I didn't find it as good as the other Charlie Parker books but made for a great prequel to see Parkers past

Absolutely brilliant. This was an excellent addition to the Charlie Parker books. John Connolly has developed probably the most interesting character I've personally ever come across in my years of reading. Don't think I could ever grow tired of reading about his life and exploits. Louis and Angel are the icing on this cake.

Another great book in the Charlie Parker series from John Connolly. This is a story from his past, which was a nice change. Same great characters, same great pacing, same great story. Need to keep reading this series.

This was my first read by the author and I thought it was an awesome read. I loved it so much that I’m going to back and read the others in the series.

I was first introduced to Charlie Parker when I reviewed "A Time of Torment", the fourteenth book in the Charlie Parker series. Although it was part of a series, it stood well enough on its own. Charlie is tormented by the gruesome deaths of his wife and daughter, and he's forever on the search of the unknown killer.
Even though my earlier reviewed book was midway through a series that includes almost twenty books, I was fascinated with the characters, and how they related to the storyline. I became a fan overnight, and had to start reading the series from the start. I've now read all of the books to date, and I'd rate the series as a stellar five.
The Dirty South is a flash-back to 1997. Charlie Parker, forever on the search for his family's killer, has arrived at a town where young women are being tortured and killed.
He finds that local morals, politics and corruption are standing in the way of justice.
As he comes closer to the truth, he becomes a target.
And as always his quasi-criminal friends are willing to come to his aid without reservation.
As I've said, this series is definitely five stars; but, as a standalone book, I think, this book doesn't come up to that standard. This step back in time would have been a good time to go into the back story of Charlie Parker. Of course, this has been done in past books - but taken as an individual book, I think an opportunity has been missed here.
Character development has been one of the strengths of this series, and I don't see much here.
Had this been the first Charlie Parker book I'd read, I'm sure I wouldn't have gone back to read the series.
I'd rate this a 3-1/2 if I could. But, I remain a fan!
Thank you NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the opportunity to provide this unbiased review.

I have heard wonderful things about John Connolly and have never read a single one of his books. I was hesitant to jump into this series as this is book 18 in the Charlie Parker series. It is technically a prequel to the other books and shows us a glimpse into what happened to his family.

I thought this book was a well written murder mystery and I definitely have to read the rest in the series to learn more about Charlie Parker!


Thank you to Atria Books, NetGalley and the author for the #gifted arc.

The Dirty South is the 18th instalment in John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series and in reality it is a prequel to the whole series. I know, some of you would be tempted to start with this book when hearing that it is the prequel BUT do NOT do so! Read the series in order as the Charlie Parker of the Dirty South is not yet the Charlie Parker of the first book of the series … the Charlie Parker that will pull you deep down into his world with a number of eccentric characters and this odd strangeness that the writer has created …
It is 1997, Arkansas, and someone is butchering young black women … and no one is really trying to figure out why as the town needs to draw in corporate investors … there is one though, a former NYPD detective, sitting in a prison cell, brought to his knees with the mourning of his murdered wife and daughter, looking for their killer … he takes notice of it and the writer takes us on the journey of making of THE Charlie Parker who have come to love …
We get the story from multiple viewpoints – the people from the town (mainly the police detectives and the movers and shakers) … the writer takes us deep under the surface of the town, it takes time to get down to the roots of it all, the evil that hides and preys on the innocent … and then we get Charlie, the emerging of the hunter, the sharpening of the intuition, the promise of what is to come … Even though it is the beginning of the Charlie Parker as we know him, his loyal sidekicks Angel and Louis do make an appearance as well …
I think having read the previous stories, one can get so much more out of the story then what one might think when picking up the book and going “where is my Charlie Parker”??? You simply need to take a deep breath, slow down and go with it … trust the writer!

I have been a rabid John Connolly fan since I found his books over a decade ago. I was interested to see how the Charlie Parker I had grown to know over the course of the series would be like back at where it all began. It was everything I hoped for and more. Connolly delivered a broken man, and obsessed man, a man determined to find a killer. The amount of raw emotion in this book was palatable and I loved every word.

I highly recommend reading the entire series first, but one could pick this up and read it without having read any in the series. The story stands on it's own. I can't wait for the next one.

Fans of Charlie Parker, both new and old, will love this book!

