Rating: 
Summary: Great book until the end...
Review: This was a very thought out, excellent suspense novel. However, the ending totally blew it. I would have rated this a 5 until the last 40 or so pages. Connelly should have gone with his first idea, not his second. I loved the characterization of the book, althought Jack was weak when it came to women. The story line was very interesting. A killer on the loose, abuses and kills children, then the investigating officers supposedly commit suicide. Jack discovers a pattern and discovers these are homicides not suicides. So he follows the FBI around, unwelcomed. The story progresses nicely and builds up. But when the conflict starts to resolve, it unravels. I was disappointed in the end but I still think it was a good book. I'm still not giving up on Connelly since his Bosch series is fantastic.
Rating: 
Summary: As an introduction to Michael Connelly...
Review: This was my first Connelly book, and safe to say I'm totally hooked.
From reading about his other books, this is one of his non-Bosch books, and as such, was a fortunate place to begin.
What we have here is an old-fashioned page turner. A bare bones summary would be a Denver reporter loses his twin brother cop to suicide, purportedly over a particularly disturbing, unsolved homicide. As he copes, the reporter learns about a number of police suicides, with several seeming related.
At that point in the novel, it becomes a struggle to put the book down. I had to remind myself to slow my reading so I wouldn't miss anything, yet I was tearing through the pages as fast as I could. You won't want to be bothered by anything else for a few hours.
The manhunt is breathlessly told, and becomes scarier as you peek into the mind of the perpetrator. Comparisons to "Silence of The Lambs" are understandable, but unfair. Honestly, this book isn't as good as THAT one, but it doesn't miss by much. Lector is nothing like the Poet; they're two different animals.
The final quarter of the book is best read at night, or better yet, like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, with only a lamp illuminating the page. It's a bit thrilling when the pieces fit together so unexpectedly yet neatly. There's a satisfying click to each piece of the puzzle as it fits into place.
Here's my big problem: the paperback edition I read ends with a several-page peek at his recent book, "The Narrows." If I'm not mistaken, characters from this book make it into that one, but somehow dovetails with his other books, of which there hae been seven or eight in between.
My problem then is that I have one heck of a lot of reading to do...
Rating: 
Summary: A great serial killer story
Review: While this story lacks his main central character Harry bosch, it is still, i am sure, going to end up as one of his best books ever. (Along with "The Concrete Blonde"). The plot is original and compelling (if a tad far-fetched, but i can live with that. fiction is, by its definition, not supposed to be real.) and adds much to the genre. The motive for the killing is good, but its description lacks a certain empathy, which i feel would have given this book even more dimension. Jack McEvoy is a very likeable character, and his quest to discover more about his brother's supposed suicide is written with emotion, feeling, and conviction. Rachel Walling, his obligatory love-interest, is also likeable, and when the two get together first, you really want it to suceed. The killer is chilling, and the way he kills is also so. The conclusion is great...you think it's all over, and then Connelly just finds more and more to hit you with, playing with the reader's expectations and assumptions, and finally trumping them with a nice twist to head it all off. If you're a fan of the serial killer genre, this would be a very good novel to reach for.
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