The Poe-esque opening line launches another somber, disturbing narrative from Connolly, who writes seamlessly about an array of forces both criminal and supernatural, killings, and torture alongside the plethora of more prosaic human failings that he delineates so compassionately. The novel's focus is a small airplane that crashed in Maine's Great North Woods near the atmospherically named town of Falls End. Here is a zone where magnetic forces are askew, where the lost soul of a child wanders, where an altar to idolatry is constructed. Private eye Charlie Parker in his 12th outing (after The Burning Soul) is trying to locate the plane and retrieve from it a list of names, thereby preventing that list from falling into the wrong hands.
VERDICT Though scarred by murder, grief, despair, separation, physical and psychic wounds, loss, and revenge, Parker—whose resilience itself verges on the supernatural—shines in his fundamental decency. Strongly recommended for plot, characterization, authenticity, angels, gay assassination team, horror, humor, and humanity. [See Prepub Alert, 7/15/12.]
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