Disquiet
Yesterday, I said that John Connolly’s works are ambiguous about the supernatural. That’s not quite true. I think there’s a reading of the work that Charlie “Bird” Parker, the investigator and main character, has actually broken his brain with all the slaughter he’s had to deal with, but so much of the atmosphere of the novels relies on ghost story and horror scenarios that it’s fair to say that it won’t really be for anyone who’s not keen on that sort of thing, and prefers their thrillers to be more (and it’s a pretty laughable use of the word, all things considered) realistic. Luckily for me, I like this kind of stuff although, again, it’s not particularly clear on the cover, so I wonder how many people get annoyed when they realise what kind of book it is, and how many extra sales the publishing company actually get from the tactic.
I’ve been a fan of Connolly’s since his first Parker novel, Every Dead Thing. Even then, there were supernatural overtones that have increased in occurrence over the series. I think the last one, Black Angel, went a little too far in that direction by suggesting that (spoiler on the way) Parker was an incarnation of a fallen angel. It was also the only one of his novels that lost me a bit halfway through, as I recall putting it down for months before picking it back up again.
The current book, The Unquiet, is much better. The events of the previous novel are skirted around, which is for the best, really. The same themes of betrayal and the cycle of violence are present, and there are few other writers that can create such a dark, corrupt atmosphere from almost poetic prose. That’s probably the biggest difference between this book and Michael Marshall’s The Intruders. Although both are excellent writers, I think Connolly’s style is more elegant and readable, while Marshall’s is deliberately jagged and uneven. It’s interesting to see two different ways of creating something thematically similar.
Connolly’s greatest strength is in his characters, the standouts being Louis and Angel, the hitman and the thief. They’re easily two of the best supporting characters in crime fiction, with the author’s next novel focussing on them. And it’s not just the good guys, either. Connolly has a knack for creating seriously evil antagonists, and uses iconography that’s pretty close to the technique used for comic book villains, a demonic rogue’s gallery not a million miles away from Batman’s, or Dick Tracy’s, and includes the demonic Reverand Faulkner and the corpse-mutilating Travelling Man, the killer of Parker’s wife and child. Merrick, the assassin out to avenge his dead daughter, is a suitable addition to their ranks, and the book is a great continuation of Parker’s story.
