CP05: 2005: THE BLACK ANGEL

SYNOPSIS

A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and no one will come looking for her. They are wrong. She is 'blood' to the killer Louis, the man who stands at the right hand of private detective Charlie Parker, and Louis will tear apart anyone who stands in the way of his efforts to find her.

But as Louis's violent search progresses, Parker comes to realize that the disappearance is part of an older mystery, one that is linked to an ornate church of bones in Eastern Europe; to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944; and to the quest for a mythical prize that has been sought for centuries by evil men: the Black Angel.

Yet the Black Angel is more than a myth. It is conscious. It dreams. It is alive.

And men are not the only creatures that seek it...

COPYRIGHT

©2005 by John Connolly

FIRST PUBLISHED

Hodder & Stoughton (UK, Ireland, Australia, etc.)

HB - 544 pages - 25/04/2005 - ISBN: 0340837659

Atria Books (US & Canada)

HB - 496 page - 31/05/2005 - ISBN: 0743487869

'VOICES FROM THE DARK' - A SOUNDTRACK TO THE NOVELS, VOL. I

Music has always played a large part in my life, so when it came to writing my books it seemed natural that music should have a role to play in them as well. I've written seven books, five of them featuring a detective named Charlie Parker (so you can see that the music references were pretty ingrained from the start.) Parker shares my musical tastes, so most of the artists on this CD have been referenced in the books in some way, and the songs chosen all have resonances for me, and for Parker. The Red House Painters' lovely, desolate "Summer Dress" brings to mind the figure of Parker's dead wife, who haunts the shadows of his life, and I've always thought that The Triffids' "Blinder by the Hour" might be about a man so overcome by grief that he wants nothing more than to be interred alongside his dead lover. The Walkabouts, Thee More Shallows, The Go-betweens and Lambchop have all made appearances in the books, and the lyrics of Pinetop Seven have graced three of my novels. The inclusion of the Radar Brothers and Hem stems from the way they seem to link with my second book, Dark Hollow, and in an ideal world Neko Case would play "Twist the Knife" during that book's dance hall scene, should it ever make it to the screen. Lullaby for the Working Class's "Good Morning" could almost be Parker's theme tune, and Kate Bush's "Ne T'En Fuis Pas" effectively soundtracks, for me, the moment when Parker and Rachel first make love in Every Dead Thing. I love the sense of promise and longing that suffuses Beachwood Sparks' "Ponce de Leon Blues", and as for The Blue Nile's "Happiness", well, there seemed no more apt way to close an album based around the troubled character of Charlie Parker than with Paul Buchanan asking how long his peace will last...

If you like these songs - and I hope that some, at least, resonate with you - then please hunt down the albums from which they come, and perhaps drop the artists a line to tell them where you heard their work. I'm immensely grateful to all of them for allowing me to use their music, and for the way in which their work has enriched both my own writing, and my life.

[THE JOHN CONNOLLY WEBSITE]

TRACK LIST

NOTES

Please see John's SEDLEC OSSUARY documentary (including the text and images of the article written for The Times (London) in June 2005).

Please visit the SEDLEC OSSUARY WEBSITE.

Another great video HERE.

THE COLLECTED

CP04a: 2004: THE REFLECTING EYE         CP06: 2007: THE UNQUIET