Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

I wanted to love this. I love Connelly's Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer series but this was so poorly edited it was unreadable beyond the engaging introduction
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By reprinting multiple articles on the same case he was repeating the same facts over and over. There's a good story to be told in the background of his novels - some of which I recognized - but it needs a narrative that isn't found here.

I didn't finish the book

Michael Connelly is probably the best crime writer out there, having written many classic novels such as THE CONCRETE BLONDE, THE POET, and BLOOD WORK. But this book is pretty much just a collection of old newspaper articles he wrote over 20 years ago. Many of the articles are repetitive, and Connelly has not bothered to edit or organize them a fashion to allow for a coherent narrative of any kind.

If you're an admirer of Connelly's fiction, there's not very much here to enjoy. This is certainly not worth paying a hardback price for.

Instead of this book, I would recommend two first-rate non-fiction books about how homicide detectives do their jobs in the Los Angeles: HOMICIDE SPECIAL and THE KILLING SEASON by LA Times reporter Miles Corwin.

Most crime stories take a single major crime or serial criminal and dig into it in depth, or to a lesser extent, do so with perhaps 5-6 situations. Connelly, however, overdoes it with 22 short vignettes about various crimes, killers, and cases. The material is almost entirely previously printed news stories, though the "good news" is that when several were written on a single case they are all included together. (The other "bad news" is that this also leads to some repetition, and it was originally copywrited in 2004 - "old news.")

Bottom Line: A fast read, but too superficial and not very exciting.

The reviews of this book on the store are generally negative. Most of them say something to the effect of "a rip-off because its nothing more than Connelly's old newspaper stories". Uh, that's the point: Connelly wanted to show how his time as a crime reporter in Florida and California shaped his view and, more importantly, gave him a series of "moments" that eventually worked themselves into his first and subsequent novels.

Connelly did not spring forth a full-blown writer of best selling crime novels. He learned about crime, cops, lawyers, criminals, victims, judges and the system by seeing it up close and personal day after day as a reporter.

You can watch Connelly grow in this collection of articles. They lack the excitement of a Harry Bosch novel, which is something many of the the store reviewers complain about, because Connelly was reporting, not inventing and controlling. One of the criticisms was that the articles were repretitive. Well, yes, they are because they were published over a period of time. An article describing the trial had to repeat the details of earlier stories reporting the crime. In the newspaper, these articles were separated by months or even years. Following one another in book form, if you don't realize the point of the book, sure, they seem repetitive.

In truth, this book is probably best for those fans of Connelly who are as interested in the art of writing as they are in Connelly's excellent novels. The book provides insight into Connelly's development as a writer; it is not intended to be the same kind of read as "The Poet" or "The Lincoln Lawyer".

There are a couple of things about the book that provide grounds for criticism. First, the original copyright is 2004, not 2006. This angered some people who thought it was some kind of rip-off by the publisher. In fact, the 2004 edition appears to have been a private edition. The other criticism I have is the inclusion of an overblown, pretentious and silly bit of "intellectual" interpretation by someone named Michael Carlson. This afterword is just plain silly in trying to explain to the reader the meaning of what he or she has just read. Unnecesary and not at all interesting or informative.

Jerry

Like Scott Adams' constant rehashing of old Dilbert strips, Connelly tries to get away with one here and the only ones to suffer are his fans. Taking old stories from his newspaper and collecting them without any attempt to follow-up, discuss the cases from a new perspective, or at least try to add something to mix is disrespectful to the readers that support his fiction. The only thing that keeps it from a one star for me is at least the cases were interesting and he's a good reporter, but with a little effort this could have been something much better.

In a little over a decade, Michael Connelly has established himself as one of the best mystery writers working in America today.

With novels like THE BLACK ECHO and THE CONCRETE BLONDE, he brought readers onto the mean streets of modern Los Angeles through cases involving police detective Harry (short for Hieronymus) Bosch. His fifth novel and first non-Bosch book, THE POET, made Connelly a bestselling author. He has written a total of 16 mysteries and crime novels.

