THE KILLING KIND

AUTHOR: John Connolly

TITLE:  The Killing Kind

BLURB: Nobody wants to believe that Grace Peltier committed suicide: not Curtis, her father; not former US senator Jack Mercier; and not private detective Charlie Parker, who has been hired to investigate the circumstances of her death.

But when a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of the Aroostook Baptists, a religious community that disappeared almost forty years earlier, Parker realises that their deaths and the violent passing of Grace Peltier are part of the same mystery, one that has its roots in her family history and in the origins of the shadowy organisation known as the Fellowship.

The third instalment in the Charlie Parker detective series introduces us to Elias Pudd and his secret weapon of eight-legged assassins. A long-time arachnophobe I squirmed my way through the passages where Pudd does his dirty work. Enough to keep me awake and begging for more.

Connolly introduces The Fellowship in what will become a regular dance with the notion of deranged groups of people with an agenda that falls just short of world domination. While twisting plots are de rigour for Charlie Parker novels, Connolly takes the time to make sure we know ‘why’ his characters do what they do as well as ‘how’ and lets us see under the lid of the checkered past of small town America. He does this in a way that’s unobtrusive and makes you feel like you’re just getting to know your neighbour’s idiosyncrasies – not neighbours any one of us would want to have to close our eyes and sleep next door too.

Didn’t quite grab me the way the first two novels did but it still left me wanting more, please.