Rating: 
Summary: Read it with the lights bright and the doors firmly locked!
Review: So much did this novel disturb me that at times when I wanted to put it down (mainly to sleep) I had to read on to find a place in the story line at which I could leave it. If a book, any book has such an effect on me as a reader then it's done its job! Every Dead Thing is written in the first person (not my favourite style to read) and what emerges is a novel that is both individualistic yet somehow collective in that it taps into a variety of common human insecurities: the death of those close to us, the abuse of the innocent and the chill of our personal destiny being controlled by another. For his first novel John Connolly has written an outstanding thriller that is crammed full of suspense. The plot centres on Charlie Parker, a former police detective as he battles both with alcohol and the horrors that torment him following the violent murder of his wife and child. Parker throughout the course of Every Dead Thing attempts to track down a child killer, while at the same time graduating towards the activities of a serial murderer known as the Travelling Man. It would be unfair to elaborate on the plot in more depth. It is however, realistic to note that Every Dead Thing is at times standard thriller material, a taut page turner, believably frightening and totally engaging while at other times it adopts a more dark and menacing approach that takes the reader certainly beyond what I've previously experienced from other books defined as thrillers. I recommend Every Dead Thing to you, read it with the lights bright and the doors firmly locked!
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down!
Review: If you like Jeffery Deaver, James Patterson or Patricia Cornwell you will love Every Dead Thing. Its spooky! And well written, The characters are lively and exciting!
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious
Review: This book is a tedious read. The book starts promising: Bird's wife and daughter are brutally murdered and Bird (an ex-policeman and alcoholist) is (most of the time) busy finding the person who did it. The first 100 pages or so the book keeps you spellbound. Looks like a winner ... ? Well, eventually it is not. Bird keeps meeting many (too many) new characters page after page. He travels from place to place, with numerous flashbacks. The murderer is a real lunatic. He kills and strips the victims in various awful ways. But it is all too much ! This book is too complicated, and it lacks a real thrill. There is no focus. This book sure is a page-turner, in that way that you want to finish this book as soon as possible so you can read another, better one.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome book
Review: I loved this book! I am always looking for new writers in the mystery/serial killer genre, and was just thrilled with Connolly's writing. As a long time fan of John Sandford's work, I was happy to find another writer I would put in that category. Some of the scenes were pretty gruesome and I figured out who the killer was prior to the book's ending, but these things only added to my enjoyment. I can't wait for another of Connolly's works to hit print. Excellent debut!
Rating:
Summary: A most laborious read.
Review: I could easily just say "ditto" to Mr. Gonnella's review. There was some clever writing and witty dialog in the fist quarter of the book. Then it bogged down. Too many characters, too many flashbacks, too many subplots...just confusion. I did manage to read the entire book and it got slower as it came to a conclusion...just the opposite of what I look for in a thriller.
Rating:
Summary: WELCOME TO A NEW GENRE
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed John Connolly's book "Every Dead Thing". There are plots and sub plots - a book to make you think. I enjoyed the fact that I was challenged and the story wasn't made 'idiot proof' Descriptive characters and locations - a killer known only as The Travelling Man. Charlie 'Bird' Parker as the main character was a person I would think I knew he became so real. His pain, fear and torment well written. Welcome to a new type of Murder Mystery writer - the thinking mans author! When the next 'Bird' Parker due out?
Rating: 
Summary: A text trying to be a book.
Review: First of all - I enjoyed this bestseller. It's so contrived, so cliched, so delightfully stupid I liked every minute of contact with these precious pages. Mr. Connolly is a parasite - the word is not an insult, it defines his writing style pretty well. He snatches the bits from everything to put his book together, many traditions, cuisines and locales are milked for anything he can use. He starts the book a la Thomas Harris, then stops, unable to continue, but he doesn't wait for the inspiration to come - he simply slips into the hard-boiled/noir routine that carries him on for the next couple hundreds pages - all of them unrelated to the main plot. The Bird drives into a SMALL TOWN. He checks in a SHABBY MOTEL. He goes to the LOCAL BAR and fights the LOCAL BULLIES. He has problems with the LOCAL LAW. In every city we are given a lecture on a warring criminal clans that rule them. There are Italians and Jamaicans in New York, Joe Bones men and Cajuns in New Orleans. Don't know why but Bird is a sucker for coming to a boss's stronghold to be surrounded immediately by the glowering and trigger-fingering henchmen and then invited by a criminal tsar for a conversation. In such way he visits Italians, Joe Bones and Cajuns. Pity he skipped Jamaicans - another exotic tradition to throw in. I liked so much his final trip to Joe Bones castle - he stumbled over so many corpses to get a candid interview. I have a definite impression that Mr.Connelly lives out his most cherished journalistic dream at these pages - to access someone unaccessible at any cost. It's evident John is a total outsider to the American life. How did you like "F..king Frank" Forbes, the doctor who rapes or attempts to rape ALL his patients? Surprisingly, he spends his life not behind the bars but in a lavish Manhattan office. John, that's weird. It's very, very stupid. And all these shootouts claiming dozens dead! John's car swishes past a "Credibility" sign at full speed and leaves it hundreds miles behind. Now about the maniac. After Silence Of The Lambs, Kiss The Girls and Seven can you imagine any other kind of monster but an overeducated Biblical weirdo? John can not. So we have to read about all that Valverde-Schmalverde and witness the profiling by the Bird's lady friend, who evidently thinks that profiling and blubbering are the same thing. "He wants to give a lesson in human mortality...bluh-bluh-bluh..." It seems everyone present was embarrassed by these "insights". Everyone repeats the name The Travelling Man without questioning it's origin. But this traveler operates only in two cities - New York and New Orlean. Not much of a travel. Another pseudo-meaningful name chosen for no reason at all. And who is the real monster is still a question. If you compare Bird's body count to the number of the maniac's victims Charlie will emerge as the undisputable winner. And the less bloodthirsty of the readers would certainly wish him dead with his wife and child - that would have saved the dozens of lifes. I flinched every time John decided to come up with a joke. Here is the short anthology: Charles Parker: - I would not let a dog be treated by you because you'd probably try to f..k it...