- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks; New Ed edition (11 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340729007
- ISBN-13: 978-0340729007
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 11 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 278,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Dark Hollow
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Recent years have seen a flurry of horror writers crossing over to the mystery genre--Peter Straub, Dan Simmons and Kristin Kathryn Rusch are three--but little movement has occurred in the opposite direction. Mysteries are where the commercial action is. When John Connolly, an Irish journalist, burst upon the scene in Great Britain in 1999 with the bestselling Every Dead Thing (it later won the Shamus award for Best First Private Eye Novel when published in the States), it would not have been unfair to describe what he was offering as "horror". However, "shock noir" is probably a better way of describing such a grab-you-by-the-eyelashes thriller, with its high body count and inventively grisly methods of dispatching hapless victims.
Connolly--who seems unconcernedly to be trespassing on Stephen King territory in Dark Hollow, with its Maine setting and echoes of background atrocities--actually brings to mind a slightly different hybridisation of horror and mystery: you might say it's Wilkie Collins re-tooled by James Ellroy. Lurking in his pages is more than a faint whiff of the Victorian triple-decker, with all its gothic complexities, while, at the same time, punctuating the plot are grotesque and excessive acts of sadism of a wholly modern sort that will cause some readers indignantly to close the book.
The trouble is, by doing that they miss a richly ripe, closely textured tale. Connolly's series character, ex-NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, is a man with a lot of pain to surmount--his wife and child were murdered in Every Dead Thing--but he's also a dogged knight errant attuned to the pain felt by others. In Dark Hollow, his quest for the truth is a twisty one, but he stays the course, and so should you. --Otto Penzler, Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk Review
To say that John Connolly enjoyed a remarkable success with his first book,Every Dead Thing, is to understate the case. This first thriller featuring Detective "Bird" Parker was a highly unusual entry in the field, written in a raw, arresting style. But is Dark Hollow, the second appearance of Connolly's fiery and inexorable investigator, equally gripping? Connolly himself has remarked that he wanted to give this new book a very sinister feel, rather than just a gruesome one. In this, he has succeeded triumphantly.
This time, Bird--recovering from the murder of his family by The Travelling Man--returns to the scene of happier times, the wintry Maine of his childhood. But relaxation is once again elusive: another young woman is savagely killed along with a child, and Bird's previous encounter with the victims compels him to track down the murderer. There is an obvious suspect, but Bird believes that the real answer lies 30 years in the past. As the body count increases, it becomes apparent that someone else is hunting for Billy, the dead woman's ex-husband and chief suspect in the slaying. And this dangerous figure appears to know Bird intimately. Before long, the tormented detective is investigating the terrifying origins of a mythical killer: the psychopathic Caleb Kyle.
Along with the kind of riveting storytelling skills we have come to expect from Connolly, the author has built into his narrative a superstructure of striking imagery. Predatory nature and the cycle of the seasons feed into the darker corners of the plot and illuminate the grim psychopathology of the characters. Bird remains the most involving of protagonists--and by dovetailing his hero's troubled past into the search narrative, Connolly ensnares the reader to the past page: "'Nice car', he repeated, and a fat white hand emerged from one of his pockets, the fingers like a thick, pale slugs that had spent too long in dark places. He caressed the roof of the Mustang appreciatively, and it seemed as if the paint would corrode spontaneously beneath his fingers". --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MENACING CHARACTERS IN SHIVER PRODUCING CLIMES,
By
This review is from: Dark Hollow (Coronet books) (Paperback)
With an opening line signaling devilish doings, "I dream dark dreams," Irish thrillersmith John Connolly launches his second suspenseful tale featuring New York policeman turned private investigator Charlie Parker. Connolly copped the 2000 Shamus Award for his debut, "Every Dead Thing." "Dark Hollow" assures readers that he deserved it.Unable to set aside the murders of his wife and daughter, a haunted Parker returns to his hometown of Scarborough, Maine. Rather than finding solace in the northeast woods Parker is faced with a series of seemingly unrelated mysteries and a terrifying sociopathic mobster, Tony Celli. Oddly enough the current series of murders are remarkably akin to 40-year-old killings - crimes that Parker's grandfather spent most of his life trying to solve. What is the connection between today's violence and killings almost half a century old? Author Connolly pulls out all the stops with this highly readable, almost surreal tale involving mysterious forces lurking in the wilderness, and a long buried past seemingly rising from the grave. Connolly's an ace at creating menacing characters and shiver producing climes. - Gail Cooke
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Less is More,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dark Hollow (Coronet books) (Paperback)
My main complaint about the author's previous novel, Every Dead Thing, was that he tried to cram too many events into a single book. Wherever Charlie "Bird" Parker went, people died, or other forms of action unfolded. At first this was merely annoying, but soon became so outlandish it was farcical. As the greats of crime fiction such as Chandler, Hammett and later writers like Michael Connelly, and James Elroy have proved that you do not need a death every 10-20 pages to write a great crime novel, or to keep readers interested.I am pleased to report that Dark Hollow is a definite improvement in all areas. Bird remains an intriguing character and as other reviewers have noted, Angel & Louis are superb and could grace books of their own, should the author so choose. All the book's characters are distinctly human and all have their own individual personalities. Walter Cole, although a very small character in the actual story plays a much larger role in the book by the effects of his animosity towards Bird. The plot is still full of twists and turns, but I think it would be even better had the author not included the mob involvement in the book. Without that, the plot although simpler could have been better as the author could have spent more time on the mythology / history of Caleb Kyle. Paradoxically, by simplifying it in this manner, the plot could have become more complex. If John Connolly continues to improve then his next book, The Killing Kind will definitely be worth waiting for.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazing read with dry one-liners.,
By hherron@lineone.net (Chichester, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dark Hollow (Coronet books) (Paperback)
I actually stumbled on to this book and author by mistake as I was looking for Michael Connolly and picked this up in haste. Boy, am I glad I did!!! I was immediately hooked by John Connolly's style of writing and the interwoven humour reminded me of one of my favourite author's, Sue Grafton. His content is much darker but still has a great style to it and an ease of reading that I look for. I'm now half-way through "The Killing Kind" which has my heart racing as I read it. I must go back and read his first novel "Every Dead Thing" as I am now completely hooked. I simply don't know how I'm going to wait until the release of his fourth novel!!
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