Location: Home > Art, Architecture & Photography > Thrillers > Bad Men

Bad Men

Author: John Connolly
Publisher: Coronet
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł7.99~~
Buy Used: Ł0.01
You Save: Ł7.98 (100%)

New (26) Used (136) Collectible (2) from Ł0.01

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

22 reviews
Sales Rank: 16210

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.3 x 1.4

ISBN: 0340826193
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780340826195
ASIN: 0340826193

Publication Date: March 15, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Second hand paperback book, fair wear and tear, books always graded fairly, shipped promptly 1st class from the UK airmail for overseas buyers.

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Bad Men
•	Paperback - Bad Men
•	Unknown Binding - Welfare spending in Milwaukee County: " where does the money go? " (Wisconsin Policy Research Institute report)

Similar Items:

•	The White Road
•	Nocturnes
•	The Unquiet
•	The Underbury Witches (Open Door Series V)
•	The Overlook

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Connolly writes dark, streetwise thrillers that pull no punches when showing human cruelty. Bad Men blends noir crime with supernatural horror as murderous gangsters invade an island whose ghosts have a special way with bad men.

Dutch Island, once known as Sanctuary, lies off the coast of Connolly's regular stamping-ground, the US state of Maine. A gory prologue relates dreadful doings there in 1693. Now it's a sleepy, only slightly spooky haven, easily policed by a single cop--the literally giant-sized "Melancholy Joe" Dupree--plus a mainland deputy.

Joe knows something of Sanctuary's history and the forces that seem to cleanse it of toxic human elements. Following two deaths in a tragic car crash, the old ghosts seem restless, as though waiting for something. They're waiting for a man called Moloch.

Moloch, amoral and appalling, is doing time as a major criminal organiser. His beautiful, cruelly treated wife Marian took her chance to cut loose before Moloch killed her, betraying him to the police and escaping to Dutch Island with their son, a brand-new identity and a small fortune in cash.

When Moloch's team of picked killers seizes a long-awaited opportunity to free him, reunion with his wife is the next priority. Working their way through her friends, relatives and contacts, they leave a chilling trail of death and mutilation. The emotionless assassin Shepherd is bad enough, but irascible Tell has a hair-trigger temper and kills unnecessarily (eg: a bystander talking too loudly on his mobile phone), while the eerily beautiful young man Willard does it lingeringly and for fun. Even Moloch, who coldly and effortlessly dominates this awful crew, is unnerved by Willard.

When all these (and more) reach Sanctuary, a freak snowstorm rages, power and communications fail, and unknowing locals standing between the hitmen and Marian are easy meat. Two quick bullets should deal with Joe Dupree and his current deputy, a female rookie cop from Portland. But something else, as we know from many portents and Moloch's own dreams, is waiting.

Bad Men is a standalone novel despite the brief, superfluous appearance of Connolly's regular PI character Charles Parker. It's a suspenseful, compelling read, hypnotic in its orchestration of brutality and mayhem; readers are likely to wince frequently and even involuntarily shut their eyes. --David Langford

Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Simply Brilliant June 22, 2007
John Connolly has become one of my favourite authors and having read his entire Charlie Parker series and Nocturnes I decided to look at this one, it took me a while to get around to buying it but didnt take long to finish.

This is one of the best books I have read in recent months and it really was gripping, having not read a Connolly book for so long the return to his superb writing was most welcome. This is his only book apart from Nocturnes (a short story collection) that does not have his usual hero playing a real part.

Connolly's plots, characters and writing in general are as good as any I have read and this latest novel is no exception. His protagonist's are well set up and easy to sympathise with drawing you into the book, even his villains which are usually mercilessly evil and well still are seem to be more human in their nature (apart from Willard). This time out the escaped convict Moloch and his team of hired goons which are all very menacing and believable are hunting down his wife so that he can have revenge against the woman that left him and the son he never knew.

Moloch's actions are not entirely his own however history seems about to repeat itself on the small Maine state Island of Sanctuary. Theres plenty of blood, death and strange goings on to interest most any reader especially returning fans of Connolly who should really love this book as much as I did, in terms of comparisons to the other books of his this is most like his masterful writing of Every Dead Thing (another book worth looking into if you havent).

A massive resounding yes to add to anyones book collection if you like a good thriller with a bit of a supernatural twist. If your only on Amazon to buy one book today make it this one and if your like me you'll be finished with it in two days and back for another anyway.

