The Children of Eve by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on May 6, 2025

Antonio Elizalde, an antiquities dealer in Mexico, has been known to trade in treasured items that cannot be sold on the private market. With the assistance of Roland Bilas, an American, he has arranged to transport certain items that ostensibly belong to Blas Urrea, a drug lord. They are assisted in that endeavor by Wyatt Riggins, who brings the items to the East Coast of the US.

The nature of the smuggled property is a mystery during the novel’s first half, so I won’t spoil it here. I will credit John Connolly, however, for setting up a likely answer that turns out to be incorrect. I was pleased by that because the seemingly obvious answer would have taken the story in a common and uninteresting direction.

The smuggling is funded and managed by Devin Vaughn, who takes his criminal guidance from Aldo Bern, although in this case Vaughn has acted behind Bern’s back. Vaughn has experienced financial setbacks, including the loss of a large cocaine shipment to Customs agents, and his investors may be coming for him. Vaughn took a big risk by stealing from Urrea. Both Vaughn and Bern need to fear Urrea's reach if he discovers Vaughn's responsibility for his loss.

Bodies begin to collect after Urrea engages Eugene Seeley to recover the property and to take the lives of everyone who participated in stealing it. Seeley is ably assisted in that project by a woman known only as La Señora. The woman is adept with blades (she cuts out the hearts of her victims, not just because Urrea wants them but because she finds the work satisfying) but she doesn’t seem to eat or sleep or bleed.

When Riggins gets a text message that simply says “run,” he disappears, leaving behind his girlfriend without saying goodbye. The girlfriend, Zetta Nadeau, retains Charlie Parker to find Riggins.

I am not typically a fan of supernatural elements in thrillers, but I make an exception for Connolly. The creepiness factor in The Children of Eve adds chills to the thrills, and Connolly brings such elegance to his prose that I forgive him for bringing the underworld into his stories. In addition to La Señora, Parker’s dead daughter Jennifer lurks in the background. She has troubles of her own — it can’t be fun to transition between a world she no longer inhabits and a world she isn’t ready to enter — but she plays only a small role in the story. Jennifer has picked up a friend in the spirit world; it seems likely she’ll need one.

Readers who are unfamiliar with the series might be puzzled by the intrusion of the supernatural, but it doesn’t distract from a plot that rolls along as a private detective novel should. Parker searches for Riggins even after Nadeau encourages him to stop because he wants the satisfaction of solving the mystery. For his trouble, he takes a beating that ends with a hospitalization (a common fate for Parker and most other fictional PIs). But Parker isn’t a tough guy so the story isn’t riddled with fights and shootouts. His friends Louis and Angel are true tough guys, but they rarely need to be violent. A mean look from either of them will persuade most people to cooperate.

The story is self-contained. New readers can start the series with this book or almost any other without worrying that they’ve missed too much. Parker’s living daughter, his ex-wife, and his current girlfriend all make brief appearances, but Connolly gives the reader all the information they need to understand those relationships. Parker blames himself for not protecting his dead wife and daughter. That’s probably all the reader needs to know to grasp his personality. The story sets up a future installment that promises to explain why Jennifer’s ghost feels a need to watch over her father at night. While I’m not a big fan of the supernatural, Connolly has me hooked on the mystery so I’m looking forward to that revelation.

Connolly’s plots are always intelligent and his stories always move quickly, but the quality of his prose sets him apart from lesser thriller writers. My favorite sentence in the book might be Connolly’s description of a sales clerk at a weed dispensary: “His hair was bunched in an intricate topknot that would force him to censor his photos in later life so his children didn’t laugh in his face, and he wore a sparse beard that appeared to be growing back after he’d accidentally set its predecessor alight.” Wonderful sentences like that one are sufficient reason to try out a Connolly novel if you haven’t already.

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