The Poet

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Summary: The BEST mystery/thriller I've ever read!
Review: This was my first Michael Connelly book I've read. I have never read an author who could add twists and turns to characters and make them believable until now. I have enjoyed Grisham and others but I must put Connelly at the top now. I am now reading The Black Echo to see how his first book in the Harry Bosch series will stack up. The Poet was a real page turner.Connelly's grasp of what the dark side of our society might be like is scary but yet totally within the realm of possibility.I never knew how the book would end until the final page and thats the way it should be.The characters were well developed and made me feel that I had emotions both good and bad towards them.His style of short chapters made for easy but addictive reading.I understand why he won the EDGAR award for this book. READ IT!

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Summary: Is Connelly always this good?
Review: Who can satisfy me now after experiencing Michael Connelly's "The Poet"?

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Summary: It is an awesome thriller,the best book since The RainMaker.
Review: You never even come close to what the ending is until you've read it.I would recommend it to anyone who is into reading.

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Summary: CONNELLY DOES IT AGAIN!!!!!
Review: I HAVEN'T READ A CONNELLY BOOK I DIDN'T LIKE, AND THE POET IS CERTAINLY NO EXCEPTION. THE POE TIE-IN MADE IT EVEN MORE INTERESTING TO ME SINCE I TEACH ENGLISH, BUT THE PLOT ITSELF WAS EXTRAORDINARY. IT KEPT ME GUESSING UNTIL THE VERY END. WILL THERE BE ANOTHER CHAPTER FOR JACK AND RACHEL?

I ONLY HAVE BLOODWORK TO GO BEFORE ANGEL FLIGHT COMES OUT. MY ADVICE IS IF YOU'VE READ ONLY THE HARRY BOSCH BOOKS, TREAT YOURSELF TO THE POET. IT'S GREAT!!!

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Summary: Excellent, though too many twists!
Review: I thought this was an extremely well-written, exciting page-turner, I literally couldn't concentrate on anything else until I had finished it! The characters were sympathetic and very well drawn. The only flaw, in my opinion, was that there were too many twists at the end, but otherwise this is the best thriller i've read in the last year or two.

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Summary: Strangely unaffecting
Review: Michael Connelly has made a name for himself as one of the premier mystery writers today. "The Poet," a non-series effort, is about a serial killer who has been murdering police detectives and making the deaths look like suicides. The title of the novel is the killer's nom, taken from the fact that the deaths were accompanied by quotations from the works of Edgar Allen Poe. The notes, originally assumed to be suicide notes, were all in the victims' handwriting.

The protagonist is a reporter whose brother was one of the victims. The reporter injects himself into the investigation and accompanies FBI agents as they seek out the killer through a maze of pedophilia and internal leaks. When it becomes clear that one of the investigative team has leaked the story to the press, the reporter begins to suspect various members and wonders whom to trust.

What begins as an impressive setup does not last for "The Poet." Connelly does do a wonderful job of keeping the story tight and of keeping his characters from making absurd choices (a problem from which far too many mystery novels suffer). But the writing itself is not all that good, and the story never fully engaged me. In retrospect, I can see the efforts to which Connelly went to tie together complex points, but while I was reading it, I never fully embraced either the characters or the story.

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Summary: A spellbinding thriller with a heart-in-your-mouth ending!
Review: What an excellent book! I have to go along with the crowd on this one and say that it was a well written, researched and deviously plotted thriller. The storyline captivates and contains enough twists to keep you turning the pages while not getting confused as to what's going on. The story's conclusion raises the heart rate!.

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Summary: Another wonderful Connelley Book.When's the next one coming?
Review: Michael Connelley is one of the three or four best mystery writers in the US today. He ranks with Robert Parker, Stuart Woods, and James Lee Burke as one of our most superb mystery writers.

As I said, I can hardly wait for his next book and sincerely hope he returns to his character Harry Bosch, whom I've grown to really enjoy!

If you haven't read all of his books go to the book store tonight. You won't be sorry.

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Summary: Good, but give me Harry
Review: I liked this book on tape, but it was less fun to have a reporter as the hero. One thing that was quite disappointing, however, is that when I started to read reviews before I bought this tape, I saw a posting from Michael Connelly that said "Don't read this if you plan to buy the book". So I didn't, but now that posting is gone. I was quite interested about what he had to say about the ending.

I'm not sure I can stand the wait until Harry Bosch comes back in January.

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Summary: Suspenseful hunt for a serial killer, with many plot twists
Review: I read this and "The Concrete Blonde" within a few days of each other. Both are about serial killers, a subject very popular in fiction these days. Connelly is a good writer who can describe the crime in an articulate fashion without getting too sadistically graphic about the gory details. Both his protagonists are lonely guys, completely devoted to their work, who are sensitive and vulnerable yet find it hard to connect in an intimate relationship. Reading the two books back-to-back makes the similarities between them rather obvious. Connelly is not the first writer, and won't be the last, I'm sure, to quote Nietzsche in this context, warning those who hunt monsters not to become monsters themselves; and he does it in both books. Although I enjoyed them, it may be awhile before I read another Connelly, as I like a bit more variety in my reading.