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About The Book

Internationally bestselling author John Connolly takes readers into the dark world of private detective Charlie Parker, whose deadly fight against evil begins when the daughter of a South Carolina millionaire is raped and murdered.

In South Carolina, a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. It's a case that nobody wants to touch, a case with its roots in old evil, and old evil is private detective Charlie Parker's speciality.

But Parker is about to enter a living nightmare, a red dreamscape haunted by the murderous spectre of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the complicity of both friends and enemies in the events surrounding Marianne Larousse's death. This is not an investigation. This is a descent into the abyss, a confrontation with dark forces that threaten all that Parker holds dear: his lover, his unborn child, even his soul...

For in a prison cell far to the north, an old adversary is about to take his revenge on Charlie Parker, its instruments the very men that Parker is hunting, and a strange, hunched creature that keeps its own secrets buried by a riverbank: the undiscovered killer Cyrus Nairn.

Soon, all of these figures will face a final reckoning in southern swamps and northern forests, in distant locations linked by a single thread, a place where the paths of the living and the dead converge.

A place known only as the White Road.

About The Author

Photograph by Mark Condren

John Connolly is the author of the #1 internationally bestselling Charlie Parker thrillers series, The Book of Lost Things and its sequel The Land of Lost Things, the Samuel Johnson Trilogy for younger readers, and (with Jennifer Ridyard) the Chronicles of the Invaders series. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, see his website at JohnConnollyBooks.com, or follow him on X @JConnollyBooks.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Atria Books (March 11, 2003)
  • Length: 400 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780743462631

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Raves and Reviews

Harlan Coben Darkly brilliant, spellbinding and disturbing....One of the best thriller writers we have.

Rocky Mountain News You don't want to miss a word of this near-perfect story.

Mystery Review [Connolly] combines beautiful language with horrifying images to create gripping novels of suspense.

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