Death is my beat.
I make my living from it. I forge my professional relationship on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker — somber and sympathetic about it when I’m with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I’m alone. I’ve always thought the secret to dealing with death was to keep it at arm’s length. That’s the rule. Don’t let it breathe in your face.
But my rule didn’t protect me.
Follow the story of the Poet and Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling in this three-book series. Click on a title or book cover to order the book in print, eBook and audio.
The Poet (1996)
Jack McEvoy specializes in death. As a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, he has seen every kind of murder. But his professional bravado doesn’t lessen the brutal shock of learning that his only brother is dead, a suicide.
Jack’s brother was a homicide detective, and he had been depressed about a recent murder case, a hideously grisly one, that he’d been unable to solve.
McEvoy decides that the best way to exorcise his grief is by writing a feature on police suicides. But when he begins his research, he quickly arrives at a stunning revelation. Following his leads, protecting his sources, muscling his way inside a federal investigation, Jack grabs hold of what is clearly the story of a lifetime. He also knows that in taking on the story, he’s making himself the most visible target for a murderer who has eluded the greatest investigators alive.
The Narrows (2004)
FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she’s dreaded for years: the one that tells her the Poet has returned. Years earlier she worked on the famous case tracking down the serial killer who wove lines of poetry into his hideous crimes. Rachel has never forgotten the killer who called himself the Poet — and apparently he has not forgotten her.
Harry Bosch gets a call, too. The former LAPD detective hears from an old friend whose husband recently died. The death appeared natural, but this man’s ties to the hunt for the Poet make Harry dig deep — and lead him into a terrifying and unknown world.
The Narrows places Harry Bosch in league with Rachel Walling, at odds with the FBI, and squarely in the path of the most ruthless and ingenious murderer in Los Angeles’s history. What follows is a taut and tantalizing mystery that has Harry Bosch racing from the hostile vistas of the Nevada desert to the glittering Las Vegas Strip to the dark corners of Los Angeles. Through it all, Bosch works at his newfound life as father to a young daughter, balancing the deepest love he has ever felt with his own sense of mission and his deep awareness of evil.
The Scarecrow (2009)
Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he’s got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang — a final story that will win the newspaper journalism’s highest honor — a Pulitzer prize.
Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo’s mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son’s innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter’s trick in the book. Jack’s real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer.
But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo’s so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he’s had since The Poet crossed his path years before. He reunites with FBI Agent Rachel Walling to go after a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar — and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. What Jack doesn’t know is that his investigation has inadvertently set off a digital tripwire. The killer knows Jack is coming — and he’s ready.