Product Description

Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the capture of their killer, The Travelling Man, Charlie Parker retreats to the wintry Maine landscape of his childhood. By following in the steps of his beloved grandfather, Parker hopes to heal his spirit and get through the bitter anniversary of Jennifer and Susan’s murder. But the echoes of the past that await him are not all benign. In a gruesome re-enactment of Bird’s own nightmares, another young woman is killed with her child and his brief involvement in their lives impels Parker to hunt their vicious murderer. As the death toll mounts, Parker comes to realise that the true answer to the puzzle lies thirty years in the past, in a tree with strange fruit, in his own grandfather’s history, and in the perverted desires of a monster incarnate - Caleb Kyle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25441 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Recent years have seen a flurry of horror writers crossing over to the mystery genre--Peter Straub, Dan Simmons and Kristin Kathryn Rusch are three--but little movement has occurred in the opposite direction. Mysteries are where the commercial action is. When John Connolly, an Irish journalist, burst upon the scene in Great Britain in 1999 with the bestselling Every Dead Thing (it later won the Shamus award for Best First Private Eye Novel when published in the States), it would not have been unfair to describe what he was offering as "horror". However, "shock noir" is probably a better way of describing such a grab-you-by-the-eyelashes thriller, with its high body count and inventively grisly methods of dispatching hapless victims.

Connolly--who seems unconcernedly to be trespassing on Stephen King territory in Dark Hollow, with its Maine setting and echoes of background atrocities--actually brings to mind a slightly different hybridisation of horror and mystery: you might say it's Wilkie Collins re-tooled by James Ellroy. Lurking in his pages is more than a faint whiff of the Victorian triple-decker, with all its gothic complexities, while, at the same time, punctuating the plot are grotesque and excessive acts of sadism of a wholly modern sort that will cause some readers indignantly to close the book.

The trouble is, by doing that they miss a richly ripe, closely textured tale. Connolly's series character, ex-NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker, is a man with a lot of pain to surmount--his wife and child were murdered in Every Dead Thing--but he's also a dogged knight errant attuned to the pain felt by others. In Dark Hollow, his quest for the truth is a twisty one, but he stays the course, and so should you. --Otto Penzler, Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk Review
To say that John Connolly enjoyed a remarkable success with his first book,Every Dead Thing, is to understate the case. This first thriller featuring Detective "Bird" Parker was a highly unusual entry in the field, written in a raw, arresting style. But is Dark Hollow, the second appearance of Connolly's fiery and inexorable investigator, equally gripping? Connolly himself has remarked that he wanted to give this new book a very sinister feel, rather than just a gruesome one. In this, he has succeeded triumphantly.

This time, Bird--recovering from the murder of his family by The Travelling Man--returns to the scene of happier times, the wintry Maine of his childhood. But relaxation is once again elusive: another young woman is savagely killed along with a child, and Bird's previous encounter with the victims compels him to track down the murderer. There is an obvious suspect, but Bird believes that the real answer lies 30 years in the past. As the body count increases, it becomes apparent that someone else is hunting for Billy, the dead woman's ex-husband and chief suspect in the slaying. And this dangerous figure appears to know Bird intimately. Before long, the tormented detective is investigating the terrifying origins of a mythical killer: the psychopathic Caleb Kyle.

Along with the kind of riveting storytelling skills we have come to expect from Connolly, the author has built into his narrative a superstructure of striking imagery. Predatory nature and the cycle of the seasons feed into the darker corners of the plot and illuminate the grim psychopathology of the characters. Bird remains the most involving of protagonists--and by dovetailing his hero's troubled past into the search narrative, Connolly ensnares the reader to the past page: "'Nice car', he repeated, and a fat white hand emerged from one of his pockets, the fingers like a thick, pale slugs that had spent too long in dark places. He caressed the roof of the Mustang appreciatively, and it seemed as if the paint would corrode spontaneously beneath his fingers". --Barry Forshaw

What’s On (Amazon Books)
'Connolly's characters have substance beyond vehicles for horror, and this is what puts him ahead in a crowded genre race'

Customer Reviews

MENACING CHARACTERS IN SHIVER PRODUCING CLIMES
With an opening line signaling devilish doings, "I dream dark dreams," Irish thrillersmith John Connolly launches his second suspenseful tale featuring New York policeman turned private investigator Charlie Parker. Connolly copped the 2000 Shamus Award for his debut, "Every Dead Thing." "Dark Hollow" assures readers that he deserved it.

Unable to set aside the murders of his wife and daughter, a haunted Parker returns to his hometown of Scarborough, Maine. Rather than finding solace in the northeast woods Parker is faced with a series of seemingly unrelated mysteries and a terrifying sociopathic mobster, Tony Celli.

Oddly enough the current series of murders are remarkably akin to 40-year-old killings - crimes that Parker's grandfather spent most of his life trying to solve. What is the connection between today's violence and killings almost half a century old?

Author Connolly pulls out all the stops with this highly readable, almost surreal tale involving mysterious forces lurking in the wilderness, and a long buried past seemingly rising from the grave. Connolly's an ace at creating menacing characters and shiver producing climes.

- Gail Cooke

Superbly gripping and high impact thriller
I like thrillers with an American theme and I particularly enjoy Jonathan Kellerman, Elmore Leonard for their portrayal of the US genre. This is a remarkable book in that the author is Irish yet still captures the feel of an American thriller, set in the New England wilds, superbly. The detective Charlie Parker is resolute, believable and likable and I also enjoyed the introduction of his two pals to both back him up and also to watch his back. I will go on to read the rest of this author's works and would recommend others, that are completely new to this author, to pick up the first book and carry on through.

An amazing read with dry one-liners.
I actually stumbled on to this book and author by mistake as I was looking for Michael Connolly and picked this up in haste. Boy, am I glad I did!!! I was immediately hooked by John Connolly's style of writing and the interwoven humour reminded me of one of my favourite author's, Sue Grafton. His content is much darker but still has a great style to it and an ease of reading that I look for. I'm now half-way through "The Killing Kind" which has my heart racing as I read it. I must go back and read his first novel "Every Dead Thing" as I am now completely hooked. I simply don't know how I'm going to wait until the release of his fourth novel!!