Finished Connolly's "Every Dead Thing"

While I was reading John Sandford's novel "Holy Ghost," one of the characters mentioned he was reading a novel by John Connolly called "Every Dead Thing" and it was "scaring the hell out of him." Authors seem to do that name-dropping thing, and I figured if it's good enough for Sandford to mention it's good enough for me.


So I bought it. Heck of a racket those famous authors have going for them. And I just finished it.It was good. It was bloody, probably had more killing in it than any mystery novel I've read (which is saying something). But, I can't say it "scared the hell out of me." A couple Koontz novels have - the kind that keep you up at night or I dream about.

Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family — a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing. 

In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.

It is the first in the Charlie Parker series. I'll read the second and see where things go. It's over 470 pages, which is a bit long for my attention span, but it was good enough to carry me through.

Amazonians gave it a 3.9 of 5. I gave it a 7 of 10, bumped it up one for the well-researched gore.

A couple lines I particularly liked:

On a guy carrying his wife's pink umbrella: "He had the look of a man who is trying to pretend that a dog isn't screwing his leg."

On a tough-looking gangster hearing his sister died but he didn't cry: "Lionel Fontenot didn't look like a man with well-developed tear ducts."

And finally: "You can't bluff someone who isn't paying attention."