To say there is a lot going on in Every Dead Thing (book #1 in the Charlie Parker series) is an understatement. There are numerous subplots and characters that at times make it hard to keep track of who’s who and what’s what. However, the constant is Charlie Parker. His character grows and evolves in this mystery, transforming from a shell of a man into something much more.When Detective Charlie Parker comes home one evening to discover his wife and young daughter have been brutally murdered, he...

I am a dilettante when it comes to my tastes. I like to read here and there, delve into some genres deeply, take a break with a shallow dip in another genre, and in general approach literature like it is a buffet. It keeps things interesting, but at times I wonder if it means I am losing the ability to be truly critical when it comes to such things as ‘clichés of the genre’. I’m not an expert in any genre, so things that seem fresh and fascinating to me may come across as clichéd and wearying to...

EXCERPT: The patrol car arrived first on the night they died, shedding red light into the darkness. Two patrolmen entered the house, quickly yet cautiously, aware that they were responding to a call from one of their own, a policeman who had become a victim instead of the resort of victims. I sat in the hallway with my head in my hands as they entered the kitchen of our Brooklyn home and glimpsed the remains of my wife and child. I watched as one conducted a brief search of the upstairs rooms wh...

I am every dead thing . . . I am re-begot Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not. John Donne, ‘A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day’Rereading this again after such a long time was a gamble. In my mind it holds its place at the forefront of my book exhibition, encased in glass, spotlighted, stunning in its contrasting beauty and darkness. I still recommend it without hesitation and it has never left my crime fiction top ten.Connolly is a master of the atmospheric; rich detail and imaginati...

This really hurts. My mother bought me this for my birthday, on a recommendation from a local bookstore here. I know she's going to feel badly if she reads this but I must maintain the integrity of my reviews by sticking with the Brutally Honest program. So here goes.I have to rip Every Dead Thing. Ready? Sorry Mom. It's not your fault; you didn't write it, and I likely would have bought it myself.On to the review: Those who read my review for Messiah know how I feel about blurbs that compare no...

I’ve got a book hangover!I just finished Every Dead Thing by John Connolly in the wee hours of the night and must function at work today. I also had some strange dreams last night because this book was dark as hell!This is the first book that I’ve read by Connolly and was impressed!I’m going with 4 to 4.5 stars on Every Dead Thing.I really loved this book along with the driven and flawed main character, Charlie “Birdman” Parker.Haunted by the unsolved slayings of his wife and daughter, former Ne...

Irish writer John Connolly introduces his readers to his continuing murder mystery hero Charlie “Bird” Parker in the 1999 thriller Every Dead Thing.His writing has reminded many readers of Thomas Harris (the author of The Silence of the Lambs) and I did not really see this in the previous book of his I read (2016’s A Time of Torment) but I could most definitely see Hannibal Lecter’s influence here. To be blunt, there are some seriously f***ed up scenes. Connolly’s writing, and his plot and theme...

All things decay, all things must end, the evil as well as the good.This is not your average run of the mill detective story.  It is so much more than that and if you will bear with me I will attempt to explain why.The story opens with the horrific slaying of Detective Charlie (Bird) Parker’s wife and young daughter.  What makes matters even worse for Charlie is that during the commission of this crime Charlie was holed up at his neighbourhood bar, drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Wild Turkey...

Read this if you need to stay awake all night. I, for instance, read through the majority of this book during one of the most boring night shifts ever. I don't know what the world is coming to when patients actually sleep through the night. It turned out to be an almost optimal way to read it for me--the occasional call light interrupting the build of tension, yet enough suspense and horror to drive any sleepies from my mind. Really. I should have lent a chapter or two to Ashley, who was working...

This is my favorite book of his. It's the start of the series. The writing is absolutely wonderful, the craft excellent. I read it a long time ago when it first came out but I highly recommend this book. It's a little rough for the faint of heart though.d.

