Kevin G. (sackett) reviewed on 7/4/2011 + 14 more book reviews

An entertaining read that goes a little overboard in the unnecessarily graphic department, but that makes up for it with complex, interesting and unpredictable characters populating a gruesome story well told. Connolly's narrative voice is compelling and entertaining, and in some of his finer moments, he captures an almost lyrical beauty in the heinous nature of both the crimes committed and in Parker's visceral responses to those crimes.

Beyond that, Connolly does a nice tapdance in negotiating the white between hard-nosed cop/crime and mood-based horror. He's just ambiguous enough with his language and descriptions to keep the reader guessing how much of what he experiences is perception and how much is touch-that real, and while that was a bit frustrating for me in "Every Dead Thing," it did drive me to pick up the second book in the series, which reads to the kind of payoff I was hoping to find.

Haunting, emotional, visceral and gritty, "Every Dead Thing" succeeds where very few do, bridging two very different and well-defined genres by being true to each of them in their own right rather than mitigating one in favor of the other. If Stephen King and Robert Parker had a lovechild, I'm pretty sure he'd write a lot like John Connolly, and that's a good thing ... a very, very good thing indeed.

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