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|  | Author: Michael Connelly
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
List Price: $27.99
Buy Used: $3.25
as of 11/23/2009 09:24 CST details
You Save: $24.74 (88%)
New (58) Used (132) Collectible (19) from $3.25
Seller: hanks-used-books
Rating:  214 reviews
Sales Rank: 1569
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0316166308
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316166300
ASIN: 0316166308
Publication Date: May 26, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: PLEASE READ! We list all of our books as acceptable. We sell used library books in various conditions. We do not sell unreadable books. All of our books are in acceptable or better condition but we cannot check each book for every flaw. For that reason all books are listed as acceptable. These are not new books so buy accordingly.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 214
 Say Hello to Connelly If You Have Never Read Him October 4, 2009
Frank Scoblete (New York)
If you have not yet made this author's acquaintance and want to read some really good and gritty mysteries, then get this or any of his books. Connelly is one hell of a writer!
From Judith at J. Kaye's Book Blog October 3, 2009
J. Kaye Oldner (http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I began THE SCARECROW, I had no idea this was the second Jack McEvoy novel. Even though this book could stand on its own, I highly recommend starting with the first one, THE POET. In book two, Jack, a star reporter for the Los Angeles Times, falls victim to budget cuts. He has two weeks left and decides to write the story of his career. He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a teen who claims to be innocent of murder even though he earlier confessed to crime. Jack's investigation leads him to a serial killer no one was aware of.
Jack teams up with Rachel Walling, an FBI agent who was also in THE POET. The two have had a more than business-like relationship and at times, Jack and Rachel seem at odds, much having to do with her job. Throughout the story, there are references to characters from his previous books such as Harry Bosch and my favorite, Mickey Haller.
I didn't feel this book had the intensity THE BRASS VERDICT did, but I thoroughly enjoyed it all the same. I'll be picking up THE POET and look forward to this next Jack McEvoy novel.
For those who love audio books, the narrator of this book is one of my favorites, Peter Giles. He was also the narrator for THE BRASS VERDICT. I could listen to that voice all day long!
He's simply the best. October 1, 2009
michael a. draper (Guilford, CT)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Jack McEvoy met the same fate that's happened to many people recently, he's given his pink slip from "The Los Angeles Times."
However, he's given 14 days to train his successor, Angela Cook.
He's wondering what to do when he gets a call from Wanda Sessums. She tells him that the paper got it wrong. Her nephew never admitted to murder. Plaeas check it out and correct the mistake.
Jack sees the chance to write one more story and maybe save his job, or maybe teach the paper that they were letting the wrong man go. He even thought it might be the time to write the novel he always wanted to do.
He does check things out and it turns out that the nephew only admitted to stealing the victim's car. He saw the pocketbook on the front seat, stole the care and later looked in the trunk. That's when he saw the dead body of stripper, Denise Babbit.
Angela does some research and finds another woman died in the same way, she was also found in the trunk of her car with marks on her similiar to Denise's.
The reader learns about a place called the Farm and a man named Carver. He is one of the killers. He has a web site for trunk murder search and when Angela found about the other murder, Carver found out about Angela. He uses his spyware and learns that Jack is coming to Vegas to interview the man convicted of killing the first victim. Carver decides to stop him. He calls Jack's credit card companies and tells them that the cards have been stolen so they put a stop on them, calls the prison and tells them the man Jack is coming to see has a life threat so they put him in protective lock up and erases Jack's emails to his boss.
With Jack isolated and not knowing what's going on, he calls the one person he can trust, Rachel Walling, an FBI agent he had an affair with when working on the Poet case.
Rachel hears what's happened and feels Jack is being set-up so she flies to Vegas and waits for him in his room. Unknowingly she ruins Carver's plan to have his accomplice kill Jack.
Jack and Rachel return to Jack's home. They make love and then find Angela Cook's body under Jack's bed. With this, Rachel brings in the investigators from the FBI. They are able to trace where the emails came from and begin their case against Carver.
As usual, for Connelly, the suspense is excellent. The plot was somewhat confusing with two killers and so much technical information but the characters were well developed. Jack shows his humane side in not accepting the job at the paper if it will cost someone else their position. He is also brave and heroic. Rachel is a character who the reader will enjoy. She reminds me of Jodi Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs."
 when and how novelists' writing start to deteriorate September 29, 2009
JustAForeignReader (Major Earthquake Faultline)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
unavoidably is when after one or two of their books were bought, adapted into screenplays and produced as movies. because usually the purchase fees were in big $$$ numbers. after that, novelists usually become undone. they kept dreaming about guys from hollywood would show up again at their doorsteps to negotiate another screenplay buyout. connelly talked about his despair and disappointment of selling his novels to hollywood movie producers, he envied robert crais' popularity. i've noticed that after his "blood work" was adapted into a movie, his novels' writing styles, paragraph arrangement, scenario/plot arrangements, like james patterson, john grisham, robert parker, stuart wood....were subtly and subconsciously changed, they were read more like movie scripts and lost a lot of taste and flavor. before that, every book they or he wrote were intense and great, but not anymore after one of the books was bought by hollywood. connelly got such syndrome now and the creativity of his novels are deteriorating. this 'scarecrow' is no exception.
One of his better books in recent years September 25, 2009
David W. Nicholas (Montrose, CA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I enjoyed the Brass Verdict, and I generally don't like Connelly's off-Bosch entries as much as the ones where Harry is present (though I will say one of my favorite of his novels is The Poet). What makes The Scarecrow worthwhile in my opinion, however, is two things: first of all, Connelly's created an interesting bad guy, and second, he sets most of the book in the newsroom of the L.A. Times, with circulation falling, writers being laid off, and the atmosphere of an extended wake where the revellers are themselves dying off as the party progresses. Since Connelly was a newsman himself for years, you feel that he really regrets the passing of this great institution, though of course he also sees it as inevitable and inexorable. It's a good setting and backdrop for the story.
So our hero is Jack McEvoy, the main character from The Poet. He's moved from there to the L.A. Times, and been writing there for about a decade, looking for a story that will replicate his success with the Poet. At one point McEvoy (who narrates the story) tells you he bought a house in West LA with the proceeds from his book about the Poet case. As the story starts, Jack gets laid off, and has two weeks to train his own replacement, a pretty new reporter who's maybe going to move into TV work at some point. Jack isn't exactly happy with this, but he thinks that losing his job may force him to finish the novel he's been intermittently working on over the years. But then he fields a phone call, gets yelled at by an elderly black lady on the other end, and decides to look into her allegations. When he does that, a story begins to unfold, and things get a lot more complicated.
I've always been a bit leery of the reporter-as-hero character in detective fiction (no offense intended to Mr. Connelly). Usually reporters are much more interested (in my opinion at least) in what makes a good story than they are in what actually happened. Connelly manages to get around that by making McEvoy more of a throwback, bucking the system and trying hard to write the story that he finds, not the one he creates. I really enjoyed the book, and I'd recommend it.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 214
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