Shots
Editorial Team have been long time readers of Irish Writer John Connolly,
so we were interested in the thoughts of his latest Charlie Parker thriller, A
Time of Torment from our reviewer John Parker; who described it in
closing as “an absolute must read”.
Read the Shots review here
and the precursor A Song of Shadows here
which is out in paperback currently.
Due to John Parker’s enthusiasm for Connolly’s
14th Charlie Parker thriller, he had some burning questions, related
to A
Time of Torment, so John
Connolly kindly obliged providing additional insights which we are sharing with
our readers.
John Parker
Is the name of
Roger Ormsby, the Gray Man a reference to Thayne Ormsby who murdered three
people in Maine back in 2012?
John Connolly
No,
thankfully! I tend to be very careful
about names, especially when it comes to
something as
awful as that. I have been known to
trawl obituary columns for possible
combinations,
though. It passes the time…
JP What gave you the idea for the community
of The Cut?
JC My British editor, when she received the
book, commented that it seemed to be part of my ongoing fascination with
reclusive groups, which is probably true. There is a strong strand in American
political and social thought relating to looking after one’s own, carrying your
own bucket, and accepting no obligation to society beyond one’s own immediate
dependents, or those who are most like oneself, which is kind of anathema to
me. Once we accept the right of
individuals or groups to secede from society, it begins to collapse, but it’s
also poisonous for those who have stepped away.
I suppose I’m interested in exploring the resulting dynamics.
JP In the past,
you spoke of the difference between “evil” and “need and greed” in relation to
Morland in The Wolf in Winter. Does
this apply to the inhabitants of The Cut which seems to be full of the most
evil people imaginable?
JC: Hmmm.
You see, I don’t think of them as evil, just as The Cut doesn’t think of
itself as evil. Even with the worst of
the characters in my books, I try to find the point at which they can justify
what they do to themselves. As someone
once said, everybody has his reasons.
Mostly, The Cut just wants to be left alone, but it’s been isolated for
so long that it no longer even sees – or wants to accept - the extent of its
own corruption. Well, Oberon – its
leader - does, to some degree. There’s
a moment in the book, when he has the chance to flee and leave the Cut to his
fate, where I want the reader almost to empathize with him. Oberon is beyond salvation, but in that
moment there is something noble about him, and a glimpse of what he could have
been under different circumstances. What
makes him interesting isn’t his corruption, but what has been corrupted.
JP It was
great that you brought back Alvin Martin for this novel. Do you intend to bring
him back again or any other “lost” character you have created?
JC For a long time, I’ve been constructing the
Parker novels as individual parts of a larger narrative, so characters who
feature – sometimes only briefly – in earlier books will have their part to
play as the sequence continues. That’s
part of the pleasure for me in writing the Parker novels: the chance to create
something bigger than a series of discrete books connected only by the presence
of two or three major characters. It’s
one of the reasons for the change in the narrative voice in recent books, where
Parker becomes less of the focus – because they’re no longer first person
narratives – and instead is more first among equals, or near equals.
JP It seems
that Professor Ian Williamson is destined to meet up with Charlie sometime in
the future. How soon?
JC Oh, I
can’t say. There’s a game being played
with the readers, and I think – I hope – they’re enjoying it.
JP There is
a whole chapter dedicated to Jennifer Parker in the novel, while later on in
the book, Samantha demonstrates some rather unique powers. What role are the
two daughters of Charlie likely to play in the near-future?
JC Again, I can’t really say, other than that
I’ve spent a long time getting the books to this point.
JP Children
play an important role in the novel. In the previous novel, A Song of Shadows, a
character says, “We’re only put here to watch over the children until they’re
ready to take care of themselves.” Does
this have implications for the future of Charlie and Samantha?
JC Crikey, there’s three in a row that I can’t
really answer. What’s been lovely about
the response of readers (most of them) to the books is not that just that they
want to spend time with Parker – character being the principal reason why we
read mystery novels, I think, particularly series novels – but they want to
find out what happens next. That’s not
really usual in mystery fiction. It’s
more typical of ongoing sagas in fantasy literature or science fiction.
JP Religion,
pagan or Christian, plays a big part in your books. Do you think that God, The
God of Wasps, The Green Man and the like are all part of the same thing or
separate entities?
JC The supernatural/ metaphysical/
mythological elements to the books allow me to explore that question, I
suppose. The books suggest that those
entities inhabit the same space, but are not necessarily the same being. The Dead King in A Time of Torment has no connection to whatever lay beneath the
church in Prosperous at the heart of The
Wolf in Winter. Then there are
others that are clearly linked, and form part of that larger narrative in the
books. Ultimately, though, the novels
suggest that evil tends towards isolation.
Goodness is collaborative.
JP I think
there are nods to the Tooth Fairy from Thomas Harris’s “Manhunter” and to the
Yellow King in Nic
Pizzolatto’s “True Detective.” Is this so or is it just my imagination?
JC No, I wouldn’t have said so. I mean, Harris casts a long shadow, and Every
Dead Thing was certainly in it, but not so much the later books. As for True Detective, the elements of the
novels that you’ve referred to in your earlier questions were there long before
True Detective. Pizzolatto – at least in
that first series - is interesting in the way he has picked from other texts,
including the work of Thomas Ligotti and Robert W. Chambers – and, indeed,
James Lee Burke. Pizzolattto has been
influenced, but he’s not an influence himself, or least not for me. He will be for others down the line. What was
most impressive for me about the first series of True Detective was its visual
and narrative cohesion, and that owed as much to Cary Fukunaga, who directed
all of its episodes, as to Pizzolatto
JP How far
have you planned out Charlie’s future? The desire to know what happens next is
strong in your fans. When is the next book out and can you give us any clues?
JC Well, I
still enjoy writing the books, and I hope to continue doing so for a while yet,
but there is a narrative strand that will have to be brought to a conclusion at
some point. The next book will, with
luck, be out in April 2017. I’m working
on it at the moment, and it has a title.
It’ll be called A Game of Ghosts, and it’s about as weird a book as I’ve
written. Sometimes it seems to me that,
with each book, the readers are prepared to step a little further into the
world of the series, and as a consequence the stories can grow stranger
still.
JP Thank you for your time and insight
JC Thanks for the interest. I just feel bad that I couldn’t answer all of
the questions. Well, I could have, but
then I’d have been forced to kill you.
Shots wish to thank reviewer John Parker, Kerry Hood of Hodder and
Stoughton and John Connolly
for their time in sorting this interview.
More information about the work of John Connolly available here
And don’t forget, Shots have heavily discounted copies of A Time of
Torment available from our bookstore
Reviewer John
Parker is a Graduate-qualified English/Spanish Teacher, owner and director of
CHAT ENGLISH, an English Language Centre in Avilés on the north coast of Spain
. A voracious reader, he has particularly loved horror fiction for many years.
Cover Photos © Hodder and Stoughton
Other Photos © Ayo Onatade
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