As James Lee Burke books go, this is VERY James Lee Burke. The only real surprise is the nature of the assassin getting pushed a little further into the supernatural, while the rest is violence, alcoholism, rich people being evil, beautiful women, gorgeous landscapes, epic weather, blood-soaked history, religious imagery and meditations on life, death and evil.

A woman travels to deepest darkest Ruralmerica to clean out her grandmother's house as a favour to her dad. She finds the journal of her step-grandfather and a strange hill behind the house that shouldn't be there covered in whote stone carvings, and something comes for her out of the woods. Thrilling and spooky tale with a truly endearing narrative voice and the most lovable and well-developed doggy character I've seen in years. Funny, but unnerving under the funny. Damn finely crafted piece of fiction.

Rip-roaring, edge of the seat, suspense-filled, heart-stopping, heartbreaking adventure across an alternative Fourth Reich where a young woman with a special power - the result of a death-camp experiment - races across continents for the chance to dance with the Fuhrere. It's a long, gureling journey with danger on every side and no-one to trust, not even herself. Absolutely rapid book.

Rabid hippies mutilate steers and eat hunters in the woods. Much fun is had by all.

Tom Baker dies, a funeral is convened, but nobody can quite agree on how he died... funny and whimsical stuff.

Connolly has left the grand guignoil elaborate serial killer murder-art well behind in favour of a lot of quite good character work. This one is the child abuse one, too. Sensitively handled for a violent crime novel with mystical over and undertones. 

Wow, these are quite addictive. Aren't these essentially urban fantasy? 

The one with lots of racism.

Oh yeah, this one had the spiders in it. Lovely. Say what you will, Connolly's villains give his protagonists a good run for their money, and his plots are pleasantly meaty and give Parker lots of opportunities to mull on the past being present in the presnt and the past being present in the past and the presnt past the future presently.


STOP SAYING HONEYCOMB WORLD JEFF 

The saga begins. Already these books have an episodic feel to them. This is season two. Action moves to Maine and other US states that aren't New York. ots of people get murdered. Then more people get murdered. More gangsters, more serial killers. Parker is a crusader against evil, and this series has more in common with the Jack Reacer books than I would have expected, except Parker, though very much a wish-fulfillment character, is not the Marty Stu Reacher is, and has to struggle intellectually, physically, spiritually, morally to defeat the bad guys. He also makes mistakes which makes him more interesting than boring blank-slate Reacher, and Connolly's plots are filled with the grotesque and strange along with more soap opera elements - Parker had an affair with the local sherrif's wife years before - to keep the reader enaged, and distract from being annoyed by Parker's infallible judgements of other people, often based on physical appearance in a way that's almost Dickensian. Morally superior Parker is the most grating Parker