John Connolly takes a trip into the past to give us a Charlie Parker story that takes place after the tragedy of him losing his wife and daughter, but before he has found the man who took them from him.

As Parker follows clues in search of revenge, he stumbles into a small Southern town in need of his unique skillset. Although this book does not feature the supernatural that some of the other books have, it does still have the same gritty crime/mystery that we've come to expect when Parker is involved.

Excellent series, and an excellent book.

Another dead girl has been found in Burdon County, Arkansas. That makes three in five years, all killed in the same brutal way with the same mutilations. All are young African-American women, teenagers. Cargill police chief Evander Griffin is determined that this murder will not get swept under the rug like the last one did. Burdon County is up for a huge investment by a multinational company and it was deemed unadvisable to have a murderer around the last time so the death had been classified as an accident although everyone knew it wasn't one at all.
Griffin hears that there is a new guy hanging around in a bar, asking questions about the dead women. He goes to talk with the man but his attitude is irritating and Griffin ends up taking him in and putting him in a jail cell while he checks him out. The man is Charley Parker. He is a New York City ex-cop, having left when the tragedy hit. His wife and child were murdered and Parker now spends his time searching for their killer. Griffin feels that Parker could help them find their killer and after some thought, Parker agrees.

There are plenty of suspects. There is the Cade family who run the county. Pappy Cade is getting older and determined that the business deal that will make Burdon County rich will be his legacy. His older son, Jurel is an investigator with the county police while his daughter handles the politics at the state capital. His youngest son is considered the family's weak link. There are drug dealers and meth cookers, strip joint owners and disreputable preachers, all lining up to make money from the deal if it happens. Which of them is killing off young women?

This is a prequel novel in the Charley Parker series although it is the nineteenth in the series. It explores what made Parker the man he is and why he feels compelled to seek out the evil found in the world. Some of the characterizations of the small town grifters and power hungry are a bit trite but overall the novel is a satisfactory chapter in the series and gives readers a deeper understanding of Parker. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

I normally do not read series out of order but I'm so glad I broke my own rule and started this series with the 18th book. I had seen out on media somewhere that this book was to be a prequel of sorts to the Charlie Parker series, so I just thought it may be a good time to figure out who Parker is and whether or not I want to commit to starting a long series like this one. I really loved reading it so I now plan to go back and start with the first Charlie Parker book.

There are a lot of details in here, and there are a lot of perspectives. There are a lot of things going on, really. I think I was able to get a good sense of who Charlie Parker is thru his own POV's and those of the other characters. I also was able to get a really good sense of the setting, which is set in 1997 out in Cargill, Arkansas. This is not too long after Charlie's wife and daughter are murdered, and Charlie is on the hunt for the person responsible for their deaths. He comes through Cargill, AK while on the hunt for this killer and finds that this small Southern town is struggling to get a handle on a string of murders that happened there. Someone has been killing young black women in a horrific way, and certain law enforcement agents are preventing the investigation from moving forward. Really, the small police department isn't equipped to handle crimes like these. Charlie has good experience from his time in the NYPD, so he decides to stay around for a while and help.

It's clear that Charlie isn't from Cargill and he doesn't really know any of the townspeople except thru his work with these murder investigations. It's a neat choice by Mr. Connolly to write Charlie as a stranger to these people because it highlighted the community's reluctance to trust and cooperate with Charlie. It made for good tension in the story. I kind of wonder if the town of Cargill will feature again in any of the previously-released books or if this is just a one-off story. I also wonder if any of these characters will show up again. I have my suspicions that two of the characters are known to longtime fans of this series because they had small roles but they left a big impression. I also wonder if starting the series from the beginning, with Parker in another setting and a different head-space, will almost be like being introduced to him all over again. I won't know the answers to these ponderings until I go back and start the series, but I find myself really excited to go ahead and pick up the first book.


I would like to thank Atria/Emily Bestler Books for gifting me a digital copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for review. I was not required to write a positive review, but I really liked this book so my review is indeed positive. Thank you, Atria and Emily Bestler!

Before we get started. This is by JOHN Connelly, whose main character is the former NYPD detective Charlie Parker. It is not by MICHAEL Connelly, whose main character is Harry Bosch (and Mickey Haller, aka The Lincoln Lawyer). Both write crime novels. But they couldn’t be more different.

