Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow

Jack McEvoy Confronts Threats to Job and Life From the Internet

Jul 3, 2009

Jack McEvoy, the protagonist of The Poet, returns in The Scarecrow to find the Internet threatening his job and his life in a novel inspired by the decline of newspapers.

Jack McEvoy, the central character of Michael Connelly’s 1996 thriller, The Poet, reappears in Connelly’s 2009 publication, The Scarecrow, as a Los Angeles Times reporter whose job is about to be eliminated. The Scarecrow is both a lament for the impending doom of the newspaper industry and a warning against the malignant power of the Internet.

Jack McEvoy’s job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times is number 99 on a list of 100 positions that the newspaper must eliminate. Jack gets two weeks to train young Angela Cook as his replacement before leaving, but he soon finds a second task to occupy that time. He plans to write the story of Alonzo Winslow, a former gang member accused of killing stripper Denise Babbit and hiding her body in the trunk of her car.

Jack sees Alonzo’s story as an opportunity to leave the Times in his own blaze of glory. Then ambitious Angela involves herself in his plans when her own Internet research connects Babbit’s murder to that of Las Vegas showgirl Sharon Oglevy. Jack immediately flies out to Las Vegas to investigate.

Meanwhile, back at the farm - the data farm, that is - data collocation specialist Wesley Carver becomes alerted to Angela’s research when she unknowingly activates a trap Carver has coded into one of the web pages she accessed.

Connelly reveals Carver’s identity as the serial killer behind the deaths early in the novel. He then patterns his chapters so that they are told sequentially from Jack’s and Carver’s perspectives.

Knowing that Angela and Jack are on his trail, Carver uses his Internet expertise to acquire the knowledge he needs about Angela’s life to find her, kill her, and then frame Jack for the murder. However, Rachel Walling, the FBI agent with whom Jack became involved in The Poet, arrives at Jack’s hotel and prevents the frame-up from succeeding. Rachel and Jack then join forces to find the killer.

In a YouTube video Connelly points out that although the decline of the newspaper industry is the inspiration for The Scarecrow, it is not intended to be the subject of the novel. Connelly sees The Scarecrow as a thriller that is focused on someone who uses the Internet to kill people. “For every good thing that we do with it [the Internet] there will always be somebody in a dark corner trying to figure out how to turn it against us,” Connelly remarks.

Despite Connelly’s own affirmation of the Internet as a source for good as well as evil, his novel portrays only the “dark corner” of its influence. It is the force that threatens both Jack’s profession and his life.

On a professional level, Jack credits his dismissal from the Times to the increasing influence of the Internet on the news media. “Like the paper and ink newspaper itself, my time was over,” Jack comments. “It was about the Internet now. It was about hourly uploads to online editions and blogs. It was about television tie-ins and Twitter updates. It was about filing stories on your phone instead of using it to call rewrite."

On a personal level, Jack must fight for his life against a killer who uses hacking, identity theft, and trolling as techniques to further his homicidal perversions. Wesley Carver works as a threat engineer, the person in charge of backing up and maintaining corporate data. He also dips into that data to acquire the information he needs for his murders. Although Connelly attempts to provide some depth to Carver’s characterization by dramatizing his damaged childhood, that attempt does not succeed. Carver remains merely a stereotypical villain.

About Michael Connelly

A former crime reporter like his character Jack McEvoy, Michael Connelly worked for two Florida newspapers before he was hired by the Los Angeles Times. He left there in 1996 to work full-time as a novelist after the publication of The Poet. Connelly is best known for his series featuring LAPD detective Harry Bosch.

Citation

Connelly, Michael. The Scarecrow. Little, Brown and Company (May 26, 2009). ISBN-13: 978-0316166300

The copyright of the article Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow in Thriller Fiction is owned by Carol Thomas. Permission to republish Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.