News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
Michael
Connelly (seen in the above and below photos), author of the Harry Bosch crime series and other crime novels, was awarded the title of Grand Master at the
Mystery Writers of America during a celebration in New York City on April 27th.
I covered many of his novels in my Washington Times On Crime columns, and I interviewed the
best-selling crime novelist some years back.
You can read the Q&A with
Michael Connelly via the below link:
“Death is my beat,” Michael Connelly’s crime reporter character
Jack McEvoy tells us in “Fair Warning.”
Shifting from his longtime police
detective character Harry Bosch, Mr. Connelly’s latest crime thriller offers
Jack McEvoy, his character from his earlier novels “The Poet” and “The
Scarecrow.” Like those earlier novels, McEvoy is pursuing a serial killer.
This killer uses DNA tests and the dark
web to target his promiscuous and vulnerable female victims. The serial killer,
known as “the Shrike,” murders his victims by Atlanto-occipital dislocation,
which the medical examiner explains is internal decapitation. The Shrike snaps
their necks.
Jack McEvoy becomes involved in the case
when two Los Angeles detectives visit him and ask him about a murdered woman
that he was briefly romantically involved with. The detectives asked him where
he was the night the woman was murdered. He told them he was at a work meeting
and there were people who could verify his being there.
One of the detectives then asked the
reporter to tell them again about him and the murdered woman.
The Washington
Times published my On Crime column on Michael Connelly’s new crime thriller,
Fair Warning.
“Death is my
beat,” Michael Connelly’s crime reporter character Jack McEvoy tells us in
“Fair Warning.”
Shifting from his longtime police detective character Harry
Bosch, Mr. Connelly’s latest crime thriller offers Jack McEvoy, his character
from his earlier novels “The Poet” and “The Scarecrow.” Like those earlier
novels, McEvoy is pursuing a serial killer.
This killer uses DNA tests and the dark web to target his
promiscuous and vulnerable female victims. The serial killer, known as “the
Shrike,” murders his victims by Atlanto-occipital dislocation, which the
medical examiner explains is internal decapitation. The Shrike snaps their
necks.
Jack McEvoy becomes
involved in the case when two Los Angeles detectives visit him and ask him
about a murdered woman that he was briefly romantically involved with. The
detectives asked him where he was the night the woman was murdered. He told
them he was at a work meeting and there were people who could verify his being
there.
One of the detectives then asked the reporter to tell them again
about him and the murdered woman.
“I could tell what he was doing. Jumping around with his
questions, trying to keep me off balance,” Mr. Connelly writes. “I covered
cops for almost two decades for two different newspapers and the Velvet Coffin
blog. I knew how it worked. Any slight discrepancy in retelling the story and
they would have what they needed.”
The reporter volunteers for a DNA test knowing it will eliminate
him as a suspect, and he then begins to investigate the murder.
Once a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Jack McEvoy is
now writing for a website called “FairWarning.” His editor at FairWarning is
cool to the story as the site covers consumer protection and not murder.
Despite warnings from the police, Jack McEvoy looks into the murder and
discovers there are other murders similar to the woman he knew. He learns that
the killer hunts women using genetic data that the victims voluntarily give to a
dating web site.
... Like Jack McEvoy, Michael Connelly is a former Los Angeles
Times crime reporter. The Jack McEvoy novels are written in the
first-person, and Michael Connelly told me a while back that McEvoy was
his voice. I asked him if the character was autobiographical.
“Not the details of his life, growing up in Colorado and having a twin, but
what is autobiographical is his view of the business,” Mr. Connelly said.
“So, when I’m writing this story, I’m not pushing my chair back away from the
computer and rubbing my chin, wondering what this character would do. I just
wrote what I would do. He says what I would say and thinks what I would think.
So, in that way we’re pretty close. I don’t know if that qualifies as autobiographical.”
You can read the rest of the column below or via the below link:
Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime. He has written extensively about organized crime, cybercrime, street crime, white collar crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, the military, espionage and terrorism. His 'Crime Beat' column, which covers crime news, crime issues and crime prevention in South Philadelphia, appears weekly in the South Philly Review, and his 'On Crime' column, which covers crime in the Greater Philadelphia region, appears weekly at Philly Daily and Broad and Liberty. He is also a longtime contributor to Counterterrorism magazine and writes their online 'Threatcon' column, which covers crime, espionage and terrorism. Paul Davis' crime fiction appears in American Crime Magazine. His work has also appeared in the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly and other publications. As a writer, he has attended police academy training, gone out on patrol with police officers, accompanied detectives as they worked cases, accompanied narcotics officers on drug raids, observed criminal court proceedings, visited jails and prisons, and covered street riots, mob wars and murder investigations. He has interviewed police commissioners and chiefs, FBI, DEA, HSI and other federal special agents, prosecutors, judges, public officials, WWII UDT frogmen, Navy SEALs, Army Delta operators, Israeli commandos, military intelligence officers, Scotland Yard detectives, CIA officers, former KGB officers, film and TV actors, film writers, directors and producers, journalists, novelists and true crime authors, gamblers, outlaw bikers, and Cosa Nostra organized crime bosses. Paul Davis has been a student of crime since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970. He served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War and he later served two years aboard the Navy harbor tugboat U.S.S. Saugus at the U.S. floating nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. He went on to become the civilian administrative officer of a Defense Department command in Philadelphia, where he oversaw security, safety and other programs for the command's military and civilian employees, and served as an investigating officer, while working part-time as a newspaper crime reporter and columnist. He retired in 2007 after more than 37 Navy/DOD years of service and became a full-time writer. From 1991 to 2005 he was a producer and on-air host of "Inside Government," a public affairs interview radio program that aired on Sunday mornings on WPEN AM and WMGK FM in the Philadelphia area. You can read Paul Davis' crime columns, crime fiction, book reviews and news and feature articles on this website. You can read his full bio by clicking on the above photo (by Brittany Davis-Pearson). And you can contact Paul Davis at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com.