4 out of 5 stars

Better Than Your Average Thriller June 21, 2007
I eat crime stories for breakfast. Well not literally, of course - although they do say there's more goodness to be found in the cardboard box than in the Cornflakes themselves. But I do read loads. Toss two-thirds aside by chapter three usually - because of the purple-tinged prose and preposterous plotlines - Bad Men, on the other hand, was a great read from first page to last. Oh, it's hardly realistic per se - but the realism is to be found in the detail. Interesting and intriguing characters with the island location itself having a depth of character all its own.

Expertly crafted, beautifully written and, despite the "supernatural" element, still somehow credible and believable.

If, like me, you are bored by the likes of Patricia Cornwell's turgid yarns or Dan Brown's vacuous Bestsellers, try this book for size. Trust me, you could do a whole lot worse and not a lot better.

3 out of 5 stars

Not bad January 13, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Following on from the critically acclaimed Charlie Parker series Connolly presents us with his first stand-alone creepy thriller based in his favoured state of Maine, but off the mainland and on the fictitious island of Dutch (sometimes Sanctuary). Moloch is a man on a mission: after breaking out of prison in Virginia he sets off in search of his wife, who did a runner with their young son and his ill-gotten gains a few years earlier - but it's really only the cash that Moloch is after.

And that just about sums it up. Compared to the Parker series, this was a far less convoluted tale in which the baddies were not, ironically, particularly bad - at least not when you think of the other evil characters Connolly has created in the past - and we are left wanting for a truly interesting or exciting hero once we have got to know the island's police chief Joe Dupree. He's big in stature, at over seven feet, but he's not known as Melancholy Joe without good reason. Of course, there's a little more to it than all this, because the tale might not have been told at all but for the horrors that took place on Sanctuary some three centuries earlier. In essence, the ghosts of Sanctuary's past are here to wreak vengeance on Moloch and his associates as they close down on their prey one snow-filled windswept night in January.

If there's one familiar gripe I have with Connolly's style, and it's one I share across all of his preceding novels, it's his near exclusive use of guns as a tool of retribution against the bad guys, despite the recurring theme of the supernatural and contact between living and dead. In Bad Men, even the ghosts use guns! That I found plain silly, in what I considered to be a generally weak and hastily-written conclusion. It was always inevitable that good would win over evil, but I had hoped for something more creative and surprising in the manner in which it panned out. Another of Connolly's master strengths in previous novels was largely missing here: that of his beautifully poetic prose. At times I even wondered if it was the `real' John Connolly at work, a man who I consider to be, when he's at his peak, one of the best writers of our time within his chosen genre. But this novel plodded on, rarely raising the pulse of the reader - and despite much clearer references to the after-life and other supernatural beings, it was actually less disturbing. Charlie Parker does get mentioned a couple of times, as a PI known to the police and underworld of Maine, but his experiences with his late wife were far more spookily portrayed than anything described in Bad Men.

It won't lose Connolly any of his existing fans, who will know that he can do better, but the risk is that anyone new to this author will finish Bad Men thinking that maybe this is what he's all about. That would be a shame, because they would be missing out on the real treats to be savoured in any of the vaguely similar but overwhelmingly superior Charlie Parker stories. Best to start with Every Dead Thing and work your way forwards from there.

3 out of 5 stars

Nothing is black or white July 3, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I was looking for a Charlie Parker follow on (didn't read the reviews beforehand!) so, apart from 2 lines, that's all you get. If I thought Parker had his daemons, Dutch Island has them in spades. I'm not keen on a mix of - in this case, over violent - thugs taking on the ghosts of some ancient settlers. It seems to mean that these degenerate criminals can be killed off by forces outside their control and it makes their elimination just too easy. This was a pity because the book rattles along, mystifyingly in some cases, bringing certain characters to the reader's 'soft spot' and you just hoped that good would triumph in the end. Reading other Connolly books, this is too much to expect. It reminded me of Stephen King's 'Fog' in parts and, in that sense, I was somewhat disappointed. Certainly, there is an ending but it's unsatisfactory for me. I look forward to reading 'The Black Angel' where I'm pretty positive Parker really does feature!

5 out of 5 stars

A Chilling Thriller August 26, 2004
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This was the first JC book which I have read. My initial impression was of a slow over descriptive author, how wrong could I have been. Bad Men is an excellent haunting thriller which if you stick with it will keep you up till the early morning as it is tough to put down. The chracters are excellent both likeable and loathsome and the body count is very high and graphic.
I look forward to reading more of his books and would highly recomend this story to any thriller reader.