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Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

Michael Connelly (Goodreads Author)

3.41 · Rating details · 4,769 ratings · 376 reviews

Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat. In these vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends—and, of course, the killers—to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.
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Hardcover, 375 pages

Published May 2006 by Little, Brown and Company (first published December 1st 2004)

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Start your review of Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers

Apr 10, 2015 Bill Kerwin rated it liked it

Shelves: true-crime

Sometimes, to appreciate what a book is, it is necessary to be aware of what it is not. Crime Beat is not a collection of true crime essays by a well-known and respected veteran novelist, winner of every prize in the crime writing field. Crime Beat is a heterogeneous collection of old newspaper pieces written by a reporter in his early 30's who has just won a Pulitzer Prize.

"Just-the-Facts-Ma'am" reporting is hard to do, and young Connelly shows his mastery of it in each piece included here. He ...more

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Mar 09, 2017 Diane Wallace rated it it was ok

Ok read! Good storyline with some interesting plotlines but the writing could have been better (paperback!) huge Connelly fan!

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May 24, 2020 Matt rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook

I know that I am one of many who thoroughly enjoys the work of Michael Connelly, with his gritty stories of Harry Bosch and others working on solving (or defending, sometimes even reporting) crimes that occur throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Some may know that Connelly began his career as a crime beat reporter, amassing much of the story ideas he would later make popular through the cases on which he reported. This book is a collection of reports, both backgrounds and follow-ups, that Co I know that I am one of many who thoroughly enjoys the work of Michael Connelly, with his gritty stories of Harry Bosch and others working on solving (or defending, sometimes even reporting) crimes that occur throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Some may know that Connelly began his career as a crime beat reporter, amassing much of the story ideas he would later make popular through the cases on which he reported. This book is a collection of reports, both backgrounds and follow-ups, that Connelly penned during his reporting career. With an introduction that gives the reader the insight into how Connelly witnessed his first criminal at the age of sixteen and the subsequent investigation made him want to report on crimes, the author paints a picture of how this type of writing soon got into his blood and helped him to craft the descriptions that pull readers into the stories. With the collection divided into three parts, the reader can see reports that feature the police, the criminals, and the unknown victims. Seeing the cases develop and those who worked hard to catch the perpetrators, Connelly shines a light on those with the badges and guns, though he does not only present the positive side of those in blue. The reader can see Connelly’s depiction of the criminals as well, with backstories on their lives and what might have led them to the life of crime before they were caught, or eluded capture and disappeared. The final section seeks to focus the attention the victim who was left without a clear identity, be it because they fell through the cracks of the system or the brutality they faced left them unrecognisable at the time of initial reporting. With some wonderful tie-ins to cases that Harry Bosch would eventually face (note, the book came long before anyone ever heard of Renee Ballard), Connelly shows his tireless fans that fact and fiction do something intertwine and make for entertaining reading. Recommended to those who love true crime seen through the eyes of the roving reporter, as well as the reader who has come to love the writing of Michael Connelly over the years.

While I am not an avid reader of true crime novels, I like to see where authors get their ideas. Many pull on experiences from their past (or current) professions and blur the lines effectively to keep things working well for their reading public while offering a degree of anonymity and keeping lawsuits at bay. While I have been a longtime fan of Connelly’s work (all series), it is interesting to see where some of the ideas emerged. I have watched a few seasons of the Amazon Prime show, Bosch, which pulls its ideas from the books, but this was even more interesting, as I could see from where the initial germination of writing ideas eventually blossomed. The cases are all over the place, from robberies to murder, kidnapping to assaults. All included both sides of the law, as well as a victim, pulling the reader into the middle, much like Connelly must have been as he used his access to case files and the like. The curious reader will see just how detailed things can get when a reporter has earned the trust of the police, though also kept his independence and is able to point out foibles in the system. Connelly writes in such a way that the reader cannot help but want to know more, seeking to eke out as many details as possible. While some attentive readers will see the parallels between the cases and the eventual books, anyone can enjoy this, with Connelly’s easy to digest prose and attention to detail. Well worth my time as I await another Michael Connelly publication, which just so happens to have a reporter as the protagonist!

