The Narrows - Michael Connelly

Ali Mark
Feb 9, 2016
3 min read

Published in 2004.

Pages: 427.

Number of books by author: 99 Novels (10th in Harry Bosch series)

Genre: Fiction

When Harry Bosch and Rachel Walling accidentally cross paths, they split hairs with the FBI over the serial killer The Poet, who Rachel subsequently lost her career in the FBI over. But when Harry and Rachel put their heads together, will they stop The Poet before he takes more lives?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Murder mystery
Serial killers
Career/work struggle
Police/FBI/Detective Work

Goodreads users gave this book a 4.05 I think it was more deserving of a 3.00.

After reading (and loving) Connelly's book The Reversal, I decided to do a random pick-up on this one. I wasn't nearly as impressed - and maybe it was because this was focused on the detective work and The Reversal was focused on the court room. But either way, I wasn't as impressed (although, people on Goodreads certainly were)

Without giving anything away, I don't really understand the connection between the title, the cover art, and the story line itself. Other than about 30-40 pages, it just didn't

really make sense why we had the title and cover that we got. Now, I had initially thought that "The Poet" would be a good title (and fitting, of course), but then I found out there was a prior book in the series named The Poet. Which pleased me, as well as disappointed me, because I was able to read the entire book without ever feeling left out on the first part of the story. I'm not usually one to complain about a title or cover art, but this just didn't fit well for me.

From the beginning, the story was predictable. (And I'm not one to read the entire back or inside flap to get the details on a book.) I knew all the way up until about chapter 20 where the story was going - even if the details were given on the back, I would've rather cut out some of those details - although most were important - that were just boring and predictable. This is a murder-mystery.... we want some mystery as readers. It wasn't until the last 60 pages or so that I finally sat on the edge of my seat. The novel was just, bland. It wasn't overwhelming with excitement or deadly-boring... but it was just bland. I wasn't excited or bored, but it took me 3 days to read something that should've really only taken 1.

I really found Backus' point of view unnecessary. Especially at the end. I felt that it only took away from the story. I feel like there was such a heavy emphasis on the profiling from the BAU (which annoyingly in this book is just called Behavioral Sciences) that we shouldn't have needed the extra "mmph" from the author to fill in details about how The Poet was thinking. I really wanted to focus in on the perspectives of the three major parties - the former detective, Bosch; the former FBI mentor, Walling; and the FBI department also working to find The Poet.

Luckily, despite all the "meh" parts of this book, the story itself was self-propelling. It wouldn't matter what the author said so much as what the author was writing about. A chase to catch a serial killer by three parties with different motives is exciting itself. I don't need much else to keep me at least mildly entertained. The description was there - I could envision what was being discussed - from character appearances to locations experienced.