Serial

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Remember the twin golden rules of hitchhiking? # 1: Don't go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy. # 2: Don't pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be raving nutcase. So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2? When two of the most twisted minds in the world of horror fiction face off, the result is SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Like a deeply twisted version of an "After School Special," SERIAL is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides. Beyond a thrilling piece of horrifying suspense, SERIAL is also a groundbreaking experiment in literary collaboration. Kilborn wrote the first part. Crouch wrote the second. And they wrote the third together over email in 100-word exchanges, not aware of each other's opening section. All bets were off, and may the best psycho win.
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 "Fast read, couldn't put it down..." 2009-08-12
By G. Clark
I usually do not real scary, gory books, but since it was free, thought I would try it. Got hooked from the beginning. Excellent, fast paced, kept you interest. Great page turner. Don't know why some people didn't like. The characters had depth. Could follow what was going on. Some books, you are lost for a while trying to figure out who was who. There were several hero's in the story and who knows if there is Red-ops out there. Scary to think there are. Love to read J.A. Konrath books. Thanks for the great book.

 "Not worth the time" 2009-08-10
By SR Avid Reader (Texas)
If there is a redeeming value - it is that the book is short. It was horribly distrubing. This book caused me to cringe, even skimming as to not read the gruesome, vivid details. As many other reviews state - not all free books are worth the download.

 "brilliant concept brilliantly poor execution" 2009-08-08
By
I was attracted to this title solely because of the method of writing the authors employed. I was further intrigued by the story of dueling serial killers met on the road but sadly the promise of these two unique ideas utterly fail to be realized in this very short story. The plot runs so predictably after the initial introduction of the characters it could have been plucked from any 90's screamer film chosen randomly from your local blockbuster and the prose, while not completely wretched, seems underdeveloped and rushed. To top it off the authors spend almost as many words patting themselves on the back and shamelessly promoting their other works as they use on the entire story. The end result of which, for me, was a complete disregard of anything published by either author. In short, free is too high a price for this junior high level collaboration and I'd appreciate a refund on the minutes of my life I wasted hoping and waiting it would get better.

 "Absolutely disgusting!" 2009-08-04
By Copper's Fan (Seattle, WA USA)
I stumbled through about 40% of this thing. By then I was so disappointed I gave up and removed it from my Kindle. If I had had a hard copy, I would have burned it.



It has no plot, only a disgusting idea. The characters are mere shadow outlines and there is no development whatsoever.



The descriptions of torture and murder are not even imaginative or particularly descriptive but rather pathetic and crude. It may be similar to how drunken or drugged out teens might describe to each other a particularly offensive urban legend while they are huddling around a flashlight in an old, abandoned house at midnight.



Well, if you like that sort of thing...



Concerning the price, it's not worth it.

 "New Age De Sade? Not Exactly." 2009-08-02
By C. Rancour (Houston, TX United States)
I have now attempted to read two different works from this author and have come to the conclusion that he apparently fancies himself as some sort of Marquis de Sade for the modern age. The only difference is that the Marquis had some flair for the dramatic and a sick sort of sense of humor. The author of this novella only thinks that he does.

Not only did the authors not bother with trying to concoct a plausible or even interesting storyline, but they also decided to forgo proofreading as well. You would think that with two of them they would have double the chance of catching simple spelling errors, but I guess they were both too busy trying to come up with even more repugnant and eye-rolling ways to kill people. An obvious example of this is when in a discussion about dogs Donaldson advises his victim to steer clear of "long-haired breads". Indeed!

Another thing that amazed me was that there were two people writing this travesty and yet neither of them thought to research even the most rudimentary basics of crime scene investigation. If they had even just watched a couple episodes of Forensic Files on CourTV they would have realized that the things they claim will make it "impossible" to solve a murder are laughable at best.

I realize that the authors are probably trying to be humorous when they write this stuff (I hope) and I guess are trying to accomplish that end with all the ridiculously poorly thought out violence, but it does nothing for me and I'm not some old prude. I mean, I find Texas Chainsaw Massacre and American Psycho pretty funny and the video games I play are gratuitously violent, but trying to think up the most vulgar ways to kill someone just for vulgarity's sake is just boring and stupid.

Oh, and peach pits are neither sweet nor springy...

The only way that this thing earned that one star is that the authors didn't quite have the audacity to try to charge people for it.


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The Scarecrow

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Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paperto write the definitive murder story of his career.

He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realizes that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. The kid might actually be innocent.

