John Connolly at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 04/09/2007

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John Connolly - Page 2

The Killing Kind

Dark Hollow

Every Dead Thing

Paperback - Coronet (2002)

First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2001)

The Killing Kind

There are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity. They live in pain, and exist only to visit that pain on others. A random glance, the momentary lingering of a look, is enough to give them the excuse that they seek. Sometimes, it is better to keep your eyes on the gutter for the fear that, by looking up, you might catch a glimpse of them, black shapes against the sun, and be blinded forever.

‘This is a honeycomb world. Be careful where you step.
Nobody wants to believe that Grace Pettier committed suicide: not Curtis, her father; not former U.S. Senator Jack Mercier; and not private detective Charlie Parker, who has been hired to investigate the circumstances of her death.
But when a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of the Aroostook Baptists, a religious community that disappeared almost forty years earlier, Parker realises that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace Pettier are part of the same mystery, one that has its roots in her family history and in the origins of the shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship.
For before she died, Grace Pettier stole something from the Fellowship, a relic capable of linking it to decades of violence and the slaughter of the Aroostook Baptists, and now someone has been sent to recover it. Lied to, intimidated and haunted by visions of a small, stray boy, Parker’s search for the truth behind Grace’s death draws him into a series of increasingly violent confrontations with the Fellowship’s enforcer, the demonic arachnophile known as Mr Pudd.
Aided and abetted by the genial killers Angel and Louis, Parker must descend into the depths of a honeycomb world populated by dark angels and lost souls, a world where the ghosts of the dead wait for justice and the unwary are prey for the worst kind of creatures.
Praise for Killing Kind and John Connolly
‘Clever, stylish, literate… confirms John Connolly as one of our leading crime novelists’ Mail on Sunday
‘The unrivalled master of Maine noir. Menace has never been so seductive.’ Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian
‘Connnolly does the chill factor brilliantly, creating horror out of the sort of misguided religious fervour not seen since Waco. Mass graves, Parker’s sixth sense and deadly spiders set the mind and pulse racing.’ Daily Mirror
‘What makes Parker intriguing is precisely that, though a crusader against evil, he has a dark side: he is haunted by the past, his capacity for violence and guilt.’ Telegraph Magazine
‘A stunningly creepy book with a villain who sets a new benchmark in nightmare-inducing fear. Nail-biting Stuff.’ Yorkshire Post
‘Ireland’s finest export since U2 and Guinness . . . Dark, menacing and moody, but with moments of wicked humour. Connolly drags you screaming to the edge of the abyss, then calmly pushes you in.’ Yorkshire Evening Post
‘Connolly’s painstaking research, wise-ass humour and consummate gift for crafting truly terrifying characters combine to shape a novel that’s a genuine thrill.’ The List, Glasgow
‘As John Connolly plunges ever deeper into the underworld of the damned, the reader, with eyes of slits, must cling on for this brilliantly terrifying ride.’ Irish Times

First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2000)

Paperback - Coronet (2000)

Dark Hollow

'There are themes that run through Dark Hollow - the fear of dark things living in the forest, the lost son, the quest - which all come from a completely different, fairy-tale tradition. I wanted to give the whole book a very sinister feel, rather than just a gruesome one.
'There are also lots of images of predatory nature and the cycles of the seasons: I wanted all of those things to tie in together and reflect back on the main plots of the book.' John Connolly in The Bookseller

'Caleb Kyle, Caleb Kyle, when you see him, run a mile.'
Charlie 'Bird' Parker has retreated to his home state of Maine, exhausted and drained after the savage murder of his wife and child. Having tracked their murderer through the swamps and burial grounds of Louisiana and north to New York, Bird is looking for some peace and a chance to recover. Against this beautiful wintry landscape, he finds anything but peace, and instead his past and present collide with brutal suddenness.
Bird becomes involved in a hunt for a man accused of murder, but soon finds he is only one of many involved in the hunt, and some are bent on a worse destruction. As the death toll mounts, it becomes clear that the biggest threat comes from a shadowy figure more legendary than real; a man whose threatening presence was widely feared in his grandfather's day; a man upon whom the stories of bogey men were based. The answers cannot be found until the secrets of a tree that threw up strange fruit deep in the forest are revealed.
'This second novel is subtler and more complex than the bestselling Every Dead Thing. Connolly's lyrical language and occasional mystical passages are reminiscent of James Lee burke. His hero is developing into a credible and sympathetic personality' Sunday Telegraph
'The unfolding of the complex and gripping mystery confirms Connolly as the equal of any top-if-the-league American crime writer' Guardian
‘Connolly’s evocative prose and sharp on-liners make it oddly akin to poetry’ Independent
‘Connolly writes superb menace, superb fear, superb horror and superb violence, but tempers it with an understanding of men and women who suffer for years in silence before exploding into action… this is a monster of a book’ Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday
'Dark Hollow is superior stuff, an exceptionally good crime novel' Sunday Tribune, Dublin
'Young, gifted and Irish' Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph

