A driven antihero - 4 star

Charlie Parker, retired New York, detective, has gone South to the small town of Cargill, Arkansas. He is a man with a sad past. Driven ever onward in this search for the murderer of his wife Susan and his beloved daughter Jenifer, he is drawn to dark places, where evil dwells and the brutal business of murder is an unwelcome occurrence. The dehumanized bodies of 2 young girls have been exposed, possibly connected to a similar and earlier discovery. The local chief of police Evander Griffin needs a quick resolve to safeguard future investment and development which would ensure the future of this once prosperous community.

For lovers of John Connelly’s brilliant Charlie Parker series this is a prequel with a young detective burdened by the horrors he has witnessed and the great sadness he is doomed forever to carry…..”Either you’re on a crusade said Griffin or you’re trying to find whoever killed your wife and child. My guess is the latter. You’re interested in murders involving mutilation and display, which is what drew you to Cargill”........”Sometimes he believed that he saw them, his lost wife and child. He called glimpses of them in the shadows, or smelled their scent. He conversed with them, and heard their responses. It was not uncommon he knew this conjuring of the dead by the living”.........”he carried himself like someone much older, although that was almost certainly a consequence of all he had endured. He radiated watchfulness without fear, and a self-aware intelligence”.....

An antihero forever doomed to seek out answers to understand the reasoning behind the death of his family, in the hope that it might bring peace but in the knowledge that each day takes him further into the void and the blackness that ultimately awaits him.