Every Dead Thing (Charlie Parker Series #1) » (Abridged)

Fans of John Connolly's unique, atmospheric novels have come to know that the cases former NYPD detective Charlie Parker sets out to solve are haunting -- literally haunting.

Have faith. I will find you.

Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge.

When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining -- one where thirty year old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family, a serial killer unlike any other, a monster who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.

Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of career criminals, he becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the...

Philip Oakes

...only layer upon layer of tosh. -- Literary Review