The Woman in the Woods by John Connolly, Book Review

The Woman in the Wood sees the enigmatic Charlie Parker back in action. He is as busy as his Irish author, John Connolly, whose 16^th book in the series this is. (This is in addition to numerous other works). Why has Connolly got such a large following? He delivers, from page one, and he keeps it fresh.

I’ll give you a small sample from the opening scene, which finds Charlie Parker in his friend’s bar in Portland. ‘The presence of the bar was indicated solely by a sign on the sidewalk, required because the bar was set back from the street on the first floor of an old warehouse, and would otherwise have been difficult, if not impossible, to find. Perhaps this was why it appealed to Louis. Given the opportunity, Louis might even have dispensed with the sign entirely, and supplied details of the bar’s location only to those whose company he was prepared to tolerate, which meant that maybe five people in the world would have been burdened with the responsibility of keeping it in business.’ That would be me if I had a bar. 

I find books about missing children particularly disturbing, and this one belongs to this category. When the corpse of a woman who had recently given birth is discovered in a wood, the search for the baby is on. However, not only the police, who usually follow rules, and Charlie Parker, who now and again doesn’t, are in the hunt for the missing child, but someone altogether more sinister is in pursuit, someone with a dangerous disregard for rules. 

Some of us are vaguely aware of guardian angels and more destructive otherworldly forces, but Charlie Parker has a gift or call it a curse. I’m glad I can’t see those who have passed, but Charlie has a strange insight into the realm of the dead and on occasion is even visited by his dead child. In this investigation, forces on both sides of the curtain play their part. 

On a lighter note, Charlie Parker has three cars which he uses according the task he faces. In this book, his beloved Mustang suffers the consequences of his precarious and dangerous work and Parker has to resort to either his ‘crappy’ Taurus which holds unpleasant associations with a burning truck or to his 2002 Audi A4 ‘that made him feel like an accountant that worked out of a strip mall, and not a good one.’ :)

It doesn’t matter to me which car Charlie Parker uses to visit my bar, he’ll always find a welcome.

The Women in the Woods was released in April 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton in Hardback, at £16.99. Also available in eBook.