Mysteries Galore.com

Reviewed by Allen Hott

Michael Connelly, having been a newspaper reporter at one time, uses this book to give the world a look at the sad state of newspapers today. Jack McEvoy, a newspaper reporter for the LA Times, has just received notice of his forthcoming layoff.

As he prepares to leave the office he gets a phone call from an irate reader of one of his last articles. The woman is extremely upset because she feels McEvoy has accused her “grandson” of murder in his piece. He attempts to calm her down by promising to come see her and look further into the matter.

After a weekend of trying to drown his troubles in booze, he does visit the lady and agrees to look further into the rape/murder of a young exotic dancer. The accused boy swears that he only drove her car and took money from her purse when he found the car abandoned in a parking lot.

McEvoy begins doing investigative work on the case and he finds some startling information. It appears that a similar case had recently happened in the Las Vegas area. Both cases involve a nude exotic dancer’s body found in the trunk of her car. In both cases she had been raped, bound, and had a plastic bag over her head. The bag was tied at the bottom with a piece of cord and strangulation occurred.

McEvoy begins digging into the cases and turns over his news reporting duties to his replacement, a young female college graduate. As he finds more and more evidence he places a phone call to an FBI agent, Rachel Walling, who had worked (and played) with McEvoy on a previous case. She had been demoted for some of her actions and was trying to forget McEvoy.

After listening to his logic about the case and the fact that his credit cards and cell phones have all been cancelled by and unknown person, she decides to fly to Ely, outside of Vegas, to meet and work with him. Together they begin not only working on the case but also resuming their romantic ties although she knows that was what caused her problems in the past.

Shortly after returning to LA to do more investigative work on both cases, McEvoy finds that his replacement on the paper has gone missing. In a very unusual manner McEvoy and Walling find her body and she too has been raped and murdered by the placement of a plastic bag over her head.

Through the rest of the story Connelly takes the reader on a journey of gathering clues and tracking down the killer. The fact of the cancellation of McEvoy’s personal items and the ways that the killer used to always know what was going on, come to shed light on the entire mystery for McEvoy and Walling.

The final chapters are filled with chases and mayhem of various types. Connelly’s style is fast moving and holds the attention of the reader right up to the final page.