The Black Angel: A Thriller

Quirky and entertaining. Loved the biblical history applied to the plot.

I loved this book and the entire series. The way John Connoly sets the mood by referencing music and litruature and religion is genious. As with the rest of his books I could not put this one down and it even came with a music CD as a soundtrack!

Let's see . . . this John Connolly potboiler's got fallen angels clothed in human flesh, serial killers, pimps and hos, killer monks, a team of gay assassins, and a lethal babe covered in tattoos. Oh, and Nazis; plenty of Nazis. And yet it all hangs together surprisingly well. An enjoyable read that didn't flag throughout at least the first 550 of its 600 pages. The ending, though, could have been better.

A relative of Charlie Parker's friend, Louis, is abducted from the streets of New York. Louis was asked by the girl's mother, to keep an eye on her but the girl was headstrong.Charlie and Louis's friend, Angel, help to look for her and they come across a number of pimps and prostitutes in New York, depicting the plight that many of the prostitutes have come to.Charlie and his friends find a link to a church of bones in Europe and an object known as the Black Angel which is very valuable and may have a life of its own.There is a great deal of violence, somewhat lessened by the humor that Charlie and his friends often share, to get through the sad sights they are seeing.John Connolly does a good job in making the characters seem real and making the story interesting.

Awesome. Loved it. Love the series. On to the next one

Once again, Connolly flirts with supernatural incredibility and pulls it off splendidly. Full of detail that opens up new imaginative worlds.

A young woman goes missing from the streets and her kidnappers assume there will be no repercussions, however she's a fairly close relative of one of Parker's men and that's opened a whole can of worms.What happens next is a mixture of thriller and horror, filled with ossuaries, mass murderers, ancient mysteries and conspiracy.I found it interesting and was wondering throughout what was going to happen next, I had no idea on occasions what the motivation of the characters was and no idea what tack they were going to take. It was a bit gruesome at times but interesting. Not the best of it's kind but I'll be looking for more by this author and reading them!

“In the crowded killing fields of crime fiction, John Connolly is a unique voice.” — Michael ConnellyIndeed he is. As my first foray into John Connolly’s work, I am amazed by his ability to elevate crime fiction writing with beautifully crafted prose. He has a rare knack of weaving elegant, loftily worded paragraphs with contemporary, casually-toned ones. The result is a smooth read with seamless alterations in moods, without jarring stops and starts, mid-stride.Black Angel is the fifth novel in a crime series. The central hero, Charlie Parker, embroils himself in an investigation over the disappearance of a close friend’s cousin, Alice. His search leads him to face a horrible truth—the existence of a demonic being known as the Dark Angel, whose lost whereabouts over the centuries have led The Believers, an army of evil men and fallen demons in human guise, to carve a bloody, gruesome trail of death in their search for him. The Believers is championed by the Dark Angel’s twin, accompanied by a malevolent soul-eater.The novel is heavy on the paranormal and the gothic, its inspiration drawn largely from at least three major sources:a) an Old Testament apocryphal book, The Book of Enoch;b) the Sedlec ossuary in Czechoslovakia, which as a major setting, appropriately lends the macabre flavor to the story;c) a controversial Mexican religion venerating the Santa Muerte.John Connolly’s delightfully detailed historical accounts in this book have probably fired up some readers to learn more about them. I know they have compelled me to scurry through the internet for my own research. So midway through the book, I’ve been entertained with a mound of fascinating albeit morbid material on this novel’s inspirations.The characters are also what make the book interesting. This particular novel, being the sequel to four others, does not elaborate on the backgrounds of its protagonists; but, you may glean some bits and pieces about them as the story progresses. Not knowing much about them, though, will not impede anyone’s enjoyment of this book. However, to know the characters intimately, a new reader to John Connolly would be better served if he were to start from the first in the series, Every Dead Thing.A lot of credit should also go to the author’s ability to present violence so artistically. He has an intensely meticulous graphical style that makes his descriptions so vividly crystalline. Unfortunately, it is precisely this quality that may render the novel too verbose for some readers. People who prefer a straight-to-the-point manner may be annoyed at being drenched with all that verbiage.True, the novel could have been a shorter read. But for readers like me who revel in Connolly’s beautiful phraseologies, there is no such wordiness. It is a rare treat to find a crime-thriller written with such eloquent and oftentimes almost poetic language; and, an even rarer pleasure to discover one that dared to successfully defy the accustomed patterns of its genre.My Mark : Excellent

Perfect. John Connolly simply never disappoints to deliver spooky mysteries.

This may be the weirdest book I've read in a long time, but it's also undeniably one of the best. Don't read this one as your first Connolly; you'll be completely lost and utterly freaked out. That's not to say this book can't stand on its own, it certainly can, but the richness and depth are greatly increased if you've followed Charlie Parker, the protagonist, through his previous trials. In the first book of Connolly's Parker series, Every Dead Thing, Parker's wife and daughter are killed (no spoiler here as it happens on the first page) and through successive books they become rather more present in his life than less so. Thus by the time The Black Angel comes along, you've been introduced to this side of Parker's personality and The Black Angel is not as unexpected as it might be if you just picked it up off the mystery/thriller rack in your local bookstore. Other reviewers have outlined the plot in detail, so I won't go into that. I will say that Connolly just gets better and better. Reading his books, I've learned more about the history and life of various US cities than I have ever known even though I have lived here all my life. I've read everything Connolly has written -- including the blog on his own site -- and cannot recommend his work highly enough. His writing sucks you right in and keeps you in his world far beyond the time you read the last word of the text.

This may be the weirdest book I've read in a long time, but it's also undeniably one of the best. Don't read this one as your first Connolly; you'll be completely lost and utterly freaked out. That's not to say this book can't stand on its own, it certainly can, but the richness and depth are greatly increased if you've followed Charlie Parker, the protagonist, through his previous trials. [return][return]In the first book of Connolly's Parker series, Every Dead Thing, Parker's wife and daughter are killed (no spoiler here as it happens on the first page) and through successive books they become rather more present in his life than less so. Thus by the time The Black Angel comes along, you've been introduced to this side of Parker's personality and The Black Angel is not as unexpected as it might be if you just picked it up off the mystery/thriller rack in your local bookstore. [return][return]Other reviewers have outlined the plot in detail, so I won't go into that. I will say that Connolly just gets better and better. Reading his books, I've learned more about the history and life of various US cities than I have ever known even though I have lived here all my life. [return][return]I've read everything Connolly has written -- including the blog on his own site -- and cannot recommend his work highly enough. His writing sucks you right in and keeps you in his world far beyond the time you read the last word of the text.

I have rarely had a book get under my skin as much as this one. Even when I slept, I was dreaming about what might happen next. The mix of crime and fantasy worked really well, keeping me intrigued... but the end was something of a let down. It felt underdeveloped and lacking in the conviction of the rest of the book. Take the conclusion away, and this is a great story.