The Black Angel A Thriller John Connolly by John Connolly 9780743487870, 0743487877, B000FCK6R0 instant download after payment.

When a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel -- considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins.

The first 60,000 copies of Irish thriller master Connolly's fifth Charlie Parker novel [arrived] signed, and with a CD. (The latter [featured] tracks that either [played] a role in his darkly atmospheric novels, or [were] favored by their characters: everything from Kate Bush to Neko Case.) But fans won't need that much enticement to pick up his latest set of intricately plotted forays into the violent world of the undead. Parker has settled in Maine, still mourning his murdered wife and child while attempting devotion to his new partner, Rachel, and their infant daughter, Sam. At Sam's christening, Parker's sometime collaborator Louis receives an uninvited guest from New York: his aunt, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter, Alice, an NYC prostitute. It doesn't take much to draw an ambivalent Parker back into the game, and soon he's in New York and stumbling onto clues regarding the Black Angel, a statue associated with a Czech ossuary and sought by various evildoers for centuries—or perhaps a living, bloodthirsty spirit. Trips to the Czech Republic and elsewhere ensue as Parker seeks to know this latest face of evil. Connolly delivers a very intense blend of Parker's authentic soul searching and of his own distinctive, moody grue.(June)
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In the fifth Charlie Parker novel, the private investigator, recently remarried (after the murders of his wife and child), has been trying to pull his life back together. But when his partner's cousin goes missing, Parker can't avoid getting back in the game. And when he realizes the young woman's disappearance is connected to an older, darker mystery, he once again is forced to risk life and sanity in a desperate good-versus-evil battle. Connolly, who resides in Ireland but writes about the U.S. like he's lived there all his life, once again blends the -private-eye novel and the supernatural thriller in a way that's altogether unique. Parker himself, one of the genre's more disturbed heroes, is a complex creation whose depths have still, even through five novels, been barely explored. The Charlie Parker novels are not for everyone (especially those who like their private-eye yarns unencumbered by philosophical or theological overtones), but Connolly has been building a cadre of devoted fans who clamor for his edgy take on the genre. David Pitt
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