John Connolly

John Connolly will talk to Phil Rickman about the latest Charlie Parker novel, A Song of Shadows.

Desperately wounded, and tormented by dreams of a world beyond this one, private investigator Charlie Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to recover his health. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth, rather like Charlie, is avoiding the past.

The forces that threaten her have their origins in the Second World War, in a town called Lubko and a concentration camp unlike any other. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.
His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. On his own, wounded and unprotected.

But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone.
For something is emerging from the shadows of the past …

John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut - Every Dead Thing - swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. Books To Die For, an anthology he edited with Declan Burke, was the winner of the 2013 Anthony, Agatha and Macavity awards for Best Non-Fiction work. He is the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award and the first Irish writer to win an Edgar award. His other books include the brilliant Book of Lost Things; a trilogy for children, featuring Samuel Johnson and a YA series written with his partner, Jennifer Ridyard. Conquest, is the first book in the Chronicles of the Invaders and the second, Empire, will be published in 2015.