I decided a while ago that this would be my last Charlie Parker novel. Back in 2018, I listened to the audiobook for The Woman in the Woods. I really enjoyed it and thought that I found a Robert B. Parker replacement, so I bought the first six books in the series. I quickly grew bored with it. Almost every entry has an interchangeable antagonist who almost seems inhuman in its capacity for evil and makes life incredibly unpleasant for Parker; and to increase the suspense, there's the threat of cliched mobsters. It's a formula that gets old after a while. Plus, unlike Robert B. Parker's Spenser, I don't find the jokes funny; Parker comes across as someone who flunked comedy class quicker than Drew Carey bombing at improv night. Also, the romance between Louis and Angel feels unrealistic (Louis strikes me as a sociopath who could fuck but not love). And the paranormal backstory throughout the series annoys me with its too little reveals. But Connolly's lyrical prose is seductive, even though at times it could be edited down.
I give The Unquiet four out of five stars. Lots of surprises at the end; the pacing is really good throughout; and some characters are so lifelike, I had to remember it wasn't nonfiction. Nice book to stop reading the series at.
He was about five years older than I was, big and strong-looking, but balding badly on top, although he kept his hair cut short enough to disguise the worst of it. It was petty and childish, I knew, but I always felt a brief surge of warmth inside when I met someone close to my own age who had less hair that I did. You could be king of the world and own a dozen companies, but every morning when you started in the mirror your first thought would be, Damn, I wish I still had my hair.
Chapter IX, pages 115-116
Men, by and large, sought sex. Women traded it.
Chapter IX, p. 119
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