You know when you pick up a Michael Connelly book you’re about to hugely entertained by a tight, gritty plot, intense characters, high-octane moments and a realistic setting. Fair Warning, the third book in his Jack McEvoy series, ticks all those boxes and then some.
Jack is a reporter with a long-from investigative paper that usually focusses on softer issues that everyday readers find interesting. But when a woman he had a one-night stand with twelve months earlier is found brutally murdered, he’s not only pulled into the investigation, but determines to uncover the culprit.
What Jack does find leaves him not only under suspicion for the crime he’s also seeking to solve, but on the brink of uncovering a serial killer who’s been on the loose for years and with a (growing) body count that makes even Jack and his associates baulk. As Jack gets closer to finding out the killer’s identity, so too the murderer is getting closer to Jack. Is breaking news worth risking your life for?
Connelly has done it again with an edge of the seat read that plunges the reader into some very dark corners before hauling us out again, giving us a good ol’ shake and then setting us upon another shadowy, dangerous path. Replete with characters who always act in ways that make sense – whether it’s in relation to who they are, their personal relationships, their job, laws, rules etc (too many crime books ask readers to suspend their disbelief just a bit too much – Connelly, I find, is never guilty of that particular sin but always works within the logic of the world he evokes) – possess flaws, egos and big hearts as well as dire intentions, this is another sensational read.
I read this over a couple of days staying up way too late to finish it and then regretted it when I did! Same old, same old with a Connelly book… now I have to wait impatiently until the next one is out.