Charlie Gets the Bird - Rated 
John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968, and saw his first book - "Every Dead Thing" - published in 1999. It went on to be nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel and won the 2000 Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel. It also introduced Charlie Parker, a former police officer and PI. "The White Road" was first published in 2002, and is the fourth book in the Charlie Parker series.
Charlie Parker - who has picked up the very obvious nickname `Bird' - lives in Scarborough, Maine. He has recently moved house and lives with his dog (a friendly soul called Walter) and his girlfriend, Rachel. The couple have been together for around a year and a half, and - with their first child together on the horizon - have only recently moved in together. It's not Charlie's first crack at domestic bliss, however - he has been married before, though his wife and daughter were killed three years previously.
Cassie Blythe, a Portland girl, has been missing for six years and is presumed dead by the police. Her parents still hope she might be alive, even if they don't really believe it. With the case stalled at the police department, they had been employing a PI called Arnold Sundquist to look into her disappearance. Sundquist, in return, has spent the last two years doing very little on their behalf for $1500 a month. Realising he's about to lose a steady pay-cheque, Sundquist pays an ex-con called Bear to claim he'd seen the girl - alive - in Mexico. Unfortunately for him, nobody buys it and Charlie takes over the case.
However, a phone call from Elliot Norton interrupts Charlie before he's even got started. Norton is an old friend who had worked in the Brooklyn DA's office when Charlie was a cop there. He has now moved back home to Charleston, and wants Charlie's help with a case. Norton is representing a black teenager called Atys Jones, who has been accused of raping his white girlfriend and then beating her to death. Norton is convinced he's innocent - to the point he's put his own house up as security for his client's bail. However, the victim's father - Earl Larousse - is an exceptionally rich and influential man, and there is a real fear that Jones may not live to stand trial. Norton wants some help moving Jones to a safe house and checking the evidence but can't find a PI in South Carolina willing to help him. After some initial concerns, Charlie eventually decides to do the right thing.
However, Charlie has troubles of his own. One of his previous sparring partners, the Rev Aaron Faulkner - known to some as the Preacher - is currently in Thomaston State Prison pending trail for murder. Charlie had been involved in his arrest, a situation that had left Faulkner's son and daughter dead. Faulkner's son had been traveling under the name Elias Pudd and, although gone, he is quite clearly not forgotten. The Preacher hasn't quite finished with Charlie either...
Luckily, though, it isn't Parker against the world - he has two rather grimy sidekicks to help him out. Angel and Louis, who have a very close working relationship, don't try to keep things legal if they don't believe someone deserves to die - and the pair bitterly regret Charlie's decision not to deal conclusively with Faulkner when he had the chance. While their encounter with the Preacher left them scarred - mentally and physically - they will wait for the chance to finish the job themselves.
This is the first book by Connelly I read, and there's quite a bit happening in it - some of it is a little strange at that. (The Preacher himself does seem to have a touch of the supernatural about him). It did regret not having started with the first book in the series. I'm not too sure how much was covered in previous books about the Preacher and Pudd, though I was left with the definite impression that I arrived late at the party. Having said that, I wasn't too badly lost at any point and I did enjoy the book - more than enough for me to look into reading more by Connelly.
...a bit disappointing - Rated 
I have read all of the Charlie Parker series, and even though I finished the book in a couple of days, it left me feeling a bit disappointed. The plot is there, the characters are there, but it never really catches fire like in the previous Charlie Parker books. It's still a good lyric read that a true Charlie Parker fan should not miss.
Poetic prose and relentless murder - Rated 
It has taken four attempts, but now I am convinced that John Connolly is the real thing, a writer of extraordinary talent and one who will have you humming the tunes to his metaphysical imagery. Well, almost. This is the fourth in the Charlie `Bird' Parker series (following Every Dead Thing, Dark Hollow and The Killing Kind) and he just gets better and better with each offering, so much so that I have elevated Connolly to one of my most enjoyable authors in my own little library of personal favourites.