John Connelly has written 17 prior Charlie Parker novels, a couple of which have been reviewed here on MRB. This one differs a bit as it helps establish Parker’s backstory. Parker had been an NYPD detective. Toward the end of his time on the force, a suspicious murder went down, and Parker may or may not have been involved. But the real force behind who Parker is and would become is that his wife and daughter were murdered. Make that slaughtered. He fell apart after that, quit the force, and began his hunt for the killer. With the help of an FBI agent friend, Parker would look into murders across the US with roughly the same MO.

Which brings him to Burdon County Arkansas late in Bill Clinton’s 2nd term in office. A third teenage girl has suffered what appears to be a ritualistic death. The first one happened about 15yr ago. The second happened a month before the third. The victims appear to have been tortured and their bodies mutilated with tree limbs crammed into various orifices.

Cargill is a nothing city buried deep within a nothing county in a forgotten corner of a state that competes with Mississippi to be the bottom of any 'best of' list of the US. The Cargill chief of police, Evan Griffin, is an Arkansas native and deals with drunks, some property crime, meth cookers, and traffic issues. A serial killer is out of his league. One evening in a local diner, he spots a stranger, Parker, and hassles him to the point where Griffin thinks a night in the slammer might improve Parker’s attitude. Next morning they check him out. What they learn earns a quick release and an apology.

Parker is curious about the murders. Griffin brings his up to speed and asks for help that Parker grudgingly agrees. Two issues underlay most everything in Cargill. First, the county is pretty much run by the Cade family. Has been for decades. The patriarch is Pappy and his three children make sure the county is run according to their wishes. His daughter Delphia lives in Little Rock to keep tabs on the legislature. Jurel is the Chief Investigator for the Burdon County Sheriff’s office. Nealus stays local to manage off of Pappy’s interests in Cargill. Nothing happens in Burdon County without Pappy’s blessing.

Second is that the county is dirt poor. Dirt poor may be a disservice to ‘dirt’. What that means is that land is plentiful and cheap. Now if some industry could be successfully courted to locate in Burdon County, that’d mean millions to the Cade family in land sales and more millions in money to the county what with construction costs, operational expenses, and the tax base. A company that deals in high tech for the military has narrowed its search for a new plant to Burdon County and somewhere in Texas. And Pappy Cade is going to make sure they choose Cargill.

The problem is whether they’ll choose Cargill what with at least two (and maybe a third if the initial death is included) unsolved murders of teenage girls. Pappy thinks law enforcement should put the investigation on the back burner until the papers are signed. And with son Jurel in the sheriff’s office, that should be easy. But the last killing was in the Cargill police jurisdiction and Chief Griffin stands his ground to lead the investigation.

The investigation pings all over the county from horny bar owners to crystal meth cookers to good ol’ boys dipping their wick in the local teenagers to local hookers and politics at the State level. Someone sure seems bent on making sure that the techies will use the killings as a reason to choose Texas for their new facilities.

Connelly paints a dead and dying corner of Arkansas to be a loathsome and worthless corner of the world. The locals are mostly ignorant and racist pigs who proudly wear their attitudes on their collective sleeves. Only the Cargill cops and the night clerk at a motel are deserving of our sympathies. The Cade family meets every stereotype of the southern control freaks who believe everyone in the county is there to meet their needs. A wretched clan they are.

If I had one hesitation, it’s this (and it's minor, believe me). John Connelly was born in Dublin and has won nearly every fiction prize out there. One thing sets UK authors apart from American authors. UK authors sure seem to have a greater command of the language, meaning a broader vocabulary. It was a good thing I was reading this on a Kindle so that I could select any number of words for its definition. Happened nearly every chapter. And that command of the language is visible in the dialogue. As such, I found it a little odd that some yahoo from rural off the map Arkansas might ask, ‘what gives you a proprietorial interest in developments?’ But making county bumpkins sound more educated shouldn’t deter anyone from picking up this (or any) book by John Connolly. It is what it is. It’s about the story. It’s about Parker wrestling with his demons that control his guilt while trying to help a fellow officer in need of his skills. And in this book, we see how Parker perfects his hunting skills.

And guess what, boys and girls? This is another Emily Bestler Books product so you know it’ll be absolutely first rate. Pay attention to those publishers. I’ve yet to go wrong with books from Emily Bestler Books.

A tip of the hat to NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy. Release date is October 20, 2021.

