John Connolly – The Lovers

ISBN: 9781444704679

What if you were haunted by a pair of lovers whose desire for your destruction was so strong that it defied both death and time? A defiance whose ability to regenerate itself in physical terms makes mortality seem a desperately facile illusion and inconvenience. This novel explores the background of Connolly’s detective Charlie Parker, revisiting the stories surrounding his dead Policeman father whose career ended infamously with his suicide after a seemingly senseless killing of two local, unarmed teenagers.

Charlie Parker finds that the past is shrouded by veils of deceit perpetuated by lonely, secretive old men whose motivations and predilections have crippled their lives. And yet the truth seems utterly incredible and even diabolical. There is no release through truth, just a terrible stumble down into a modern day Hades where nothing is worshipped except desire.

I found this book utterly compelling to read; marrow deep horror and a seeping awareness that Connolly’s universe contains creatures whose morality is irrecoverably buried in some Dantean hell. The ‘lovers’ of the title do not even know that they are lovers and a fated couple until the evil that is their mutual destiny begins to inabit their souls like some deadly lodger.

Place, atmosphere and sensory impression combine to prevent any desire to sleep. One of the most engrossing and enthralling books I have read in a very long time.

And where you can only be saved by the dead. Your tragic, loving dead.

Not theirs.

Reviewed By: Tusitala

Posted in Book Reviews