The Instruments of Darkness by John Connolly
Review by Jordan S.
If you’ve learned nothing else about me, the one thing you’ve probably figured out is that I love three authors’ works more than all others: Sebastien de Castell, Steven Brust, and John Connolly. Of those three, John Connolly’s Charlie Parker books reign supreme in my mind. They are an utterly unique fusion of horror, noir detective fiction, and urban fantasy elements and as hard as I’ve tried to find something that feels similar, so far it’s proven impossible. My love for these books inspired me to start the Every Dead Thing Book Club/Reread, of which the inaugural chapter can be found here! Twenty-one books later I continue to love this series and it’s an instant pre-order the minute it’s available to do so.
The aforementioned twenty-first volume of this series came out May 7th and it was far and away one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It has the typical Charlie Parker vibes: a seemingly straight-forward case with just a little bit of weirdness at the edges and before long you realize that those edges are much deeper and much more malevolent than they first appeared. In this foray, Charlie is hired by his long-time friend and attorney, Moxie Castin, to help prove a young mother didn’t kill her own child. Unfortunately, everyone except Moxie and Charlie think she’s guilty, including the estranged husband/father of the young boy. However, the father seems overly focused on being judge, jury and executioner for his wife and Charlie’s spidey-sense is thrown off by the ex’s seeming hatred for the mother of his child.
But this wouldn’t be a Charlie Parker book if it was that straightforward. There’s two other forces lingering that add an extra layer of chaos to this tale. First, an old enemy of Charlie and Louis who still holds a grudge against them for the death of his son during a shootout and is supporting the creation of a far-right militia in the forests of Northern Maine. Adjacent to the militia’s parcel of land is a house that should never have been built. There’s something evil about the house itself and the forest seems to wish it had never been built. Before too long, Charlie and his allies will find themselves being drawn into the shadow of that house and will encounter for themselves the darkness that lives within it.
Immediately a few things jumped out to me about Instruments of Darkness. First, we are back in first person mode after a long run of books that were in third person. It’s always nice to be living in Charlie’s head and getting to see the world through his eyes and John Connolly returns to this style with great effect. We also get to spend a lot of time with Charlie’s supporting cast in this book. We get Angel and Louis, our lovable thief/contract killer duo. We get the Fulcis, Moxie, Dave at the Bear, Sharon Macy, Jennifer, and more and they are perfectly used. I especially loved a late scene in the book featuring Charlie Parker and Sharon Macy having the “talk,” specifically that Charlie sees his dead daughter and has for years at this point. This talk means dredging up Sharon Macy’s own past with the dead, specifically in the book Bad Men, where she found herself fighting her own battle against the dead on the island of Sanctuary (eventually I’ll talk about this book in Every Dead Thing Book Club so I won’t say much more here).
On the downside, there’s not a lot of forward momentum regarding Jennifer or Amanda’s natures (Amanda barely makes an appearance here at all). Hopefully, before too long we get another lore heavy book and start working towards some resolution with Charlie’s long standing battle against the forces of the God of Wasps. Also, as much as I love Charlie and Sharon Macy being together now, I do miss Rachel’s presence in these books and hope that we get some Charlie/Rachel working together again soon. These are all small flaws to an otherwise remarkable twenty-first entry into a series. Usually by this point serieses have completely fallen apart in quality and I’m thrilled to say that as of now, Connolly doesn’t show any signs of that happening with his books.
If you’ve never read a Charlie Parker book, don’t start here. Start either at the beginning or at the Killing Kind (where the overarching arc of the series really begins to take off). However, if you are someone who has read a lot of the Parker books and has been holding off on this one, I definitely recommend jumping back in and reading the Instruments of Darkness as soon as you can. It’s soooo good.