Michael Connelly is most famous for creating Detective Harry Bosch, but the author's newspaperman Jack McEvoy, introduced in 2003's The Poet, is no less arresting. When McEvoy chases a story, he's just as relentless as Bosch on a case. In Fair Warning, McEvoy's first appearance after 2009's The Scarecrow, he identifies the chilling link between the deaths of four women.
McEvoy now works at FairWarning, a real-life consumer watchdog news site. A chance encounter with a woman who ends up murdered plunges McEvoy into an investigation in which he discovers recently killed women all submitted DNA samples to the same company for analysis. This puts him in the killer's crosshairs and, due to McEvoy's liaison with one of the victims, the LAPD also considers him a suspect. He contacts former colleague Rachel Walling for help but must tread carefully, because on a previous story he destroyed her FBI career and their romantic relationship. The two still have trust issues, but must work together in order to snare a vicious killer who's already targeted his next victims.
Connelly (The Late Show), a former journalist, excels in making investigative reporting as enthralling as any action scene. Fair Warning shines a spotlight on the shocking lack of government oversight in the field of DNA analysis and ancestry identification. Patrons who submit samples have no control or knowledge of where their DNA ends up, and Connelly spins a skin-crawling, cutting-edge mystery about the dangerous ways the data can be mined. The scariest part? According to the author's note, the depictions of genetic research and government oversight are based on fact. Fair warning, indeed. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd