Tag Archives: Book Reviews

‘The Scarecrow,’ by Michael Connelly, book review

The Scarecrow Michael ConnellyThe Scarecrow was Michael Connelly’s first release of 2009, being followed by the recently released 9 Dragons. Two major hardback releases in a single year is unusual for many writers (a notable exception is James Patterson) and Connelly, if not suffering from a lack of productivity seems to be suffering from a lack of creativity.

Scarecrow features one of Connelly’s four main protagonists, L.A. Times reporter Jack McEvoy (the others being LAPD detective Harry Bosch, FBI agent Terry McCaleb and attorney Mickey Haller ) and begins with McEvoy’s investigation into the arrest of a young man, Alonzo Winslow, who is found driving around with a body in the trunk of his stolen car. A call from the accused’s grandmother/mother gives the soon-to-be unemployed (due to corporate downsizing) reporter a final big story, which he hopes to turn into a Pulitzer as a means of payback to the paper which no longer needs him. The “big story” is that Winslow has been wrongfully charged for the crime; a charge from which McEvoy’s investigative skills will extricate him.

At this point of the narrative I had high hopes. The book is quite thick, so I was prepared for many chapters of L. A. culture, racial apprehension and tension, legal maneuvering and a bang up finish.

Maybe next time.

Instead, the story takes a turn into serial killer land and only returns to its start as Alonzo is paraded out unceremoniously for a TV appearance. McEvoy ultimately is teamed with a recurring Connelly character, FBI agent Rachel Walling, who is also a former love-interest of McEvoy’s (and Bosch’s) hearkening back to Connelly’s earlier effort, The Poet. Other than background information on the ease by which one’s entire life can be pieced together via public information on the Internet, this book simply does not work. There is too little character development, the action is predictable and the ending unsatisfying. Rather than being a story that draws one into a vortex, it ends up more as a sermon about the dangers of the Internet.

Having read virtually all of Connelly’s novels, McEvoy has always seemed his weakest character and The Scarecrow does nothing to dissuade me of that thinking. If Bosch was not to appear this time around, I was hoping to see another full length Haller story since Connelly’s turn at the legal genre was quite satisfying. (Haller does return in 9 Dragons along with Bosch.)

The Scarecrow will, quite likely, please some, perhaps many, die-hard Connelly fans, but new readers wanting to absorb his finest work should look earlier to Trunk Music or The Concrete Blonde or later to The Lincoln Lawyer, each of which may be purchased below.

‘The Prodigal God,’ book review

The Prodigal God, is the latest book by New York Times best selling author and New York pastor Timothy Keller. Keller, of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, has been called a “C. S. Lewis for the 21st century” as his books are for thinking people, Christian and irreligious alike. Keller’s previous book, The Reason for God, was named book of the year by World magazine.

Exploring the familiar New Testament story of the son who asks for his inheritance and then proceeds to squander it on wine, women and song (well, mostly wine and women), The Prodigal God uses historical and cultural realities to bring out nuances in the story that the modern reader might easily overlook.

Moving the emphasis of the story from the rebellious younger son to the “obedient” elder brother, Keller demonstrates that the true focus of the parable is not on the “prodigal” at all, but that both brothers had, in their own way, rejected the love of the father. And it is the love of the father toward each brother, offering each the redemption that they need, that reveals the true Father of the story, God. The lostness of both sons relates to the people who were in and around Jesus’ ministry. The younger, rebellious son with the drunkards, prostitutes and thieves that were entering the kingdom of God, and the prideful, older son with the Pharisees and religious hypocrites who refused to enter God’s kingdom and who made up the actual audience for the parable in Luke 15.

After exploring the family dynamic in its cultural sense and it’s relation to the kingdom of God, the story turns to a person who is missing from the narrative, but would have been expected to be there if the story was fully joyful: a true older brother–an older brother who would have left home to find his life-wasting sibling and spared no expense to return him to his father. This true older brother, who was absent from the story, is present for every believer. He is Jesus Christ.

Writes Keller,

Jesus’ message, which is ‘the gospel,’ is a completely different spirituality. The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles–it is something else altogether.

It is Jesus’ saving work available to the younger and the elder, pictured by the Father’s lavish party, that is the ultimate focus of the story and of the book. The Prodigal God is an amazing, thought provoking, illuminating work that demands beneficial self examination from the reader.

You can purchase The Prodigal God directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the image or link below.