Kudos, Mr. Connelly, for all your hard work on the beat, which you have been able to turn into a stellar collection of novels that have stood the test of time.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... ...more

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Mar 18, 2016 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1audio, 2non-fiction

This was interesting due to understanding the roots of Connelly's writing. Several of the stories covered here are the real events that played out in his novels & the characters contributed a lot, too. That said, it's true crime or newspaper reporting, often done in parts with summaries that duplicate what I had just heard. Yuck. I don't care for true crime & tend to skim newspaper articles on it, so listening to every single repetitious word was painful. Still, I'm glad to understand Connelly's ...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Gary rated it it was ok

Let me start by admitting that I am a huge Michael Connelly fan and love almost everything he writes.
This book however was a collection of his newspaper reporting from the '80s and at times was very interesting giving a good insight into his work but generally there was not enough to keep me fully entertained. ...more

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Feb 15, 2019 Aditya rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Crime Beat is a collection of newspaper reports that Connelly wrote about the stories he covered over the course of his successful journalistic career. There are twenty two cases, all of them consisting a series of articles. All of them are about three decades old and very few of them are interesting. The original articles might have been touched up a bit to resemble something akin to traditional narratives but they betray their origins. Facts are repeated (as is par for the course in follow ups Crime Beat is a collection of newspaper reports that Connelly wrote about the stories he covered over the course of his successful journalistic career. There are twenty two cases, all of them consisting a series of articles. All of them are about three decades old and very few of them are interesting. The original articles might have been touched up a bit to resemble something akin to traditional narratives but they betray their origins. Facts are repeated (as is par for the course in follow ups published days later in a newspaper) every other page and almost one-fourth of the book is redundant. Occasionally Connelly's articles are supplemented by reports from other journos covering other aspects of the crime and Connelly's writing is better.

Connelly's writing has always been bereft of any signature style and often appears generic. This makes him an odd choice to publish feature pieces that he wrote when he was even less polished as an author. However he always knows what he is talking about and his plots have an insider's look at the procedural aspect of police work. Crime Beat successfully shows where and how he honed that definitive aspect of his writing.

This was the only unread Connelly left for me and I wanted some insights into the evolution of one of the most commercially successfully crime authors of his generation. My completionist nature was satisfied but I did not glean much in form of insights. It is clear he would go on to adapt themes and plotlines from his real life experiences notably in Trunk Music (Bosch #5). But the raw source material is simply not interesting by itself.

Connelly should have provided fewer cases as 22 is too large a number when all of them follow the same repetitive structure; or analysed just a couple of them in much greater detail for this book to have any sort of meaning. Not even recommended to Connelly fans or true crime lovers because at the end of the day it is a random collection of dry, thirty year old newspaper clippings. For what it's worth I really struggled to finish it. Rating - 2/5. ...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Ben rated it it was ok

For Crime Beat, Connelly dug through his archives to serve up a series of articles he wrote for newspapers in Florida and California during his formative years as a writer. Unstructured and repetitive, this pseudo-collection is nothing that would sell were not the Connelly brand stamped on the cover (he must have been gunning for a yacht).

Apart from an unexplored tag line about the influence of his reporting years on his writing and a brief aside about the importance of the "telling detail" in t ...more

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Sep 25, 2009 Joyce added it

Shelves: discarded

The ostensible rationale for this collection of stale journalism pieces is to demonstrate Connelly's contention that working the crime beat is a great way to learn the craft of crime novelist. Unfortunately, you guessed it, the book ends up utterly undermining his own argument. It's hard not to conclude that Connelly is one of the rare birds who are simply good at two different crafts -- because the tiny nuggets of anything resembling novelistic interest panned out in Connelly's newspaper pieces ...more

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Oct 08, 2015 Ashley rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: If you like crime news stories!!

Shelves: 1980, revenge, secret-lives, vigilantism, 1990, action, adult, adventure, rape, redemption

Another great from Michael Connelly!!