Jack is soon running with his biggest story since The Poetmade his career years ago. He is tracking a killer who operates completely below police radar--and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. Including Jack's.
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 "good but not up to Connelly's usual standards" 2009-08-13
By C. Smith (Los Angeles, CA)
an entertaining mystery but not up to Connelly's usual extraordinary standards. I was tempted to give it three stars, but realized that if the book had been written by an unknown writer I would have considered it a four star mystery, so that's what I gave it

 "OK But Connelly Can Do Better" 2009-08-11
By Susan Y. Schoonover (Boulder, CO)
THE SCARECROW is an average to above average thriller that is actually a followup to Connelly's THE POET which was published in the 90's. I read THE POET at the time of publication but have only the dimmest memory of it and reading that novel is not necessary to follow this one. Los Angeles journalist Jack McEvoy is the hero of THE SCARECROW while Connelly's most frequent protagonist LA cop Harry Bosch does not appear in the story and there is only a mere passing mention of Bosch's half brother and new Connelly leading man Mickey, "the Lincoln lawyer."



The story is very contemporary and has the changes wrought by the internet as a major theme. Jack is being downsized from his newspaper job because of competition from online news sources. The serial killers use the world wide web to find each other, their victims and lots of important information that help them elude detection. The first part of the book is the best as the plot loses momentum toward the last third or so. THE SCARECROW is not a terrible book to spend some diverting time with but it is not one that is particularly memorable or thought provoking.

 "A Loving Obituary for American Newspapers" 2009-08-10
By Hershel Parker (Morro Bay, California United States)
This is one of Connelly's best mysteries. It is also an obituary for all newspapers, although focused on the Los Angeles TIMES. Not everyone will grieve with Connelly as I do. I was in email contact with an editor at the LA TIMES on a day when 140 people were let go. I have spent months, all told, in the old NYPL Annex and many other libraries reading nineteenth-century newspapers, my head in a microfilm reader or standing in pain over low flat tables turning big pages or, very rarely, working at a high slanted stand kind to the back. I have a special love of American papers when 10 or 12 papers were in tough competition and another 20 or 25 catered to special audiences. Many, many other readers of Connelly will bring their own newspaper history to THE SCARECROW, and grieve in their way. This is a fine mystery, but it is more. This early tribute to the vanishing newspaper may remain one of the most heartbreaking anyone ever writes.

 "Good but not perfect followup to the Poet" 2009-08-10
By Sam Fisher (LA, USA)
As a dedicated fan of Michael Connelly's work, the sequel to the award-winning poet is a very good page-turner that is exciting and filled with vivid depictions of locales and police procedure, and in this book modern digital technology plays a large part in the plot. While most of the technology is quite accurately depicted, the security part seems a little far-fetched, for someone like me who has worked in the field, I have to say common law firms most likely will not use this kind of services. However my major complain is how the story is structured, that the villain is revealed in the beginning so the reader know exactly who he is. While this plays into the story of the limited cat and mouse chase the writer has represented, it takes away the mystery and the twist the author is good at, as in the Poet, we would have kept guessing till the end who the murderer was. But in this book, we knew who he was from the beginning and his every move, some of them smart and devious, but some of them, mostly towards the ending, childish and impossible, as the plot has demanded, the bad guy makes mistakes and losses. Aside from my complains, this is still a very well-written book, and even at his worst, not to say this book was his worst work, Connelly is still much better than a lot of best-selling authors out there.

 "Not just a great serial killer tale, but also a scathing look at the newspaper business" 2009-08-09
By Joshua Mauthe (Nashville, TN)
I discovered after finishing this that Connelly was partially inspired to return to the Jack McEvoy character (from The Poet) after watching season five of The Wire; its scathing portrait of the newspaper business and its current status made Connelly interested in visiting some of the same territory. I've long argued that Connelly isn't the greatest writer in the world, but his sense of time and place - whether the post-Rodney King LA of the Bosch novels or the increasingly downsized Los Angeles Times of this one - and his strong sense of verisimilitude more than make up for his pedestrian style. The Scarecrow is no exception, and in some ways, it may be one of his best books in a long time. The main story - about McEvoy being given his two-weeks notice, his desire to go out with a bang, and the way that leads him into the sights of a long working but unknown serial killer - is a great one, and Connelly milks the suspense for everything its worth. (His use of alternating sections between McEvoy and the killer is intriguing; not only does it allow him to add to the suspense, it adds more depth to the villain than we could otherwise get.) But the book is just as worthy for its subtext about the declining state of newspapers; while McEvoy isn't as complex or rewarding a character as Bosch, his strong commitment to journalism makes him a great character for Connelly (himself a crime reporter for many years) to write about. A great serial killer tale, a nice exploration of the media, and more, The Scarecrow is a must for any Connelly fan.


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