The Furies

In this 20th installment in Connolly’s “Charlie Parker” series (after The Nameless Ones), comprising two novels in one, private investigator Charlie Parker takes on several unusual cases. In the first story, The Sisters Strange, criminal Raum Buker arrives in Portland with a mysterious malevolent killer on his trail. Buker has stolen a valuable coin, and the killer wants it back. Is the coin a talisman that can delay death or is it simply a coin linked to a rumor? Whatever the case, Parker’s job is to protect sisters Dolors and Ambar Strange from Raum, the killer, and themselves. In the second novel, The Furies, a woman hires Parker to find the men who are blackmailing her and to retrieve a box containing the trinkets of her deceased daughter’s childhood. The ghost of the child haunts the blackmailers and the seedy motel where they live, and a second woman needs help to escape from an abusive boyfriend. Narrator Jeff Harding expertly captures Connolly’s wide variety of characters, from sarcastic and wry Parker to the deeply unsettling people that he encounters.