Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers by Michael Connelly returns to the author’s roots as an investigative journalist working the crime beat in Miami and Los Angeles, showing where a lot of his ideas that would later become novels he’s better known for, started as real crimes that Connelly had the opportunity to see unfold in real time, following the unique twists and turns each case presented police. Each chapter covers one of his stories, and is interspersed with clippings from the author’s newspaper articles, which are divided into three distinct sections focusing on “the cops,” “the killers,” and “the cases.” Over the span of the book Connelly illustrates not only how these experiences would lead to writing fiction, but how he developed both his writing skills as well as observation, learning how to delve beneath the more sensational surface, and get a sense as to why these criminals committed the crimes that they did, or the impact that such investigations could have on the detectives tasked with solving them, allowing him to write such realistic characters in his books. However unlike those novels where the criminals eventually get locked up, this book provides an unflinching look at just how long it can take law enforcement to solve a crime. While there is some repetition in the provided articles, I personally felt this underlined the point that newspapers will often rehash more sensational crimes, even if little has changed in the reporting, to sell their papers and just how long the criminal system can take grinding through an investigation. Given the nature of the content, it should be understood that this could be a triggering book for some readers. That said, if you’re interested in this type of reporting, then this is definitely worth the read for the insights it provides into that world.

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