'Crime Beat' will meet your 'true crime' needs
"Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers" by Michael Connelly is one of the most entertaining books that I’ve read in a long time.
The 384-page book, published by Little, Brown and Co. in May, is a collection of almost two dozen newspaper stories written by Connelly in the late 80s and early 90s. During that time, Connelly, who is best known as the author of the best-selling series of Harry Bosch crime novels, was a prize-winning crime reporter with The Los Angeles Times and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
"Crime Beat" is broken down into three parts: The Cops, The Killers and The Cases. The best story in the section that focuses on "the cops" is "Death Squad," a story that tells of an secret, undercover Los Angeles police surveillance unit that killed three robbery suspects after a McDonald’s restaurant robbery in 1990. Connelly’s story details the robbery, the resulting shoot-out and the civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles that followed. In the end, Connelly uncovered that the secret police unit had been involved in 45 shootings since 1965, killing 28 people and wounding 27.
My favorite story from The Killers would have been funny if it hadn’t been true. In "The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight," Connelly tells the story of Vietnam veteran Richard Savage and his gang of inept murder-for-hire thugs.
Savage and his gang left a wide variety of comically botched killings in their wake over a number of years before they finally killed the wrong person and the police closed in. Strangest of all, Savage’s gang got most of their work from a classified advertisement that Savage ran each month in Soldier of Fortune magazine:
Gun For Hire: 37-year-old professional mercenary desires jobs. Vietnam Veteran. Discrete and very private. Body Guard, Courier and other Skills. All jobs considered.
Weird, huh?
The best story from The Cases is called "High Time," a tale that centered on 24-year-old Billy Schroeder, a.k.a., Billy the Burglar. Armed with nothing more than a Florida Power & Light work shirt and a screwdriver, he broke into at least 350 Florida homes in a year’s time and stole an estimated $2 million worth of property to feed his cocaine habit. Police eventually caught him and he confessed, but out of the millions of dollars in property he stole, nothing was recovered.
I think that aspiring journalists and writers in the audience will also enjoy the book’s introduction, which tells of how Connelly became interested in writing and the events that led him to a career as one of the finest crime reporters in the country.
Will the book be read 100 years from now? My first instinct is to say that the book will be of importance a century from now. Just like old newspapers, books often offer the reader a glimpse into what life was like in a given time and place. In the case of "Crime Beat," Connelly offers readers a glimpse of what life was like for police officers and journalists in Los Angeles and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. during the late 80s and early 90s.
In the end, I really enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone with an interest in journalism, law enforcement, crime or big city living. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give "Crime Beat" an 8.5.
The 384-page book, published by Little, Brown and Co. in May, is a collection of almost two dozen newspaper stories written by Connelly in the late 80s and early 90s. During that time, Connelly, who is best known as the author of the best-selling series of Harry Bosch crime novels, was a prize-winning crime reporter with The Los Angeles Times and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
"Crime Beat" is broken down into three parts: The Cops, The Killers and The Cases. The best story in the section that focuses on "the cops" is "Death Squad," a story that tells of an secret, undercover Los Angeles police surveillance unit that killed three robbery suspects after a McDonald’s restaurant robbery in 1990. Connelly’s story details the robbery, the resulting shoot-out and the civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles that followed. In the end, Connelly uncovered that the secret police unit had been involved in 45 shootings since 1965, killing 28 people and wounding 27.
My favorite story from The Killers would have been funny if it hadn’t been true. In "The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight," Connelly tells the story of Vietnam veteran Richard Savage and his gang of inept murder-for-hire thugs.
Savage and his gang left a wide variety of comically botched killings in their wake over a number of years before they finally killed the wrong person and the police closed in. Strangest of all, Savage’s gang got most of their work from a classified advertisement that Savage ran each month in Soldier of Fortune magazine:
Gun For Hire: 37-year-old professional mercenary desires jobs. Vietnam Veteran. Discrete and very private. Body Guard, Courier and other Skills. All jobs considered.
Weird, huh?
The best story from The Cases is called "High Time," a tale that centered on 24-year-old Billy Schroeder, a.k.a., Billy the Burglar. Armed with nothing more than a Florida Power & Light work shirt and a screwdriver, he broke into at least 350 Florida homes in a year’s time and stole an estimated $2 million worth of property to feed his cocaine habit. Police eventually caught him and he confessed, but out of the millions of dollars in property he stole, nothing was recovered.
I think that aspiring journalists and writers in the audience will also enjoy the book’s introduction, which tells of how Connelly became interested in writing and the events that led him to a career as one of the finest crime reporters in the country.
Will the book be read 100 years from now? My first instinct is to say that the book will be of importance a century from now. Just like old newspapers, books often offer the reader a glimpse into what life was like in a given time and place. In the case of "Crime Beat," Connelly offers readers a glimpse of what life was like for police officers and journalists in Los Angeles and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. during the late 80s and early 90s.
In the end, I really enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone with an interest in journalism, law enforcement, crime or big city living. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give "Crime Beat" an 8.5.
posted by Lee Peacock at 3:12 PM
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