John Connolly's Charlie Parker series - any readers/fans here?

[scarletwoman]

A friend at work gave me a paperback copy of The Wrath of Angels (#12 in the Charlie Parker series) for a Christmas gift. She knows I like mysteries, but she's not a reader herself, so she asked at a bookstore for recommendations of new mystery books and this was one of the books the clerk recommended.

I was not familiar with either the author or the series, so this was totally new to me. Well, I read it, even though I could tell from the back cover blurb that this was decidedly NOT the sort of book I would ever pick out for myself. I like police procedurals, I don't like "thrillers" or horror/weird supernatural stuff.

There's no doubt that John Connolly is very good at crafting prose, and I enjoyed some of the characters and the Maine setting, but I won't be seeking out any other books in this series and I'll donate the book to our breakroom paperback collection. It was just too unrelentingly dark and depressing, and bloody - with totally unpleasant and twisted metaphysics.

But that's just my opinion. I'm curious if there's anyone here who is into this series.

[getting old in mke]

1. I'm a fan of John Connolly

but I'm not yet sure about Charlie Parker: I have read the first one and found it kind of astonishing, the amount he fit into a single book--it seemed to me like two full thrillers. The supernatural twists in the first one were fairly mild--the insistent vision of a girl seeking justice--but that was for me somewhat surprising. I have another couple Parkers, a YA he did, and a short story collection and the non-Parkers definitely have a supernatural bent.

John Connolly as an guy, on the other hand, is a really fun person. He's well read, opinionated, and very Irish and very funny. He was the toastmaster at the Bouchercon in Cleveland in 2012 and I somehow managed to end up next to him waiting for something and we got to talk for about 40 minutes. He talks about how his secondary studies almost put him off reading, but not enough to keep him from writing. Everything else followed. He also explained why he uses an American (anti)hero instead of Irish. He felt there was a larger range of possible stories for his primary focuses of fall and redemption. He did, though, feel it true to his Irish roots, to include elements of the supernatural in something not otherwise supernatural.

With another member of the Irish crime writers, Declan Burke, he put together a book where about 100 crime writers list their favorite (and possibly unexpected) mysteries. Previously I'd seen the two of them do a pretty hilarious yet enlightening of what the 25 mysteries you can't miss over a lunch at the San Francisco Bouchercon in 2010. I should probably look up the notes on that, but I do remember that _Red Harvest_ was in there and some Jim Thompson and James Lee Burke.

[scarletwoman]

2. That's WAY cool that you got to meet him!

Thank you so much for relating your personal encounter!

After I finished the book, I did a bunch of googling about Connolly, and read excerpts from a number of interviews. He really did come off as a lovely person to know.

I just don't care for the genre that the Parker book seems to be a part of. I don't agree with the metaphysics.