Rachel Walling

The Poet

"Every rhyme means death"
Author	Michael Connelly
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Jack McEvoy #1
Genre	crime novel
Publisher	Warner Books Paperback (USA) & Orion Paperback (UK)
Publication date	1996
Media type	Print (Paperback), audiobook, e-book
ISBN	(USA); (UK)

The Poet is the fifth novel by award-winning American author Michael Connelly. Published in 1996, it is the first of Connelly's novels not to feature Detective Harry Bosch and first to feature Crime Reporter Jack McEvoy. A sequel, The Narrows, was published in 2004.The Poet won the 1997 Dilys Award.

The story is told in first-person narrative from the perspective of reporter Jack McEvoy. At times, a first-person narrative is also used for a mysterious character named "". And, while telling the story from the viewpoint of pedophile William Gladden, Connelly uses third-person narrative. The book also features the first appearance of FBI agent Rachel Walling, a recurring character in Connelly's novels.

In April 2004, The Poet was reissued in paperback with an introduction by Stephen King.

The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News ("Death is my beat"), relating how the news of his identical twin brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces.

After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to look like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence suicide note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main proteges, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer "The Poet" due to his use of Poe's lines with the victims.