Operation Mincemeat, Oh William!, by Elizabeth Strout, and The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

In 2010, I read Operation Mincemeat:  How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory  by Ben MacIntyre, and it remains one of my favorite WWII nonfiction books.  The film with Colin Firth is coming out in 2022, and I can't wait.  Operation Mincemeat trailer.

Oh, William is such a complex mix of human emotions, memories, and revelations.  How well do we know the people we live with for years?  Parents, spouses, children?  Not always as well as we think, and the same is often true about how well we "know" ourselves.  A lovely, character-driven story of a family, Oh, William makes the reader look into themselves and their own relationships.  Now, I have to go back and read Lucy Barton and all of Elizabeth Strout's books that I've missed.

A beautiful cover and a beautifully written book, as many of you have mentioned.  I'm late to reading Elizbeth Strout, but it has been such a satisfying experience.  How ordinary, how extraordinary!

NetGalley/Random House

Family.   Oct. 19, 2021.  Print length:  256 pages.

John Connolly's Charlie Parker series is always full of violence and brutality.  The series isn't for everyone, but I've followed it for years, always rooting for Parker, Louis, and Angel as they fight against supernatural evil.

from description of  The Nameless Ones:  In Amsterdam, four people are butchered in a canal house, their remains arranged around the crucified form of their patriarch, De Jaager: fixer, go-between, and confidante of the assassin named Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland.
They are wrong.
 

Anyone who has read about the Serbian Croatian war is aware of the war crimes, mass murders, and ethnic hatred of that period.  The brutality of the Serbian forces remains a particularly dark stain in history, and Connolly doesn't refrain from the atrocities.

Fans of the series can't help but love Louis and Angel, who add a great deal of dark humor to the books.  The Nameless Ones leaves Charlie Parker in the background as Louis and Angel hunt the Serbian war criminals.

Of course, there is also a supernatural element:  Zorya is an eerie, chilling associate with the Vuksan brothers.  

Trigger Warning:  the book is well-researched, but even though I'd read about some of the atrocities before, they still made difficult reading.  

 read in march; review scheduled for Oct

NetGalley/Atria Books   

Supernatural Thriller.  Oct. 26, 2021.  Print length:  388 pages.

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis and A Book of Bones by John Connolly

At first, I was not sure if I'd be able to read The Good Luck Girls--those girls taken or sold at ten years old to a "Welcome House." On each girl's sixteenth birthday, she is auctioned off before before assuming her role in the brothel.

From description:Westworld meets The Handmaid's Tale in this stunning fantasy adventure from debut author Charlotte Nicole Davis.
Aster, the protectorViolet, the favoriteTansy, the medicMallow, the fighterClementine, the catalyst
THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS
The country of Arketta calls them Good Luck Girls--they know their luck is anything but. Sold to a "welcome house" as children and branded with cursed markings. Trapped in a life they would never have chosen.

Clementine, however, on her sixteenth birthday kills the "brag" or client that won her auction.  With the help of Clem's older sister Aster, several of the girls make a break for freedom.  From that point on, the plot becomes an adventure story with Aster in the lead.  Violet, the favorite who had delighted in getting girls in trouble, demands to go with them because she knows where to find Lady Ghost.

The girls must work together to survive and to find the almost mythical Lady Ghost, hoping that she will be able to remove the "favor," the magical tattoo that brands each of them as welcome girls.  Because they are all dustbloods (with the exception of Violet)-- they are all part of a disenfranchised, oppressed element of society,but without the favor, they would not be recognizable as escaped "good luck girls."

Part dystopian, part adventure, part supernatural, part heist...and all about the inequity of a society that subjugates certain members.  While there are flaws--some elements are not explored or explained, the length of the journey isn't mentioned until the end, and other than the madam of the Green Creek Welcome house, women are largely absent or mentioned only in passing--The Good Luck Girls  nevertheless provides an interesting, adventure-filled plot that addresses a number of social issues.  

I'm glad I kept reading, and I look forward to the next book which I hope will smooth out some of the problems in this intriguing debut novel.

NetGalley/Tor Teen
YA/Fantasy.  Oct. 1, 2019.  Print length:  352 pages.

A Book of Bones by John Connolly is the latest in the Charlie Parker PI/supernatural/horror series.  

I was a little disappointed in this one.  It skips all over the place from Parker and his allies to the villains to new sets of characters to historical inserts.  The writing is excellent as always, but the frequent breaks and historical insertions (while interesting) gives an uneven pace to a long book.

There is a great deal of violence in Connolly's good vs evil conflict.  The sinister, macabre elements are so frequent that they actually become less effective.  When a book is over 700 pages, maintaining suspense and dread is difficult.  Gruesome can only go so far.

Problems: too little of Parker, Angel, and Louis (Bob does a little better), too many interruptions that fracture the pace.

spoiler:  At any rate, this ends the Familists, Quayle, Pallida Mors narrative arc, but the Backers are still in play.

