Product Description

The Black Angel is not an object. The Black Angel is not a myth. The Black Angel lives. A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and that no one will come looking for her. They are wrong. She is 'blood' to the killer Louis, the man who stands at the right hand of private detective Charlie Parker, and Louis will tear apart anyone who stands in the way of his attempts to find her. But as Louis' violent search progresses, Parker comes to realize that the disappearance is part of an older mystery, one that is linked to an ornate church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the quest for a mythical prize that has been sought for centuries by evil men: the Black Angel. Yet, the Black Angel is more than a myth. It is conscious. It dreams. It is alive. And men are not the only creatures that seek it ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30876 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
With The Black Angel, John Connolly takes his Charlie Parker series a step further away from the conventional serial killer thriller and over the border into supernatural horror--which, in fairness, is where these extraordinary books have been heading from the beginning. The question of why and how so many bad people find their way into Parker's orbit has always been lurking in the background of his novels; why so many ghosts of victims point him the way to vengeful justice and why so good a man is so fond of his killer for hire friends Louis and Angel. Many writers would just leave these as givens, but Connolly has too much integrity for that.

The search for Louis' junkie whore cousin, and her abductors, leads the trio ever further into darkness. They have fought evil obsessives before, but none as bad as the Believers, a group obsessed with fallen angels and with the strange sculpted objects men have made from human bones. This time at least there is a possibility that what the Believers believe is true, both what they believe about the world and what they believe about Parker--this is a book which ought to be insane and ludicrous and is in fact chilling. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'Gruesome and gripping.' Yorkshire Post (Apr 05) 'An excellent read.' Nottingham Evening Post (Apr 05) 'His most ambitious and intricate work to date ... Connolly's remarkable talent includes an assured ability to tease the reader to the very point where you accept that there are creatures and beings other than humans stalking the earth.' Manx Independent (Apr 05) 'There is a precision to the horrors that make them one of the few sequences to have found anything interesting to say about serial killers since Thomas Harris.' -- Independent 'Connolly has virtually no match when it comes to chilling his readers.' -- Daily Express 'A Gothic horror story and a well-paced thriller. John Connolly writes beautifully about a world that is desolate, pain-filled and seeming hopeless, with the powers of darkness always threatening to rent the fabric of reality and bring chaos. But he also has a keen eye for the underbelly of modern American life, a good ear for current street argot, and his violent set pieces are satisfyingly exciting and vibrantly realised.' -- Myles McWeeney, Irish Independent 'Colourful but visceral grand guignol, and definitely not to be read at night.' -- Guardian 'Stylishly literate gore and terror' -- Kirkus Reviews 'Dark and powerful yet beautifully written' -- Big Issue 'Great narrative talent packed with vivid scenes and sequences. An impressive feat of storytelling' -- Irish Times Weekend Review 'Satisfying and literate thrill ride' -- Evening Herald (Dublin) 'An excellent, thrilling read.' -- David Torrans, Belfast Telegraph 'John Connolly has taken his serial hero and changed him from an ex-cop turned private eye to a supernatural detective whose own ancestry is as murky as it is fascinating. It's another bestseller of course.' -- Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday 'One to keep you up at night' -- Tangled Web 'Private detective Charlie Parker chases strung out prostitutes and ossuary-building killers in a page-turner that harks back to the fall of the rebel angels. The action stays both speedy and gruesome' -- Time Out 'This is not just a powerful thriller, it's also a titanic battle between the forces of good and evil, with religion and the supernatural stirred into the brew... his most operatically large scale book yet.' -- Crime Time

Big Issue
'Dark and powerful yet beautifully written'

Customer Reviews

The Black Angel, John Connolly
After two sucessful but unspectacular deviations (2003's adequate supernatural thriller Bad Men, then Nocturnes, a collection of occasionally brilliant short stories), Connolly returns to the character who made his name, PI Charlie Parker. After stretching his literary muscles, growing within these other forms, does he return even stronger than before, as I'd thought he must? Rather disappointingly, I'm not sure.

