Published by Pocket Books Genres: Contempory, Crime, Fiction, Mystery, suspense, thriller
Format: Hardcover
This book is the first in the Charlie Parker series. I have read some of the other books in this series but not the first so I decided to go back to the beginning.
The book opens as Charlie “Bird” Parker has come home to find his wife and daughter dead. They have been murdered and left for him to find by a serial killer known as “The traveling man”. The traveling man has killed before and continues to kill as Parker desperately tries to hunt down and stop him. Parker is full of guilt as he was out drinking as his wife and daughter were being murdered. He has lost his job, is an alcoholic and works as a private detective hell bent on revenge.
He is hired to work a case of a missing young woman. At first he sees no similarities between this missing woman’s case and his families murders but he feels like “the traveling man” is behind things. The search for the missing woman takes him to the deep south were an old woman who cannot see seems to “see” into people’s pain and can sense when the traveling man is coming. Parker is aided by two career criminals who are bound to Parker and a beautiful psychologist. They find a town where terrible things have happened to children, where old murders are tied to current ones.
Connolly doesn’t disappoint. It was nice to go back to the beginning. I can definitely see the character development that has taken place since the beginning. He tends to mix his stories with elements of the supernatural. He writes characters who do not always do the right thing. The law is taken into their own hands and they never seem to suffer any consequences for this. There is a lot of violence so not for the faint of heart.