The Los Angeles Times profiles Michael Connelly, who's one of my guilty-pleasure authors.

I've been reading Connelly's The Poet, which is one of the scariest serial-killer novels I've ever read. And I don't mean horror-movie scary, although there's plenty of gore and a few weird kills. (In one memorable instance, a young college student is found chopped in half.) There's nothing cheap about The Poet. It's gotten under my skin in ways I didn't expect. Even in his scant appearances, the Poet has more depth than the average serial killers you find in crime fiction. He's very creepy. Connelly drops clues and plays the plot--which is airtight--like a violin, but there's nothing manipulative about the book. It's pretty simple: Connelly's haunting procedural is scary because he's a great writer and a great storyteller.