A disappearance kicks off the events of The Black Angel. The disappearance of a young woman from the streets of New York (indeed, very much a young woman of the streets of New York). Those who've taken her think she has no one, think there is no one to care and no one who'll come. They're wrong. For the girl is blood to Louis, friend of Charlie Parker. Despite the wishes of Parker's partner Rachel, who wants stability and safety for their new daughter, he undertakes to help his friend follow the trail of the men who have taken his cousin, and who have silently been taking others also. As their violent search progresses through nests of pimps, whores and people of the street, it becomes clear that something far more sinister is going on. Something that has reverberations far beyond New York; something that leads to a slaughter at a motel in Mexico, an apartment decorated with statuettes formed of bone, a sacked French monastery, and a sinister ossuary in Eastern Europe. Parker's journey through these places leads him towards a group known as the Believers, the monstrous, corpulent demon Blackwell, and the prize they ultimately seek: the mythical Black Angel.

Ah, it's good to be back with Parker again. Angel and Louis, too: the sheer force of Louis's emotion is one of the most powerful and dangerous things about this book. Normally so...contained (if that's the right word), now there's a restrained and barbaric rage in him that's rather scary. Especially as in The Black Angel he steps incredibly close to the edge once or twice, and some might say he even falls off. The degree of his violence, probably unnecessary at times, makes you question his character in a rather alarming way. In this sense, The Black Angel is not a comfortable read, but it is not supposed to be. On one level, it is simply the inevitable melding of Gothic horror story and detective novel (more thriller, this time) that Connolly was always leaning towards, but on a deeper level it's a book about evil, darkness. Hell is formed in the minds of the corrupted, and they stalk above the soil not beneath; what havoc's within they wreak without, by their nature. What leads men into evil? What tempts them and corrupts them? Can evil have a benevolent cause, even if it's vengeance? Is it finite? Does evil exist because of man, or is humanity merely an outlet?

It's a scary, disturbing novel, especially towards the end when its dominant allele begins to show, when "horror" takes over. As a detective novel, it's less sucessful than his previous books, and that might be why I feel some small (very small, though) portion of disappointment. Because it seems more of a horror-thriller than a detective novel, its happenstances seem almost destined, predetermined, as if Parker is simply treading a laid-out course to an inevitable end.

Connolly is also not as good at depicting the street culture which takes up so much of the first half; he's far better when immersed in the esoterica of chandeliers constructed from bones, (as an example). It's not that his depiction of that culture is not good, it's just that he's so much more interesting, riveting and original, when he's giving the gothic background to his story, daubing pentacles on the floor of his story. Anyway, that's a minor thing. More important is the fact that this book is, well, a bit long. It's written brilliantly, with Connolly's usual lyric flare for the gothic macabre, but it's still too long by about 100 pages. Thus, it's not as quick and purely thrilling as The Killing Kind, and because it feels a little drawn-out it doesn't feel as beautifully twisted as The White Road. It's only when Connolly really gets into the Believers, Sedlec, and bones that the whole thing sparks with grim ancient gothic life. Oh, and the vampiric Brightwell, who is the most chilling fictional villain since Connolly's own Mr Pudd. He really does excel at creating these repellent, deformed villains that make the flesh creep. His representations of evil are inspiring, which is almost paradoxical. Their arcane originality certainly carries a good sense of the fascination that evil has for some.

Though it's a bit long, and though Connolly doesn't always dwell in the places he should, The Black Angel is an impressive, fascinating and thrilling book. It's revelations regarding Parker's nature mark it as a significant milestone in the series. It's almost a culmination of all the books so far. Indeed, Parker himself has come full circle: with a new partner and child as hostages to fortune once again, The Black Angel could perhaps provide Parker with another, darker, beginning.

Dark and Magisterial
Dark, mystical and magisterial, few writers can match the metaphysical richness of Connolly's prose. His works have always been as much explorations of the nature of evil as conventional serial killer thrillers, and here he brings this supernatural element to the fore without sacrificing credibility. This is Connolly's finest novel to date, and the best book I have read in some time. I enjoyed it so much it sent me back to reread the earlier entries in the series

Compulsively readable, beautifully written, and emotionally and viscerally thrilling, this is Connolly back at his best.

A supernatural thriller : be warned.
I loved the first three John Connolly novels covering the Charlie Parker and his friends Angel and Louis. There was always a hint of the supernatural about them but these always seemed to relate to dreams and I found their real word setting both fascinating and disturbing.
Its a personal thing but I am mildly disappointed with the direction he has now taken. It has to my mind moved in the realm of pure supernatural fiction/horror and while that is to some people's taste it is not to mine.
It is superbly written and very tense and exciting but I just feel the other worldly influences take away some of the sympathy you have for the main protagonists.
How can you empathise with them when they are beseiged by something which is not human.
So in conclusion a disappointment but I still read it in two days flat! He is a great writer I just think the series has become a bit lost and confused.