- Title: The Killing Kind
- Author: John Connolly
- Genre: Crime/Thriller
- Date Published: 2001
- Length: 436 pages
- Where I read it: Bed
Nobody does dark, twisty storytelling quite like John Connolly. The Killing Kind is one of those books – clever, unsettling, and full of the creeping unease he’s so annoyingly brilliant at delivering.
Connolly has this ability to blend crime fiction with the supernatural without ever tipping into the ridiculous. He walks that tightrope with the confidence of someone who’s made a pact with something he probably shouldn’t have spoken to in the first place. And in The Killing Kind, he’s in full command of the eerie, the mythic, and the downright spine-tingling.
We need to talk about spiders.
Personally, I’m a “live and let live” person when it comes to anything eight-legged. Huntsmans? Fine. Daddy long-legs? Welcome to the share house. But, I will admit, I am racist. White-tailed spiders? Immediate eviction by death – I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Between the rest of them and my Venus flytrap, I figure they’re paying rent and I’m okay with them staying. But Connolly weaponises my mild discomfort and turns it into full-body creep factor. I swear I felt phantom tickles for days.
Beyond the arachnid trauma, what really hooked me was the mythology woven through the narrative. Connolly doesn’t just flirt with the supernatural – he threads it into the bones of the story (when you read the book you’ll see what I did there!). The villains feel ancient, hungry, and wrong in a way that makes you instinctively lean back from the page.
And then there’s Charlie Parker. Complex, haunted, stubbornly human in a world that feels like it’s tilting toward the uncanny. He remains one of the most compelling protagonists in crime/thriller fiction – a man constantly wrestling both the literal and metaphorical darkness.
The Killing Kind isn’t simply a thriller; it’s a descent into something older and darker than any crime novel has a right to be. Completely gripping. Deeply unnerving. And yes – worth every goosebump.
Have you read it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Em x
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