Book Review - The Killing Kind - John Connolly

Title:  The Killing Kind 

Author: John Connolly 

Review: Now we are talking.  As you know I am reading Connolly’s backlist after really enjoying book 11 in this series.  Books one and two have been rambling all around the plot without a clear focus.  Killing Kind is book three in the series and we finally see a much tighter plot.  We have a mysterious murder and a relentless detective to solve it.  No weird sidetracks to the main plot to waste our time, just a good solid story. 

Our bad guy is a little too extreme, the clichéd super villainy villain who isn’t afraid of anybody or anything.  He takes the time to challenge his opponents prior to actually confronting them.  Think like Dr Evil explaining his entire plan to kill Austin Powers and then just leaving the room trusting it will all work out.  All of us Scotty Evils just want to shoot them and get it over with.  Of course our bad guy here can’t shoot people, rather we have to have a very complex death by spider scenario all worked out because we are creepy too. 

I always find the extreme bad guy to be cartoonish and I hope Connolly moves to a more realistic bad guy soon.  Otherwise this is the book to start with if you want to get into the series right away.  Like I said the first two books provide a lot of background to the main characters that you need eventually, but this book is by far the best written. 

Thanks go to T Stevens for this review

Publisher: Pocket Books 
Copyright: 2001 
Pages: 436 
ISBN: 978-0-7434-5637-1 
Quick Review: 3.5 Stars out of 5. 
Why I Read it: Working through Connolly’s entire backlist 
Where I Obtained the Book: Sent to me by the publisher 

Synopsis: P.I. Charlie Parker is drawn into a violent conflict with a group of zealots intent on tracking down a relic linking them to the slaughter of a religious community in Maine. Soon, Parker is forced to fight for his lover, his friends, and his very soul.

Author Biography: John Connolly was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1968 and has, at various points in his life, worked as a journalist, a barman, a local government official, a waiter and a dogsbody at Harrods department store in London. He studied English in Trinity College, Dublin and journalism at Dublin City University, subsequently spending five years working as a freelance journalist for The Irish Times newspaper, to which he continues to contribute.

He is based in Dublin but divides his time between his native city and the United States.

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