The Poet

Good crime novels lead you in one direction – even though a savvy reader knows that the solution to the puzzle could never be that easy. Then it twists and turns and you enjoy the somewhat unexpected turn it takes you in. No so with Michael Connelly’s The Poet.

Obviously I was drawn to The Poet because of the title – and the delicious prospect of references to Edgar Allan Poe. I thought it might be an intelligent crime novel – and for a while it wasn’t bad. A serial killer of homicide cops has hidden his tracks for years by making his murders look like suicides. And all the victims leave a line of Poe as a suicide message.

The book leads you in one direction – the narrative is shared by an investigative journalist and a killer with a penchant for young children. When they finally catch up with each other though – we are nowhere near the end of the book. Now is clearly the time for Connelly to work his magic – yet there is no magic in sight. The reader expects to be misled... but the final resolution has to be satisfying. However, Connelly tries to mislead us again, by developing a case against the main love interest. While a little cliché, this is at least understandable to the reader, once her background is explained. However, Connelly tries to be too clever. He twists again, and yet another character turns out to be the killer. Unfortunately, Connelly is unable to provide us with any reason for this character’s dark desires – he does not even express his motivation. This is extremely disappointing and very “hack”. He twists and turns for the sake of it, and it left me very unsatisfied, and a little annoyed.

To keep the poetry metaphor going, I’d say in this instance, Connelly is about on par with a limerick.