EVERY DEAD THING AND OTHER HORRORS

About a year ago, maybe a bit less, I got really bored of reading the same sort of stuff - when it comes to films, I can happily watch anything, but I'm a lot less lenient with books. Why spend time chewing on a potentially boring thriller when you can devour a well-written horror? I'm making a grotesquely broad generalization there, but what it boils down to (for me) is: I like old detective thrillers, but all the modern books are like TV cop dramas. There's some grisly death and a world weary detective solves the case. Rinse and repeat. I was looking for something not dissimilar to what I like to write, which could be broadly (or narrowly, I suppose) defined as 'horror noir'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there doesn't seem to be much of a market for this, which made it all the more surprising that I stumbled across the work of JOHN CONNOLLY.

Thanks to my local library's database revealing his books as 'horror/crime' I picked up a copy of THE WHISPERERS, which turned out to be the tenth novel featuring his detective creation Charlie Parker. What sold me on giving it a go was the mention of supernatural elements worked into a crime story, which is exactly what I got. However, despite the overt reference to demons and unnatural happenings, it was Charlie Parker himself who grabbed me. A lot of the book doesn't follow his point of view, and I found those bits a little dull. They were well-written, don't get me wrong, but Parker's personality is so strong it made everything else pale in comparison. 

Parker's a haunted man, but also possessed of a strong wit and driving need to see justice done. He exudes a paradoxical menace; dangerous to know but also the sort of person you feel safe having on your side. I was so enamoured with his adventures I immediately set about trying to get hold of the rest of the Parker series. His "gimmick", if you will, is sharing a name with a famous jazz musician, so that he's often nicknamed 'Bird'. Thankfully, this conceit rapidly fades away (I don't think anyone calls him that in the last few novels at all) and the character gets to stand on his own two feet.

Thanks to someone in my area obviously following the same path, I read a few of the novels in a random order, but have since managed to read everything up to THE BLACK ANGEL (the fifth novel) and after THE UNQUIET (the sixth novel - both of these are packed and ready to read on my travels, when I leave the country at the end of this month), save the short stories that feature in some of Connolly's anthologies. THE WHISPERERS remains, I think, the weakest of the lot, though it's a clear testament to Connolly's writing that it still made me want to read more.

Throughout the series, supernatural elements come into play, though with varying degrees of success. Perhaps my favourite novel - in terms of crime plot - is THE BURNING SOUL. In this one, a young girl goes missing from a small town and an unassuming accountant with a dark past hires Parker to help figure out if someone knows about this and/or is looking to pin the crime on him. The supernatural aspects are practically non-existent but the way certain characters are shown to be less savoury than they appear more than makes up for this. 

This is followed by an exceptionally supernatural tale, THE WRATH OF ANGELS, in which previous characters and questions as to Parker's past and 'uncanny nature' come to light in a story that also explicitly features a buried, malevolent god. Great stuff. THE WOLF IN WINTER follows this with an intriguing, though ultimately squandered, tale of a town that feeds women to another, different, buried entity. 

However, events in this book lead into A SONG OF SHADOWS, which I'm currently reading. It's another one like THE WHISPERERS in that, so far, Conolly is keeping the action removed from Parker's viewpoint; effectively, making him a character in his own story. This has worked well before, (particularly in THE REAPERS, which focused on Louis and Angel - Parker's best friends and thoroughly dangerous accomplices) though here it can't help but create a kind of impatience: we know, from many of the other books, how Parker tends to come across to others, but how is his current situation affecting him directly? What is going through his mind right now, as he takes it upon himself to investigate the discovery of a corpse on the beach near his current hideaway?  

I can't wait to find out, though. From all accounts his latest, brand new, book, A TIME OF TORMENT, is an excellent jumping-on point for new readers, but I'd recommend THE LOVERS, before going back to the beginning with EVERY DEAD THING. THE LOVERS deals with Parker's childhood and the suicide of his father, which is mentioned quite a few times beforehand, though the events surrounding his dad's death feature a heavy supernatural component that gets repeated/referenced in later novels. It works as a decent standalone story but also gives that sense of intrigue that makes reading the preceding books that little bit more interesting: Parker is touched by the unnatural from the very beginning, so in what ways will it manifest going forward?

And now, to finish, how can I not link to his namesake? I CAN'T. So here you go:

THE ONE WHERE I TALK ABOUT A BOOK SERIES I'M READING

Hello there. I don't have an awful lot of internet access so I don't get to update this as much as I want. However, here I am right now so make the most of it, like I'm your partner and you haven't spoken to me in weeks. Cherish me, Internet. CHERISH ME AND MY WORDS.

I like to read. Of course I do. What sort of writer doesn't? A TERRIBLE ONE, that's what! I mean, who! In order to broaden my horizons, I started to actively pick random books from my local library to read. Some were so mundane I can't even remember them, but others were a lot more intriguing. Case in point: the work of John Connolly. Or more precisely, his Charlie Parker series.

I stumbled across this author by searching on the library's database for 'horror anthologies' – they didn't have his Nocturnes collection checked in, but they did have THE WHISPERERS, so I gave that a go. The premise sounded a little dull – someone's smuggling artefacts stolen from the Middle East – but the promise of 'unnatural' horror reeled me in none-the-less.

The book itself took a little getting into, as it takes several chapters before it turns to the point of view of ex-cop Charlie Parker – in this book, he's lost his PI licence after the events in a previous book, and is trying to figure out quite what to do. And then he's asked to look into the suicide of a former soldier, which sets him on a path that ends in very explicit supernatural horror (though not a gratuitous amount). All the stuff in the Middle East was a bit boring, but as soon as we're in Parker's head the story comes alive. He's a man transformed by past tragedy into a relentless machine fuelled by the pursuit of justice, but this is leavened with a sharp wit and down-to-earth approach to the more macabre elements of the story/his world that really appealed to me.

THE WHISPERERS is the tenth Charlie Parker novel and has plenty of mentions of past adventures, and those he encountered. One such character in particular plays an integral (though low key) role in this story. I enjoyed the book but only really when Parker's narrating events – this was a character I wanted to spend more time with. So, back to the library where I found THE LOVERS (as luck would have it, the ninth book in the series).

This was a lot better. Some chapters still abandon Parker's point of view in order to detail events, but the overall plot of two, apparently resurrected, killers with ties to Parker's familial past was far more engaging than the follow-up book. Was this a sign that John Connolly's work is better earlier on? I wanted to find out (as well as learn more about the various cases touched by the unnatural that Parker finds himself embroiled in).

This time the library had THE KILLING KIND and THE WHITE ROAD available. Both from earlier in the series and, as luck would have it, the third and fourth Charlie Parker novels, respectively. I've just finished THE KILLING KIND and, although there are touches of the supernatural, it's more about twisted humans than any kind of demonic entity or group – yet, it still felt refreshing and exciting to read. Basically, when a load of human bones are uncovered by a remote lake, it sets off a chain of events involving a 1960s religious commune, a conspiracy, and a creepy maniac obsessed with deadly spiders and insects. There are very few interstitial chapters removed from Parker's POV, which I think greatly helped the flow. Not that I think John Connolly's writing suffers when he turns to a typical third person omniscient view, but when you're leaving behind someone with as much character as Parker, you feel it.

In any case, it's exciting (for me) to have a new series worth checking out and hunting down, especially considering it's classed as a contemporary 'thriller/crime' series, which typically I find quite boring (though I enjoy older pulp crime stories). I'm going to start on THE WHITE ROAD today, and have just picked up THE REAPERS (which is set just before THE LOVERS) and EVERY DEAD THING (the very first Parker novel) so have those to get stuck into, too. Watch out for more opinions! WATCH OUT!