Independent Reading #2 - Crime Fiction Novel: Void Moon

For this assignment, I read "Void Moon" by Michael Connelly. It was a thrilling crime novel, with a large body count. Skillfully written, the book will entrap the reader until the very end. The novel is about a casino heist that goes wrong for Cassie Black. Cassie is out of jail on parole after serving six years. The owner of the casino Cleopatra, Vincent Demaldi has now set a ruthless Vegas private investigator called Jack Karch on her trail. Karch is merciless, killing all who knew about the operation after extorting information from them. The book is great in that it has many major plot twists, and is an exciting read.

Identifying the distinction between the criminal and the detective is tricky in this novel. It could be argued that Karch is also a criminal, as he commits far more felonies in his investigation then Cassie has in her entire life. Karch is described as a man with pale skin, jet black hair and grey eyes. He is the son of a magician and performs many gags, which is perhaps the lightest part of his personality. He is also completely cold blooded, killing without mercy and practiced ease. Jack is nicknamed "Jack of Spades", not just because of his inclusion in a magic trick that his father performed involving the playing card. It is also because he keeps a shovel in his trunk to bury bodies in the desert. Karch is very perceptive and cunning, making him very good at his job. Not only that, but he has a constantly calculating mind. He is able to improvise quickly, and retains information easily. It is said in the novel that the people that he kills in the duration of the novel are not the first. Karch is clearly psychotic, as at one point Vincent mentions that he helped his father bury his murdered mother's body at a young age. Karch is a perfect antagonist for this thrilling and fast paced crime novel.

Karch tracks down Cassie through many steps. The first was finding the cameras in the victims room, and then searching room 2015 to find the discarded Ace of Hearts. The next key part was determining the inside-man in the case, by watching the surveillance tapes. Also, he gained knowledge of Cassie's movements. Then he traced Paltz through the bumper sticker on the van that Cassie left in. After extracting her name and related information from Jersey Paltz, he killed him and started tracking Leo. He finds some things at Leo's house after killing him, such as a cellphone with Cassie's number on the recently dialed list and two fabricated passports. Using this number he tracks her to the Porsche dealership where she works. He pretends to be a customer interested in purchasing a Carrera. Karch then reveals himself during the test drive, pulling a gun on Cassie and taking the car into a secluded area. Here he drills her about the money, to no success. Cassie evades him, but he obtains her drivers license and finds out where she lives. Before stopping by her home, he goes back to the dealership and kills the owner Ray and a woman from the finance department. When Karch breaks into Cassie's house, he discovers that Max Freeling and her had a child. This is further proven to him when he interrogates Cassie's parole officer Thelma Kibble. He then abducts this child, which then leads to the final confrontation. At this point, there is no longer a hunt for Cassie as she is going to appear at the Cleopatra.

One passage which I found interesting was this one: "Oh, I'm here. I'm just thinking to myself how ironic this is. I mean, I think it's irony–I never was very good in English class. Is it ironic when somebody whose plan it was to abduct a child complains about that very same child being snatched by somebody else first? Is that irony?" - P. 368 Here Karch is playing on Cassie's own plan to take her daughter back and go to Tahiti. It really strikes a chord with her when he says this to her, and causes her to realize what she has been planning is wrong. The next passage is: "'Hey we got a void moon rising tonight,' he said out loud. 'Ten-ten till midnight.' He thought maybe there was something valid to all of this. After all, he knew the night was going to be bad luck for somebody. " - P. 383 + 384. This was interesting as it conveyed a sense of foreshadowing, telling the reader that someone was going to have bad luck. Although the catch is it does not specify who. The final interesting passage is: "As they went through the bedroom Cassie glanced back into the room. In the bullet-fractured mirror she caught a disjointed image from the television. It was Porky Pig doffing his hat. He said, 'Th-th-th-that's all, folks.'" - P.433 The passage tells the reader that the climax of the novel has ended, and that the tension that was building up from the start has finally been released. It is also funny how Connelly uses a cartoon to signify this.

All in all, Void Moon is a thrilling novel. It is fast-paced, and the bodies pile up quickly. Also the plot twists will keep the reader on their toes. I would highly reccomend the novel to older teens and adults (because of many swears and adult elements).