3.5 starsThis book is the first in the Charlie Parker series. I have read some of the other books in this series but not the first so I decided to go back to the beginning.The book opens as Charlie "Bird" Parker has come home to find his wife and daughter dead. They have been murdered and left for him to find by a serial killer known as "The traveling man". The traveling man has killed before and continues to kill as Parker desperately tries to hunt down and stop him. Parker is full of guilt as

Rereading the first book in your favourite series is like revisiting a cherished memory. Your first kiss, the first time your dad bollocked you for coming home drunk spending five minutes trying to get the key in the door, getting louder by the minute. When you wrote knob on next doors lawn with weed killer or even taking a screenshot of mum's desktop, hiding all the icons and then using it as the wallpaper, ok maybe not that cherished but you know what I mean, or is that just me.This time I lis...

Charlie Parker had it all. A wife and child, a job he was good at and then his world crumbles and he becomes a former shell of himself. Haunted by the death of his family he blames himself and his world spirals out of control. His visions of the death lead him into a life he had not planned and does not want but his sense of survival and right and wrong is too strong to let him to let him shy away from the evil he knows walks among us. I have read all of the Charlie Parker stories and if I ever

This novel is the clearest case I've seen of the whole exceeding the value of its parts. It has 5 - 6 significant flaws, for the most part flaws that are typical of first-in-the-series suspense/thrillers. I gave it 4 stars and I'm not a generous reviewer, so I own defending that rating. After 24 hours of thought, I can't define any category of readers for whom it's a sure thing. It's a solid effort, but doesn't break any new ground. It's a 2009 novel, so not old enough to be a classic, and not n...

A thriller of rather epic proportions, what immediately sets Every Dead Thing aside from the crowd is the exceptional quality of its prose. The novel deals with some harrowing themes and should be approached with caution by those faint of heart or weak of stomach, and yet the writing is of such high quality that it is hard not to recommend this book to anybody and everybody. The plotting is extremely ingenious and Connolly pulls of a bit of a coup with this, his debut novel. Every Dead Thing was...

I've started to reread (and that includes listening to the audiobooks version when I can't sit down to read) the Charlie Parker series while I wait for the latest book, The Dirty South, to be published. The first time I read this book I gave it 3-stars. I started to read this series, not from the start and had already read a couple of books when I went back to this one. And, it just didn't rock my socks like the ones I've read. Now, however. Oh, what a great joy to return to the beginning, to re...

This book in paperback form looked and felt big for a detective novel; 467 pages as it turned out. Well, I thought, I’d probably read as many successful books of this size as not, and the fans that like this series really like it. Why not? Turns out Every Dead Thing is actually two novels. Not two concurrent stories, as often happens with the genre, but two consecutive cases--with a few through lines and back references to tie it together. Upon finishing the “first” novel, I suspected we were be...

4 starsThis book starts with 2 horrific murders--a a mother and child are tortured, killed and then arranged in a pose reminiscent of some twisted horror painting. Charlie Parker comes home after a night of heavy drinking to find his wife and daughter murdered. The killer tortured them by cutting flesh from their bodies while they were still alive. Charlie is a NYPD police detective and now has a guilty conscience because he was out getting drunk instead of protecting his family. He decides to f...

Charlie Parker has more than a nodding acquaintance with the dark. The vicious murder of his wife and small daughter has left him a damaged soul, tormented and raw. A serial killer is not even close to finishing his work. A former police detective, Parker is going to try to focus away from his grief and turn his full attention to finding the perpetrator, this demon, this man without a face. I believe in evil because I have touched it, and it has touched me.

Video review: https://youtu.be/bGCBgemFdoEI've been returning to books I've marked DNF in the past five years and am finding that I'm enjoying more of them than I am not. If I return to one and my opinion hasn't changed, I'm not updating my review. But in cases like this, I feel the need to tell y'all what happened. Unfortunately, I don't recall what I disliked the first time I tried reading this one, and my previous review was unhelpful. It did mention a quote I didn't care for, but the quote f...