The Poet

Michael Connelly’s crime novel, The Poet, falls short of his other works that I have read. The characters are not as fully developed, the plot is thin and there is not as much detail or insight into police investigation. I felt I didn’t profit as much from this story as I did from Dark Echo, which gave extensive detail on police detective work or from A Darkness More Than Night, where Connelly gave detailed descriptions of psychological profiling.

Jack McEvoy is a newspaper reporter whose twin brother, a policeman, commits suicide while investigating a high profile case. Jack doesn’t believe it was suicide and begins digging deeper, finding six other policemen who had committed suicide under similar circumstances. One important link is that all seven had left behind suicide notes that were quotes from Edgar Allan Poe.

Jack gets involved in the investigation and works along side the FBI. There are enough plot twists to keep the story interesting, and Connelly does a good job of hiding the identity of the real perpetrator to the very end.