Review: The Burning Soul by John Connolly

Title: The Burning Soul

Author: John Connolly

Series: Charlie Parker Thrillers #10

Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery 

Publisher: Atria Books

Release Date: September 6, 2011

Source: Publisher

Pre-order the Book: Amazon

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

“There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud, so appalling that even to acknowledge them is to risk sacrificing a crucial part of one’s humanity, to exist in a colder, crueler world than before.”

Randall Haight has a secret: He is a convicted murderer, a man with the blood of a young girl on his hands. He has built a new life for himself in the small Maine town of Pastor’s Bay, but someone has discovered the truth about him. He is being tormented by anonymously sent reminders of his crime. He wants private detective Charlie Parker to make them go away.

But another girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor’s Bay itself, and her family has its own secrets to protect. Now, in a town built on blood and shadowed by old ghosts, Parker must unravel a twisted history of violence and deceit involving the police and the FBI, a doomed mobster and his enemies, and Randall Haight himself.

Because Randall is telling lies. . . .

This is the first book I read by John Connolly so when I started reading I didn't know what I was going to find out in it's pages. I must say I was pretty excited, specially after reading a comparison of Connolly's writing style with Stephen King! Yes! Stephen King! Even though I have only read one book by Stephen King, I know perfectly what his stories are about; and because I'm a huge fan of mystery stories with a little bit of paranormal and strange stuff, I was, like I said before, thrilled.

And, what can I say? Well, the first part of the book was really good, I mean, the beginning of the story when we have the opportunity to meet the principal characters and the main topic of the story, was amazing, and yes I felt in some moments that I was reading a book, which was something more than a simple thriller/mystery book. It was much more, and I'm sure readers who have had the opportunity to read this book or any other book by this author know exactly what I'm talking about. 

And that is when the Stephen King stuff appeared  just for a while. Some of those scenes will make readers think that they mistook this book for a horror novel. I'm not saying it's a horror story or something like that, but some situations were not normal and not usual in this kind of books. 

They were kind of paranormal. But hey! Don't get me wrong, this is a thriller, not a paranormal one!  

This is a book with some killers, blackmail, a Private Investigator… and that kind of stuff, just with a few little weird things… 

What I didn't like too much was that the rest of the story the author was all the time talking about other characters, and my big question was: Who are they? Why are they here? And why are they so important? Of course, like any mystery book, you can't know everything! But it was a little bit exasperating reading about other characters, which didn't seem important or that they didn't seem to affect the main story directly. But, well, I'm glad to say that I really enjoyed the ending, and after I finished it I wanted to read more.

Like I said at the beginning, this is the first book I read by this author, and even though I was waiting for a little bit more, I enjoyed that lightly mix of two genres with a great result. Maybe some readers will not think the same, but if you're an open-minded person, who doesn't care about that kind of thing, I'm sure you will loved it.

Happy Reading!

I like it!

John Connolly is the author of Every Dead Thing, Dark Hollow, The Killing Kind, The White Road, Bad Men, Nocturnes, and The Black Angel. He is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and lives in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, see his website.