The Wolf in Winter

My former coworker liked John Connolly books so much that, even though they are published in the UK about a year before they are here in the US, he couldn't wait to read them so was willing to pay the postage to get his hands on them sooner. I decided to find out what all the fuss was about.

If Connolly is really that good, I feel I should be able to jump right into the middle of a series and understand the characters and what is going on with them. THE WOLF IN WINTER is well into the Charlie Parker series. I didn't feel lost.

While this novel's beginning is about Parker and his investigation into the whereabouts of the daughter of a homeless man, that soon leads him to a peculiar, even Stephen Kingish, small town in Maine. This town, show more Prosperous, rather than any single person, is the main character and this is what the book is really about.

Connolly mixes fiction with fact throughout THE WOLF IN WINTER. That's good, but sometimes, as a result, this book is a slow thriller. Does "slow thriller" sound like an oxymoron? It really is both. But I didn't mind the slow because it was so interesting. show less

Prosperous, a small town in Maine, lives up to its name. While the rest of the country is still in the grips of recession, Prosperous remains relatively unscathed as it always has. However, this prosperity comes with a price tag, one they have kept a secret for centuries. When the daughter of a homeless man goes missing and later he appears to have committed suicide after searching for her in Prosperous, one of his friends asks Charlie Parker to investigate. Despite all of their protests of innocence and a decided lack of evidence to the contrary, Parker is determined to discover what the town is hiding but Prosperous will not give up its secrets easily and it will protect them by any means necessary.

The Wolf in Winter is the twelfth in show more author John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series and one would expect by now that it would be losing some of its ability to entertain. Not so. In fact, this may be one of the best in the series. Connolly is an expert at combining thriller with horror so seamlessly that it never offends the reader’s suspension of disbelief. This is a dark, atmospheric tale that creeps up on the reader spreading thrills and chills all down the spine. The characters are more than the stock stereotypes of either genre and they never fail to engage our empathy, our outrage and our humour. But, perhaps, most importantly, Connolly never underestimates the intelligence of his audience, he never ‘plays down’ to us. He expects us to follow where he leads and he never disappoints even when it is to the precipice of a cliff. Although there are references to earlier cases, it is not necessary to have read the earlier books in the series to appreciate this one but, if you love horror and/or thrillers, you should really do yourself a favour and read them all – your imagination will thank you for it. show less

John Connolly is a brilliant author and with his creation Charlie Parker has produced one of the most complete series of books ever published. This is the 12th outing for our great hero/ private detective and in this taut tale he is drawn to the town or Prosperous in an attempt to find what really happened to Annie Broyer. Annie’s estranged father Jude, living on the streets, has amassed the princely sum of $100+ that he hoped would entice the detective to help him....in Charlie’s own words that might have bought some 2 hours of this time. When however Jude is discovered dead, an apparent suicide, our hero knows that he must help discover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of Annie.

There is a solid and memorable list of show more characters that we meet as we travel with Charlie on his journey which is fraught with danger and in particular the evil Hayley Conyer the “voice” of Prosperous , her chief of police Morland who is no stranger to killing, and the wonderfully named Ronald Straydeer. If you add in the old favourites of Louis and Angel we have all the ingredients for a cracking story!

It is however the tormented mind of Charlie Parker that always holds the reader’s interest and never fails to draw me back. He is tortured by the death of his wife Rachel and in particular his daughter Samantha who appears to him throughout and always give the impression that she is calling him home. I don’t feel that CP will ever find peace and contentment until he can be with them again....wherever that may be...So once again Connolly has produced a masterpiece of crime combined with just the right amount of dark horror to entice the reader to return for the next instalment. Anything by John Connolly comes highly recommended and this is no exception... show less

The community of Prosperous, Maine, moved from England, bringing their church with them. It's a church with a lot of Green Men and it doesn't feel like a comfortable or welcoming church. The town is literally prosperous but at what cost.
Charlie Parker hears of the death of a homeless man he knew, and the disappearance of his daughter and he feels compelled to investigate but the investigation will bring him up against people willing to kill to keep their secrets.
I could see where a lot of this was going, I have an interest in Green Man imagery for a long time, and the town's prosperity is an old trope, but it was well done and kept me reading. I'm curious to know where things will go from here.

For those of you who are wondering if you should read Connolly, I don’t really know. He’s not precisely one I would have recommended for myself, but he’s become almost a genre of his own, a curious blend of vengeance wish-fulfillment, literary fiction, and a dash of supernatural horror. The story line has been evolving since the very first book, when Charlie Parker’s wife and young daughter were killed by a serial killer. It seems that despite a period or two of happy times, it has almost becomes Parker’s mission to avenge those targeted by killers of the most brutal sort.