CRIME BEAT is Connelly's first book of nonfiction and a compilation of his writings as a newspaper crime reporter in both Florida and Los Angeles from 1984 to 1992. These 22 articles display the raw material that in Connelly's skilled hands would later help produce Harry Bosch and the serial killer known as the Poet. They also reveal the attention to detail and clean, concise writing that is a hallmark of both great journalism and Connelly's novels.

And in many ways, these works of nonfiction are even darker and more terrifying than his novels. In the introduction of CRIME BEAT, Connelly writes, "The irony of crime beat journalism --- maybe all journalism --- is that the best stories are really the worse stories. The stories of calamity and tragedy are the stories that journalists live for. It gets the adrenaline churning in their blood and can burn them out young, but nevertheless it is a hard fact of the business. Their best day is your worse day."

And there are a lot of bad days in CRIME BEAT. A hit man kills his target with a machine gun in front of the victim's 16-year-old son. A husband hires somebody to beat his wife to death in her bed as she recovers from a mastectomy. A nurse sees a man lying in the street, stops her car to help him, and the man jumps up and shoots her dead. A serial killer poses as a professional photographer to lure young women to their deaths.

The violence chronicled here is grim, unrelenting and executed for all the usual reasons: greed, sex, rage, power and madness. And worst of all, it is real.

Readers turn to mysteries for entertainment; reading the darkest story is like listening to a ghost story around the campfire. We want to be scared but know that by the time the last embers die, we will be safe in our sleeping bags as we drift off to sleep and dawn is on the way. And with that dawn and on the last page, justice will prevail.

Reporters and cops know that this is rarely the case in real life. Happy endings happen only in movies. The killer sometimes is caught and sometimes disappears, like the 21-year-old son who meticulously planed and executed the murder of his father in Los Angeles in 1987 and was never found. Or sometimes, the case is never solved, like the murder of the 51-year-old businessman, Vic Weiss, who was found stuffed in the trunk of his red and white Rolls Royce in LA in 1988. That news story later became the basis for Connelly's novel, TRUNK MUSIC.

What makes CRIME BEAT so hard-boiled is the simple, understated way Connelly writes about these horrors. For example, he says:

"Michael Connable, 31, was walking with two friends down Sixth Street towards the Riverside Pub. It was midnight dark, and a second group of three men were approaching from the opposite way. As the two groups passed, one of the men from Group Two opened fire. The men from Group One began running. Fifty yards later Connable fell dead a few feet from the door to the Riverside Pub, his blood slowly seeping down an incline on the parking lot towards a storm drain."

In the world Connelly writes about, violence strikes without warning and the results last forever. A woman seeks to escape her con man husband when she finds that he is married to another woman and has lived a double life. She gets the husband to surrender his gun to police. What she doesn't find out until the moment before he kills her is that the police gave the gun back to him.

"She would have never gone there if she knew he had the gun back," he (the victim's attorney) said. "She made a mistake and paid for it."

Connelly is not only a great novelist; CRIME BEAT proves that he is also a great reporter. Another great reporter turned great novelist, Pete Hamill, once told me that the tough thing about working the crime beat for a newspaper is that you can't approach it like a cop or funeral home director seeing yet another body during another day of work. You have to make death seem fresh each and every time you write a story because even if it is your 1,000th murder scene, the reader is reading it for the first time.

Connelly accomplishes this in CRIME BEAT. He doesn't editorialize. His stories are filled with the detachment and telling details of the reporter. But beneath the surface, you can feel the empathy he has for the victims and get a sense of the complexity that would later emerge in his fictional characters, like Harry Bosch. Good and evil is not always as simple as black and white.

It is the work of the novelist to explore those complexities and the gray areas that exist inside the human heart. Michael Connelly will be doing this for years to come, much to the delight of mystery fans. Read CRIME BEAT and see a young writer laying the foundation for his lifework.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

Michael Connelly is a fine author. He has stories to tell, and he tells them well. I have most of his books, and will no doubt continue buying them.

This one, sad to say, did not please me.

This is the true-crime version of a Dave Barry book, a collection of previously written columns / stories from the author's days as a reporter, in South Florida and in Los Angeles. The stories are all well written; footnotes bring us up to date (whenever possible) on what has transpired in each case in the 15 - 20 years since they first appeared in print.

But Lord, is it dry! If I wanted to spend a few hours reading a newspaper, I'd buy the NYTimes.

