THE CHILDREN OF EVE BY JOHN CONNOLLY

 

The latest issue of Phantasmagoria magazine includes the following review I wrote of Jhn Connolly's latest Charlie Parker novel, The Children of Eve.

THE CHILDREN OF EVE

By John Connolly

Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 2025

This is the latest volume in the ongoing saga of Charlie Parker, whose private eye investigations all too often bring him into far too close a contact with dark forces. Nor is this any different.

It starts innocuously enough with Parker being asked to find avant garde artist Zetta Nadeau’s missing boyfriend, an ex-army veteran who has abruptly disappeared, presumably having gone into hiding after carrying out a mysterious job. As Parker’s investigation begins he discovers that, disturbingly, the boyfriend, Wyatt Riggins had been involved in something more sinister than his girlfriend suspected, the abduction from South America of a group of children, stolen from cartel boss, Blas Urrea, who wants them back. Complicating matters, the children appear to have been stolen on the orders of an American mob boss who had been working with Urrea till their relationship soured. Both sides are now using dangerous heavies either to find the children or hide them securely, resulting in a rising body count and some particularly sadistic murders, including hearts being cut out of bodies while their owners are still alive – that is till the hearts have been torn free and partially devoured.

It's a typically dark tale from John Connolly who is a master at creating unforgettable villains and intricately conceived stories, within which one atrocity will soon be topped by another. Charlie Parker, and his friends Louis and Angel, are often tested to the brink, never more so than in this tale, with its overtones of something even darker and more ominous lurking above and beyond the story itself, which will only reveal itself in some future volume.

Splendidly well written, this is yet another horrific page-turner (quite literally), and I cannot wait for the next.

 

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR BY WILLARD M. OLIVER

The latest issue of Phantasmagoria magazine #27 includes my review of Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author by Willard M. Oliver. Below is a copy of this review: 

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR

By Willard M. Oliver

Published by University of North Texas Press, 2025

This is a big book (579 pages), especially for a writer whose life ended after only thirty years. But when you look at the amazing literary legacy left behind by Robert E. Howard this is not too long a book at all. And Willard M. Oliver does full justice to all of Howard’s many stories, heroes, and the different genres in which he wrote, with chapters on Weird Tales, “On Werewolves and Horror Yarns, 1925”, “The Last Celt”, “Solomon Kane and Historical Fantasy, 1928”, “Steve Costigan and the Boxing Yarns, 1929”, “King Kull and the Birth of Swords and Sorcery, 1929”, “‘Lovecraft, One of the Greatest Writers of Our Time’, 1930”, “Bran Mak Morn and the Picts, 1930”, “Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet, and Historical Fiction, 1931”, “The Cthulhu Mythos, 1931”, “Westerns both Strange and True, 1932”, “‘Hither Came Conan, the Cimmerian’, 1931”, “Steve Harrison and the Detective Yarns, 1933”, “Breckenridge Elkins and the Tall Tale Yarns, 1934”, “El Borak and the Adventure Yarns, 1934”, and so on and so forth.

Not only are we given detailed biographies of Howard’s parents, but also of his close friends and his only girlfriend, Novalyne Price, as well as those writers he became involved with, mainly through frequent correspondence, such as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Willard M. Oliver’s thoroughness is exemplary, and he is never boring, giving the reader a keen understanding of the times in which Howard lived and wrote, his constant problems with editors, the rejections, rewrites and struggles with payments, the latter being especially important to him as Howard was determined from the start to be a full time writer with no other employment to distract him if he could manage it.

I was fascinated with Howard’s continual rejections from many markets, including his main standby, Weird Tales. His determination to make his way as a writer despite numerous setbacks is inspirational, but I sense eventually this all took its toll, especially when he began to rely on the payments he received to help cover medical bills for his mother, which only became greater and more frequent as her terminal illness (tuberculosis) progressed towards its inevitable end.

As I read this book I became increasingly more impressed with what Howard managed to produce over those few active years as a writer and what he had to endure, both mentally and physically. I must admit, though, it’s a book whose final chapters I approached with growing trepidation, knowing how it would end: with him sat alone in his car with a loaded gun. With the failure of his friendship with Novalyne Price, who it is obvious he would have wanted eventually to marry had things gone differently and their relationship hadn’t finally soured, plus the toil of the necessity to look after his mother both physically and financially, all took it out of him, till the end had a dreadful inevitability about it, especially for someone given to periodic bouts of black depression.

Despite the tragic end to Howard’s life, this is an incredible book, utterly readable, insightful and impressively thorough, one of the best biographies of a writer I have ever read, and I recommend it unreservedly for anyone with an interest in the creator of Conan.