On page 1, first-person narrator Jack McEvoy sits numbly in the back of a police car. His twin brother Sean has committed suicide. Sean was a Denver cop depressed over his failure to solve a gruesome murder. Now two other cops take Jack to break the terrible news to his sister-in-law.

Jack, a 34 year-old crime reporter for The Rocky Mountain News, can’t accept Sean’s suicide. He questions Sean’s last message: the words “out of space, out of time.” It seems like a poetry fragment.

Obsessed, Jack sifts through the evidence surrounding his brother’s death. The Denver cops resist him because he’s an outsider, and they would just as soon forget that one of their own committed suicide. Finally he uncovers a clue that his brother was murdered.

A new character slimes forth: Gladden, a smug pedophile who narrates third-person chapters. Gladden gets arrested in Santa Monica for ogling kids at an amusement park. The cops book him and wait for his fingerprints to go through the national database. However, he makes bail beforehand and gets free after calling a lawyer whom he knows through an internet pedophile community.

Jack, meanwhile, convinces the Denver cops his brother was murdered. With their support, Jack uncovers a horrific pattern of nationwide homicides. A serial killer slaughters kids, and then picks off the detectives assigned to the kids’ cases.

Increasingly the kids’ murders seem like bait to reel in the more worthy prey: the tough and elite homicide cops. Somehow the killer controls the detectives so thoroughly that he forces them to “kill” themselves in a convincing way. Even more bizarre, their suicide notes are all cryptic lines from the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

The FBI takes charge, naming the killer the Poet. They distrust Jack for being an outsider and a reporter. Jack actually blackmails the FBI to keep him involved in the investigation: if they kick him out, he’ll publish all the secret details he has come to know about the case. That would make the Poet change his pattern and demolish the FBI’s ability to catch him. But it will also make Jack’s career: he can write a good story right then, or an even better one after the Poet is caught.

By now, the novel cranks the suspense and tension to an amazing level. Everyone seems dangerous. There’s the alluring Agent Walling. You can’t forget how easily she overpowers Jack when they first meet by chance in a creepy hotel. The caustic Agent Thorson is her jealous ex. Meanwhile the pedophile Gladden gets more and more out-of-control. Is he the Poet? Are there two killers working together?

The answer involves two twists and each is a shock-and-a-half! The preposterousness of the murders – cops being forced to enact their own suicides – is revealed to be ingenious and grounded in reality.

One final word about Jack’s character: at first he comes off as a total jerk. He is callous, cynical, and self-serving. His many flaws (arising from a brittle and hyper-macho insecurity) never vanish, but his harrowing adventures also draw out his courage and intelligence. Ultimately he experiences a touching, if hesitant, desire to love and trust another person. It takes a master author to create so complex a character.

I highly recommend The Poet. You can find it through the following link at Amazon: The Poet