Every Dead Thing [Hardcover]

John Connolly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 1999

Have faith. I will find you.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's a good idea to avoid reading John Connolly's debut novel on a full stomach. His descriptions of mutilated murder victims give him honorary membership in the gore wars club. Every Dead Thing is a fast-paced piece of fiction from an author whose regular stomping ground is as a journalist for the Irish Times.

NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker was busy boozing at Tom's Oak Tavern when his wife Susan, and young daughter Jennifer were mutilated by a killer called the Traveling Man. Consumed by guilt and alcoholism, Charlie soon lost his job, and almost his sanity. Several months on he is sober and ready to get his life back in order. Charlie takes up private investigating. One of his first cases involves the disappearance of a woman called Catherine Demeter. At first this puzzle seems unrelated to the Traveling Man--but Charlie has a gut feeling that the slayer is pulling the strings. "I dreamed of Catherine Demeter surrounded by darkness and flames and the bones of dead children. And I knew then that some terrible blackness had descended upon her."

The search for Catherine takes Charlie on a whirlwind tour of the South. First to the small Virginian town of Haven, where, some 30 years before, Catherine's sister Amy was murdered, along with other local children. But the trail turns cold--until a tip from a psychic leads Charlie to the swamplands of Louisiana. The subplots of Catherine's disappearance, age-old child murders, and the slaying of the Parker family finally unite in the hot, humid terrain. A showdown with the Traveling Man is inevitable.

Every Dead Thing is classic American crime fiction, and it's hard to believe that John Connolly was born and raised on the Emerald Isle. --Naomi Gesinger

From Publishers Weekly

One serial killer who tortures children and another who steals victims' faces after mutilating their bodies give readers two grisly plots in one darkly ingenious debut novel. New York Homicide cop Charlie "Bird" Parker left the force when his wife and baby daughter were gruesomely murdered (while he was boozing down the block), but he agrees to trace a missing woman as a favor to his old partner. The trail leads from Brooklyn wise guys to a dying rural Virginia town where the shameful secret (children were tortured and killed by wealthy local eccentrics) is linked to the missing woman. Stepping on toes and muscling past stonewallers, Charlie eludes hired killers to flush several villains into the open with the help of two friendly hitmenAa competently lethal gay couple who provide a refreshing change from both stereotypes. Charlie receives a phone call from Tante Marie, a Creole woman near New Orleans whose detailed psychic visions of "The Traveling Man" match the profile of the killer. Scoping out the bayous, Charlie teams up with his old FBI buddy, Woolrich, for more convoluted probing involving a plethora of psychic tips, bodies in the bayou and Creole gangs. A romance with a beautiful Brooklyn profiler who joins the case helps make the New Orleans sequence of the novel sing. The tortuous plot seldom falters and each character is memorable. There are sometimes too many detailsAlike extensive lists of zydeco and Cajun singers on the radioAthat force the Louisiana ambiance, and Brooklyn never does feel right, but the rural Virginia town is petty, bitter perfection: no mean feat for a native Dubliner. The prose rings of '40s L.A. noir, ? la Chandler and Hammett, but the grisly deaths, poetic cops and psychic episodes set this tale apart. Published by Hodder in Great Britain in January, Connolly's gory tale should find an avid U.S. audience. Foreign rights sold in Germany, Japan and Italy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (May 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684857146
• ISBN-13: 978-0684857145
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #807,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1968 and have, at various points in his life, worked as a journalist, a barman, a local government official, a waiter and a "gofer" at Harrods department store in London. I 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 I continue to contribute, although not as often as I would like. I still try to interview a few authors every year, mainly writers whose work I like, although I've occasionally interviewed people for the paper simply because I thought they might be quirky or interesting. All of those interviews have been posted to my website, http://www.johnconnolly.co.uk.

I was working as a journalist when I began work on my first novel. Like a lot of journalists, I think I entered the trade because I loved to write, and it was one of the few ways I thought I could be paid to do what I loved. But there is a difference between being a writer and a journalist, and I was certainly a poorer journalist than I am a writer (and I make no great claims for myself in either field.) I got quite frustrated with journalism, which probably gave me the impetus to start work on the novel. That book, Every Dead Thing, took about five years to write and was eventually published in 1999. It introduced the character of Charlie Parker, a former policeman hunting the killer of his wife and daughter. Dark Hollow, the second Parker novel, followed in 2000. The third Parker novel, The Killing Kind, was published in 2001, with The White Road following in 2002. In 2003, I published my fifth novel - and first stand-alone book - Bad Men. In 2004, Nocturnes, a collection of novellas and short stories, was added to the list, and 2005 marked the publication of the fifth Charlie Parker novel, The Black Angel. In 2006, The Book of Lost Things, my first non-mystery novel, will be published.

I am based in Dublin but divide my time between my native city and the United States, where each of my novels has been set.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven at first; a roller-coaster through hell by the end., October 28, 1999

By 

Dan Reilly ([e-mail]) (Rochester, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Dead Thing (Hardcover)

Despite a strong start, I quickly found myself getting bored with Connolly's attempt to create a world of characters that he could build a book series upon. The story starts with our hero attempting to find the murderer of his wife and child, but meanders far and wide before getting back on track in the final 50 pages. Despite my waning interest, the characters of Bird, Louis, Angel, and the mysterious, grisly psychopath "Travelling Man" kept me going until the satisfying, edge-of-my-seat ending. Uneven, but I will give connolly's next book a look. The guy has raw talent.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it with the lights bright and the doors firmly locked!, July 28, 2000

By 

Simon Jackson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Dead Thing (Mass Market Paperback)

So much did this novel disturb me that at times when I wanted to put it down (mainly to sleep) I had to read on to find a place in the story line at which I could leave it. If a book, any book has such an effect on me as a reader then it's done its job! Every Dead Thing is written in the first person (not my favourite style to read) and what emerges is a novel that is both individualistic yet somehow collective in that it taps into a variety of common human insecurities: the death of those close to us, the abuse of the innocent and the chill of our personal destiny being controlled by another.

For his first novel John Connolly has written an outstanding thriller that is crammed full of suspense. The plot centres on Charlie Parker, a former police detective as he battles both with alcohol and the horrors that torment him following the violent murder of his wife and child. Parker throughout the course of Every Dead Thing attempts to track down a child killer, while at the same time graduating towards the activities of a serial murderer known as the Travelling Man. It would be unfair to elaborate on the plot in more depth. It is however, realistic to note that Every Dead Thing is at times standard thriller material, a taut page turner, believably frightening and totally engaging while at other times it adopts a more dark and menacing approach that takes the reader certainly beyond what I've previously experienced from other books defined as thrillers.

I recommend Every Dead Thing to you, read it with the lights bright and the doors firmly locked!

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next Thomas Harris, September 30, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Dead Thing (Hardcover)

"Just when I thought I had figured it out .... he pulled me back in!" This is a great first novel for John Connolly; he out did "Hannibal" by a mile. I liked the 2 in 1 story line and the plot twists - you won't believe the ending. If you start this book be prepared to finish it in one sitting. I can't wait for Connolly's next one!