The Wrath of Angels
"...what never ceases to amaze and delight me is Connolly's ability to maintain his unfeasibly high standards."
Synopsis:
In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of an aeroplane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money: it is power. Hidden in the plane is a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those who believe that it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness.
The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and the serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter.
But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets. Something has survived the crash. And it is waiting . . .
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Review:
I've been a fan of this author since his very first Charlie Parker outing and what never ceases to amaze and delight me is Connolly's ability to maintain his unfeasibly high standards. Charlie and the gang are back and what a delicious slice of gothic noir they have to offer. Much of the story takes place in the Northern Forest in Maine. Just like in all good fairy tales, this is a forest which is dense, dark and mysterious and waiting to trap the unwary traveller. It becomes a character in its own right and is beautifully realised with a crash site that feels wrong, an abandoned fort and a wandering, lonely ghost-child. What Connolly affects supremely well is a sense of menace and dread. His bad-guys are as full of colour as they are of malice and his word choice in evoking this atmosphere is a continual delight. Open the first page and you quickly and effortlessly suspend your view of 'real' life and slip into Connolly's alternative universe, where good and evil are on a continuous collision. Just like pretty much all of this man's work, 'The Wrath of Angels' is a book you want to rush through, but you find that you force yourself to slow down - to savour the language and the experience because you know once you finish this book, you have too long to wait until the next one!