Every Dead Thing by John Connolly Hodder & Stoughton, 485pp, 10 in UK
Because of the hype attached to it - a £350,000 advance from Hodders, $1 million from Connolly's American publisher - this is a difficult one to review. The author's agent, getting in on the act, has attempted to pre-empt negative reviews by maintaining that any knocking of the book will be motivated by envy. . However, invoking the reviewer's version of the Hippocratic Oath - that of objectivity at all costs - one must push on regardless. After all, money alone can't ensure success, any more than it can bring happiness, even if it does go a long way in that direction.
The first thing that must be said is that Every Dead Thing is a big and involving read. It is obvious that Connolly can write, can plot, can handle the technical side of things, and can put order on a mountain of research. He gets into the American idiom from the start and no stage Irishness is allowed to intrude. The protagonist is Charlie "Bird" Parker, an embittered former New York City detective, whose wife and three-year-old daughter have been slaughtered in their Brooklyn apartment by a serial killer. Before the murders Parker had already been well on the way to becoming a drunk and alienating his wife; now he quits the police department in a fit of remorse, then sets out to find the perpetrator of the grisly killings.
His investigation leads him to uncover a paedophile ring, something that occurs around the 250-page mark, which seems a logical finishing point for the book. Not so. Instead, the plot takes on some new twists, the scene shifts to New Orleans and environs, new baddies start twirling their gory locks, and a final resolution is effected wherein the original killer - called The Travelling Man - is finally unmasked and suitably punished. By throwing so much richness into the pot, Connolly exhibits one of the errors to which many first-time authors are prone: too much, rather than not enough. There is a surfeit of material in Every Dead Thing, sufficient to sustain two or three thrillers, and judicious pruning would have led to a leaner and more taut book.
It is also obvious that Mr Connolly has read long and deep in modern American practitioners of the genre, such as James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, et al, and, although he has unquestionably a style of his own, at times he steers close to imitation, especially in scene setting and plot elucidation. The manner in which Parker finally discovers the identity of the serial killer is also rather weak, and the ready willingness of the forces of authority to believe him strains credulity. And e raises its ugly head in the abduction of the available girlfriend is surely a cliche. In the long run, these could be set down as minor faults when judged against the good points of the book.
Every Dead Thing is a refreshing exercise in thriller writing by a new author who is not afraid to take chances. The violence is explicit and graphic, but not gratuitous. Serial killers as depicted here are only too prevalent in modern society, the Irish version having been visited upon us in recent years. It will be interesting to see where Mr Connolly goes from here. The blurb tells us that he is already working on a second work featuring Charlie "Bird" Parker. Now that the hype is dying down, the heat will be off and he won't have to try so hard. This could well result in a tighter, less excitedly plotted book, and one all the better for it. In the meantime, prepare to have the spine tingled by this one.