Title: The
Lovers
Author: John Connolly
Review: How can you tell a great writer? When he can basically present in book eight
of a series 400 plus pages of back story and keep it thrilling.
The top advice given
to writers is start with the action; avoid the exposition like the kiss of
death. But yet Connolly manages to prove
there is always an exception to every rule.
His private detective Charlie Parker has always been an interesting
character with a much storied past, but there are even parts of if it he was
unsure of. With that premise the author
threshes out the character of Parker more fully than ever before and we the audience
gets to experience it with him. He
didn’t even need to resort to using his best supporting characters Louis and
Angel except in minor roles.
In all the Charlie
Parker books there is a hint of the supernatural, a whisper of something more
is going on than just bad luck. Forces
that he doesn’t quite understand, and maybe not even fully believe in are at
work behind the scenes of his life. With
the Lovers we delve into the origin story of these rumors and confirm that
there is more to him than what appears.
While brilliantly not revealing his whole hand, Connolly manages to whet
the appetite of his fans, to leave them begging for more.
When reading these
books I am left with the desire to know more about these ancient people and
their stories. Who were the Sumerians? What are the lost angels? He tells just enough to start the fire of the
reader’s curiosity, all while interlacing it around a solid mystery and a
flawed but likable lead character. And
what first drew me to Connolly is the
skill and time he spends even on the most minor of characters, each one
seemingly possessing a personality and story worthy of several books of their
own.
Read The Lovers if you
want a master class of how to do exposition correctly, and read John Connolly
if you want to understand character development. He is one of the best pure writers in the
mystery genre today.
Publisher: Published June 2nd 2009 by Atria (first
published June 1st 2009)
ISBN: 978-1-4165-6955-8
Pages: 466
Copyright: 2009
Quick Review: 5 stars out of 5-
Why I Read It:
Sent by the publisher for review/catching up on John Connelly’s backlist.
Synopsis: Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived
of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker
takes a job in a Portland bar. But he uses his enforced retirement to begin a
different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry
into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead
two unarmed teenagers. It's a search that will eventually lead Parker to
question all that he believed about his beloved parents, and about himself.
But there are other
forces at work: a troubled young woman who is running from an unseen threat,
one that has already taken the life of her boyfriend; and a
journalist-turned-writer named Mickey Wallace, who is conducting an
investigation of his own. And haunting the shadows, as they have done
throughout Parker's life, are two figures: a man and a woman who seem driven to
bring an end to Charlie Parker's existence.
Haunting, lyrical, and
impossible to put down, "The Lovers" is John Connolly at his best.
Compact Disk Includes
a Bonus MP3 CD of John Connolly's "Every Dead Thing"
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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