John Connolly’s The Wrath of Angels

I shouldn’t even have this book!

Connolly’s North American publisher is waiting until January 01st, 2013 to release it in my neck of the woods and seeing as how the world is supposed to end on December 22nd, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have been able to ever read it. So, seeing as it was released as originally specified in the UK on August 30th, I took it upon myself to order it from the UK Amazon store.

A group from Charlie Parker’s storied past returns in The Wrath of Angels. An enemy who Parker believed to have stopped in the past is at the forefront of a mystery surrounding a fallen plane, a missing sack of money and a list of names. While the purpose of said list is not initially known, it eventually comes to light that those names contained within have already faced certain doom or are destined to confront it. As if that wasn’t enough, Parker must deal with the resurfacing of a dangerous and ruthless man known as The Collector who will stop at nothing to bring those with tainted souls to his unique form of justice.

As I said, The Collector returns and often plays as big of a role in The Wrath of Angels as Parker himself. This time around, The Collector has a lot to accomplish within a time frame that continues to restrict as the story moves forward. Nothing about the character struck me as overly exceptional the first time we meet him some time ago but Connolly really gives him an edge this time around, surprising me with a pretty cool development about halfway through.

Arguably the most entertaining characters in this Parker universe return with Louis and Angel once again providing a form of back-up for Charlie. Their back and forth dialogue is something I always enjoy and look forward to Connolly hopefully giving us a follow up to The Reapers, a book strongly focused on the two.

I found that the scenes in which Charlie interacts with his daughter one on one felt forced and awkward. Writing a child’s dialogue isn’t an easy task in my experience, Room was probably the only book that I’ve read that nailed it and even then, it took a while to really get into that story. However, I will say that the idea of Parker, Louis and Angel eating in a restaurant with a child amused me greatly.

It’s a pretty strong entry into the Parker series and proves that Connolly’s signature character still has longevity within him. Eleven books and counting is pretty impressive when you think about what it takes to keep a lengthy series like this strong. I’ll look forward to number twelve!