Part of the problem is that many chapters consist of multiple stories, written a few weeks / months / years apart. Each subsequent story had to reiterate the important facts, so there is a *lot* of repetition.

I'm not sorry I read it; I just wish I had waited for the paperback.

I have read every single Connelly book - and loved each one - and was really looking forward to this one.

So what it is, essentially is a collection of old newspaper articles he wrote (along with others) from his Florida and Los Angeles crime reporter days. By old I mean 1984-92.

Not only that, it's a reprint of a book published earlier in 2004!

No reflective insight to speak of; dull, repetitive passages; stilted newspaper writing, uninteresting politics. Major bore.

I can't believe he stooped to this as a means of squeezing a few bucks out of loyal fans. What a travesty.

What this book really is and must be read as is a journalism portfolio. Taken as such, it is a great example of Connelley's work as a newspaper reporter. He takes his readers right into the heart of what was going on without layering the story in a bunch of sensationalist garbage. The newspaper world lost a great reporter when Connelly moved to writing fiction full time.

Michael Connelly's "Crime Beat" is a compilation of previously published newspaper articles that appeared in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel from 1984-1987 and in the Los Angeles Times from 1987-1992. In his introduction Connelly explains, "My experiences with cops and killers were invaluable to me as a novelist." Readers beware! This is not a Harry Bosch novel, nor is it a stand-alone thriller. The book is divided into three sections: the cops, the killers, and the cases. Each chapter is a look at how Connelly the reporter views a crime and its aftermath.

The valid question that some reviewers have posed is: Why should we be interested in true crimes from the eighties and early nineties? After all, Connelly's fans buy his books because they love his delineation of fictional characters, his thoughtful exploration of what makes a homicide detective's life so harrowing, and his intriguing story lines. This book provides a different kind of pleasure: a glimpse at how a good reporter parlayed his considerable talent into successful fiction-writing. In "Crime Beat," Connelly describes misdeeds both horrifying and banal, criminals who are drug-addicted, delusional, or sociopathic, and victims who are sometimes innocent and occasionally just plain foolish.

For example, there is an eye-opening account of criminals who flee to Mexico to avoid standing trial in the United States. Connelly introduces us to two detectives who help Mexican authorities find and prosecute fugitives from American justice. Some civil libertarians believe that it is unfair to subject suspects who commit a crime on American soil to the Mexican justice system, which offers fewer protections to the defendant. However, the "foreign prosecution unit" has successfully survived all legal challenges, and authorities in both Mexico and the United States are satisfied with the unit's performance.

In other chapters, Connelly depicts a wide assortment of miscreants: rogue cops, a serial killer, a brazen bigamist, an inept gang of contract killers, and a vicious twenty-one year old man who butchered his own father. Not all of the cases are closed. Some remain open-unsolved until this day, and the reader's heart goes out to some victims' families who do not even have a body to bury.

Connelly has a gift for understanding and interpreting the criminal mind. He also has empathy for the harried, overworked, and often frustrated detectives whose tedious job it is to run down every lead. Cops love it when a suspect jumps out at them right away; however, perpetrators rarely confess immediately. Usually, detectives must work long hours conducting endless interviews, working the phones, checking computer databases, and following dozens of tips before they are ready to make an arrest. In clear, crisp prose, the author provides not only the bare facts, but he also clarifies the legal aspects of each case and gives the reader insight into the personalities involved.

My one quibble with "Crime Beat" is its excessive length. At a bit under four hundred pages, the book eventually becomes repetitious; there is considerable fat that could have been trimmed. Still, Connelly effectively shows how his keen powers of observation, fluid prose style, dark sense of humor, and understanding of what makes people tick has enabled him to make such a smooth transition from reporting to writing superb thrillers.

I recently "discovered" Michael Connelly and after reading all of his fiction books, the only thing left was his non-fiction work, Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers. I have enjoyed everything I've read until now. Unfortunately, I found Crime Beat to be a big disappointment.