I've read the Bosch books, Lincoln Lawyer novels, and now this from his days as a Journalist/Crime Reporter! This was not a bad read.... A little slow at times, but it read like any newspaper piece! It wasn't a jam-packed essay on the topic, it seemed like he was given a word limit and put "just the facts".
It was a great read, I enjoyed it because I see just where he came up with the ideas for ALOT of his books!!(Trunk Music, The Poet, Black Box, and many mo ...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Martin rated it did not like it

Shelves: library, gave-up-on, non-fiction

Connelly of course is the guy who writes the Harry Bosch thrillers set in LA - never a top favourite of mine because his writing is a little drab, but his plots are generally good (except when they're execrable (A Darkness more than Night)). Connelly was/is a journalist, and this is a collection of his crime reporting. And it's a complete waste of time, a pure ego exercise: the writing is very pedestrian, with the stories apparently reprinted as they originally appeared in the papers, including ...more

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Jul 18, 2008 Marcie rated it really liked it

I thought this was fabulous...anyone else might find it a huge bore, though. This book contains the kernels, seeds, of inspiration, the experiences and sights and sounds that stick with you and then coalesce into a future work. And I am so-o-o-o jealous!

Michael Connelly and I were both working as newspaper reporters at the exact time...his press pass shows a goofy, curly headed kid who gets to ride shotgun with the cops for a week, the homicide division no less. Meanwhile mine shows a girl with I thought this was fabulous...anyone else might find it a huge bore, though. This book contains the kernels, seeds, of inspiration, the experiences and sights and sounds that stick with you and then coalesce into a future work. And I am so-o-o-o jealous!

Michael Connelly and I were both working as newspaper reporters at the exact time...his press pass shows a goofy, curly headed kid who gets to ride shotgun with the cops for a week, the homicide division no less. Meanwhile mine shows a girl with stupid straight bangs and a pissed-off expression, assigned to covering wedding stories for the bridal section and art exhibit openings. In 1986, girls were not allowed to cover the police beat or the court beat. We were assigned to the lifestyles or entertainment sections.

I can remember my first day and asking the room in general "what the hell is peau de soie?" and the older, female reporter, "mother" of the department, smiling and saying "French for silk" as she slammed a drawer shut with her hip. This woman went on to write murder mystery novelettes for Harlequin romance...and I went on to prostitute myself in advertising where I would be paid a lot more money for knowing stuff like what peau de soie is. And Connelly went on to create an unforgettable character, Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, the LAPD homicide detective who speaks for the dead. Harry is the compilation of all the real-life detectives Connelly knew, the cases...well, we all know truth is stranger than fiction, no doubt.

In all honesty, he was not that great as a reporter. I bet he drove his editors NUTS with convoluted leads (supposed to be 25-30 words in length, one I counted at 46, why he didn't break into two?) and flowery, inappropriate, editorializing adjectives like "swift and efficient" killer and "bizarre cast of characters and seamy tales." Hmmmm. Use your verbs, man, not your adjectives, to color up a news story!

So, he goes on to write, with great economy and word-restraint, stuff like: “In every murder is the tale of a city.” and "We all are circling the drain, he thought. Some are closer to the black hole than others. Some will see it coming and some will have no clue when the undertow of the whirlpool grabs them and pulls them down into darkness forever."

Connelly found his correct place in the universe. And I'm one of his biggest fans. Thus, the book gets four out of five stars.

...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Sidna rated it really liked it

This book is for Michael Connelly fans. I'm not sure that anyone who has not read at least some of his books would enjoy it.

For me, the best part of this book was the Introduction in which he tells about how he became interested in crime reporting. When Connelly was 16 he worked as a night dishwasher in a hotel restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, FL. On his way home from work one night he witnessed a man escaping after robbing a nearby store and shooting a man in the head. His experience in working This book is for Michael Connelly fans. I'm not sure that anyone who has not read at least some of his books would enjoy it.

For me, the best part of this book was the Introduction in which he tells about how he became interested in crime reporting. When Connelly was 16 he worked as a night dishwasher in a hotel restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, FL. On his way home from work one night he witnessed a man escaping after robbing a nearby store and shooting a man in the head. His experience in working with the detectives, even though they never found the robber, got him interested in crime and he began reading the newspaper. Then he started reading books by crime writers, such as Joseph Wambaugh and Raymond Chandler. It is interesting that his experience led him to crime reporting and not to law enforcement.

Connelly also tells about watching a particular detective as a crime reporter who became the basis for Harry Bosch. This was great fun to read.

The rest of the book is a reprinting of stories that appeared under his byline when he was a newspaper crime reporter. The book is divided into three sections: The Cops, The Killers, and The Cases. Since they are newspaper stories and reporters must give all the details in each story, some of the information is repetitive if there are several stories about the same case. That is not what I expected this book to be. I thought Connelly would write about stories he covered as a reporter.