Now, where will Connolly go next?  In spite of my disappointment in A Book of Bones, I wouldn't miss a Charlie Parker book and am eagerly anticipating the next one.

NetGalley/Atria Books
Horror.  Oct. 15, 2019.  Print length:  720 pages.

John Connolly and the Charlie Parker Series

Last month I received A Song of Shadows by John Connolly from NetGalley.  It is the 13th in the Charlie "Bird" Parker series, and I had read only two of the previous novels, The Wolf in Winter and The Whisperer.   The Charlie Parker series is one of those in which each book functions well as a stand-alone, but has characters that weave themselves in and out through the various books.   

Charlie is an anti hero haunted by the ghosts of his family; a flawed man who believes in evil (not just people doing bad things, but true evil) and feels bound to fight it; and who believes in justice over the law and has to live with the guilt when he crosses the line.

My blog review for A Song of Shadows is scheduled for Sept. 21, but I've already posted the review on Goodreads.  At the close of my review, I mentioned that I wanted to begin with the first book in the Charlie Parker series, and eventually, catch up on reading the entire series. 


I ordered Every Dead Thing (Book 1) and discovered that graphic violence is much more evident in this one.  NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is out drinking while his wife and young daughter are viciously murdered.  I almost gave up with that horrific description.  

After the death of his family, Charlie quits his job with the police department, quits drinking, and simply tries to keep his sanity.  Eventually, he sets himself up as a private investigator.  

The book is divided into two parts; it is almost as if there are two novels contained in the one book.  The two plots are connected, and Charlie begins to feel that he is finally on the trail of the man who killed his wife and child.  From a small town in West Virginia to New Orleans and the bayous of South Louisiana, Charlie pursues The Traveling Man.  Tante Marie, the blind woman with psychic ability, gives some credence to Charlie's belief that he is on the right track.

I haven't read anything by Stephen King (amazing, I know), but think Thomas Harris and Peter Straub and you have a mash-up of violence and the supernatural.  So...fair warning.  Had I not read the later books, the prologue of Every Dead Thing might have been the last I read in this series.  

But I had read some of the later books, and I did finish Every Dead Thing, and then I ordered another one. 

 Every Dead Thing won the 2000 Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel; Connolly is the first author outside of the U.S. to do so.

Read in June.  Purchased.

Crime/Suspense/Horror.  2000.  Print length:  480 pages.


Dark Hollow (Charlie Parker Book 2)

Charlie takes a case looking for Billy Purdue in order to get child support for Billy's wife and child.  When Billy's wife and child are murdered, the obvious suspect is Billy, but Charlie isn't convinced that Billy is the culprit.

Guess what?  A lot of people die.  And this time the killer may be the subject of a child's rhyme.

Read in June.  Purchased.

Crime/Suspense.  2001.  Print length:  258 pages.

The Wrath of Angels  I really screwed up here, I clicked a link and ordered TWA (#11) instead of the third book in the series.  

I didn't even realize at first how far out of order it was.  While it still functions as a stand-alone, there are a lot of hints about what I missed in the intervening books, derailing my intention to read them in order until I caught up.

The Collector, Epstein, and Eldritch appear in this one, but I've missed their first appearances somewhere between Dark Hollow (Bk 2) and TWA (Bk 11).  

Not only the characters, but the conspiracy of good vs evil and supernatural elements is pretty well-developed in TWA, but I've missed the build up.

Crime/Supernatural.  2012.  Print length:  529 pages.

Below you can see the order of publication and the order in which I read them--duh!  What a mess.   

• Every Dead Thing (1999)          fourth one I read - purchased
• Dark Hollow (2000)                   fifth - purchased
• The Killing Kind (2001)
• The White Road (2002)
• The Black Angel (2005)
• The Unquiet (2007)
• The Reapers (2008)
• The Lovers (2009)
• The Whisperers (2010)              first one I read - NetGalley
• The Burning Soul (2011)
• The   Wrath of Angels (2012)     sixth - purchased
• The Wolf in Winter (2014)          second - NetGalley
• A Song of Shadows (2015)        third - NetGalley

I will go back and pick up the rest eventually, but the truth is that having read 4 of them in June was excessive, especially since I read them so out of order.  It was too much brutality and murder to read in a few days, but I couldn't put them down.  I really needed a respite after all the darkness and will give myself a long break before continuing.

All the books in the series are all dark and frequently violent with a heavy emphasis on evil.  There are supernatural elements, quirky characters, witty dialogue, comic relief (with Angel and Louis), and a heaping helping of brutality.  They are really not for everyone, and I am surprised that I've enjoyed them so much.  The series is categorized as Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and Supernatural on Amazon; I think I'd have to add Horror, as well.

If you participate in Carl's RIP Challenge, keep John Connolly in mind!

Oh, one last thing, several years ago I read The Book of Lost Things by Connolly which is a beautifully written fairy tale for young readers!