Latest Reads: The Woman in the Woods John Connolly

 

 

Publication Date: 5th April 2018 from Hodder and Staughton

Source: Review Copy

In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realize that the dead young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby.

Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant but Parker is not the only searcher. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child…someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake.

And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman.

This is book 16 in the Charlie Parker series. Let’s just take a moment of silence for that one…

Ok that’s quite enough of that – this may be a long running series but it is just as exciting, just as riveting, I’m not even sure what I’m saying – I mean more of course not just as – it gets better and better and changes the game every time.

No different with The Woman in the Woods which had the after effect just a little while ago of me rummaging through the toy box to throw far far away anything that might ring in the night – but that’s neither here nor there except to my children. The point is this is, as usual, beautifully creepy as well as being beautifully written and every time I go into one of these I think it can’t possibly up the ante or make me more desperate for the next than I always am and every time I am wrong.

I’ve reviewed too many of these now to have anything new to say really, so I won’t bother with new I’ll say the usual just in case you, for some obscure and rather random reason, have not yet started to read what is simply the best crime series out there. The mythology is incredibly complex and wonderfully woven, the depth is beyond my ability to articulate and Charlie Parker and his close friends will embed themselves into your soul. Both the living and the dead…

I loved the villainy of this one particularly, especially in the ending because I half thought I knew what to expect, in style if not in substance, but actually our lovely (??!!??) Mr Connolly went a slightly different route into garnering our interest (nay obsession) for book 17 – I might have to have words.

Themes expanded, emotions played upon, nightmares almost guaranteed or at the very least an odd look over your shoulder because you’ll be sure there is someone there, several reasons why the Charlie Parker series continues on as fresh and new as it ever was, because every time you think you’ve got a handle on it everything changes.

Also dead mothers, Angel’s fate, Louis and his unique values, Charlie and his daughters, rogue toys, sinister woods, trauma (and I don’t mean necessarily for the characters) brilliant writing, literary genius and well, that THING. The thing for which there is no name.

All of the above means Highly Recommended isn’t even close to being the right thing. But as it’s the only thing I have you can have it.

Highly Recommended.

 

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Happy Reading!

 

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2 Responses to Latest Reads: The Woman in the Woods John Connolly

  1. David Putnam says:

    Great review. Connolly is one of my favorites. I’ve been following him since his book All Dead Things. Met him a couple of times at book conferences over the years and he is a genuinely nice person.

  2. David Putnam says:

    Thanks for the great review

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