This will be a short review. This novel was awesome. It took my breath away at times at how good it was. I do have to say though that parts of it dragged, (why I gave it 5 stars and did not favorite it) and I totally figured out who the serial killer was at 30 percent which was a slight letdown since I like to be surprised. I also felt like Connolly shoved two separate stories together into this one novel. I'm not mad at it, but it was a lot to digest in one sitting. This book haunts you all the way through up through the ending. I loved the characters of Charlie, Angel, and Louis. Connolly does a great job of capturing New York, New Orleans, and other locations in this one. You feel the weight of the dead through the whole book and one wonders how Charlie will go on after this. 

"Every Dead Thing" follows ex-detective Charlie Parker. Charlie (otherwise known as Bird) comes home one night after getting drunk to find his wife and young daughter murdered by a serial killer called "The Traveling Man." Charlie disappeared to reemerge and start chasing down jail skips. Doing one of these leads him to wind up in the middle of a mysterious case where a wealthy widow wants Charlie to look up a young woman (Catherine Demeter) that her stepson was involved with. Charlie is also getting calls from "The Traveling Man" and is hell-bent on tracking the killer down. 

Charlie travels from Virginia and back to New York looking for Catherine. He feels himself pulled to her backstory and wanting to keep her safe. Charlie though finds out about a little town and the secrets that they hid. While doing that the Traveling Man taunts Charlie which has him going to New Orleans to track the killer down. He gets aided by a couple of criminals and a profiler (I guess I can call her that) that makes him wonder about a future.

I have to say the ending was wonderfully done though I guessed the serial killer. This book does feel dated at times (it was published in 1999) but it wasn't enough to ruin my enjoyment though. 

Wow. That’s all I got. 

Inhaling this book. 

As she touched me, I heard and felt, deep within myself, the blade cutting, grating, separating muscle from joint, flesh from bone, soul from body, the artist working on his canvas; and I felt pain dancing through me, arcing through a fading life like a lightning flash, welling like the notes of a hellish song through the unknown girl in th Louisiana swamp. And in her agony I felt the agony of my own child, my own wife, and I was certain that this was the same man. Even as the pain faded to its last for the girl in the swamp, she was in darkness and I knew he had blinded her before he killed her.

"Who is he?" I said.

She spoke, and in her voice there were four voices: the voices of a wife and daughter, the voice of an old obese woman on a bed in a wine-dark room, and the voice of a nameless girl who died a brutal, lonely death in the mud and water of a Louisiana swamp.

"He is the Travelin´ Man."

11% into the book and I´m hooked. This book is dark, creepy, mysterious, brutal and utterly compelling. I have to devote a considerable amount of time to it tomorrow.

Definitely the most gory and grotesque beginning to any book I have ever read. Do not start reading this while you are eating. I seriously thought it was going to be a DNF.

There were a few moments when my eyes started to cross and my mind started to wander. Thankfully, those were very few. For the most part, I found this book to be very edge of my seat. The suspects for the "Traveling Man" were many and my finger pointed at a lot of them. Some of the time when I was reading the book, I was wondering, "how the heck does this tie in?". Then at the end when the author put in the red arrows and the blinking lights along with the sirens, I was like I would have never figured that out.

The story took me from New York, up to the East Coast, to Virginia and down to the Big Easy. Charlie Parker provided many chuckles as well as his friends, Louis and Angel. So basically, the author added everything. Entertainment, mystery, suspense, gore, action scenes, scenery, high speed chases, the "don't go into the basement scenes", a few swampland scenes and some good ole Bayou voodoo. Not to mention the Cajun delicacies enjoyed by the characters.

This was a great story and definitely held my interest. This was one serial killer you did not want to meet in a dark alley.

Thanks to Atria Books for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.