The Lovers-John Connolly

The Lovers
John Connolly
Atria, Jun 2 2009, $26.00
ISBN: 9781416569541

With his private investigator's license revoked (see THE REAPERS), Charlie Parker leaves New York City to tend bar in Portland, Maine. The job gives him time think about the other tragedy in his life besides the murders of his wife and daughter that haunts him. When Charlie was fifteen, his father Will an NYPD cop shot dead two teens, who after he kills them learns they were unarmed. Unable cope, Will committed suicide.

As Charlie digs into the background of that traumatic incident, he finds some shocking evidence that makes him wonder if his beloved parents were his biological ones. He decides to return to Manhattan to investigate and avoid the police. At the same time a frightened disturbed woman is on the run from whatever killed her boyfriend. Writer Mickey Wallace investigates the stranger that haunt the Big Apple; as this pair converge on Charlie, two of the undying also come together wanting Parker dead.

Charlie’s focus remains on his personal life, but spins to what happened to his father rather than himself. He is at his best as he begins to uncover shocker after shocker as if someone has connected his body to live electrical wires (see the Cheney torture handbook for more details). He makes the LOVERS a great urban Noir fantasy although the paranormal is kept to the minimal. Readers will relish his escapades as Charlie investigates his father’s suicide while the undying want to give him an opportunity to question dad in whatever hell the dead old man resides in.

Harriet Klausner