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One of the first things one has to realise with CRIME BEAT is that it is not a novel. Nevertheless, with a title like that one would have thought so. CRIME BEAT is a collection of previously published articles by Michael Connelly during the time he worked as a newspaper journalist in Florida and Los Angeles. Connelly has quite rightly divided the book into three parts: the police, the killers and the cases and each chapter is an impression of how as a journalist Connelly saw the crime that had taken place and its consequences. Most people read Connelly because of his writing style and his ability to make the reader empathise with the harrowing life of a homicide detective (amongst other things), along with his captivating stories. It is therefore not an unreasonable assumption that readers would wonder why someone of Connelly's stature should bother to write such a book. Why on earth in this day and age would we be interested in real-life crimes of the 1980s and 1990s when there are evidently still a lot more brutal crimes being committed today? For me the reason is quite clear. The reader is given a glimpse into various misdeeds -- some traumatic and predictable, others just plain stupid. The criminals range from drug users to the delusional and/or sociopathic. And the victims? Well they were at times blameless and on the odd occasion just basically unwise. CRIME BEAT provides us with a different kind of pleasure, a deep satisfying look at how a successful journalist is able to use his journalistic skills to transform himself into an award-wining novelist. What emerges from CRIME BEAT is Connelly's ability for understanding and interpreting a criminal's behaviour, plus the tedious amount of work that the police have to undertake with very little reward. There is also his capability of simplifying the legal aspects of each case without too much legalese and therefore not alienating the readers. His prose, keen powers of observation and dark sense of humour is what makes Connelly so good at what he does and it is reflected in his work. It is therefore not surprising that he states in his introduction that it was his work as a journalist with cops and killers that was invaluable to him as a novelist. It is clear that this is the case with CRIME BEAT.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade, June 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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