THE WOLF IN WINTER

Parker, Connolly’s scarred and battered private detective, continues on the trail of his main quarry—The Collector—but swerves to take a job offered by a homeless man in his 12th outing.

This time, Parker, who's an easy touch, takes on the mission of finding the long-lost daughter of a dead homeless man. Jude, a dandy professorial type by street standards, was found hanged, his demise chalked up to suicide by local police. But one of Jude’s friends tracks down Parker and convinces him that a man who was so eager to find his estranged former-junkie daughter would not have taken his own life. Parker agrees and traces Jude’s trail back to the malevolent town of Prosperous, Maine, a place where dark secrets flourish and outsiders are escorted to the town’s limit, if they’re lucky. Parker soon discovers that the town board will go to great lengths to prevent outsiders from discovering the root of the community’s prosperity and that an odd and very old church brought stone by stone from England holds the key to many of its mysteries. But the price that Parker pays for that knowledge is heavy in this part-detective, part-supernatural thriller. In addition to superb writing, Connolly brings a consistent intelligence to his work, never shortchanging or, even more important, underestimating his readers. Parker, a conflicted man whose personal life is a train wreck, and his quirky but deadly sidekicks, gay hit men Angel and Louis, make an unlikely but lethally successful triumvirate in their relentless journey toward putting a vicious killer, The Collector, out of business. The author’s singular voice guides readers on that journey in a tale that never stops entertaining.

While it helps to have read previous Parker novels, it’s not a prerequisite for enjoying this witty and imaginative journey into the darker natures of men and things that go bump in the night.