This is to be expected, after all the guy is doing 10+ hours of reading, but the director should catch these and suggest 'we take that last paragraph again.' The production is good, with excellent audio quality throughout and engaging snippets of suspenseful music at key points. The reader flubs several pronunciations, voices, and phrasings throughout the text. The reason I only gave this four stars, though, is that there are some serious flaws in the direction of this product. I found his voice very easy to listen to. The reader is very good and voices the characters very well. This book is classic Connelly in every way. There's a creepy villain, as usual, and a couple of plot elements that the reader is privy to that the main characters have to discover the hard way. Both know Bosch, but it's their relationship and teamwork that really add the spark to this book. But front and center in this book are LA Times reporter Jack McEvoy and FBI agent Rachael Walling. There's another mention of Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, and Bosch's half-brother.

Bosch, of course, is at the center and gets an unnamed nod in the Scarecrow. What really struck me as most impressive is the way Connelly has built a whole group of characters around the LA cop beat and newspaper scene. This time we have a short film called Conflict of Interest, which features the exploits of FBI Agent Rachel Walling leading up to the point she enters the story of The Scarecrow. As a big fan of Audible's collection of Harry Bosch and Lucas Davenport novels (by Michael Connelly and John Sandford, respectively) I found this novel to be a very good continuation of Connelly's Bosch series. Michael Connelly has always tried to give his readers bonus material with each new novel.

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly