The Lovers was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2009. After eight novels of investigating other people’s pasts, Parker turns his attention to his own: specifically, the death of his father, Will Parker, an NYPD officer who shot two teenagers and then killed himself when Charlie was a boy. The official story has never satisfied Parker, and now — stripped of his PI license, isolated from his usual support systems — he begins to investigate.
What Parker discovers reframes the entire series: his father’s suicide was connected to the same supernatural forces that Parker has been fighting throughout his career. The “lovers” of the title are Parker’s parents — his father Will and his mother Elaine — whose relationship was shaped by knowledge of what their son would become. Parker’s role as a detective of the supernatural was not chosen but fated, determined by forces that preceded his birth.
This is the novel where Connolly’s series transitions from crime fiction with supernatural elements to something closer to cosmic horror in a crime-fiction framework. Parker is not merely a good detective who happens to encounter evil — he is a figure in a metaphysical drama, chosen (or cursed) to stand at the intersection of the living and the dead. The revelation is handled with extraordinary narrative control, recontextualizing everything that has come before.
Collecting The Lovers
First edition (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2009): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- US first (Atria, 2009), fine/fine: $15–$35