I have been reading Harry Bosch novels for years. “Trunk Music” was the first Connelly book I ever read. “The Poet” was my second… and I have not stopped reading him since. His attention to detail in investigations is authentic, superb, and on the level of Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh. Connelly is more prolific than Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Dashiell Hammett, and just as real and entertaining.

This time Connelly completes a perfect crime trifecta with Fair Warning and revisits a known character from his bestselling classics “The Poet” and “The Scarecrow”. Jack McEvoy is really Michael Connelly’s alter ego and/or composite. Let’s not forget Connelly was a crime reporter for the L.A. Times before we knew him as a bestselling author. Connelly has said that writing about McEvoy was his “least favorable writing experience” because “he is easily the most autobiographical character I have ever written about.”

Note: You don’t have to read the other two prior books to enjoy Fair Warning.

If you are a fan of strong, well-defined characters with an investigative journalist bent in the vein of “Rogue Island” by Bruce DeSilva, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer,” by Michelle McNamara (non-fiction), and “The Night Crew” by John Sanford, then “Fair Warning” is your book, or series, even if you’re a stranger to the trilogy. No fake news here. Just exposing fraud and one of the biggest artists (Arthur Hatheway).

What I continuously enjoy about Connelly’s writing, and is present in “Fair Warning,” is the great Los Angeles geographical descriptions from the streets and freeways of Los Angeles, the insider information and realism of crime journalism and the inner workings of the LAPD, and the gritty characters they unmask. I live in L.A. so the visuals and the cons come to life on the page.

Lose your cell phone. Close your office or bedroom door. You have been given Fair Warning this book will keep you up all night. Connelly Never Fails to keep us continuously engaged and entertained with his writing. I look forward to the next Jack McEvoy book.

I hope you found this review helpful.