"It's Evil versus Good versus an entity indifferent to both. Connolly often stretches the boundaries of the crime novel, but he also tells a ripping-good yarn and creates vividly drawn characters."
Booklist
"The best kind of book for long winter nights."
Newsday
"A gruesomely entertaining ride."
Publishers Weekly
The Wrath of Angels
BOOK 11
A list of names in the wreckage of a plane becomes the focus of a race among Parker and sinister forces.
Synopsis
In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of a plane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money. It is power: a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret, and those for whom it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness. The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and the serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter. But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets. Someone has survived the crash. SOMETHING has survived the crash. And it is waiting . . .
Chapter I
At the time of his dying, the day and the hour of it, Harlan Vetters summoned his son
and his daughter to his bedside. The old man’s long gray hair was splayed against the
pillow on which he lay, glazed by the lamplight, so that it seemed like the emanations
of his departing spirit. His breathing was shallow; longer and longer were the pauses
between each intake and exhalation, and soon they would cease entirely. The evening
gloaming was slowly descending, but the trees were still visible through the bedroom
window, the sentinels of the Great North Woods, for old Harlan had always said that
he lived at the very edge of the frontier, that his home was the last place before the
forest held sway.
It seemed to him now that, as his strength failed him, so too his power to keep
nature at bay was ebbing. There were weeds in his yard, and brambles among his
rosebushes. The grass was patchy and unkempt; it needed one final mow before the
coming of winter, just as the stubble on his own chin rasped uncomfortably against
his fingers, for the girl could not shave him as well as he had once shaved himself.
Fallen leaves lay uncollected like the flakes of dry skin that peeled from his hands and
his face, scattering themselves upon his sheets. He saw decline through his window,
and decline in his mirror, but in only one was there the promise of rebirth.
The girl claimed that she had enough to do without worrying about bushes and
trees, and the boy was still too angry to perform even this simple service for his dying
father, but to Harlan these things were important. There was a battle to be fought, an
ongoing war against nature’s attritional impulse. If everyone thought as his daughter
did, houses would be overrun by root and ivy, and towns would vanish beneath seas
of brown and green. A man had only to open his eyes in this county to see the ruins
of old dwellings suffocated in green, or to open his ears to hear the names of
settlements that no longer existed, lost somewhere in the depths of the forest.
So nature needed to be held back, and the trees had to be kept to their domain.
The trees, and what dwelled among them.
Harlan was not a particularly religious man, and had always poured scorn on
those whom he termed “God-botherers”—Christian, Jew, or Muslim, he had no time
for any of them—but he was, in his way, a deeply spiritual being, worshipping a god
whose name was whispered by leaves and praised in birdsong. He had been a warden
with the Maine Forest Service for forty years, and even after his retirement his
knowledge and expertise had often been sought by his successors, for few knew these
woods as well as he. It was Harlan who had found twelve-year-old Barney Shore after
the boy’s father collapsed while hunting, his heart exploding so quickly in his chest
that he was dead within seconds of hitting the ground. The boy, in shock and unused
to the woods, had wandered north, and when the snow began to descend he had
hidden himself beneath a fallen tree, and would surely have died there had Harlan not
been following his tracks, so that the boy heard the old man calling his name just as
the snow covered the traces of his passing.
It was to Harlan, and to Harlan alone, that Barney Shore told the tale of the girl
in the woods, a girl with sunken eyes, and wearing a black dress, who had come to him
with the first touch of snow, inviting him to follow her deeper into the woods, calling
on him to play with her in the northern darkness.
“But I hid from her, and I didn’t go with her,” Barney told Harlan, as the old
man carried him south upon his back.
“Why not, son?” said Harlan.
“Because she wasn’t a little girl, not really. She just looked like one. I think she
was very old. I think she’d been there for a long, long time.”r I At the time of his dying, the day and the hour of it, Harlan Vetters summoned his son and his daughter to his bedside. The old man’s long gray hair was splayed against the pillow on which he lay, glazed by the lamplight, so that it seemed like the emanations of his departing spirit. His breathing was shallow; longer and longer were the pauses between each intake and exhalation, and soon they would cease entirely. The evening gloaming was slowly descending, but the trees were still visible through the bedroom window, the sentinels of the Great North Woods, for old Harlan had always said that he lived at the very edge of the frontier, that his home was the last place before the forest held sway. It seemed to him now that, as his strength failed him, so too his power to keep nature at bay was ebbing. There were weeds in his yard, and brambles among his rosebushes. The grass was patchy and unkempt; it needed one final mow before the coming of winter, just as the stubble on his own chin rasped uncomfortably against his fingers, for the girl could not shave him as well as he had once shaved himself. Fallen leaves lay uncollected like the flakes of dry skin that peeled from his hands and his face, scattering themselves upon his sheets. He saw decline through his window, and decline in his mirror, but in only one was there the promise of rebirth. The girl claimed that she had enough to do without worrying about bushes and trees, and the boy was still too angry to perform even this simple service for his dying father, but to Harlan these things were important. There was a battle to be fought, an ongoing war against nature’s attritional impulse. If everyone thought as his daughter did, houses would be overrun by root and ivy, and towns would vanish beneath seas of brown and green. A man had only to open his eyes in this county to see the ruins of old dwellings suffocated in green, or to open his ears to hear the names of settlements that no longer existed, lost somewhere in the depths of the forest. So nature needed to be held back, and the trees had to be kept to their domain. The trees, and what dwelled among them. Harlan was not a particularly religious man, and had always poured scorn on those whom he termed “God-botherers”—Christian, Jew, or Muslim, he had no time for any of them—but he was, in his way, a deeply spiritual being, worshipping a god whose name was whispered by leaves and praised in birdsong. He had been a warden with the Maine Forest Service for forty years, and even after his retirement his knowledge and expertise had often been sought by his successors, for few knew these woods as well as he. It was Harlan who had found twelve-year-old Barney Shore after the boy’s father collapsed while hunting, his heart exploding so quickly in his chest that he was dead within seconds of hitting the ground. The boy, in shock and unused to the woods, had wandered north, and when the snow began to descend he had hidden himself beneath a fallen tree, and would surely have died there had Harlan not been following his tracks, so that the boy heard the old man calling his name just as the snow covered the traces of his passing. It was to Harlan, and to Harlan alone, that Barney Shore told the tale of the girl in the woods, a girl with sunken eyes, and wearing a black dress, who had come to him with the first touch of snow, inviting him to follow her deeper into the woods, calling on him to play with her in the northern darkness. “But I hid from her, and I didn’t go with her,” Barney told Harlan, as the old man carried him south upon his back. “Why not, son?” said Harlan. “Because she wasn’t a little girl, not really. She just looked like one. I think she was very old. I think she’d been there for a long, long time.”
