Every Dead Thing: A Charlie Parker Thriller

John Connolly

Jul 2000 · Charlie Parker Book 1 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly.

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.

Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.

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.

Ratings and reviews

Wow. He is a terrific writer. This book is vastly different from _The Book of Lost Things_, but the writing is still very strong. It was absolutely absorbing - impossible to put down. I can't wait to read the next one. I also can't believe how fast he has moved up to become one of my favorite writers. Even though I had the mystery solved towards the end, there was still great suspense as to how it would all turn out in the end. I loved reading this.

A little hard to keep up with at first. But power thru and you will be glad you did. One of the best crime novels I've read in a while. Don't try to finish the last 1/3 of it thinking you'll be able to start and stop. You won't be able to put it down till finished.

Had trouble keeping all the characters straight. It is like 2 novels in 1. First part he is looking for a child killer, then he is trying to find who killed his family. And the 2 parts don't seem connected. Too many people and plots. Hard to read and confusing.

About the author

John Connolly is the author of the #1 internationally bestselling Charlie Parker thrillers series, The Book of Lost Things and its sequel The Land of Lost Things, the Samuel Johnson Trilogy for younger readers, and (with Jennifer Ridyard) the Chronicles of the Invaders series. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, see his website at JohnConnollyBooks.com, or follow him on Twitter @JConnollyBooks.