The Whisperers by John Connolly

The Whisperers is a mystery, crime, and supernatural novel.  And an overdue library book.  I finished it a while back, but since it must be returned, it is time to review it.

First, I didn't realize when I checked it out that John Connolly is also the author of The Book of Lost Things in which a young boy is lost in the realm of fairy tales.  I read and reviewed it in 2007 and liked it very much.

This novel, however, is part of Connolly's Charlie (Bird) Parker series and a very different style.  Drawn by the cover, I really had no idea what to expect.  The novel is an intriguing mixture of a crime novel and the supernatural.  The surprising thing is how well Connolly makes it work.

P.I. Charlie Parker is asked to look into the suicide of an Iraqi war veteran, but discovers that the death has much wider implications.   The plundering of antiquities from the Iraq National Museum,  information about Post Traumatic Stress, treatment of war veterans, and villains, human and supernatural, are all mixed together.

Sometimes brutal, the novel still engaged me from beginning to end.  I know I read a blog entry somewhere that mentioned this series, but can't remember whose blog it was.  If you've read the series, let me know what you think.  This is the 9th in the series, so I've begun at the "end," so to speak. 

Fiction.  Crime/Mystery/Supernatural.  2010.  409 pages.