Every Dead Thing (Charlie Parker, #1)

by John Connolly

[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.