Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"He thinks he is a demon", 14 Jun 2005
I discovered John Connolly when I read "Bad Men" and the experience was extremely pleasant, so I decided that I had to read the books in the Charlie "Bird" Parker series. In this first installment I found a novel that blends the mystery and horror genders in a superb manner and that keeps you guessing on what will happen next. One of the aspects I enjoyed most was that the main character is not one of those good guys you see in most mystery novels, who are always working towards a good cause and have no negative feelings towards others. Charlie is more human than that, and this carries with it a desire for revenge that will not be quenched easily.Why does he want revenge? Because his wife and three year-old daughter were brutally murdered and desecrated by a man that can only be considered a demon. Related to this event is that we see the author immerse the novel into the horror genre through the use of gory details about the murders by introducing a detail version of the police and autopsy reports. The descriptions are precise and Connolly does not pull any punches, going straight for a knockout of our endurance to take the effects of evil. Charlie was a cop at the time of the murders and had a problem with alcohol, but after the terrible shock, he left the force, became a private eye, and quitted cold turkey. Seven months later he is working on a case involving dangerous guys, who use bullets that can go through body armor and have no qualms about killing anyone that crosses their path. Concomitantly, Charlie is in constant search of the killer of his family, and the fact that the monster contacts him, gives him greater strength to pursue his desire for revenge. I like horror, so I have no problems with reading about the gruesome aspects of the murders described in the novel, but I understand that some people may not feel comfortable with these, so be aware of this aspect. The novel that starts this series also has a nice pace, which is helped by the constant switching back and forth between the two cases Parker is involved in. You will also get a few twists that will keep you on your toes until the conclusion. Overall, it is a book that left me eager to keep reading about this fascinating character and move along with this series.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Serial murders most foul, 5 Feb 2004
Once upon a time, Charlie "Bird" Parker was an NYPD cop with a drinking problem. One night, while out on a binge, his wife and daughter are butchered in a manner so horrific that it defies description here. (This is, after all, a family website.) Leaving the force, Charlie's obsession is to track down the killer, since identified as The Traveling Man.This crime novel is actually a two-for-one deal. A large part of the book's first half is devoted to Parker's investigation of a missing person incident, taken on at the request of an old pal on the NYPD. It bears no relation to his search for his family's executioner, but mainly serves to acquaint the reader with the larger concept of "serial killer", and introduce several players that remain in the plot to the novel's end, including Bird's disheveled FBI pal, Woolrich. (I didn't know "disheveled" was in the FBI dress code. Where's J. Edgar when you need him?) This is a hard-boiled, gritty book - a triumph of a first novel by author John Connolly. He introduces us to villains that are truly nasty in the scariest sense, and who make Vlad the Impaler look like a kindly grandfather in comparison. In any case, the identity of The Traveling Man is not resolved until twenty pages from the end, and involves an eye-popping plot twist that will have you looking forward to Connolly's next offering. However, if his subsequent thrillers continue to cast such monsters, I don't know if my imagination can take it. I'm getting to be a sissy in my old age.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, brooding and metaphysically savage, 13 Aug 2006
My copy of this novel is festooned with critical acclaims spread across the first four pages together with the front and back covers, just one example of which is "the most terrifying thriller since Hannibal". Several other professional reviewers mention the parallels between this and the work of Thomas Harris, so it was hugely hyped up before I read the first line of the novel itself, and expectations were accordingly sky-high. If anything, all these extracts - designed, no doubt, to attract the passing eye of the potential buyer in the bookstore or airport - serve to disadvantage the author, especially for a debut novel such as this is. Now, as I cast my mind back over the past few days as I completed my reading, I can at last confirm that the universal acclaim is vindicated, and for anyone who reads these reviews on Amazon as a means of assisting in their decision whether or not to buy a particular book, then let me simply say this : Buy it, you will be more than glad you did.
As others here have suggested, Every Dead Thing, at 160,000 words or more, could have been a little shorter and might have been the better for it. I am of the understanding that John Connolly wrote this on a part-time basis and took many months (possibly years) to complete it, and in a way this is shown in the occasional changes of direction and cutting-off of characters and events long before the halfway stage of the book. In essence its storyline is simple : good guy hunts bad guy, although it could equally be said that it is a story of a bad guy tracking down a good guy and you want the baddie to win. The only thing missing from the tale and which, in my view, leaves it falling short of being worthy of comparison to The Silence of the Lambs, is a central character with the unprecedented charisma of Hannibal Lecter. With all the prominent references to Thomas Harris' creation in and around the sleeves of Every Dead Thing, this is something that will possibly disappoint you. On the other hand, there is compensation in the form of beautiful prose throughout, which despite the subject matter manages to sound poetic and strangely uplifting. "The Travelling Man" everyone wants to find (especially the hero Charlie "Bird" Parker) may lack the magnetic personality of Lecter but he may be his intellectual superior, such is his obsession with centuries-old history of anatomical dissection and his attempts to display his victims in keeping with (for example) Renaissance works of art.
Not blessed with a photographic memory, I found myself forgetting about the significance of one or two characters who only earn occasional mention; I could not begin to guess at the number of characters in this story but in hindsight I would have benefited from writing their names down on a piece of paper together with the role they play and their relevance to the story-line. Some characters, such as the organised crime 'dons', are crafted with a dedication to detail that is refreshing and most welcome, yet curiously their importance in the story as a whole is relatively minor. It is perhaps these details that could have been scaled down, sad to say, in the interests of keeping the pace of the story more consistent.
There are many colourful characters throughout the tale, not all of them survive of course because this is a novel of serial murder and if I were to guess at the number of victims I would surely underestimate the actual figure. It is a tale of gruesome and psychopathic violence although relatively few of the killings are described 'as they happen' - for the majority it is a case of discovering their bodies. Part of the story takes place in and around New York, but the bulk of it is dedicated to New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, of which I learned quite a bit thanks to Mr Connolly. I wonder if this tale could have been told in the wake of Hurricane Katrina...
Five stars, then, for a darkly violent yet vividly detailed masterpiece of love, loss, regret and retribution.
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