Twelve years ago, crime reporter Jack McEvoy came face to face with a brutal serial killer nicknamed The Poet. Emotionally scarred by the encounter, Jack also found fame and fortune as the newspaperman who lived to tell the tale. But now Jack is yesterday’s news, and he’s about to be forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts. Angry and defiant, he’s determined to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paper to write the definitive murder story of his career.
Alonzo Winslow seems to represent his best shot, a sixteen-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to raping then strangling one of his crack clients. The case has all the elements of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning story: a kid from he projects born into a society that gave him no hope and no prospects, journeying down a road that inevitably ended in drugs, violence and death. The only problem is, once he starts to look at Winslow’s so-called confession, Jack begins to believe he’s innocent.
Which means that somewhere out there a vicious and highly organized killer is still at work. A killer with some very special skills that have enabled him to indulge his fantasies for years without leaving a trace. A killer who takes a perverse pleasure in destroying his enemies.
And now he knows Jack is coming.
Praise for Michael Connolly
‘The master storyteller’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
‘Keeps you enthralled to the last page’ DAILY MAIL
‘Thrilling’ GUARDIAN
‘Impossible to put down’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