This was definitely one of those books that was hard to put down. What initially drew me to the book when I read the description was it was set in Arkansas. Being an Arkansan and loving this genre of book made me jump quick. This author was new to me, but definitely did not disappoint. The storyline, characters, and overall feel of the book made me a very satisfied reader.

The Dirty South brings Charlie Parker's past into sharp focus, as it takes place in the time period between his resignation from the NYPD and Every Dead Thing. Looking for the murderer of his family through other cases across the country, Charlie finds himself in a small town in Arkansas, where three young black girls have been murdered and mutilated. From a suspect to a helpful investigator, will Charlie be able to give closure to others, if not himself?

The secrets and corruption that live in the small town are not all that surprising and give the story a more realistic viewpoint. Having only read some of the Charlie Parker novels, I liked the fact that this book was a straightforward mystery/thriller. Although I was not that surprised by the ending, I did like how the author paced the novel with many highs and lows throughout. Writers often leave gaps in the stories of their characters, so it is nice when they come back and give the readers a new perspective of the time period. The Dirty South is well written and the character development for Charlie is an unexpected bonus. Readers new to the series can definitely read this novel out of sequence, but they might be either disappointed or elated because the rest of the novels include more of a supernatural element.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of The Dirty South by NetGalley and the publisher, Atria/Emily Bestler Books. The choice to review this book was entirely my own and I was not compensated in any way.

This is the best of the non-supernatural Parker novel so far. My friend Aaron Nash and I stopped at #11 in the series to read this one. It's a prequel and you don't have to have read past Dark Hollow, but I suggest you read the first two books before this one. Other than that, I don't know what else to say. It's a wonderful book and you should definitely give it your attention!

Connolly is masterful!

This is part of the Charlie Parker series and I was not at all surprised at how good this was. I couldn't put it down! I would recommend reading this series before picking up this book. This is the 18th book in the Charlie Parker series.

Warning: Save Your Time And Money!

I’ve read the first 3 books in the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly but for whatever reason, I hadn’t read another one in about twenty years until I decided to read The Dirty South. My hope was that it would draw me back into the “world of Charlie Parker.”

Having now finished The Dirty South, my level of dislike of it is such that it might very well take another twenty years for me to read another book in the series.

Simply put, my overall dislike stems from the following factors:
...The plot being boring, boring and, oh yeah,boring;
...All of the characters (including the main character, Charlie Parker) being uninteresting and too thinly developed; and
...The book being almost devoid of any “in the moment” excitement, action, thrills or surprises;

Due to the above factors, I seriously considered at several points giving up on this overly long and too drawn out book. However, I decided to read on with the hope that some level of excitement was “just pages away”. That was my mistake and my recommendation to you is to not make the same mistake I did by reading The Dirty South. Unfortunately, the only pleasure I got from reading it is when I came to THE END.

#The Dirty South #Net Galley

Great story line that kept me turning pages. Wonderful characters that fit the southern setting well. Started slow but great finish and overall a story that hits home to southern rural life. I loved it.

I so loved this book. The mystery really pulls you in. The storyline was interesting and entertaining. I will buy more from this author. I would highly recommend this book.

Charlie Parker has resigned from the police force and is crossing the country in search of the killer of his wife and daughter. Having heard of a particularly gruesome murder in small town Cargill, Arkansas, he stops to check it out. Unfortunately, he quickly gets himself on the wrong side of the law and ends up in a police cell overnight. However, the police officer who arrested Parker, on learning his experience as a cop in New York, asks him to help with the investigation. At first, he refuses but he eventually reluctantly agrees to help.

He quickly begins to regret his decision. Cargill is poor and is run by a single family that has a plan to bring back prosperity and the murder of a young Black girl could interfere with this plan. One of the members of the family is the sheriff of the district who has already listed a similar murder as an accident but the police chief is determined to prevent this. As a result, there is a battle for jurisdiction of the murder between the district and the town and Parker quickly finds himself caught in the middle.

I've gotta admit I am a huge fan of the Charlie Parker series by John Connolly and The Dirty South didn't change my mind. It's the 18th in the series but takes the story back to the beginning. As in past books, the characters, both old and new, are well fleshed out with witty dialogue and interesting back stories and the pace is fast but never so much that it distracts from the story. For those who know the series, the usual touch of the supernatural is missing here but that's okay because it's still one cracking good mystery.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>