Every Dead Thing (Charlie Parker, #1)

by John Connolly

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.

• ISBN10: 067102731X
• ISBN13: 9780671027315
• Publish Date: 1 July 2000 (first published 21 January 1999)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Touchstone
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 480
• Language: English

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

I made it 12%.

Trigger Warning for rape, torture, mutilation, child murder. Especially the beginning prologue. Absolutely brutal.

-->Describes a character as a lover of "Oriental food".
--> Fatphobic.
--> This fucking quote: "We drove north on I-10, past an outlet mall and on toward West Baton Rouge with its truck stops and gambling joints, its bars full of oil workers and, elsewhere, blacks. " ----REALLY?!?
-->That racist BS is followed by the most stereotypical "black swamp witch" passage I've ever had the misfortune to read.

Yeah, I'm fucking done.

[chymerra]

This book spooked the pants off me and I don’t normally get spooked by books. From the beginning, when Charlie’s wife and daughter were murdered to the end…..I got chills. Put it this way, I couldn’t read this book at night because of how creepy it was. The one time I did, all I dreamed about was human beings being cut open and flayed. So yeah, I read this book during the day.

I felt awful for Charlie. I mean, I can’t imagine coming home to my family murdered. I don’t even think I could cope. Actually, I know I couldn’t cope. So I was a little surprised when it looked like he had moved on. New job, new house. Then everything came to a head when he takes a job to find the missing girlfriend of the son of an influential women and clues show up about his wife and daughter.

My favorite characters had to have been Angel and Louis. A thug and an assassin in a relationship, yes please!!! Louis I liked because of his fashion style and the fact that nothing seemed to phase him. Also, I think I would want him as a back up when things when south. Angel was very cute (but also very dangerous) and you could tell that he genuinely loved Louis.

The action in this book was insane. It went from zero to bloodshed within a chapter. Which is OK with me. Sometimes I need that!!!

I liked that the author really didn’t play up the paranormal part of the book until the end. And even then, it was understated. Creepy but understated. With everything else that was going on in the book, I liked that.

I will say that the author did have me going about who The Traveling Man was until the end of the book. I did have a suspicion as to who it was but with everything that was going on in the book, I kinda said “Nah”. Well, color me surprised when it ended up being who I originally thought it was.

The end of the book was very good. All of the storylines were tied up, for the most part, and I could see where the author left an opening for the next book. Which I am going to have to read because I got hooked on this series!!

How many stars will I give Every Dead Thing: 4

Why: A very intense mystery will kept me guessing and I refused to read at night. The violence and bloodshed might be a little much for some people but I didn’t care.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Adult

Why: Sexual situations, violence and language

**I received a free copy of this book and volunteered to review it**

[pamela]

What a book! I thought I'd try John Connolly's Charlie Parker thriller's from the beginning rather than picking them up at the new releases and I am so excited to read the rest of them. Charlie 'Birdman' Parker is a brilliant character, who is flawed in a believable way, and makes believable choices and decisions for a man of his background. I was utterly invested and engrossed from the beginning.

Connolly has absolutely nailed his pacing. We have two different crimes tackled in both halves of the book which prove to have a connection, but not in such an overt way as to appear 'convenient'. The killings are equally gruesome and horrific and yet are imbued with humanity through Connolly's wonderful writing. The victims are people, with personalities, lives, and existence outside their status as victims in the novel. This is an issue I often have with crime novels, that the victims are simply treated as plot devices making their deaths seem somehow voyeuristic.

I was also impressed by Connolly's tactful use of supernatural elements. They were not presented overtly, but rather as feelings, intuition or indeed manifestations of a character's mind. He did not ascribe any deeper truth or meaning to them, and they served to humanise the characters.

I struggled to put this book down, and I think this might be my favourite foray into the crime genre to date. Looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

[empressbrooke]

I first encountered Charlie Parker in [a:John Connolly|38951|John Connolly|http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1201288913p2/38951.jpg]'s short story collection [b:Nocturnes|23754|Preludes & Nocturnes (The Sandman, #1)|Neil Gaiman|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411609637s/23754.jpg|1228437]. The novella featuring the former cop alone made me give the collection four stars, so I was eager to read the rest of the series.

Every Dead Thing did not disappoint. Serial killer thrillers are a dime a dozen, and it's always nice to find an author who can stand out from the pack. Charlie Parker left the police force following the brutal murder of his wife and child, and the book opens in bleakness as he's groping around, looking for direction. He spends the first half of the book on a missing persons case before heading down to New Orleans to face down the serial killer who took his family from him.

The division of the book into two cases was unusual; the parts really could have been two different books. My theory is that we needed the first 200 pages to get to know Charlie and to care about him before diving into the case that affected him personally. Otherwise, if we didn't know him yet, why should we care if he caught his family's murderer?

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. I like Charlie, I like the subtle supernatural elements, and I liked Charlie's friends Angel and Louis, a gay couple who are on the wrong side of the law but seem more noble than some of the cops.