Michael Connelly

Bosch cleared all the old mail and carpentry books off the dining room table and placed the binder and his own notebook on top of it.  He went to the stereo and loaded a compact disc, “Clifford Brown with Strings.”  He went to the kitchen and got an ashtray, then he sat down in front of the blue murder book and looked at it for a long time without moving.  The last time he’d had the file, he had barely looked at it as he skimmed through its many pages.  He hadn’t been ready then and had returned it to the archives.

This time, he wanted to be sure he was ready before he opened it, so he sat there for a long time just studying the cracked plastic cover as if it held some clue to his preparedness.  A memory crowded into his mind.  A boy of eleven in a swimming pool clinging to the steel ladder at the side, out of breath and crying, the tears disguised by the water that dripped out of his wet hair.  The boy felt scared.  Alone.  He felt as if the pool were an ocean that he must cross.
Brownie was working through  “Willow Weep for Me,” his trumpet as gentle as a portrait painter’s brush.  Bosch reached for the rubber band he had put around the binder five years earlier and it broke at his touch.  He hesitated only another moment before opening the binder and blowing off the dust.

The binder contained the case file on the October 28, 1961, homicide of Marjorie Phillips Lowe.  His mother.
The pages of the binder were brownish yellow and stiff with age.  As he looked at them and read them, Bosch was initially surprised at how little things had changed in nearly thirty-five years.  Many of the investigative forms in the binder were still currently in use.  The Preliminary Report and the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Record were the same as those presently used, save for word changes made to accommodate court rulings and political correctness.  Description boxes marked NEGRO had sometime along the line been changed to BLACK and then AFRICAN-AMERICAN.  The list of motivations on the Preliminary Case Screening chart did not include DOMESTIC VIOLENCE or HATRED/PREJUDICE classifications as they did now.  Interview summary sheets did not include boxes to be checked after Miranda warnings had been given.

But aside from those kinds of changes, the reports were the same and Bosch decided that homicide investigation was largely the same now as back then.  Of course, there had been incredible technological advances in the past thirty-five years but he believed there were some things that were always the same and always would remain the same.  The legwork, the art of interviewing and listening, knowing when to trust an instinct or a hunch.  Those were things that didn’t change, that couldn’t.

The case had been assigned to two investigators on the Hollywood homicide table.  Claude Eno and Jake McKittrick.  The reports they filed were in chronological order in the binder.  On their preliminary reports the victim was referred to by name, indicating she had immediately been identified.  A narrative on these pages said the victim was found in an alley behind the north side of Hollywood Boulevard between Vista and Gower.  Her skirt and undergarments had been ripped open by her attacker.  It was presumed that she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.  Her body had been dropped into an open trash bin located next to the rear door of a Hollywood souvenir store called Startime Gifts & Gags.  The body was discovered at 7:35 A.M. by a foot patrol officer who walked a beat on the Boulevard and usually checked the back alleys at the beginning of each shift.  The victim’s purse was not found with her but she was quickly identified because she was known to the beat officer.  On the continuation sheet it was made clear why she was known to him.

Victim had a previous history of loitering arrests in the Hollywood. (See AR 55-002, 55-913, 56-111, 59-056, 60-815, and 60-1121) Vice Detective Gilchrist and Stano described victim as a prostitute who periodically worked in the Hollywood area and had been repeatedly warned off.  Victim lived at El Rio Efficiency Apts., located two blocks northerly of crime scene.  It was believed that the victim had been currently involved in call girl prostitution activities.  R/O 1906 was able to make identification of the victim because of familiarity of having seen victim in the area in previous years.

Bosch looked at the reporting officer’s serial number.  He knew that 1906 belonged to a patrolman then who was now one of the most powerful men in the department.  Assistant Chief Irvin S. Irving.  Once Irving had confided to Bosch that he had known Marjorie Lowe and had been the one who found her.

Bosch lit a cigarette and read on.  The reports were sloppily written, perfunctory, and filled with careless misspellings.  In reading them, it was clear to Bosch that Eno and McKittrick did not invest much time in the case.  A prostitute was dead.  It was a risk that came with her job.  They had other fish to fry.

He noticed on the Death Investigation Report a box for listing the next of kin.  It said:

Hieronymus Bosch (Harry), son, age 11, McClaren Youth Hall.  Notification made 10/28-1500 hrs.  Custody of Department of Public Social Services since 7/60 — UM.  (See victim’s arrest reports 60-815 and 60-1121) Father unknown.  Son remains in custody pending foster placement.