I have always been a person who enjoys the story behind the story. For that reason, I was anxious to read Crime Beat. I thought it would provide some insight into Connelly's characters--especial his LAPD homicide detective, Harry Bosch. He got off to a great start with his forward. Connelly explains how he came to be a crime writer, and how he incorporated the things that he saw as a beat reporter into his works of fiction. But after that, the remainder of the book (except for an afterward by Michael Carlson) is just the reprinting of articles he wrote for the "LA Times" and the "South Florida Sun-Sentinel." Although I could pick some of his fictional characters out of his articles (especially the Poet and a Bosch-like detective), I would have enjoyed Crime Beat much more if Connelly had actually explained the influences in each case. As the stories stand, he only adds a brief update to some of them. Some of the crimes had a series of articles that repeated the same background information over and over again. Except for the forward, not much additional effort was expended here.

Michael Connelly is a talented writer and has quickly become one of my favorites. But I think I'll stick to his works of fiction.

I checked the audio book out from the library. Couldn't get through it. After the 3rd CD, I returned it. The same information is repeated over and over and over and over.....for a second I thought my CD player was repeating the same tracks. Incredibly dull and annoying to hear the same articles about the same cases again and again with the same information and descriptions. How this got passed the editors, I have no idea.
Unless you want to be bored to tears, skip this one.

I suppose that either there's such a demand for Michael Connelly's books (and justifiably so), or he had some sort of contractual deadline which required that he submit something to his publisher, but this is nothing but a cut-and-paste job consisting merely of a collection of his old newspaper reporting. I suppose this would be fine reading if you live someplace where newspapers are not available, but most of the material this book is no better than any other old news stories.

What next? A collection of Michael Connelly's grocery lists?

Obviously, this book is not worth reading, but if you've a taste for truly superb reporting about LA homicide detectives, the books to get are The Killing Season and Homicide Special: A Year with the LAPD's Elite Detective Unit both by Miles Corwin, a fine writer.

Apparently the same holds true for best-selling authors. Evidently you can get paid big bucks to recycle your old articles from when you were starting out as a newspaper reporter. The best part of the whole deal is you don't have to do more than write a 13 page intro, then turn on your scanner and copy all your old articles and bundle them off to the publisher.

That's all this book is, folks. And it is soooooooooo boring to read old newspaper articles recycled from the 1980s. I made it through about 110 pages of this garbage before just chucking it over and hitting the keyboard to type this review. At least this review is 100% original.

I bought this book - as I'm sure will be the case with most purchasers - because I've been a Connelly fan for a long time. If this sounds like you, you're going to be very disappointed. And if you're not familiar with Connelly's work, don't let this turkey be your introduction. His original fiction is orders of magnitude better.

This is just a blatant attempt to cash in on his popularity. Save your money.

Mr. Connelly is a gifted writer, and I'm a big fan of his novels (I've read all of them). That being said, I have to express my disgust with this "book".
I bought it because it was by Connelly, and was hoping for some background on his writing life and perhaps to see the development of the writer I've come to love.
Sadly, it's nothing but a mishmash of disconnected stories, most of which aren't even interesting. I used to hold the opinion that even mediocre Connelly would be better than the best of most other authors, and I've been proven wrong.
This book is a ripoff, cashing in on Connelly's name and reputation, and he and the publisher should both be ashamed.

Here it is: the nitty-gritty news reports from one of the few crime writers who has made crime writing his career. Readers should be aware that this is a compilation of Connelly's journalism, not one of his best-selling novels. That said, it's perhaps one of the outstanding books in the "true crime" genre.

I MYSELF LIVE IN LOS ANGLES AND HE TAKES ME THRU THE STREETS LIKE I AM IN THE CAR WITH HIM AND ON THE STREETS I HAVE READ EVERYTHING MICHAEL CONNELLY HAS EVER WRITTEN WITH ENJOYMENT EVERY BOOKS BRINGS OUT THE STREETS OF THE CITY THE KILLINGS WITHIN THE NATURE OF THE BEAST A REAL JOY TO READ. I STARTED READING LINCOLN LAWYER THEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT ALL OF THEM AND WENT ALL THE WAY BACK AND STARTED FROM THE FIRST EVER WRITTEN AND BOUGHT EVERYONE AND READ THEM IN ORDER TILL THE LAST ONE IN NOVEMBER 2012

..It was interesting, (the true crime) but not what I'm use to reading. I finished it. Easy read. This is one of the few bks of Connelly's that got two stars from me. I am a avid fan of Michael Connelly and have read all his books.

