The White Road

Charlie Parker reluctantly takes a case in Charleston, South Carolina, defending an old friend's Black client accused of murdering his white girlfriend in a Deep South where racial politics still carry lethal weight. The investigation pulls Parker into a nightmare landscape haunted by the specter of a hooded woman and forces pursuing him with a fury that extends far beyond the original crime. John Connolly's fourth Parker novel deepens the supernatural mythology of the series while placing it in one of the most historically fraught settings in American life.

Paul Birchard narrates with the deliberate menace the Parker series demands, handling the Southern Gothic atmosphere without caricature. His performance conveys the mounting sense that Parker is walking into something from which he may not return, and the contrast between the formal legal proceedings and the supernatural threat gives the novel an unusual tension. Birchard's Barry Award-winning performance is one of the stronger entries in the series.