Book 10 of 23: A Charlie Parker Thriller

I am reviewing this audiobook for Reading Ireland Month. It is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. Please use the hashtags #readingirelandmonth26 or #begorrathon if you choose to participate. Today I am presenting a review by the CE.

Book Blurb:

New York Times bestselling author John Connolly brings his “visionary brand of neo-noir” (The Irish Times) to this “riveting and chilling” (San Francisco Examiner) thriller in the Charlie Parker series about buried secrets and haunted lives.

There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud. Here is one of those truths: after three hours, the abduction of a child is routinely treated as a homicide.

When a girl goes missing from a small Maine town, her neighbor—a recluse named Randall Haight—begins receiving anonymous letters referencing a different teenage girl, murdered years ago. Unknown to many, Randall has been hiding a secret: at fourteen, he was convicted of killing that girl. Now, his past resurfaces, and he hires private detective Charlie Parker to make the torment stop.

But in a town built on blood and shadowed by old ghosts, where too many of the living are hiding secrets, the past cannot be dismissed so easily. As Parker unravels a twisted, violent history involving a doomed mobster and his enemies, the police, and the FBI, his search returns again and again to Randall Haight. Because Randall is still telling lies…

His Review:

This book focuses on three lives forever destroyed by a stupid act. The loss of a vibrant young girl’s life was the beginning of the loss. The two young killers destroyed their own lives then as surely as they ended hers. The years spent in juvenile detention certainly did not offset the life ended. However, their sentence does not end there!

At the age of maturity, they are then subjected to changes of names, identities and sent to different cities to start new lives. The problem is that some know the location of their release. Their imprisonment does not erase the public’s memory of the crime and does not exonerate them. The memory of the public is long and unforgiving.

A slow burn start, there were some passages that dawdled as well, and slowed the progression of the story. It was difficult at times to stay focused on the storyline.

I found myself unable to forgive the crime or the criminals. There is no way to forget the loss of life or the potential loss of what that might have meant. Relocation and changes of identity do not erase a criminal’s past. The book has a very thought-provoking theme and raises more questions in me than answers. 4 stars – CE Williams

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this ebook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Ghost Mysteries, Private Investigator Mysteries, Kidnapping Thrillers
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication Date: September 6, 2011

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US  |  Amazon-UK   |   Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo

The Author: I was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1968 and have, at various points in his life, worked as a journalist, a barman, a local government official, a waiter and a “gofer” at Harrods department store in London. I studied English in Trinity College, Dublin and journalism at Dublin City University, subsequently spending five years working as a freelance journalist for The Irish Times newspaper, to which I continue to contribute, although not as often as I would like. I still try to interview a few authors every year, mainly writers whose work I like, although I’ve occasionally interviewed people for the paper simply because I thought they might be quirky or interesting. All of those interviews have been posted to my website, http://www.johnconnollybooks.com.

I was working as a journalist when I began work on my first novel. Like a lot of journalists, I think I entered the trade because I loved to write, and it was one of the few ways I thought I could be paid to do what I loved. But there is a difference between being a writer and a journalist, and I was certainly a poorer journalist than I am a writer (and I make no great claims for myself in either field.) I got quite frustrated with journalism, which probably gave me the impetus to start work on the novel. That book, Every Dead Thing, took about five years to write and was eventually published in 1999. It introduced the character of Charlie Parker, a former policeman hunting the killer of his wife and daughter. Dark Hollow, the second Parker novel, followed in 2000. The third Parker novel, The Killing Kind, was published in 2001, with The White Road following in 2002. In 2003, I published my fifth novel – and first stand-alone book – Bad Men. In 2004, Nocturnes, a collection of novellas and short stories, was added to the list, and 2005 marked the publication of the fifth Charlie Parker novel, The Black Angel. In 2006, The Book of Lost Things, my first non-mystery novel, was published.

Charlie Parker has since appeared in five additional novels: The Unquiet, The Reapers (where he plays a secondary role to his associates, Louis and Angel), The Lovers, The Whisperers, and The Burning Soul. The eleventh Charlie Parker novel, The Wrath of Angels, will be available in the UK in August 2012 and in the US in January 2013.

The Gates launched the Samuel Johnson series for younger readers in 2009, followed by Hell’s Bells (UK)/The Infernals (US) in 2011. A third Samuel Johnson novel should be finished in 2013.

I am also the co-editor, with fellow author Declan Burke, of Books to Die For, an anthology of essays from the world’s top crime writers in response to the question, “Which book should all lovers of crime fiction read before they die?” Books to Die For is available in the UK as of August 2012, and will be available in the US in October 2012.

I am based in Dublin but divide my time between my native city and the United States, where each of my novels has been set.

©2026 CE Williams – V Williams