[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]

EVERY DEAD THING by John Connolly Pocket Books, July 2000 395 pages $6.99 ISBN: 067102731X

Charlie "Bird" Parker is a man with lots of troubles. He is a cop who drinks a lot, his marriage is breaking up, and people are out to kill him. One night, Charlie goes out drinking after fighting with his wife, Susan. When he returns home, he finds her and his daughter, Jennifer, both brutally murdered and posed, like as in a picture. But the worse part is, that the faces have been skinned off, the eyes totally removed. Charlie is investigated, told that he is innocent, and retires from the force.

Months later, his friend, Walter Cole, asks him to locate a friend of a friend. Thus begins Bird's descent into a nightmare from which there is no relief. It seems Catherine Demeter has vanished, and Isobel Barton, a friend of hers, wants Catherine found on the quiet. Charlie tracks her to Haven, West Virginia, where her sister had been killed years earlier by a sadist.

As Bird continues to ask questions, a lawyer, who is the son of the city's only lawyer, warns him to stay out of Haven. Then the locals start getting in his way. Bird persists, and in a truly dramatic scene, he finds both Catherine Demeter and the Sheriff of Haven buried in a locked up cellar, located in a house where two people were burned to death for killing little children years later.

Back in New York, Bird asks his friend, Angel, who is a B & E artist, to cover his back, as the trail leads to a mob family whose son is connected with Catherine's death. At a deserted warehouse owned by the mobster's son, Bird, Angel and Louis, a gay, black assassin, find several missing children's corpses, plus a video connection showing the children being killed, and tortured. Finally, Bird arrives at the mobster's house, only to find that the father has killed his son, by shooting him in the back of his head. It is at this point, that Bird realizes his mission is to help innocent children and bring child molesters and the like to justice.

Throughout the first part of the book, the author uses flashbacks here to show the reader what is going on in Parker's mind as he has to deal with violence, death, and depravity among the living.

The second part of the book deals with Parker's search for the Travellin' Man, a killer who has been taking lives for several years, but always a step ahead of the law. This is the person who stole the lives of Parker's wife and child.

At this point, the book moves to Louisiana, where several people have vanished. There is a black woman, blind, who sees visions of the dead. She leads Parker into a mob war, when one of the victims' turns out to be the niece of one of the mobsters. Then the woman, and her son turn up, dead, victims of the Travellin' Man. A mob hitman who saw something, then becomes the next victim. As the war escalates between two mob families, Parker is torn up by all the death that he brings to people. When a cop, Morphy, and his wife, Angie, become another of the Travellin' Man's victims, it becomes clear someone who knows about the investigation is in on the killings.

The ending is explosive, full of hatred, death, remorse, and finally, an understanding that everybody dies, and that only in death, do people come to grips with living. John Connolly has woven together an extremely violent, blood soaked book, but shows what happens to people when pushed to extremes.

Note: This review is based on the hardcover edition which is now out of print

Reviewed by Steven M. Sill, April 2003

[ Top ]

QUICK SEARCH:

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)

[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]