For a few years, mystery novelist Michael Connelly’s books bounced back and forth between two recurring main characters—Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch, and Terry McCaleb, retired FBI profiler. Sometimes both at once. But Connelly killed McCaleb off a few books back, and since then he seems to be casting about for a new regular series, mixing and matching characters in various combinations.

The Scarecrow appears to be an attempt to re-launch the adventures of crime reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI profiler Rachel Walling. They teamed up (as investigators and lovers) in a much earlier novel, The Poet, and Rachel also featured in a recent Harry Bosch book. But Connelly here drops big hints that he’s carving out a future for them as a team.

I applaud this, but wish they could have been re-launched in a slightly better book. Not that The Scarecrow is bad. It moves right along, and builds tension nicely, but I wouldn’t list it among Connelly’s best works. Of course, that’s a pretty high bar.

When the book opens, Jack McEvoy, former celebrity and bestselling author on account of the Poet investigation, is on the point of losing his job at the Los Angeles Times. He hasn’t had a big story in a long time, and all the newspapers are cutting back. His boss tells him he can stay on for two weeks, if he’d be willing to train in his replacement, a young woman, beautiful and much less expensive than he is. He agrees to this indignity, wondering what he’s going to do next, almost relieved to be out of the oppressive, last-man-standing environment of the 21st century news room.

Then he gets a call from a woman who blames him for writing lies about her grandson, who’s on trial for murder. Figuring he’ll write a feature story about the background of the murder, Jack decides to investigate, discovering—to his amazement—that it looks very much as if the young man didn’t do the murder. It appears there’s a serial killer out there—a very cruel, very intelligent one.

This investigation brings him together with Rachel Walling again, and the tension (along with the romance) ratchets up rapidly.

One of the strengths of The Scarecrow, in my opinion, was the alternation between Jack McEvoy’s first-person narration of the main action, and an omniscient-point-of-view account of the murderer’s doings. The murderer in this case is a highly intelligent psychopath with world-class computer skills, and an internet security specialist’s access to the information that makes our world work. Formidable.

But this villain seemed to me to also be a weakness. I didn’t think he was as fully fleshed out as most of Connelly’s villains. I didn’t really want to know this guy better, but I think it would have made the book stronger.

Also plain luck played a big part in the protagonists’ success, at a couple points. That seemed to me a little lazy on the author’s part.

I’m not advising you not to read The Scarecrow. There are no bad Michael Connelly mysteries. But I wouldn’t place this one on the top shelf.