In reading the stories, you can definitely see the story lines for some of Connelly's books. You also see how he developed his writing style. As a reporter, he tells a straight forward story without embellishment. He does the same thing in his books, which I love. I prefer linear writing to foreshadowing and most writers use way too many adjectives.

The final 10 pages of the book are "The Novelist as Reporter" written by Michael Carlson. In this section, Carlson talks about Connelly's development from a reporter to a novelist. I was surprised to read that Carlson has written about Connelly for other publications. I love his books, but didn't know that people were writing about him.

...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Kurt rated it it was ok

This is a collection of some of Connelly's journalism in Florida and Los Angeles, from a time before he started writing novels. For devoted Connelly fans, it holds its curiosities (I've read all four existing Lincoln Lawyer novels and the first three Harry Bosch novels), as many elements of real crimes and characters surface in Connelly's novels. On the whole, though, it is rather mundane, one article after another of someone getting robbed or murdered with enough words to cover the facts and el ...more

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Sep 14, 2016 Jan rated it liked it

For me no one beats Michael Connelly for writing the absolute best police procedural/crime novels. I can't get enough of his Harry Bosch series, and eagerly await each new book in the series-which I usually read within days of its publication. But this collection of Connelly's columns from the 1980s that covers crimes in Florida and Los Angeles were, if I'm going to be honest, pretty dry and a bit boring. These columns are nothing like a Harry Bosch novel. Just the facts ma'am, as Detective Joe ...more

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Sep 05, 2011 Grey Ghost rated it did not like it

I got this one as an audio book, which did not add to my enjoyment. A great disappointment, as this book is basically a reprint of Connolly's old newspaper articles about each of these cases, with little or no new information or insight. In addition, that fact means that there is a lot of repetition in each chapter as it appears that Connolly hasn't bothered to edit out the redundancies inherent in news articles printed about the same case on different days.

To add insult to injury, the guy who r ...more

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May 14, 2010 Ally rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-booklist, non-fiction

Having read most of Connelly's fiction books and loving them, I was initially quite excited to find out more about Connelly as a reporter, and hoped to gain some insight into how he started and where he got his insipiration. In some respects I suppose this book met that aim, in that you can see some brief glimpses into how Connelly uses his experience as a crime beat reporter to develop his characters and plots in his novels. However I really struggled to finish the book, and only really carried ...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Mike rated it liked it

Shelves: xcharity-2013, mystery, non-fiction

Only took a few hours to breeze through this one. Mainly just repeats of his newspaper stories when he was a crime reporter in FL and CA. (I'd be ticked off if I had paid retail for the book--I'm a fan but not a fanboy) Still, I found it interesting to see elements of his real life crime stories show up in his novels. Some stories are really interesting and some not so much. Worth a read if you can check it out from a friend or library. Not so much if you have to buy. ...more

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Apr 28, 2015 Anastasia rated it liked it

Shelves: aussie-crime-lovers-challenge

Crime Beat by Michael Connelly is a collection of reports and articles from his time as a crime reporter and which provided the inspiration for his novels. It was interesting to read about the various crimes, some of which were never solved unlike in fiction. His novels though are much more exciting and satisfying. Crime Beat although interesting was quite tedious and repetitive in places.

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Oct 17, 2015 William rated it it was ok

The very early days of Michael Connolly as a reporter.

This book only for die-hard fans who want to see his development from hack to adequate writer. The good stuff comes much later than you see in this book though.

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Feb 23, 2011 Shea Ivy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Overall I liked this collection, but one qualm I did have was with the choice to include multiple pieces on the same subject (whether it was a particular crime, incident, offender, etc.) in one chapter, which made reading very similar information over and over again a little boring.

Often when journalists cover a crime story, the "facts of the case" (can we tell I work in a legal setting yet?) remain fairly consistent, and all of the back story is rehashed up to the point of reporting. It was in ...more

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May 17, 2015 Rach A rated it it was ok

The book is very, very repetitious and plain in text, as it is non-fiction and written by a reporter. So if those styles do not suit you, I suggest skipping this book. However, the insight to the 80s/90s of police work and battles they faced are similar to what are current in times.

It did not take me more than a few days to finish this book and I would suggest reading it if you picked it up at a library or from a discount retailer. Keep an open mind and don't expect an award winning masterpiece ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Joe rated it liked it

Be forewarned that this is not a novel or an autobiography. It is a collection of Connelly's news articles from his time as a journalist at the Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times. In the articles, you can see the bones and foundation of Connelly's Harry Bosch novels, and I got a sense of Connelly finding the voice that eventually emerged in his fiction work.

Certainly a must for Connelly completists. If your relationship with Connelly and Bosch are more casual, your mileage may vary. ...more

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Aug 26, 2020 Alan Teder rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020-reading-challenge, audiobook-edition, non-fiction, crime-non-fiction

Connelly Non-Fiction 1984-1992
Review of the Little, Brown & Co. hardcover (2006)

Crime Beat collects a selection of writer Michael Connelly's crime reporting for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times from the time before he began a successful crime fiction writing career with the release of The Black Echo (1992).

The book is organized by themes such as Cops, Killers, and Cases, rather than chronologically. It conveys how Connelly was always building a human & character story ...more

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Mar 16, 2019 Tracey rated it liked it

Shelves: history-nonfiction

Very Well written.

This Is a collection criminal news articles spanning 10 years.

They are random.

If you enjoy these types of stories for what they are, you will enjoy this. It’s an interesting selection of different types of crimes, victims and defendants. Some are sympathetic. Some are heartless.

If you enjoy true crime stories, you will like these.

If you want more involved drawn out stories, this may disappoint.

I was fascinated in part because I don’t recall most news articles being this i ...more

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Jun 13, 2018 AKT rated it really liked it

What a shame that as a thriller fan I just found out about Michael Connely’s novels. Obviously, I love murder stories, forensics, detectives. I am fascinated with the gripping anticipation and the drama between the victim and the perpetrator. But this is not crime drama, this is all real. The crime cases, the detective jobs, the narration of each story with the victims and the villains, this created a story of each fight for justice. Well-written that I promised myself to buy more of his novels.

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Apr 27, 2020 Sonny rated it it was ok

I really enjoy Michael Connelly's crime novels. About the best I ever read. I guess that was why I was so disappointed in this book.
Now, I knew going in that this was not a novel but a book based on crimes he had covered as a journalist.
As it turns out, these are mostly just reprinted newspaper articles about crimes committed in Florida and California. Mostly (if not entirely) verbatim.
And to top it off they are not very interesting articles at that.
Even though this book was a disappointment to ...more

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Oct 24, 2019 Amy "the book-bat" rated it liked it

Shelves: true-crime, read-in-2019, history-historical, audiobooks, mystery, tower-teams-7

Due to the nature of the book being a collection of newspaper article collected from Connelly's time as a crime reporter, there is a lot of repetition, which kind of bogs down the flow of the writing and becomes a bit boring. If some of the repetition could have been edited out, it might have been a 4 star read. I thought the cases were interesting overall. ...more

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Jan 06, 2021 Alice Driscoll rated it liked it

It was OK I'm not a fan of real crime though. I like pathological thrillers so to me it was too much like reading a news paper. ...more

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Jan 18, 2021 David Highton rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: all-non-fiction, general

A selection of Connelly’s journalism - I found bits of this book repetitive as several stories were published on some of the cases, obviously with detail repeated.

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Oct 21, 2019 Margaret Sankey rated it it was ok

This is a collection of Connelly's work for South Florida newspapers and the LA Times on the crime beat--spare, journalistic accounts of human tragedy, a lot of it still unsolved. While the pieces themselves are frustrating in their bare bones, it is easy to see why Connelly finds novelization to be a satisfying closure, and precisely where the inspiration for a lot of the Bosch cases comes from. ...more

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About Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teache Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly has followed that up with over 30 more novels.

Over eighty million copies of Connelly’s books have sold worldwide and he has been translated into forty foreign languages. He has won the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, Los Angeles Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), .38 Caliber Award (France), Grand Prix Award (France), Premio Bancarella Award (Italy), and the Pepe Carvalho award (Spain) .

Michael was the President of the Mystery Writers of America organization in 2003 and 2004. In addition to his literary work, Michael is one of the producers and writers of the TV show, “Bosch,” which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Michael lives with his family in Los Angeles and Tampa, Florida. ...more