Plot
After being laid off by the Los Angeles Times , Jack McEvoy is given two weeks to train his replacement, Angela Cook, and decides that he wants to write one more major story before his exit. He focuses on the case of 16-year-old drug dealer Alonzo Winslow, who is being held by police for the brutal rape and murder of a stripper in Santa Monica. However, after he is given access to the case files, Jack learns that Alonzo only confessed to stealing the car containing the body, not to the crime itself.
In researching trunk murders on the Internet, Angela unwittingly finds evidence of a similar crime in Las Vegas. However, her research took her to a "trap" site set up by the real killer: Wesley Carver, an MIT graduate who is the chief security officer for a server farm in Mesa, Arizona. Carver cracks Angela's e-mail password and learns that Jack is headed to Las Vegas. He promptly creates a fake data emergency so that his company will send him to Los Angeles.
The next day, Jack finds that neither his credit cards nor his cell phone work, and is forced to buy a burner phone. He shares evidence of the identical L.A. murder to the attorney for the convicted Las Vegas murderer, who gives Jack a letter permitting him to meet his client at Ely State Prison. During the lengthy drive on the "loneliest road in America", Jack calls his former girlfriend, FBI agent Rachel Walling, to report the "under the radar" serial killer, while also mentioning his electronic problems.
When he arrives at the prison, Jack is told that he cannot see the prisoner until the next day. He books a room in a local hotel, where he encounters another guest in cowboy attire with distinctive sideburns. He unexpectedly finds Rachel in his room, having taken an FBI plane to the prison after she realized that Jack's discoveries and his electronic problems were linked but had no way to warn him. Jack and Rachel learn that "Sideburns" is not staying at the hotel and surmise that he must be the killer.
When calling the Times, Jack learns that Angela has disappeared. He and Rachel promptly return to Los Angeles. During the flight, Rachel notes that the victims were both exotic dancers with similar body types and that both had been put in leg braces while being sexually abused before death, a perversion known as abasiophilia. Rachel admits that her recent relationship with a police detective ended in part because she still had feelings for Jack. Upon arrival, the duo find Angela's body under Jack's bed, killed in the same style as the other victims.
Jack is quickly cleared of Angela's murder, and the evidence allows both Alonzo and the Las Vegas prisoner to be freed. The FBI links the trap site to Bill Denslow, a fake name used by an online client of Carver's server farm. Jack appears on CNN to discuss the case, but Rachel is forced to resign from the FBI for her unauthorized trip to Nevada. Meanwhile, Carver has his assistant, whom he gave the pseudonym "Freddie Stone", help him murder and bury the server farm's CEO and then quit.
Jack deduces that the killer knew non-public legal information about his victims and finds that all were represented by law firms whose sites were handled through Carver's server farm, just like the trap site. Posing as potential clients, he and Rachel visit the server farm and talk to Carver, who doesn't reveal that he knows their true identities. Following a trail laid by Carver, they find Stone's house, identify him as "Sideburns" and uncover evidence concerning the killings. They call in the FBI, and Rachel is able to use her role in finding the killer to regain her job.
Jack agrees to return to Los Angeles and goes to Rachel's hotel room to say goodbye—but finds that she has just been kidnapped by Stone. He intercepts them, rescues an unconscious Rachel from a laundry bin and then kills Stone in a battle on the top floor. Rachel tells Jack that the FBI believes there were two killers: Stone and Angela's murderer. With Carver's "help", Rachel and the FBI team find evidence that Stone and the missing CEO committed all of the murders.
Jack's high-profile causes the Times to offer his job back, even though his role as a participant means that he cannot write about the case. Jack turns down the offer and accepts a two-book deal. However, Jack then sees a picture from The Wizard of Oz in his editor's office and realizes that the method used to suffocate the victims is similar to the head of a scarecrow. He immediately heads to Arizona to warn a disbelieving Rachel, but unfortunately meets her in a coffee shop near the server farm with a full-time webcam. Jack deduces that they are being watched by 'The Scarecrow' over the webcam.
Carver watches their discussion, then ambushes the other FBI agents. His plan to kill the agents and fake his own death is foiled when Jack figures it out. Rachel shoots Carver in the head, leaving him in a seemingly permanent comatose state. In a brief epilogue, Jack's research has revealed that Carver's mother was an exotic dancer similar in appearance to the victims who needed to wear leg braces when not performing. The story closes with Carver in medical lockdown, deep in a coma, alone with his thoughts.
