The Poet

This was Michael Connelly's fifth novel and the first not to feature Heronymus 'Harry' Bosch. The protagonist is, instead Jack McEvoy, crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain. 'Death is my beat' he announces, opening the novel. This is a sombre reflection as he has just learned of the death by suicide of his identical twin brother, a homicide detective based in Denver. The apparent explanation is Detective McEvoy's increasing frustration at his failure to solve the brutal murder of a local student.
As a form of distraction from his grief, Jack starts looking into the incidence of police suicides. His researches uncover a surprisingly large number of police officer suicides, with a disproportionate preponderance of homicide detectives among them. Closer analysis revealed alarming similarities among many of these cases, including some unexpected aspects of the suicide notes that were left. Upon his return to work after compassionate leave, McEvoy convinced his editor to let him look into the issue in more depth, with a view to running a feature on it in a forthcoming weekend edition of the paper.
As his investigation gains pace McEvoy becomes increasingly convinced that his brother had in fact been murdered. Having amassed his evidence he is able to convince the FBI that there may be some substance to his theory, and they begin a full scale investigation. Meanwhile the story flits back to William Gladden, a previously-convicted pedophile who has been released and has broken his probation.