Bestselling mystery author Michael provides a true crime look at his days as crime reporter in Florida and California. CRIME BEAT is divided into three overall segments, "The Cops," "The Killers" and "The Cases". Within each Mr. Connelly provides a wide range of stories that he covered as a journalist. The true stories are fascinating in that macabre way that make the genre such a success. Not shockingly, the most poignant moments involve combat fatigue syndrome detectives dealing with bereaving family members of victims with what went down. Fans of the author's mysteries and those who appreciate true crime will want to read this powerful look at the real life underlying basis to much of Mr. Connelly's fiction.

Harriet Klausner

I bought this book expecting a "riveting collection of true stories that inspired and informed his novels". Instead, only his introduction is new; for the rest, we get a re-print of some articles he wrote for the "LA Times" and the "South Florida Sun-Sentinel." And nowhere is this mentioned on the cover or the back of the book.

I felt cheated. If only he had used those old articles to put some new perspective on them and the way they've influenced his crime-novels.

Instead, we get this (not cheap) rip-off, intended to provide Connelly and his publisher with a quick buck. Sad things is, I wished I could only blame the publisher (from them we can expect things like this) but that Connelly would go along with this... Shame on you, Connelly!

So, people, DON'T BUY THIS! Limit yourself to his crime-novels! Those at least are a lot of bang for your buck.

The flap description had me intrigued, as I have loved to read all things Connelly. I expected more of an analysis of his experiences and how they formed his work. The "Telling high school yearbook caption" was simply a reprint of the caption. Not anything more, not more about who the person was, etc. This is literally a reprint of newspaper articles, and each one repeats much of what the previous handful on each subject had said. A disappointment. Move on.

If you want to read of yore news read this book. So, many cases were solved and some others are cold cases, the question is: Where's the plot? Maybe is the story of why MC became a writer but this book is an out and out waste of time, paper and ink. Here you'll find no plot. No thrilling parts. You'll find nothing at all.

A conglomeration of Connelly's stories from when he was a reporter, with a self-serving critique as an afterword. If you're looking for Harry Bosch, you will be told what parts of him you will find here. This is a series of news reports, not any kind of novel.

I've read everything Michael Connelly has written. I'm a huge fan. What was this? Apparently all the news articles he wrote as a reporter organized by criminal into chapters. The result is unending repetition of the facts, as newspaper articles are wont to do. When you're reading one article a day, that's fine. But when you're reading the articles in succession, it definitely is not fine.

The book is a collection of newspaper columns Connelly wrote while a reporter. While interesting, the book could have benefited from a good editor to eliminate repetitiveness and provide continuity between related columns. Lacking this, the book comes across as a lazy attempt to make money by gathering some old columns together and getting them reprinted as a book. Sloppy, tedious and not worth your money or your time.

This is the collected journalism written by Mr. Connelly before he became a successful crime writer. Fans of Harry Bosch will love reading the articles; which serve as a primer on how the character developed and evolved. The collection describes the life of a homicide detective in great detail. It is not the life we see portrayed on Law and Order. If you're waiting for the next Harry Bosch novel, ECHO PARK, which will be published in October, don't buy this book. If you love Michael Connelly's writing then buy it. To say Mr. Connelly wrote this for the money is an insult to his integrity. This book was originally published as a limited-edition collectors item. His fans wanted the book published, and here it is. Kacey Kowars

...it was all down hill from there. I bought this book thinking that Connelly was writing about crimes he had covered. That sounded interesting. Instead it appears to be just a reprint of old columns he wrote about various crimes. For each crime, there's a series of stand-alone articles and as a result there's lots of repetition of information from one to the next. I got bored and gave up on it after about 60 pages. It could have been very good if only Connelly had taken the info from each crime and reworked it into one story for each incident.

As a fan of the Harry Bosch series, I thought a nonfiction background would prove interesting. Like other reader-reviewers, and unlike professional book reviewers, I concur with the former. This is a rehash of newspaper articles without cohesion or explanation. Much more intriguing would have been pointing out how unusual points in a case might lead to a fictional account. In spite of my interest in crime stories, I grew bored, frustrated with repetition, and decided to quit reading well before the end of the book. I wonder why professional reviewers thought the book was so great?