Michael Joseph Connelly is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bestselling author of 38 novels and one work of non-fiction, with over 74 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1997 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer starred Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Jack Crawford is a fictional character who appears in the Hannibal Lecter series of novels by Thomas Harris, in which Crawford is the Agent-in-Charge of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. He is modeled after John E. Douglas, who held the same position.
Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is a fictional character created by American author Michael Connelly. Bosch debuted as the lead character in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, the first in a best-selling police procedural series now numbering 24 novels.
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1988 psychological horror crime thriller novel by Thomas Harris. Published August 29, it is the sequel to Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon and both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer and brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. This time, however, he is pitted against FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she works to solve the case of the "Buffalo Bill" serial killer. It is the most well-known installment of Harris' Hannibal Lecter series, selling over 10 million copies.
Kiss the Girls is a psychological thriller novel by American writer James Patterson, the second to star his recurring main character Alex Cross, an African-American psychologist and policeman. It was first published in 1995, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1997.
The Poet is the fifth novel by American author Michael Connelly. Published in 1996, it is the first of Connelly's novels not to feature Detective Harry Bosch and first to feature Crime Reporter Jack McEvoy. A sequel, The Narrows, was published in 2004. The Poet won the 1997 Dilys Award.
The Overlook is the 18th novel by American crime writer Michael Connelly, and the thirteenth featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch.
Echo Park is the 17th novel by American crime-writer Michael Connelly, and the twelfth featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. It was published in 2006.
The Narrows is the 14th novel by American crime author Michael Connelly, and the tenth featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. As Bosch crosses paths with FBI Agent Rachel Walling, the novel ties story elements left unresolved in The Poet and those from Blood Work and A Darkness More Than Night together into the Bosch mythos.
A Darkness More Than Night is the tenth novel by American crime author Michael Connelly; it is the seventh featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, and the second featuring FBI profiler Terry McCaleb, with reporter Jack McEvoy also making an appearance in a supporting role.
Trunk Music is the sixth novel by American crime author Michael Connelly, and the fifth featuring the Los Angeles detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch.
Blood Work is a 1998 mystery thriller novel written by Michael Connelly which marks the first appearance of Terry McCaleb. The character McCaleb later returns in A Darkness More Than Night (2000).
Nine Dragons is the 14th novel in the Harry Bosch series and the 22nd book by American crime author Michael Connelly. It was published in the U.K. and Ireland on October 1, 2009, and worldwide on October 13, 2009.
The Reversal is the 22nd novel by American author Michael Connelly and features the third major appearance of Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Michael "Mickey" Haller. Connelly introduced Haller in his bestselling 2005 novel The Lincoln Lawyer and then paired him with LAPD detective Harry Bosch, his half-brother, in 2008's The Brass Verdict. In 2009's 9 Dragons, Haller was a secondary character as Bosch's personal lawyer. The Reversal was published in the United States on October 5, 2010.
John "Jack" McEvoy is a literary character created by Michael Connelly in the 1996 novel The Poet and starring again in the sequel The Scarecrow thirteen years later. In-between, McEvoy appeared in one Harry Bosch novel – A Darkness More Than Night – and one Mickey Haller novel – The Brass Verdict. McEvoy starred again in Connelly's 2020 novel Fair Warning.
The Drop is the 24th novel by American crime author Michael Connelly, and the fifteenth novel featuring Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Harry Bosch. The book was published on 22 November 2011.
Bosch is an American police procedural television series produced by Amazon Studios and Fabrik Entertainment starring Titus Welliver as Los Angeles Police Department detective Harry Bosch. The show was developed for Amazon by Eric Overmyer, and the first season takes its inspiration from the Michael Connelly novels City of Bones (2002), Echo Park (2006), and The Concrete Blonde (1994). It was one of two drama pilots that Amazon streamed online in early 2014, and viewers offered their opinions on it before the studio decided whether to place a series order. The seventh and final season was released on June 25, 2021.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 people, nearly all women, between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.
Fair Warning is a 2020 thriller written by American author Michael Connelly. It is the third novel featuring Jack McEvoy, a Los Angeles investigative reporter for the consumer watchdog news service Fair Warning, as well as former FBI agent Rachel Walling. The novel is a sequel to the events in Connelly's 2009 book The Scarecrow. Themes explored in the book include the decline of investigative journalism and the print-newspaper, the rise of fake news, the misogynistic incel movement, and the dangers of trafficking in DNA sequence data by an industry having no government oversight or regulations.
