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A review by brettt
The Black Angel by John Connolly
3.0
Irish-born John Connolly was the first author from outside the United States to win the Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel, for 2000's Every Dead Thing. He also picked up a Bram Stoker award for Best First Horror Novel, which should tell you that his private eye fiction is just a leetle different from some of the usual product on the shelves.
The Black Angel is the fifth novel in the series that began with Thing, focusing on former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, whose cases don't always involve purely natural elements. It seems supernatural forces of several kinds are at work in the world, and for some reason Charlie and his clients are often caught up in their work. In Angel, we start to get a hint of why that might be.
Although he is trying to make a new life for himself with his infant daughter and her mother, Charlie gets pulled back into a case when a young woman important to one of his friends is missing. The case will involve some truly terrifying criminals and supernatural beings who may number among the angels who fell with Lucifer.
Connolly excels as a writer and a storyteller, and uses the events of Angel to highlight the conflict within Charlie's life. He has in mind some commentary and consideration of some important issues in human life, like salvation, redemption, morality and compassion. But those same gifts make the bleakness of that life and sordid details of the crimes almost too vivid. In the end, Charlie Parker novels are probably an acquired taste, and might be best read with a lot of other, lighter-toned and more hopeful books in between them.
Original available here.
The Black Angel is the fifth novel in the series that began with Thing, focusing on former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, whose cases don't always involve purely natural elements. It seems supernatural forces of several kinds are at work in the world, and for some reason Charlie and his clients are often caught up in their work. In Angel, we start to get a hint of why that might be.
Although he is trying to make a new life for himself with his infant daughter and her mother, Charlie gets pulled back into a case when a young woman important to one of his friends is missing. The case will involve some truly terrifying criminals and supernatural beings who may number among the angels who fell with Lucifer.
Connolly excels as a writer and a storyteller, and uses the events of Angel to highlight the conflict within Charlie's life. He has in mind some commentary and consideration of some important issues in human life, like salvation, redemption, morality and compassion. But those same gifts make the bleakness of that life and sordid details of the crimes almost too vivid. In the end, Charlie Parker novels are probably an acquired taste, and might be best read with a lot of other, lighter-toned and more hopeful books in between them.
Original available here.