Events move fast in a gunfight, particularly when the participants are in close proximity, as Herb Caldicott had learned to his cost. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral lasted just thirty seconds and left six of the nine participants dead or wounded at the end. So by the time Parker had retrieved his gun , and was ready to fire, Louis was already slumped against a tree, bleeding heavily from one wound to his right shoulder and a second to his groin; Quayle and Mors were disappearing into the woods with most of the book; and the yard was bathed in the glow of fire. Somewhere in the old house, Owen Weaver was screaming.
John Connolly, The Woman in the Woods (Emily Bester Books/Atria, 2018)
I have written comments on a number of John Connolly's books in this blog. His main character is private detective Charlie Parker, who has led an unusual life of victories and defeats, beginning with the murder of his wife and daughter. There is a fair amount of the supernatural in the Parker books, with alleged appearances and phone calls from the dead, which the living might be imagining. Sometimes the supernatural elements can be intriguing and sometimes just annoying; in The Woman in the Woods they are minimal and I think the book is better for that, as Parker is hired to find out who a woman who is buried in the woods is and what happened to the child she bore just before her death. He follows leads from Maine to Indiana and from local police to houses of refuge for battered women and picks up the trail of a man named Quayle and a woman named Mors, an evil pair in search of an important and powerful book.
Although to a certain extent Parker is the good guy he is not without his demons and a sometimes irrational anger about those who are not up to his standards; in other words he is human, always struggling to the right thing and overcome his weaknesses. As usual Connolly creates complex human beings -- there are quite a few in this novel -- and the vivid effects of their occupations and environments.
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