Meaningless Rating: **
In this overwrought, and sometimes flat-out stupid, novel, Connelly introduces the first new hero since Harry Bosch to his crime fiction universe: Denver journalist Jack McAvoy, who is convinced his police detective twin brother did not kill himself. But digging into the case reveals something even more sinister at play - a serial killer who hunts police detectives on particularly difficult cases, stages their suicide, and quotes lines from Edgar Allen Poe in their supposed suicide notes. The hunt brings him into an uneasy alliance with the FBI, and a ridiculous romance between himself and one of the agents. (Again I ask - are any of his characters capable of the simple one night stand?)
There's an unfortunate tendency with serial killer fiction to make them closer to a comic book super villain than the evil which actually haunts our world. Is this because we must make sense of the unconscionable? Or is it simply the inability of an author to truly capture evil and accurately portray it? Connelly seemed able to do it with his first serial killer in "The Concrete Blonde," so why not here? Was that a happy accident, or since the titular serial killer of "The Poet" takes up so many scenes, the author has to make it somehow palatable to the audience? I don't know the answer, but I do know it leaves this antagonist feeling closer to Batman's Riddler or Joker than Ted Bundy.
As usual the red herrings are obvious, though the twist is a true surprise, and one that isn't contrived - or at least, not any more contrived than anything else about the killer. The usual deficiencies regarding relationships abound, though Connelly does show a knack for some of the quieter moments between Jack and his sister-in-law, and his background in newspapers lends verisimilitude to a story that's about as real and gritty as anything produced by DC or Marvel Comics.
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