The burning soul - a charlie parker thriller - review

THE BURNING SOUL – A CHARLIE PARKER THRILLER

Written by John Connolly.

The story revolves around Detective Charlie Parker and Randall Haight. Randall Haight has a secret, when he was a teenager. He and his friend killed a 14 year old girl and are allowed to live as different identities after being released by a juvenile court.

Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor’s Bay but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall’s past. He is being tormented by anonymous messages and haunting reminders.

But another 14 year old girl has been missing, this time from Pastor’s Bay, and the missing girl’s family has its own secrets to keep. Now Parker must unravel a web of deceit involving the police, the FBI, a doomed mobster named Tommy Morris, and Randal Haight himself.

Is Randal Haight telling lies?

John Connolly claims his Charlie Parker thrillers as a sequence rather than a series, with each book developing themes, ideas and plots from the preceding books.

Well, this was the first book of John Connolly read by me, and I got mixed feelings reading it. It had a good plot involving a murder as well as kidnapping of teenaged girls and the story also has characters who are pedophiles, but not great enough to make a novel running into more than 400 pages.

The author tries to impress by using too many phrases, imagery and even try to sound supernatural, but the narrative never kept me on my toes desperate to know what will happen next.

After a slow start, the novel gets stuck in the middle and I felt really irritated by the slow pace of narration. The author packs in too many words and never tries to push the story forward but then the story gets too pacy in the end, and the author seems desperate to end the story by cramming many turning points in the story.

The story could well have been cut short as it had a pretty interesting premise

I reserve my judgment on this Novel and maybe, hope to be proved wrong by other thrillers written by John Connolly.


... Suresh M Iyer

 

thanks innerbliss