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Crime Beat

by Michael Connelly

If you're a true crime fanatic instead of a fictional murder-mystery fan, you will probably go for this collection of real-life stories in Crime Beat by author Michael Connelly. He's categorized them into sections (Cops, Killers, Cases) with a number of sub-sections. Mr. Connelly has also written an introduction explaining that while he was a journalist in Los Angeles, he actually rode with the homicide detectives called to investigate the murders on site as soon as they happened.

I can only trust that Michael Connolly's fiction is better than his writing about true crime. I found Crime Beat to be incredibly boring. The writing is anything but imaginative – and when you're writing about true crime, the reader at least expects to have it told in words that reflect the writer's skill as well as blunt facts. I haven't had the pleasure(?) of reading any of Michael Connelly's many fictional titles as yet – all I know is that at least most of them are based on the actual murders included in this book. Whatever the situation, I'm sure Mr. Connelly would have been more successful with Crime Beat if he'd used the same fictional technique.

Michael Connelly is (was?) probably a fine reporter, and Michael Carlson accedes to this in his Afterword of Crime Beat. In his Acknowledgement section at the end of the volume, Mr. Connelly praises the editors, etc. who went over the various stories to make sure they were presentable to the public. All I can comment on is that those people must have only ascertained the facts to be correct; not the way they were presented.

So – as I said before, if you're interested in the actual facts that inspired most of Michael Connelly's fiction, you may enjoy Crime Beat. I didn't. I had to struggle to keep from falling asleep. My advice to anyone who enjoys a beautifully written murder-mystery is don't waste your money.

Alan Paul Curtis

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