Michael Connelly is truly a great author. This book is a disgrace. He has done nothing more than paste together his scrapbook of newspaper articles on crimes. Sadly, because the articles repeat each time all of the details of the crimes, the repitition will drive you nuts!Worse yet the articles aren't updated, so when he say that somnethiong occurs last year, but the article is dated 1991 he means 1990. The reader is totally misled. The book is a sham playing on his good name; now tarnished.

I guess if there had been an editor it wouldn't have been long enough for a book. The intro is great and it just falls apart after that. Each chapter is several columns about the same subject very clumsily stuck together so it comes across as redundant. I made it about halfway through & gave up. What was he thinking? I think he can write but I'm not checking further.

Normally I like Connelly's books but this wasn't worth reading. Thankfully I didn't buy it but read the first 20 pages on a kindle version checked out at my library. I scanned the next 20 or so pages and returned it.

I have read every book by Michael Connelly and enjoyed them all so I decided to buy the true crime book that he had written. I have to say that i was most disappointed with it and find it difficult to believe that the fictional books and this true crime book were written by one and the same person. There was too much repetition in each and every story and not at all what I would have expected from the author.

Tom Ahern.

I have read everything Michael Connelly has written and am always checking the book sections for news of his next novel; something I do with only 2 other authors. I usually wait a number of months at the library for his books and had just seen this in the Library news section, so I ordered it and got it in 2 days. It is nothing but newspaper clippings; 368 pages of them. I put the book down at page 67. Please bring back Harry Bosch.

I opened this book at the bookstore (found one!)and asked why they only had the large print edition. Ha, this is the only edition! About 280 pages of print you won't need your glasses for. This is disappointing. If the content is short, publish a short book. Great content can stand up to small size. This content can't.

Although Connelly is one of my favorite writers and I greatly enjoy his books, Crime Beat is a joke.

It is not a novel. It is purely a listing of crimes. I can think of no reason for anyone that likes to read to be entertained to but it.

Shame on you Michael for doing something like this to your readers.

I have totally enjoyed every Michael Connelly book I've every read (and I think I've read them all)...until this came along. It reads like Connelly simply collected a bunch of his old newpaper reports and bundled them into a book...and I suspect without even editing them. Most everything is written in the present tense (e.g. "next Tuesday....") make me suspect he didn't even reread them.

Very disappointing, especially from such a fine author.

The stories picked for this book are not at all interesting. On top of that the stories consist of nothing more than newspaper articles. Each article is printed in it's entirety, which means each article rehashes the same information disclosed in previous articles. No thought at all by the author went into this project. One of very few books that I had to stop reading because it was a complete waste of time.

Wish I had read the reviews. I bought it on the strength of the other books by Micheal Connelly that I thoroughly enjoyed and was very disappointed. Newspaper articles rehashed over and over. I tried to finish it but it just couldn't hold my interest. First book I have put down before finishing in years!

Wanting a book for a trip and not having much time I picked up this book trusting that I knew Michael Connelly's work. Needless to say, I was sorely disappointed. I guess it's "buyer beware" but this is not anything near what I expected. I read the first few pages and put it up on the bookshelf when I got home. Not only is it just a collection of stories he wrote about in the beginning of his career, they were previously published. Only leads me to believe it was a money making ploy based on his recent success. I'll think twice before I buy his next book.

Don't waste your hard-earned cash on this one, folks. If you are a true fan of Michael Connelly (and I am-every single book!), you will be sorely disappointed. I bought this book from behind the counter based on his fine reputation. Had I realized that it was a collection of news stories, restricted in column inches and imagination, it would not have been purchased. This is a mish-mash masquerading as relevant work. It is nothing more than his "string book" as a cub crime reporter two decades ago. His publisher must have pressured him for something fast, as this was poorly conceived. I couldn't even finish it.

An unbelievable collection of redundant, repetitive, uninteresting (often unresolved) case histories from the author's days as a crime reporter. You can skim read this "book" in a half hour tops. No more Michael Connelly for me thank you.