Paperback - Coronet (1999)

First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (1999)

Every Dead Thing
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill

All things decay, all things must end, the evil as well as the good. What her death had done, in its brutal, flame-red way, was to show me that this was true. If I could find her, and could bring her to an end then I could do the same with others.
I could do the same with the Travelling Man.
And somewhere, in some dark place, a clock began to tick, counting off the hours, the minutes, the seconds, before it would toll the end of the Travelling Man.
'I could find her if I chose. I found the others, but they were dead when I found them.'

Haunted by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, and tormented by his sense of guilt, former New York City detective Charlie 'Bird' Parker is a man consumed by violence, regret and the desire for revenge.
Then Bird's ex-partner asks him to track down a missing girl and Bird embarks on an odyssey that is to lead him into the bowels of organised crime; to an old black woman who dwells by the Louisiana swamps; to cellars of torture and death; and to a serial killer unlike any other, an artist who uses the human body as his canvas and takes faces as his prize, a killer known only as The Travelling Man.

'It is easy to get lost in the darkness on the edge of modern life and, once lost and alone, there are things waiting for us in the darkness. If I could not fight evil as it came in the form of the Travelling Man, then I would find in other forms. I believe in evil because I have touched it, and it has touched me.' Charlie 'Bird' Parker

Steeped in the best traditions of classic American crime fiction, John Connolly's first novel pushes back the frontiers of the genre. Complexly plotted, richly textured, with memorable characters and a profoundly moral dimension, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realised.
The title of the book was drawn from Donne's poem A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucies Day, because as Connolly says, it is 'about Salvation and a belief that out of pain and grief people can be reborn.' Every Dead Thing explores more fully than ever before the psychology of a man left behind to pick up the pieces of his life, his guilt and his future.

'My interest - at least in this novel - is what happens when the survivor can't get the kind of release which killing his tormentor would give him. How does a man respond to the reality of evil in the world when that evil has been visited on him personally?'
'I want to be viewed as one of the best crime writers of my generation. I've written the sort of novel which I, as a reader and lover of the genre, would want to read ... I hope it's a novel that people who might ordinarily shun genre fiction might pick up and enjoy.' (Connolly)

'Ladies and gentlemen we see before us the birth of a massive new talent in the crime genre.' Shots
'Intelligent, deep and literate...it is difficult to believe that this is John Connolly's first novel, so confidant is the writing… an ambitious, moral, disturbing tale with a stunning climax.' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'Enveloping the stark brutality of the slasher in a warm cloak of words. ' The Evening Standard
'A taut, fast thriller which takes on a genre at its own game and comes out without any bruises. ' Big Issue
'A great, camp romp through freak-show America as imagined with enormous storytelling energy.' Mail on Sunday
'You can smell the movie already.' Time Out
'The most terrifying tale you will read this side of the millennium.' Big Issue in Scotland
'Buy it and be scared' The Times
'That rare thing these days, a genuine, gripping page turner which shreds the nerves and is certain to be one of the thrillers of 1999.' Mike Ripley
'A deeply disturbing story, well-executed and eminently filmable. John Connolly has a great career ahead of him… Every Dead Thing is a warning to every crime-novelist, for it raises the game and indicates the standard of the future. ' Julia Wallis Martin
'Painstaking research, superb characterisation, and on ability to tell a story that's chilling and thought provoking make this a terrific thriller' Mirror
'A sometimes disturbing thriller that Connolly's writing lifts above the average. Well worth a read? Definitely.' Val McDermid, Express
'A stylishly written tale in the grand and gruesome tradition of Thomas Harris - even more grisly then the Harris novel. Connolly has a genuine talent for violent, heart stopping and truly stomach turning imagery.' Sunday Independent
'Connolly's first novel is a spellbinding book. Informed but uncluttered, it holds the reader fast in a comfortless stranglehold.' Los Angeles Times
'Every Dead Thing is a stunner... Connolly has treated a complex tale that is as riveting and chilling as Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs and James Patterson's Kiss the Girls. Well-paced and character-driven, Every Dead Thing is a terrific addition to the genre' San Francisco Examiner