-(p.88) Woolrich: - When I die, they'll find beignet crumb up the crack of my ass.- (p.46)- By the way - did they find it? It's a pity this time Mr.Connolly failed to include the detailed autopsy report. Angel:- I was a kid and looked like him I'd cut my dick off and make money singin' castrato, 'cos it ain't gonna be no use no other way.-(p.99) Rachel:- My last relationship ended six month ago and I think my hymen may be growing back. - (p.362) Since that debility comes from the different sources and there is no other kind of humor in the book I understand that's the way Mr.Connolly himself jokes when he is in the mood. It's evident he does not see or hear the things and the people he puts in his work, he does not have any images in his mind but the ready chunks of typed text he transfers to a page. " He swallowed the last of his whiskey, the ice cubes rattling against the glass like old bones"(p.60). Now imagine the ice cubes melting in a glass of whisky that was sipped, not gulped. They are solid and moist, they click against the glass with the sound very much unlike the sound of the dry and fragile old bones. "A discarded newspaper skimmed the sidewalk with a sound like the whispering of a dead lover"(p.130) How poetic! How do the dead lovers whisper? "...her shirt brushing my hand with a sound like water sizzling on a hot metal"(p.357) John, you have to download a new, more accurate sound samples archive to your brain. "Dim light lanced through the curtains..."(p.297) How the dim light could lance through? It seeps. But the second part of that sentence is even better. Even though English is not my native language I feel something's wrong with the phrase -"my watchface glowed the time at 8.35 a.m." There is a lot of meaningless and very unnecessary passages. One of my favorites is - "If I had been able to turn, I would have seen the lights of Old Orchard Beach, but I was not able to turn."(p.375) - Yeah, if I was flying over Kathmandu at night I would see the city lights but now it's not night and I am not flying over Kathmandu. And my special little gem shows Mr.Connolly's power of imagination and originality in all it's splendor. On the page 502 Charlie enters the maniac's lair full of preserved victims body parts and what he sees right before his face? - " ...A thick spider web...the brown drained husks of trapped insects shivering in the vibrations from the opening door." John, I hope you blush when you call yourself a writer... Charles sits in a cafe and flirts with the lady psychologist: "- I know the feeling. I used to be like that with Ben and Jerry's until I realised I was starting to look like one of the cartons.- She smiled again..."(p.154). Ain't we coquettish! The only problem is that just several pages and hours ago Bird's daughter's face was sent to him floating in a jar. Which did not prevent the desperate father from having a good time. Culturally I can profile Mr.Connoly as the real maniac behind the text. He is painfully aware of his creative impotence. He feels his characters are just paper thin and he wants them to come alive, he flays them to see flesh and blood under the layer of word-splattered paper. He overdoes it. He needs all the compassion and sympathy for his lifeless creature so we learn that Charlie's father took his life - and here is the suicide story - and his mother died of cancer - and John supplies the story of her demise. Then the wife and child are killed. You have to be heartless to feel nothing for the guy! The book's editors Sue Fletcher and Bob Mecoy either decided to do their work on vacation and forgot the script at home or sweated over the text and what we have now is the result of the superb job they did. But then how weak and pathetic Mr.Connolly's initial offering was if all the editorial efforts resulted in that intellectually inferior and amorphous mass?I just could not believe my eyes reading all these "stunning debut" and "stylishly written tale" comments. P.S. The page numbers are given according to the Coronet Books Hodder & Stoughton edition of 1999.
Rating:
Summary: Every Dead Thing
Review: Gripping, Intense thrill ride from first to last page. I couldn't put this one down. John Connolly knows how to hold the reader. This is one of the best books I have read in quite a while. I look forward to further works by this author. If you liked "Silence o the Lambs" or "Hannibal" then you will want to read this one.
Rating:
Summary: A HARD TO FOLLOW THRILLER
Review: Charlie Parker is a former NYPD detective tormented by the murders of his wife and daughter. Charlie relives the murders by visions of their mutilated bodies. Charlie returns to the force to investigate new crimes, leading him to a psychic woman who explains the murders are the work of "The Traveling Man" and they are happening again. I could not finish this book. It has too many characters and the plot jumps around TOO MUCH. I will give the author credit for trying to create something original, but in the process created something hard to follow. The opening of the novel was enough to hold my attention, but after 100 pages I could not care what happened, and could not keep concentrated on the many characters, and various sub plots. Despite high critical acclaim, there are better serial killer novels out there. Nick Gonnella
Rating:
Summary: wow!
Review: This book had my husband and I fighting over reading rights. Great characters, amazing plot, page turning thrill ride! I bought this in the airport in Sydney Australia, and can't wait for his next book. I am almost contemplating a trip back to Australia just to get the new book!
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