History Literature / ThePoet

* ChekhovsGun: Jack discovers that someone from the FBI made calls to the Quantico main line and to the prison holding Gladden's cell mate, Horace Golden. This seems unimportant until Jack finds out that the fax from The Poet came in to the Quantico main line and that Golden was running a child porn website from his prison.

Eight years later Connelly returned to the Poet story in a sequel, ''Literature/TheNarrows''. Connelly would later write another Jack [=McEvoy=] novel, ''Literature/TheScarecrow''.

It was Connelly's fifth novel and the first that didn't feature his most frequent protagonist, LAPD detective Literature/HarryBosch. Instead, the main character is Jack [=McEvoy=], a newspaper reporter who specializes in the crime beat and, specifically, murder. His world is rocked when his twin brother Sean, a homicide cop, kills himself by a bullet to the head. Jack resolves to write about his brother's death. He is skeptical of the suicide theory and eventually discovers that sure enough, Sean's death was a carefully planned murder. It turns out that there is a serial killer going around the country targeting homicide cops. The killer makes a habit of quoting Creator/EdgarAllanPoe works, which earns him the nickname of "The Poet". The FBI takes over the investigation, and brings Jack along, which leads to romance when Jack meets attractive FBI agent Rachel Walling.

* {{Rule34}}: “If there is one thing I know from this job it’s that there is an appetite and therefore a market for anything and everything,” Thorson said. “Your darkest thought is not unique. The worst thing you can possibly imagine, whatever it is, no matter how bad, there is a market for it.”

* ContinuityNod: ''The Poet'' was the first non-Bosch Michael Connelly novel, and it has fewer Continuity Nods than any other Connelly book. But it does have one: a news article Gladden reads about himself in the ''L.A. Times'' is written by Keisha Russell, the crime reporter introduced in ''Literature/TheLastCoyote,'' establishing this story as part of the Harry Bosch universe. (Later books would have more; Rachel Walling works with Harry Bosch on a couple of cases.) There are also some more subtle allusions; see ShoutOut below.

* ShoutOut: A couple of veiled references to earlier Connelly novels.
** The FBI stashes Det. Thomas, the man thought to be the Poet's next target, at the Mark Twain Hotel. Walling comments that "Hollywood Station" often stashes witnesses there. Harry Bosch, LAPD homicide cop out of Hollywood station, does just that in ''Literature/TheBlackEcho''.
** Another very subtle one at the end, when Backus takes Jack to the FBI safehouse on Mulholland. They note all the cantilevered houses on the hillside held up by pylons and talk about how those would not be great places to be during an earthquake. Harry Bosch lives in just such a house (on Woodrow Wilson Drive, off of Mulholland) and in 1995 novel ''Literature/TheLastCoyote'', Bosch's house has been condemned after damage suffered in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

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!!Tropes:

--> "The woman had moved to the right side of the car and we had settled into the slightly uncomfortable silence that always comes when strangers are enclosed in an elevator.”

It was Connelly's fifth novel and the first that didn't feature his most frequent protagonist, Det. Literature/HarryBosch. Instead, the main character is Jack [=McEvoy=], a newspaper reporter who specializes in the crime beat and, specifically, murder. His world is rocked when his twin brother Sean, a homicide cop, kills himself by a bullet to the head. Jack resolves to write about his brother's death. He is skeptical of the suicide theory and eventually discovers that sure enough, Sean's death was a carefully planned murder. It turns out that there is a serial killer going around the country targeting homicide cops. The killer makes a habit of quoting Creator/EdgarAllanPoe works, which earns him the nickname of "The Poet". The FBI takes over the investigation, and brings Jack along, which leads to romance when Jack meets attractive FBI agent Rachel Walling.

* ContinuityNod: One of the articles Gladden reads about himself is written by Keisha Russell, the crime reporter for the ''L.A. Times'' introduced in ''Literature/TheLastCoyote,'' so this story was part of the Michael Connelly shared universe all along. This is the only direct tie of ''The Poet'' to the Bosch universe, but there are a couple other allusions; see ShoutOut below.

* ContinuityNod:
** One of the articles Gladden reads about himself is written by Keisha Russell, the crime reporter for the ''L.A. Times'' introduced in ''Literature/TheLastCoyote,'' so this story was part of the Michael Connelly shared universe all along.
** A very subtle one that verges on ShoutOut. The FBI stashes Det. Thomas, the man thought to be the Poet's next target, at the Mark Twain Hotel. Walling comments that "Hollywood Station" often stashes witnesses there. Harry Bosch, LAPD homicide cop out of Hollywood station, does just that in ''Literature/TheBlackEcho''.
** Another very subtle one at the end, when Backus takes Jack to the FBI safehouse on Mulholland. They note all the cantilevered houses on the hillside held up by pylons and talk about how those would not be great places to be during an earthquake. Harry Bosch lives in just such a house (on Woodrow Wilson Drive, off of Mulholland) and in 1995 novel ''The Last Coyote'', Bosch's house has been condemned after damage suffered in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Jack [=McEvoy=] is a newspaper reporter who specializes in the crime beat and, specifically, murder. His world is rocked when his twin brother Sean, a homicide cop, kills himself by a bullet to the head. Jack resolves to write about his brother's death. He is skeptical of the suicide theory and eventually discovers that sure enough, Sean's death was a carefully planned murder. It turns out that there is a serial killer going around the country targeting homicide cops. The killer makes a habit of quoting Creator/EdgarAllanPoe works, which earns him the nickname of "The Poet". The FBI takes over the investigation, and brings Jack along, which leads to romance when Jack meets attractive FBI agent Rachel Walling.

** The connection to the Bosch novels is made much more obvious when a later Connelly novel, ''Literature/BloodWork'', mentions both The Poet and a character from Harry Bosch novel ''Literature/TrunkMusic''.

* CanonWelding:
** Subtly averted. One of the articles Gladden reads about himself is written by Keisha Russell, the crime reporter for the ''L.A. Times'' introduced in ''Literature/TheLastCoyote,'' so this story was part of the shared universe all along.
** The connection to the Bosch novels is made much more obvious when a later Connelly novel, ''Literature/BloodWork'', mentions both The Poet and a character from Harry Bosch novel ''Literature/TrunkMusic''.

* CigaretteOfAnxiety: Jack gets so nervous after thinking he's being stalked by The Poet that he has to light up.