Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
All three of the themes are in this intense crime thriller. Revenge as Charlie Parker pursues the man responsible for his wife and daughter’s death (no spoiler, it’s in the prologue), justice as most crime thrillers and PI novels deliver. Redemption started. As this is the first in a series of currently twenty books, redemption will play out slowly. I reached back in time as this novel was released in 1999. Number twenty was release in 2022.
Charlie “Bird” Parker is an ex-New York cop who retired after a brutal murder of his wife and daughter. This book is really two books. One could stop after part two of four parts and feel they’ve read an entire story. Parts three and four are the second case that Parker pursues, though it’s a case he’s been pursuing since he retired, the killer of his family.
Parker isn’t officially a private investigator – no license yet – but he’s asked by a former colleague to help find a missing woman. This leads him to Virginia and into the search for a serial killer who has been murdering children. After resolving this case, he’s led to New Orleans on a tip that the killer of his family may have killed a woman there. This killer is bizarre. His murders are graphic and gruesome.
This novel is a classic private eye novel. We have the loner tough guy who has limited social skills, though Parker gets by. He works with not just one, but two shady sidekicks. Parker is a recovering alcoholic. He falls in love but pushes the woman away, so it doesn’t last. He has a love / hate relationship with the local authorities. He blurs the lines between legality and criminal behavior in the name of solving the case. All the tropes we’d expect of a PI novel.
Connolly writes poetically. Some of his descriptions jump off the page and immerse the reader in the scene. My only issue with that is believing Parker is that philosophically deep. The writer is present in this book and sometimes took me away from the character as I struggled to reconcile the prose with the lone ex-cop PI character of Charlie Parker.
My second complaint is more around my preferences. This book is long. And we get deep backstory on characters that are maybe present for fifty pages total and on some that are not even in the story. We also get deep backstory on New Orleans and many of the locations in the city. Many readers enjoy this and if that’s you, coupled with Connolly’s excellent writing craft, you’ll enjoy this story. I could have done without all the backstories of minor characters, who I forgot twenty pages later anyway. But the story engrossed me and kept me plowing through.
As for content, some profanity, though not over the top considering the dark story. A little on page sex. No over the top violence, but descriptions of the murder scenes are gruesome and graphic.
This is book read number two this year, and I’ll rank it ever so slightly above Citadel. Will it stay number one? Time will tell.
- Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
- Citadel (Palladium Wars Book 3) by Marko Kloos
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