A winter setting was perfect for a icy January stay-cation. The plot was less intriguing, as I have saw the exact story done on Supernatural, Season One, show more recently. The plot centers on a preternaturally lucky town, named ‘Prosperous.’ Sure, Connolly goes into the town with a little more depth than the tv show, but it’s just not a tale that has a lot to hold for me, no matter how Connolly is able to couch it in cult-like behavior of the town's resident. More so than the show–perhaps because of the depth–I never got full buy-in on the group-think that lets seemingly "normal" people kidnap others for --da-dum--nefarious motives.

Connolly’s other angle of late is to integrate an alternative lifestyle or social justice issue. He’s covered soldiers and PTSD, abuse of women (which he touches on again), and runaways and prostitution. I feel like he tends to do a solid job of presenting issues in a multilayered way. In this one, he explores a bit of the homeless community when the daughter of a homeless man has gone missing, and the man seems to have committed suicide.

One of the many reasons I like Connolly is his on-point social commentary. Regarding a man working at a homeless shelter:
“Stephen was clearly a good kid, but he had the egotism of youth. The world revolved around him, and consequently he believed that he had the power to change how it worked. And, in the way of the young, he had made another’s pain about himself, even if he did so for what seemed the best of reasons. Time and age would change him; if they didn’t, he wouldn’t be working in soup kitchens and shelters much longer.”

Brilliant. I see this often in young nurses. In a few short sentences, he captured a phenomenon I had noted but hadn’t been able to describe and the reasons I felt bothered and discomforted by it.

And this, the cutting edge of hope when one is in pain:

“Let him come, and let us be done with all this. But somehow he would steal enough sleep to continue, and each day he tried to convince himself that he could discern a diminution in his sufferings: more time between the spasms in his legs, like a child counting the second between cracks of thunder to reassure himself that the storm was passing; a little more control over his fingers and toes, like a transplant patient learning to use a new limb; and a slight reduction in the intensity of the noise in his ears, in the hope that madness might be held at bay.”

So the mystery, a mild one, solvable; the supernatural, a little more present, in the familial way, but takes us no farther in the series conflict. Decent enough, and somehow absorbing to me, despite not being outstanding at any one thing. As always, perhaps, a combination that is almost and leaves me wanting more.

Three and a half, rounding up because I stayed up to finish (me or the book; who can tell?) show less

John Connolly is so quintessentially Irish in his writing, weaving a colourful web of romance and melancholy, violence and spirituality, horror and humour, it is difficult to categorise his books – thrillers with occult overtones? Detective stories with a tragic hero? Or mystery adventures characterised by wit?
In this, his 12th outing, private investigator Charlie Parker discovers that Jude, a homeless man who has just been murdered, intended to hire him to find his missing daughter Annie. Annie vanished in the secretive little town of Prosperous – in name and nature – originally settled in the 16th century by a cult who transported their church from England, brick by brick.

Charlie goes to the to Prosperous, which is ruled by a show more group of elderly selectmen, trying to discover what became of Annie and others like her and what role they played in the town’s eternal prosperity - assisted, as always, by his deadly friends Angel and Louis, and the Fulci brothers.

Connolly is a wonderful writer and the Wolf in Winter an exciting, moving book, but the series is getting a little tired. The gross-out factor in Charlie’s dealings with Cambion the Leper, his relationship with the Collector, and the Cassandra-like appearances of his daughter’s ghost, not to mention Charlie’s own tortured angst, may have reached their sell-by date. All the same, an excellent book. show less

Yeah me too. I am shocked I gave a Charlie Parker book 2 stars, but here we are. Not too much to say except this book dragged. A lot. And I love Angel and Louis usually, but I got so sick of them by the end of this book. Because this book focuses on them, The Collector, and some other people towards the end the book didn't read as much like a Charlie Parker novel. I honestly think things would have been better if the series had focused on Charlie, Angel, and Louis hunting down The Collector or the town of Prosperous. Having so much in this one just didn't work for me at all. The flow was all over the place. I got to the end and felt genuine disappointment, and not because the book was over, but that I had wasted my time on this one. show more

"The Wolf in Winter" has Charlie, Angel, and Louis on the hunt for The Collector after the latter's (justified in my opinion) actions in the last book. Charlie takes a pause though when a case comes his way which has him traveling to the town of Prosperous. The town itself seems spooky and full of secrets. And when Charlie gets too close, those who want the town to continue to be lucky take matters into their own hands which causes repercussions for a lot of people.

I loved the standalone book featuring Angel and Louis but wow. This one was not great. I think the book picks up though when we finally get them moving and not just doing their Scooby Doo investigation into things.

Charlie I thought was being dumb about a lot of things in this one, especially him thinking he can somehow take on someone like The Collector. Frankly I am glad that Connolly ended things the way he did, because I like the Collector as a character and would hate to see him go.

The writing was okay, I just think that this one had too many moving parts that just didn't gel well. I think that Charlie investigating Prosperous should have been it's own thing instead of trying to shoehorn in a lot of other things that this book tried to. I was fascinated by the town and wanted to read more about it and the goings on there. I was disappointed every time we left that setting. show less