The Poet (Jack McEvoy, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #5)

by Michael Connelly

Whether you are the reader or the writer, it can be extremely hard to start a novel. No one in the book is your friend yet, and all the places are strange; hence, starting to read feels like a forced act of intimacy.

I’ve always thought the secret of dealing with death was to keep it at arm’s length. That’s the rule. Don’t let it breathe in your face.

I thought about the backseat of the car. For prisoners and suspects. And I guessed that I was both now. Suspect as a brother. A prisoner of my own pride. The sentence, of course, would now be life.

Most homicides are little murders.

But it’s hard to hold a grudge against the dead.

I once read a book about a reporter written by a reporter who described the life as always running in front of a thresher. I thought it was the most accurate description I’d read. Sometimes people got tired of running in front of the machine, sometimes they got pulled in and were left shredded. Sometimes they managed to get out from in front of it.

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

In his own words, the killer was an Eidolon. I was chasing a phantom.

But I’m hoping she’s like most TV reporters.” “And how are they?” “Sourceless and senseless. If she is, then I’ll be okay.”

“These people that we hunt… sometimes there is no explanation. That’s the very hardest part, coming up with the motivation, understanding what drives them to do what they do. We have a saying for it. We say these people are from the moon. Sometimes it is the only way to describe it when we don’t have the answers.

There is no way to explain the behavior of some humans, so we simply say they are not humans.

We trust the things we find beautiful, the things we want.

Every day you fight death with life and what is more vital in life than the physical act of love?

I knew what they meant now. About the moon. The letter was the voice of a man from someplace else. Not here. Not this planet.

This time I felt like a suspicious husband checking on his wife’s affairs. There was a voyeuristic thrill to it as well as a sense of guilt.

Pedophiles are networkers. They like to surround themselves with their own kind. They have phone nets, computer nets, a whole support system. They view it as them against society. The misunderstood minority, that kind of bullshit.

“I guess you never heard that you supposedly can catch more flies with sugar than with lemon.” “Why waste the sugar on flies?” he replied.

“It’s okay. I know what you meant. There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than the cause, though it’s the cause that is usually the most vilified.”

What’s that line that Nietzsche said? ‘Whoever fights monsters…’ ” “ ‘Should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.’ ”