If only there wasn't so much killing! Just as in the three previous outings, we have central character and private investigator Parker, his wonderful back-up crew Louis and Angel, and his girlfriend Rachel. Apart from them, almost everyone else dies - and there are a lot of others! Parker's not very often directly responsible, but as seems to be the trend in this series, death follows him around every single corner and although the majority of the victims are baddies, I am beginning to find this widespread carnage just a little wearisome. But there are so many pleasures within the pages of this book that many readers won't mind the violence at all, for Connolly's writing is for the most part wonderfully stylish, his sense of imagery masterful and his research into his given subjects - be they people, locations or wildlife - is simply awesome.
This is Connolly's tightest and most coherent novel yet, with an unwavering plot-line that for once does not include any mafia figures - possibly because he killed them all off in the previous three novels, I guess. We learn, at last, of the makings of Louis and Angel many years before, the better to understand what makes them who they are today. Bird has temporarily moved into new territory in the shape of South Carolina, and initially aims to help out an old lawyer buddy who is representing a young black man accused of murdering the attractive daughter of a very wealthy white local tycoon, in an environment that even today makes it very difficult for black people to obtain legal justice in a highly prejudiced society which still harbours associations with the Ku Klux Klan. It's just the tip of the iceberg however, because there's bad blood running between the families of both the victim and the accused that dates back generations, and eventually Bird finds that there are some very dark cover-ups, some in the present and some in the past, that he needs to unearth before he can get to the root of what's going on. To add a little spice to the mix, it emerges that the Reverend Faulkner is still alive and able to exert deadly influence even from his prison cell, an elderly but highly evil man who some of us might have thought had died at the end of The Killing Kind but who has returned to seek vengeance on Bird for his sins.
One of the trademarks of the Bird series has been his occasional and usually involuntary ability to communicate with the dead. This theme is taken to a deeper level in The White Road, and to an extent it serves to explain the reasons for what has gone on before, in Maine and in New Orleans, and although there are thankfully far fewer `please buy my previous book' references in the story this time, the subtlety of their mentionings serves to better link the four tales together. I found this a most welcome change. What I don't want Connolly to change though is his prose, which enables him to stand tall among his peers, and if I may I would like to quote from this novel just so that the unfamiliar can sample a taste of this very creative author's imagination:-
"Around the trunk, a vine weaves. Its leaves are broad, and from each node springs a cluster of small green flowers. The flowers smell as if they are decomposing, festering, and in daylight they are black with flies drawn by the stench. This is Smilax herbacea, the carrion flower. There is not another one like it for a hundred miles in any direction. Like the black oak itself, it is alone of its kind. Here, in Ada's Field, the two entities co-exist, parasite and saprophyte: the one fuelled by the lifeblood of the tree, the other drawing its existence from the lost and the dead.
"And the song the wind sings in its branches is one of misery and regret, of pain and passing. It calls over untilled fields and one-room shacks, across acres of corn and mists of cotton. It calls to the living and the dead, and old ghosts linger in its shade.
"Now there are lights on the horizon and cars on the road. It is July 17, 1964 and they are coming. They are coming to see the burning man."
If you enjoy classical writing successfully married to a contemporary style, then you will love The White Road and its predecessors in the Bird Series. Absolutely recommended.
Good but not his best - Rated
I think Connolly is fine writer and have enjoyed reading his other novels. This book did not spoil my enjoyment but I didn't think it was one of his best.
I found that Connolly seemed to go off on tangents and overcomplicate the the story at hand. Chapters on characters histories, both new and old, seemed unnecessary and felt like padding rather than integral information to the plot.
The story itself, whilst interesting and readable, just felt as if there was too much bulk and that when you finish you wonder if it really added anything to an otherwise excellent series.
The White Road - Rated
This was not a bad read but I was disappointed. A lot of characters and a lot of plot, which doesn't seem to go anywhere. It covers a lot of ground already trodden in the first three Charlie Parker novels and fails to add anything really new.
I'm left wondering where this series can go next, how much evil can Parker and his loved ones believably face? On a positive note there is some closure for a few characters, it remains to be seen whether they will return.
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