Looking at the report, Bosch could easily decipher all of the abbreviations and translate what was written.  UM stood for unfit mother.  The irony was not lost on him even after so many years.  The boy had been taken from a presumably unfit mother and placed in an equally unfit system of child protection.  What he remembered most was the noise of the place.  Always loud.  Like a prison.

Bosch remembered McKittrick had been the one who came to tell him.  It was during the swimming period.  The indoor pool was frothing with waves as a hundred boys swam and splashed and yelled.  After being pulled from the water, Harry wore a white towel that had been washed and bleached so many times that it felt like cardboard over his shoulders.  McKittrick told him the news and he returned to the pool, his screams silenced beneath the waves.

Print these questions and use them to lead a discussion about The Scarecrow. SPOILER WARNING! This guide does address the entire book. Do not read it if you have not read the book.

1. Jack McEvoy had been flying high for a while, after The Poet case. He wrote a bestselling book about that story, was featured on TV shows, and was hired at a premier newspaper. However, at the start of The Scarecrow, 12 years after The Poet, he is divorced and seemed to be at the end of his career as a journalist.  Did you like Jack as a protagonist? Could you relate to him or to his career issues?

2. The layoffs at the Los Angeles Times in this novel are a fictional example of what is really happening in the newspaper industry today. Why are so many newspapers shutting down or going bankrupt? What is the future of the news industry? And what will our communities miss if local daily newspapers are gone?

3. Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling reunited in The Scarecrow and appeared to be in a good relationship at the end. Michael Connelly has also written Rachel in an on-and-off again relationship with LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Who do you think is a better fit for Rachel, Jack or Harry? Or neither?

4. Rachel seemed lost when she was forced out of the FBI. Can you imagine Rachel in another line of work? Do you think she can ever really have job security with the FBI or will she always be one mistake away from being fired?

5. Wesley Carver, the Scarecrow, was obviously a very smart man who was very dangerous. Do you think, if his childhood had been different, he would have leaded a healthier, saner life? Or do you think some people are just simply born bad?

6. Carver seemed to have found a home on the Internet, indulging in his twisted sexual fantasies, finding others who shared his tendencies, laying traps, and finding victims. He was able to get information about his victims very easily. Think about Angela Cook and how much information he gathered about her just by visiting a few web pages. Is this book a cautionary tale about our use of the Internet?

7. Did you catch any of the references to the The Wizard of Oz throughout the book?

The Scarecrow audiobook by Hachette Audio is read by narrator Peter Giles. It is available in CD and in downloadable formats.

Listen to an excerpt:

Michael Connelly has always tried to give his readers bonus material with each new novel. This time we have a short film called “Conflict of Interest,” which features the exploits of FBI Agent Rachel Walling leading up to the point she enters the story of The Scarecrow. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here. Starring Julie St. Claire, Chris Bruno, and James Remar (Sex and the City, Dexter.) Written by Michael Connelly, the film has been made available in 3 parts. Watch all 3 below.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

 

 

On location in the Nevada desert, Michael Connelly discusses his thriller, The Scarecrow.

Question: It has been quite a few years since reporter Jack McEvoy was featured in The Poet. What made you decide to write about him again?
Michael Connelly: Being a former newspaper reporter, I’ve watched in recent years as the newspaper economy has crumbled and newspapers have tried to figure out ways to deal with advertising and readers shifting to the Internet. Along the way, many people I worked with have lost their jobs to buyouts or layoffs. I am also a big fan of the television show The Wire. In its last season, the show explored in a secondary plot what was happening to the newspaper business. Watching that show made me want to take a shot at a story that would be a thriller first and a torch song for the newspaper business second.

Q: In The Scarecrow, Jack is in his last days of working for the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper you used to work for as a reporter. Sadly, the Rocky Mountain News, Jack’s newspaper in The Poet, has shut down production forever. How did that affect the writing of this book?
MC: As with any sort of downward spiral, the closer you get to the end, the tighter the circles become. In the writing process and thereafter, I kept hearing of things that were happening and had to try to get them into the story. The Times is meant to represent the entire business — all newspapers. So I might hear of something happening at one paper and I would incorporate it into my story of the Times. But after the book was finished, the spiral continued. The day after I turned in the manuscript, the Times’s parent company filed for bankruptcy. This necessitated several changes in the manuscript. Three days after the book was supposedly locked and ready to be printed, the Rocky Mountain News closed. This meant we had to unlock the book and make changes. Since then, the Times has announced plans to close more foreign bureaus this summer. Sadly, it goes on and on. In many ways, I wish the book weren’t so timely, because what is making it timely is all of this bad news for newspapers.

