First Look: A TIME OF TORMENT by John Connolly

The latest Charlie Parker offering from John Connolly is one of those sumptuous annual treats. A TIME OF TORMENT (Hodder & Stoughton) is the 14th in the Charlie Parker series, which – as of the previous outing, A SONG OF SHADOWS – features a Charlie Parker ‘reborn’ to a new purpose. To wit:

Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart. He was imprisoned, brutalized.
  But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death but was saved, of the ones who tormented him, and an entity that hides in a ruined stockade.
  Parker is not like other men. He died, and was reborn. He is ready to wage war.
  Now he will descend upon a strange, isolated community called the Cut, and face down a force of men who rule by terror, intimidation, and murder.
  All in the name of the being they serve.
  All in the name of the Dead King.

  A TIME OF TORMENT will be published on April 7th. For more, clickety-click here …

Winter Wonderland

As I understand it, John Connolly’s THE WOLF IN WINTER topped the bestseller charts in Ireland and the UK while I was away on holidays, which is marvellous news but not entirely surprising – to my mind, THE WOLF IN WINTER is one of the finest of John Connolly’s books to date. I was particularly impressed by its ambition, as you might guess from this snippet from an Irish Examiner interview published last week:

THE WOLF IN WINTER finds Charlie Parker investigating the disappearance of a young woman and the apparent murder of her father, a homeless man who lives on the streets of Portland in Maine. Far from resting on his laurels, the 46-year-old author has blended a novel of social conscience into his traditional private eye tale, and also explores themes of ancient and contemporary spirituality.
  “It’s because I enjoy doing it,” says John when I ask why it is that he seems so restlessly self-challenging. “I love what I do, and if you love what you do you take a kind of craftsman’s pride in wanting to produce the best work possible. I know that there are writers who object to that word ‘craft’, who say that a book is art or it’s nothing. But I don’t get to decide what’s art and what isn’t. That’s a function of time as much as anything else. And all art is a function of craft. You work with craft and if you’re lucky there’s a moment of transcendence and you produce something that just slips past that barrier, whatever it may be, and becomes something slightly greater than its parts. But you don’t get to decide those things. All you can do is sit down each time and write the best book you can.”

  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, Declan Hughes reviewed THE WOLF IN WINTER for the Irish Times, and a very fine piece it is too. You’ll find it here …

Cometh The Winter, Cometh The Wolf

The launch for John Connolly’s latest Charlie Parker novel, THE WOLF IN WINTER (Hodder & Stoughton) takes place in Dublin’s Smock Alley tomorrow evening, March 20th:

We are delighted to announce another event our ongoing series of author talks with our neighbours, the Gutter Bookshop. Join us to celebrate the launch of the twelfth Charlie Parker thriller, THE WOLF IN WINTER. John Connolly will be joined by musicians Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell in what promises to be a unique and thrilling evening.

  As I understand it, the Smock Alley venue is entirely booked out, but John also plans a book signing after the event at ye olde Gutter Bookshop. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Hungry Like The Wolf

A new novel from John Connolly is always a treat around these here parts, and something we missed out on in 2013, so there’s an added anticipation to THE WOLF IN WINTER (Hodder & Stoughton), the latest Charlie Parker story. To wit:

The next pulse-pounding thriller in John Connolly’s internationally bestselling Charlie Parker series.
  The community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children’s future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards its own. And at the heart of the Prosperous lie the ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the founders of the town …
  But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to Prosperous. Parker is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, by rage, and by the desire for vengeance. In him the town and its protectors sense a threat graver than any they have faced in their long history, and in the comfortable, sheltered inhabitants of a small Maine town, Parker will encounter his most vicious opponents yet.
  Charlie Parker has been marked to die so that Prosperous may survive.
  Prosperous, and the secret that it hides beneath its ruins …

  THE WOLF IN WINTER will be published in April. For all the details, clickety-click here …