Cushla

Student Grace Peltier is writing her Ph.D. thesis on a group of religious zealots, the Aroostook Baptists, who mysteriously disappeared in 1963. This research leads Grace to a current religious group operating in Maine called The Fellowship and their founder Carter Paragon. No long after meeting Carter, Grace is found dead in her car and suicide is suspected. Her father, Curtis Peltier, doesn't believe that his daughter committed suicide and hires Charlie Parker to find out what really happened to Grace

At the same time a building company uncovers a mass grave that solves the mystery of the disappearance of Aroostook Baptists. Charlie discovers disturbing links between The Fellowship and the Aroostook Baptists. As he probes deeper into the doings of the group and its founder Carter Paragon he receives a visit from probably the most terrifying of John Connolly’s villains Mr Pudd and his mute female sidekick.

Mr Pudd is a ‘demonic arachnophile’ and uses them (spiders) to do his dirty work…as Charlie soon finds out when he checks his mailbox one morning after being warned off the case by Pudd

The Killing Kind maybe just scrapes the ‘best’ Charlie Parker, tightly plotted, pacey and the writing beautiful, and as disturbing, as always. The supernatural element is ratcheted up in this novel and you will believe that…

“…there are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity. They live in pain, and exist only to visit that pain on others. A random glance, the momentary lingering of a look, is enough to give them the excuse that they seek. Sometimes, it is better to keep your eyes on the gutter for the fear that, by looking up, you might catch a glimpse of them, black shapes against the sun, and be blinded forever.”