The Lovers: A Thriller (Charlie Parker Book 8)

New York Times bestselling author John Connolly writes an "unfailingly compelling" ( New Orleans Times-Picayune ) and lyrical tale that forces Private Investigator Charlie Parker to examine his haunting past and all that he has ever believed true about his beloved parents—and himself. Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker takes a job in a Portland bar. But he uses his enforced retirement to begin a different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead two unarmed teenagers. It's a search that will eventually lead Parker to question all that he believed about his beloved parents, and about himself. But there are other forces at work: a troubled young woman who is running from an unseen threat, one that has already taken the life of her boyfriend; and a journalist-turned-writer named Mickey Wallace, who is conducting an investigation of his own. And haunting the shadows, as they have done throughout Parker's life, are two figures: a man and a woman who seem driven to bring an end to Charlie Parker's existence. Haunting, lyrical, and impossible to put down, The Lovers is John Connolly at his best.

In John Connolly’s thriller, Charlie Parker is haunted by a man and a woman who appear to have only one purpose: to end to Parker’s existence.

Publishers Weekly

Connolly's latest thriller sees a depressed, soul-searching Charlie Parker stripped of his private investigator's license, tending bar in Maine and still tormented by the dark secrets in his past: the murder of his wife and daughter and the mysterious suicide of his policeman father, Will. He returns to New York to investigate the circumstances of his father's death and is contacted by a woman who claims to be haunted by an unseen and deadly presence. Jay Sanders does full justice to Connolly's taut narrative, relying on an approach that is colorful yet restrained, edgy yet traditional in a perfect interpretation of this novel that combines elements of classic noir with the supernatural. An Atria hardcover (Reviews, May 4). (June)

Stripped of his private investigator's license, Charlie Parker takes a job tending bar in Portland, Maine. Alone and directionless, he faces at last a shadow he has lived with since his childhood: what made his father, a respected police officer, apparently shoot dead two unarmed teens and then commit suicide. His quest leads him back to the little New York town where he grew up, to the secret history of the NYPD, and to the existence of mysterious friends and hidden enemies. For waiting in the shadows, as they have been throughout Charlie's life, are a man and a woman with only one purpose: to bring an end to his very existence Stripped of his license, Charlie Parker takes a job in a Portland bar and investigates why his father had shot two teenagers and then committed suicide, and his findings reveal secret friends and hidden enemies