Fair Warning

I have never warmed to Jack McEvoy, a character who has so far featured in three of Michael Connelly’s crime novels. McEvoy is an investigative journalist and something of an alter ego of Connelly’s, who in real life got his start as a newspaper crime beat reporter. But McEvoy is less distinctive than Connelly’s more famous creations (especially LAPD detective Harry Bosch). Fair Warning finds McEvoy working for a five-person consumer watchdog website. When he discovers that a former romantic acquaintance was murdered in a specifically violent way, he suspects a more complex motive. While the plot is a decent one, the implausibility of a consumer watchdog journalist attempting to investigate and solve such a complex crime plagues most of the book.