The Lovers

Starred review from May 4, 2009
Bestseller Connolly once again expertly melds a hard-boiled plot with the supernatural in his eighth Charlie Parker crime novel (after The Reapers
). While previous books in the series explored the trauma at the heart of Parker's backstory, the murder of the PI's wife and daughter, this one examines an equally devastating family trauma—the suicide of his New York City policeman father, Will, after Will gunned down two unarmed teenagers decades earlier. As Parker, who was 15 at the time, seeks the truth about his ancestry, he comes to doubt that he was raised by his biological parents. When he learns a pair of undying beings have him at the top of their hit list, he decides to return to New York City after a stint tending bar in Maine. The underlying grim sadness and Connolly's unwillingness to pull his punches will appeal to noir fans, while his effective use of understatement and evocative prose makes his alternate universe plausible.

Jay O. Sanders has a genius for delivering conversation. His performance of Charlie Parker's first-person narrative is done with superb timing and thoughtful inflection. But it's the nuance of emotion he teases out of the characters' relationships with one another through which he really shines. The listener is immediately pulled in. Parker may have lost his PI license this time out, but that doesn't keep him from investigating his own past demons. After taking a job tending bar in Portland, Maine, he finds he needs answers to his policeman father's suicide when Charlie was only 15 and the haunting murder of two teenagers he confessed to beforehand. There's the usual frisson of the supernatural woven into this beautifully crafted story, made all the more memorable through Sanders's considerable talent. D.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine