‘Fair Warning,’ by Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is best known for his brilliant series of Harry Bosch police procedural novels. But he has other series. The most minor of these (only in terms of volume count) is his Jack McEvoy series. I have a personal fondness for Jack, because it was the first J.M. novel, The Poet, that introduced me to Connelly’s work.

Jack McEvoy is a journalist, occasionally a famous one. He broke a couple big serial killer stories, and parlayed them into bestselling books. But time moves on. There isn’t much work for journalists these days, and Jack’s books have settled back into publishers’ midlists; he can’t live on the royalties. So, as Fair Warning begins, he’s working as an online journalist, for a consumer web site called Fair Warning.

Jack gets a visit from the police. A woman with whom he once had a one-night stand has been murdered, and he’s briefly among the list of persons of interest. But she did a lot of dating, it turns out.

Still, Jack is curious and troubled by the murder. He does some research and discovers that this woman has one thing in common with several other recent female murder victims – she had contacted a popular DNA mapping site on the web, to make contact with relatives.

Jack’s beat isn’t homicide anymore, but he can’t let this go. He goes to the one person he knows who could really help make sense of this thing – Rachel Waller. Rachel used to be a top profiler for the FBI. Now – thanks to a mistake on Jack’s part – she’s doing research for an insurance company. Also, Rachel and Jack are in love, but Jack keeps messing up and spoiling their prospects. Still, she is intrigued by Jack’s theory and agrees to help him.

They will learn horrifying things, both about the potential for abuse in the field of genetic testing, and about the amoral world of Dark Web communities.

I enjoyed Fair Warning very much. It was nice to catch up with Jack and Rachel, and the story was satisfying. I was a little disappointed to see that a political message was inserted in a couple places, but it’s a message that’s perfectly natural for Jack as we know him.

Cautions for language and mature, sometimes troubling situations. Recommended.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.