The Whisperers [Hardcover]

With The Whisperers John Connolly continues the work he started 12 years earlier in Every Dead Thing to blur the boundaries between the crime novel and the horror novel. He has achieved that blend brilliantly in what may well be his most satisfying novel so far.

We start in the war-zone of Iraq and in particular, a museum vault, within which a treasure hoard is hidden, including one item more important but also potentially more dangerous than all the rest.

Charlie Parker, with his private investigators license recently reinstated after some "trouble" (see previous books in the series) is hired to investigate the death of a soldier. He soon finds out that this death is also linked with the deaths of several other recently returned Iraq veterans. Initially dismissed as a result of post traumatic stress, Parker begins to uncover a much deeper and darker mystery involving that mysterious box.

John Connolly's tales are always populated with some marvellous characters but here he excels himself with a huge range of interesting, diverse and downright nasty individuals. All are drawn in the same pen picture style that Stephen King uses so well are all are immediately brought to life through their actions and dialogue. So we meet Mexican drug lords, less than honest policeman, young bloods trying to make their mark and of course the soldiers and their families. Beyond these players, however, are a whole range of much darker characters. Herod, a deeply nasty individual tortured by illness and demons. The Collector, again a character from previous books, but this time given more life as he continues his mission to collect souls. And then there is The Captain, the thing behind the glass, everyone's nightmare realised.

These final characters and the underlying premise of the book inject a huge dose of supernatural adrenalin into the story which lifts it way beyond the norm. Those who have read Connolly's work in the past will already know that Parker is a tortured individual on a seemingly one way road to oblivion. His partners, the excellent Louis and Angel are always there to help with the physical side of things but it is in the deeper darker realm that Parker meets his greatest tests and there he is alone.

Of course, the book also carries a powerful message, not so much anti-war but very much pro-war veteran. Much of the detail in the book about the horrendous way that returning vets are treated is based on real life and is something we should all be ashamed of.

John Connolly continues to travel his fairly unique journey through the boundaries of genre fiction. Every Charlie Parker book builds on the previous to provide a genuinely unsettling mythos. Just real enough to be believable, just unreal enough to be terrifying, it's a journey which seems destined to end in tragedy for Parker but it's all the more compelling for it.

If you haven't read his previous Parker books then you may miss some of the subtle nuances on show here but for fans of the series this is fantastic, not merely recommended reading this should be compulsory.

Some old demons are revisited and some new ones unleashed in John Connolly's latest Charlie Parker investigation, and when I say demons ...well, like it or not - and it's not to everyone's taste - the darker supernatural flavour that has coloured the author's thriller novels and is evident in his alternate dark-fantasy works is even more to the fore in The Whisperers.

Here Parker is called upon to investigate an ex-soldier, Joel Tobias, who served in Iraq and came back pretty beat-up and tormented by the experience. Bennett Patchett, an influential figure around Portland, Maine, the owner of a well-known diner, doesn't believe however that this is any excuse for his mistreatment of one of his waitresses who lives with Tobias. That's the story anyway, but what Bennett really wants to find out is if Tobias's cross-border transportation trips to Canada might have anything to do with the suicide of his son, Damian Patchett, also an ex-Iraq veteran who served in the same unit with Tobias, but who had seemed, up until his untimely death, to have come through it unscathed. Dealing with a lot of tough ex-military types, well rehearsed in torture techniques, who don't want a private detective probing too deeply into their business of smuggling precious ancient treasures looted from the Museum of Baghdad, Parker has to call on the service of two old friends, Louis and Angel, to look after his back.

There are a few other characters, collectors, some old and some new with Biblical names, who have an interest in the trade of valuable, ancient Mesopotamian, Sumerian and Babylonian antiquities, all of them inevitably quite scary and ruthless in their business dealings and the artifacts themselves are supposed to have certain arcane occult qualities that they are eager to possess. This would appear to bring Connolly's Charlie Parker work even closer into the realm of the horror novel, which may not be to everyone's taste, but there can be something almost mythological about the nature of dark thrillers in any case, with Death stalking the land in the shape of ruthless assassins, serial killers and damaged figures seeking vengeance, and this is something Connolly clearly recognises.

Even more so here, where the principal driving force behind it is the events in Iraq and the impact of dealing with near-mythological forces far above what humans can be expected to endure unscathed. I'm sure many clinical psychologists and therapists wouldn't be too keen to see post-traumatic stress disorder considered in terms of demonic possession, but, no less capable of causing terror, nightmares and death, it proves to be an effective means of making the horror real and the real even more horrifying. The idea of the invasion of Iraq potentially opening up a Pandora's Box in the region is also an effective, if somewhat obvious, metaphor.

That said, the storyline in The Whisperers doesn't entirely gel or hold sufficient interest once the premise is made clear very early on. The main part of Parker's investigation advances slowly, while the potentially more thrilling elements and the entertaining conversations you usually find with Connolly are relegated to occasional colour (Louis and Angel remaining in a disappointingly minor supporting role after The Reapers), the writing moreover remaining direct rather than lyrical. If the execution is somewhat wanting, The Whisperers however ties in well with what is increasingly becoming a Charlie Parker mythology.

... 'Let us out - let us out!'

Everything starts in Baghdad in April 2003, when the deputy curator of the Iraq Museum finds out that a worthless relict has disappeared, a small box apperently without any value. But the appearance doesn't count much in this case...

Charlie Parker has gotten back his licence as a Private Eye and is contacted by Bennett Patchett, owner of a diner near Portland. He wants Parker to investigate the motive of his son's suicide. Damien was a soldier who had just returned from Iraq, so it was all explained by PTSD. Shortly after Charlie finds out that Joel Tobias, the ex comandander of Damien's squad has a lifestyle far above his means and his frequent trips to and fro Canada are everything else but pleasure rides.
In the meantime the number of suicides in the ex-squad of Tobias and Patchett continues to rise. And that squad was obviously responsible of the theft of a mystery box, out of which seem to penetrate terryfying whispers. It is of general knowledge that in Maine exists a regular traffic of drugs, weapons, people and money which enter the USA from Canada, but it seems that our squad of ex-soldiers traffics in objects absolutely out of the common.

And Charlie Parker with his eternal fight against the Absolute Evil finds himself
very but very very mysterious and suspect adversaries who are orbiting him for unknown, dark and mystical motives.
The first, Herod, is a repellent man, eaten the incurable 'Big C', hopes to achieve in the right time the salvation from a gruesome death, and an eventual regeneration. He is always in the company of an enigmatic character called The Captain.
The other one, the Collector fishes in the dark to catch as the 'Mercenary of God' unworthy beings and takes from the 'captured' macabre trophies for his collection.
And when the the forces of the Evil are unchained and the help of his faithful friends Angel and Louis may be not enough to win, Parker will be forced to coalesce an unholy alliance. Unholy - because with an ally like the Collector no one comes out without being damaged - physically or mentally. Or with a debt which has to be paid sooner or later...
But Charlie Parker himself has an aura around him - a strange and indefinable aura
which gives the creeps to demonic entities, too...

This is a thriller by the famous author John Connolly's series which tells the stories of the ill-fated Private Investigator Charlie 'Bird' Parker which has not only to solve the crimes and murders which tend to increase with the progress of the developments. No, he always has to fight mystic creatures impersonating the eternal war between the Good and the Evil.
And the more the series goes on - the eleventh book in English is The Wrath of Angels John Connolly adds always more and more supernatural elements to the yet gruesome crime our hero has to solve.
For my personal opinion - this way the thrillers of John Connolly have an extra portion of 'spice'...
But the personal tastes differ ... :)