Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat, In these vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the listener past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends—and, of course, the killers—to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.

Connelly's firsthand observations would lend inspiration to his novels. His first book, The Black Echo , was drawn from a real-life bank heist, while Trunk Music was based on an unsolved case of a man found in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce. And the vital details of Connelly's best-known characters, both heroes and villains, would get their realism from the cops and killers he reported on: tram loner detective Harry Bosch to the manipulative serial killer the Poet.

Crime Beat presents stories as fascinating as they are chilling, from the serial killer of young models who cuts a swath across the country to elude police, to the man who leads a bizarre double life on two coasts before his elaborate hoax breaks down. Here, too, we can see Connelly's razor-sharp eye for telling details: a worn-down earpiece on a cop's Eyeglasses, the revealing high school yearbook quotes of an alleged cold-blooded murderer, the checkered career of a bumbling gang of killers who publicly advertise their services.
Stranger than fiction and every bit as gripping, these pieces show once again that Michael Connelly is not only a master of his craft but also one of the great American writers in any form. Crime Beat confirms why the Washington Post distinguishes Connelly as "the real thing, taking us in to the parts of the real America that most of our novelists never visit because they don't even know where, or what, they are. "

Connelly is a former journalist and the author of the bestsellmg series of Harry Bosch novels, along with the bestselling novels The Lincoln Lawyer, Chasing the Dime, Void Moon, Blood Work, and The Poet. Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and novels, including an Edgar® Award .

Len Cariou is a distinguished stage, television and film actor. He won a Tony Award for his performance in Sweeney Todd . He has read several books for Time Warner AudioBooks.

Carl Franklin is an acclaimed actor and director whose films as a director include One False Move; Devil in a Blue Dress and Out of Time, both starring Denzel Washington ; and One True Thing , starring Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger .

Nancy McKeon has been a series regular on The Division, Style and Substance, The Facts of Life, and Can't Hurry Love (which she also produced). Nancy read Street Dreams by Faye Kellerman for Time Warner Audiobooks