CRIME BEAT by Paul Davis

Copyright © 2002 Paul Davis. All rights reserved.

    Criminals love the summer season. They love the summer months because people go out more for walks and drives, visit friends and family and take vacation trips.

    While out and about, your homes and cars are left unprotected and you are much more likely to become a target for criminal predators. During the summer we are much more vulnerable to burglars, pickpockets, armed robbers, car thieves, carjackers, muggers and other street criminals.

    In addition to my Crime Beat column here, I write about crime and security matters for other publications, including a crime prevention column for The Golden Times, the Philadelphia region’s premiere mature market publication. The monthly newspaper serves readers over 50 years old in the Philadelphia, Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey area. As an outgrowth of the column, I’m often invited to speak to business and civic groups about crime, and since September 11^th, terrorism.

    In my talks, I pass on the knowledge I’ve acquired during my years of doing security work for the U.S. Navy and the Defense Department, as well as my years covering crime as a writer. I pass on crime prevention tips, advisories and other public information.

    Law enforcement and security professionals say that most crimes are preventable. You can prevent most crimes by installing alarms on your home and car and by taking common sense precautions when out working, shopping, dining or traveling. Be aware of your surroundings at all times and be alert to anything out of the ordinary. Lastly, don’t be shy and timid – report your suspicions to police or security officials.

    An FBI official once told me that we should be concerned about crime and terrorism, but not unduly concerned. So if you’ve taken the necessary safeguards to prevent you from becoming a victim, you can relax and enjoy the summer months.

    Summer time also brings another crime wave in the release of many new crime fiction novels. Publishers know that people love to read these books on weekends and while on vacation. You can see the books being read on the beach, by the pools and in the parks. I’ve read a couple of the new crime novels and I can heartily recommend one in particular.

    The novel is Michael Connelly’s "City of Bones." The novel is the latest in a series featuring Los Angeles Police Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. Bosch is described by the Michael Connelly web site--www.michaelconnelly.com--as "a stubborn former foster child and divorced Vietnam vet who has clashed with bureaucrats in the Los Angeles Police Department through eight novels."

    In "City of Bones," a doctor’s dog finds a bone in the Hollywood hills and makes the judgment that it is a human bone. The good doctor calls the police and Detective Bosch is sent to investigate. The investigation leads to the discovery that the bone belonged to a child and that the child had been abused for a long period of time.

    The 20-year-old cold case rips up Bosch’s own childhood memories as he and his partner Jerry Edgar research old police and hospital reports in an effort to discover the identity of the murdered child. Bosch encounters the usual criminal suspects, clashes with police brass and has a short-lived romance with a rookie policewoman.

    "Jerry Edgar had a warrant knock that sounded like no other Bosch had ever heard. Like a gifted athlete who can focus the forces of his whole body into the swinging of a bat or the dunking of a basketball, Edgar could put his whole weight and six-foot-four frame into his knock. It was as though he could call down and concentrate all the power and fury of the righteous into his fist of his large hand. What it sounded like was Judgment Day," Connelly writes in "City of Bones."

    I like the Connelly novels for the accurate depictions of police work and for the Los Angeles backdrop to the stories. While serving in the Navy in the early 1970s, I was stationed on an aircraft carrier that performed sea trials off San Diego prior to our shipping out to Vietnam. I often spent weekends in Los Angeles. I liked the nightlife and enjoyed walking down the "mean streets" that Raymond Chandler had so artfully described in his Philip Marlowe novels.

    Michael Connelly was also influenced by Chandler and has said he decided to become a writer after reading Raymond Chandler. He was also influenced by a 15^th century painter, whose name he would take for his LA detective.

    "Hieronymus Bosch did those chaotic, world-gone-mad paintings," Bosch says on his web page. He added that this is the way his fictional detective views the world.

    Connelly’s sense of place and realism comes from his having been a crime reporter for the LA Times from 1987 to 1994. Born in Philadelphia, his family moved to Florida when he was 12. After graduating from the University of Florida in 1980, he worked on Florida newspapers. He covered the crime beat in Fort Lauderdale during the violent era of "the cocaine wars" prior to moving to LA.

    So during this fine summer, take precautions for your personal security. Lock those doors and windows, install burglar alarms on the home and car, and always be alert and aware of your surroundings. Then you can safely hit the beach blanket or poolside chair with your copy of "City of Bones."

Other Michael Connelly novels:

The Black Echo
The Black Ice
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
The Poet
Trunk Music
Blood Work
Angels Flight
Void Moon
A Darkness More Than Night