Every Dead Thing - John Connolly

 Every Dead Thing  (1999) is the first Charlie Parker thriller and Connolly's first book.  Parker is a former NYPD detective who let the job get to him.  He took to drink and neglected his wife and daughter.  Then, one night, he staggered home to find his wife and daughter monstrously butchered.

Two years on, having left the force, Parker is completely sober and 100% forcused on capturing the killer.  He contacts his old partner and gets an informal gig hunting for a missing woman.  This leads him to a philanthropist widow, a local mobster, and the person responsible for a chain of serial murders - but not his serial murders.  So Parker moves on to New Orleans and hooks up with FBI contacts and local NOPD in another chain of murders.

The problem, ostensibly, is that Every Dead Thing is actually two novels, one set and solved in New York, the other likewise in New Orleans.  Even more problematic, they are in many ways the same novel done twice - mob links, serial killers, Parker allowed more access to police and FBI than would ever be allowed.  It is also very long.  And yet, for all that, it works.  It works very well indeed.  The overarching story of Parker's quest links the two main storylines sufficiently to keep us going.  The characters, especially Parker, are deeply drawn and engaging.  The narrative tone - first person Parker - is pitch perfect.  He is never a man in control, always a man in recovery.  Side characters, the New York killer couple Angel and Louis, the voodoo momma in deepest Louisiana, even the mobsters and their lead assassins, draw us in.  I didn't work out who the killer was in either North or South, and especially not both, which is always a good thing.

There are now twenty Parker novels.  I enjoyed Connolly's non-Parker novel He (see review below) so much that I decided to try Parker and now I'm hooked.

The Shameless - Ace Atkins

Before finding The Shameless, all I knew of Ace Atkins was that he had been chosen to continue the Spenser novels of the late Robert B Parker.  Now it turns out that Atkins has written a whole bunch of novels in his own right, including a hatful of True Crime Novels which seem right up my street.

The Shameless is the ninth in his Quinn Colson series.  It matters not at all that I hadn't read the previous eight - Atkins has used the ingenious device of a couple of podcasters from New York who come to Tibbehah County, Mississippi, to investigate a young man's mysterious death thirty years earlier, who inevitably unearth Colson's back-story.  Colson was at school with the late Brandon Taylor; both were avid hunters given to disappearing into the woods.  Quinn Colson famously came back, poor old Brandon didn't.  Eventually the local sheriff found him with his brains blown out.  Suicide, the sheriff decided.  The sheriff back then was Quinn Colson's uncle.  He, too, shot himself twenty years later.

Back in 1990 Quinn Colson and his best friend Boom were teenage tearaways.  Then they joined the military, became rangers, served in Afghanistan and became heroes.  Boom came home missing an arm.  Quinn returned to become sheriff.  Now he is married to Maggie who, back in the day, just happened to be Brandon Taylor's girlfriend.  When he married Maggie, Quinn also took on her son from her previous marriage - who, of course, is called Brandon.

While the podcasters did into the past, Quinn Colson has more than enough trouble to deal with in the present day.  Senator Jimmy Vardaman is running for the governorship.  Vardaman is a huckster, claiming to be against the corrupt political system, promising to bring traditional values back to Mississippi.  Obviously he is corrupt as hell, riding on criminal money instead of the traditional vested interests.  Quinn Colson doesn't care a damn for Vardaman or his personal militia; he is after the Syndicate who control him.

It's a dense and dangerous system in which it's well night impossible to tell the bad guys from the good.  It gets even more complicated when an anonymous letter to Maggie Colson leads to Quinn finding the remains of a young woman, not far from where Brandon Taylor was found, dating back to the same time he died.

I loved the deep back-story to The Shameless.  I really enjoyed Atkins' writing style - sharp, intelligent, but retaining a flavour of William Faulkner and other chroniclers of the Deep South.  I've got some serious catching up to do with Mr Atkins.

The Gentlemen's Hour - Don Winslow

 The other day Don Winslow announced on Twitter that he's retiring after he completes his current City on Fire trilogy.  There will be no new novels published, but thankfully there are plenty of not-so-old novels just appearing on this side of the Atlantic.  Take this, for example, from 2010, the follow up to The Dawn Patrol.  The Gentlemen's Hour is what happens immediately after the Dawn Patrol on the surf off Pacific Beach, San Diego, California.  It is when the forty-somethings take over from the thirtyish surfer dudes.

Boone Daniels (brilliant name) is on the cusp.  A former cop turned PI, he is getting a little old for the Dawn Patrol.  A new generation is coming up.  Maturity calls - the need to do something with his life, to earn some money, perhaps even start a new relationship.  Since his longtime squeeze Sunny left to ride the pro surfer circuit Boone has been flirting with Petra (Pete) Hall an upmarket British attorney, though he can't quite bring himself to seal the deal on account of old loyalties and fiscal inequalities.

But then Petra offers him a job.  The prestigious practice she works for has taken on the case of Corey Blasingame, the racist skinhead who killed the San Diego surf guru Kelly Kuhio (K2) with a single superman punch.  Much against his better judgement Boone takes the gig.  After all, what can he do?  There are five eyewitnesses to the crime and Corey confessed straight away, no excuses, no explanation.  It's the refusal to explain that causes Boone the problem and sets him against his best bud Johnny Banzai, the cop who took the confession, and the rest of the Dawn Patrol.

Meanwhile Boone picks up another job courtesy of a regular at the Gentlemen's Hour, a millionaire who wants Boone to keep tabs on his wife who might be indulging in a little extramarital fun and games.  It's the sort of work Boone despises but, hey, he needs the money.  And this time it's not the Dawn Patrol he finds himself up against.  It's the Cartels, their expert torturer Jones, and the full weight of corporate California.

It's all pure Winslow - the modern master at his very best.  All present tense and taut as a tripwire.  I loved every second.