Book #39: The Lovers by John Connolly
The Lovers by John Connolly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The eighth novel in the Charlie Parker series definitely feels a bit different to what has gone before.
This novel focuses on Parker’s family, specifically the fact that his father apparently killed two kids. So, in this book, he sets out to find the truth about what happened, meaning that the book contains a lot of flashbacks. This book also throws in a subplot involving a journalist who starts investigating his background, much to the annoyance of the detective. It throws in an interesting plot twist when the journalist ends up meeting the ghosts of Parker's dead wife and daughter, previously only seen by Parker himself. I will be interested to see if similar events occur in later titles.
There are some other plot elements to it as well, including Parker’s true parentage, which was hinted at briefly towards the end of one of the previous titles, and also a murder that occurs quite early on, but which doesn’t become significant until much later in the book.
Like the previous book, The Reapers, this book felt a bit shorter than some of the previous ones, and I got through it quickly. There were a lot of good things about this book, including how it fleshed out Parker’s background a lot, and the fact that it did see the return of some of the killers from one of the previous novels.
This wasn’t my favourite book in the series, however. The flashbacks did mean that I had to pay attention a lot. Also, the narrative style took some getting used to. As well as the usual first person narrative from Parker, the book would suddenly switch to third person narrative in scenes that Parker was in, which felt like a strange decision on John Connolly’s part.
This was still enjoyable though, although the book’s climax seemed slightly rushed. However, I got the sense that the book was written mainly to push the continuity forward; thus, I’m expecting to see the novel’s antagonists, the “lovers” of the title reappear later in the series.
I am already looking forward to reading the next book, The Whisperers.
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