Q: What is your biggest fear about the decline of newspapers and daily print journalism?
MC: I understand and even accept the shift to online news. What I worry about is the reliability of the news and the loss of vigilance. Anybody can start a web site, write a blog or hold themselves out as a journalist. But the newspaper is an institution (the Rocky Mountain News was 150 years old) with set standards and requirements of journalists. It is also the central point of community news. It usually sets the stage for what is important and what is news. A lot of that will be lost. There will be no central place for news. There will be dozens of web sites that people will probably pick according to their political persuasion. Ultimately, it will be the public that loses here. A friend of mine who lost her job in the business says that you can bet on government corruption becoming the growth industry because there will be no watchdogs like there are at newspapers. The thing I wonder is whether a bunch of news web sites and bloggers could ever bring down a corrupt president the way Nixon was felled by the Washington Post and other papers. At the moment, I doubt it.

Q: Did you make up the name the “Velvet Coffin” (“a place to work so pleasurable that you would easily slip in and stay till you died”) to describe the Los Angeles Times, or was it really called this back when you were a reporter there?
MC: That was its nickname when I went to work there in 1988. I remember people in the business telling me that I had made it to the velvet coffin. That it would be my last stop because it didn’t get any better than working for the L.A. Times. I remember if they sent you somewhere on a story, they flew you first class. In the early ’90s its circulation grew to over 1.2 million and it was the largest daily newspaper in the country. It’s got less than two-thirds of that circulation now, and it is still declining.

Q: In The Scarecrow, you bring FBI agent Rachel Walling and journalist Jack McEvoy back together for the first time since The Poet. In recent years we’ve seen Rachel working closely with LAPD detective Harry Bosch and falling in and out of a romantic relationship with him. Do you think Jack is a better match for Rachel than Harry is?
MC: I think the thing about my books is that nobody matches up well, and in the friction of these relationships is some of the drama I need for each story. For the moment, at least, Jack fits better with Rachel because he needs her more than Harry does. Harry has sort of built himself to need no one on any level. Jack is not that way, and I think that would make him more attractive to Rachel. The question is who and what does Rachel need. I am not sure yet because I need to explore this character more. I hope I get the chance.

Q: I think your killer, The Scarecrow, is by far the creepiest one you have ever written. What elements do you think you need to create a truly terrifying fictional killer?
MC: Prior to this, I’ve written from the killer’s point of view only two other times. One of those times was with The Poet. Since that was a Jack McEvoy/Rachel Walling story, I decided to do it again here. The truth is, the villains are easiest to create because there are no bounds. The creepier your imagination can go, the better. I think the thing to remember is that these sorts of people need to square their crimes with themselves. So they have built-in mechanisms that allow them to live with themselves and that give them plausible explanations for why they are the way they are. When they become true believers in the cancer that affects their character, they are really frightening.

Q: Care to explain how the Scarecrow, Wesley Carver, got his name?
MC: He operates a data storage center. This is a hermetically sealed environment where there are rows and rows of servers for storing digital information. Businesses anywhere in the world can instantly back up their vital records to centers like these. These are often called farms by people in the business because of the rows and rows of servers set up like crops, and because most often they are located outside urban areas — in traditional farming areas — for security reasons. As the man charged with keeping intruders off the crops, so to speak, Carver is like a scarecrow watching over the farm.

Q: Identity theft, cyberstalking, computer hacking, and the sharing of sexual perversities are just some of the ways the Internet is used by predators in The Scarecrow. It is not the first time you have used the Internet to showcase crime. Why does it make for such a good playground for evil?
MC: I think I write about the Internet so often because it is such a force of positive change in my lifetime. But with the good comes the bad. For every invention that positively changes the world, there will be those who turn it toward the dark side. That is the grist of fiction as well as social reflection. I find it fascinating, if not scary as hell, that the Internet is the great meeting place in our time for all things. This is including the bad. People with similar perversities and aberrant tastes find one another on the Internet every day. It breeds acceptance. To me, the scariest lines in the whole book are what Rachel says about this to Jack: “Meeting people with shared beliefs helps justify those beliefs. It emboldens. Sometimes it’s a call to action.”