the bulk of the novel is grossly overwritten, padded almost. Was he paid by the word on this one? On the plus side, as a career news reporter myself, I enjoyed the characters and the book was quick to read. But I threw it across the room when I started to sniff the final twist and yelled: "Not another one of these..." I won't give the ending away but I will accuse Connelly of taking the lazy way to a twist that makes no sense at all. Also, the love story is ludicrous.
Rating:  Summary: Two Twists Too Many Review: The Poet has 425 pages of excellent character development , detail and exicitement... each page drawing you into the suspenseful story line. Problem is: the book has almost 500 pages.
In those final 75 pages, Connelly manages to utterly suspend the reader's belief in the plot and the characters. The final chapters are marked by inexplicable, in comprehensible, and improbable twists; a complete lack of coherence; and a failure to tie off loose ends.
Call me a cynic, but the ending reads as though an after thought, perhaps prompted by a literary agent seeing a payday in the form of a 3rd rate Hollywood screenplay.
It will be a long time before I would entrust another 6 hours of my reading time to Connelly based on this disappointing treatment of his very capable skills.
Rating:  Summary: worth reading if you have read his better Bosch books first Review: This book started off interesting enough. I was engaged for the first few chapters and then it became very predictable and tired... as though Connelly were going through the motions after he set up an interesting premise. The characters here have nothing to do with Bosch in this book, but interestingly they find themselves in a later Bosch novel, I think it was `The Narrows.' Connelly seems to be enjoying combing his earlier work without Bosch and tying everything together, which is admirable.
I think that Connelly is getting to the end of his career as a writer. And this saddens me. Primarily because he never wrote a book that truly meets his talent head on. I wish that he had allowed for himself to struggle a little bit more as an author. I think that the great character known as Harry Bosch and all of the neat tied up ends of every book are fine and all, but it's not enough. Even though his stories walk the edge of something dangerous they never break any literary boundaries as Hammett and Chandler did in their own day. The Bosch works might even surpass these two luminaries in some aspects, but Connelly has had decades of other authors to feed upon and add to the flavor of his plots. Thus these books are slightly underwhelming. Besides Lawrence Block, I think that Connelly had one of the best chances to overcome the predictability of our contemporary thrillers. He has not yet done so. Instead he constantly tries to grapple with what I assume are his own doubts by sending every novel needlessly over the top into a stereotypical 1980's shoot-em out cop drama. So sad.
This is a fine read unto itself, I give it three stars and think that if you have read the better Bosch books by Connelly, this book will not let you down too hard. In fact it is an enjoyable time consumer.
Rating:  Summary: Wow! Review: This has to be the best Connelly book I have tackled yet! I could not put it down.
The Poet begins when homicide journalist Jack McEvoy's twin brother (a Homicide Detective), kills himself. To confront grief in his own way, Jack decides to do what he does best, and write about what happened. It is during his investigations he discovers clues which lead him to believe that his brother died in suspicious circumstances.
In a trail of red herrings which spans across the States, Jack follows clues to piece together the puzzle of his brothers death. Aided by an inventive range of characters (including the cliched bombshell, intelligent, alluring female lead), Jack discovers the shocking truth about what really happened that day.
A word of warning to the faint hearted, 'The Poet' contains a myrriad of references to child abuse which you might find offensive. Despite this, the book is tastefully written, and is extremely suspensful. I often found myself wondering how on earth Connelly came up with this stuff though.
For crime lovers, I thoroughly recommend this one. I love Harry Bosch, but I have to say that 'The Poet' topped all others I have read. Don't miss the fascinating note by Stephen King at the start - was a great prelude to a great novel.
Rating:  Summary: The Poet Review: This was a good book, of course I don't read many and end up thinking most i read are good books.
It was about this serial killer named the poet, who got a rush from killing homocide detectives. He (the poet) used grotesque murders of innocent children(they are molested and mutilatet), or girls who worked with children(also mutilated) to lure his homocide detectives in. Once they got depressed from obsessing over the murders and not finding the culprit, the poet capped them and made it look like a suicide.
Then, this reporter's brother is one of the victims of the strike from the poet's right hand. He investigates more into it, and discovered someone is nocking off police officers.
When I first started reading it, I found it interesting how the writer followed the trail of the Poet, and even bothered to tell us his name, and what he was up to. This is a fairly good book. Like I said, I dont read many, so i dont know if I can fairly justify the goodness of it. It had a couple of twists, which I ran across, like his later book I had read before, "Bloodwork" (which I still havent seen). And, the reason I had read that is because I wanted to see the movie.
I still don't get how you can shoot yourself in the head with a 12 gauge shotgun. And about me not reading alot, I usually just read up until the last few pages, which wasnt true about this book.
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