The Diva Review:
Before becoming a bestselling author of crime novels, Michael Connelly was an award winning journalists covering the crime beats in Florida and Los Angeles. You have to imagine that the most colorful crime has got to to come from those two states. In Crime Beat, we find that, indeed it does.
Be prepared that this is a non-fiction book. It is not one of his crime novels. It's not even one complete story. Connelly has compiled some of the more interesting stories from his days as a reporter into vignettes which are divided into three sections: The Cops, The Killers, The Cases.
These are his newspaper articles from the 1980s and early 1990s. One criticism of the book is that being a collection of news stories, the basic facts get reintroduced in each story, which, admittedly becomes a little annoying. Not everyone enjoys old newspaper stories - I get that. I think that this is more than made up for in the quality of the the writing and the "stranger than fiction" element of the stories. And hey, it beats microfiche!
If you are a Connelly fan, you may find some of the stories and players vaguely familiar. These stories were the fodder for the fiction that most of us know and love.
If you love Michael Connelly and his characters, but not necessarily true crime, I'd stick to the novels. For those with an interest in crime and how it's reported, this is a good bet.
|
|
|
Diva Interviews