A Song of Shadows (Charlie Parker, #13)

by John Connolly

tiny, neighboring Gratton

How can it be smaller yet make it look like Vegas?

Gratton made Boreas look like Vegas,

threw his toys out of his playpen

That’s an Aussie term, to ‘throw your toys out of the pram’ to be more precise

helped by the occasional toke. Sometimes she threatened to arrest him for it, which he found highly amusing.

Heh I wish it was legal

he had depths. What swam through them, though, she could not tell.

You really REALLY don’t want to know

‘The doctors aren’t sure. I get real tired, and then I get sick, and it’s hard for me to move.’

Sounds like me, sitting in hospital this very second just after having 3 x bags of blood & 1 x iron as I’m anaemic

Fatigue Syndrome,

It’s on my lovely list of ailments, but I don’t have it badly

his profile was suggestive of one who had slammed his forehead into a horizontal girder as a child, with the soft skull retaining the impression of the blow as it hardened.

Oh god it’s not the guy who survived the plane wreck is it? I can’t remember if he died or not, I’m thinking no….. But then again freaky killers are the standard

grab

They had dug so many shotgun pellets out of his skull and his back that the surgeons had filled two glass dishes with them.

I don’t know why the author put glass, as I’ve never seen anything but plastic or stainless steel used, & I worked in CSSD along with theatre for 20yrs

The scar left by his laparotomy – the vertical abdominal incision used to open him up after the shooting – started to burn,

I got me one of those & they’re very painful when healing, but the scars also pull a long time afterwards & they probably always will

He despised how slow he had become almost as much as he despised the biweekly physical therapy sessions designed to help him, not so much for the discomfort they caused but because he hated being surrounded by those like himself. He did not want to see his own weakness reflected in others. He hated the headaches and the medication and the scars and the wounds,

Welcome to becoming disabled, I think those of us that do, out of the blue for no reason, have it harder, what we’ve lost, trying to reconcile what we now are to what we were. We take things the wrong way because we don’t like to feel that we can’t do this or that, we want to prove we still can, no matter the cost, being or showing or knowing we can’t, it’s like acid in a wound….

Tyrolean stained glass

? Can’t be bothered searching for it, nothing in X-ray or dictionary….

St John’s was not an austere environment, not with its onyx, bronze, and marble, its ornately decorated walls and ceilings, its sculpted Stations of the Cross. No, this was an architectural hymn to God.

More like they have SO much bloody money they can do something like that! Organized religion = thieves & liars

Netflix

Oh what did we do without Netflix…… I’m hooked I binge & can’t recall the last time I watched a real tv show on a normal tv station Won’t be long until those are gone & on demand is just normal & I so wish I’d been born later, I love technology in all its forms & can remember when actually hand coding a webpage was actually something cool to do, now they’d laugh & use an editor & think ‘why do it the hard way’ … Ah, but you lose knowledge, lose learning skills etc etc, & even just losing the kickass moment when a page loads perfect & you look at it & think ‘I did that, it exists for everyone to see, because I did it’

as soon as Sam was safely with Ruth Winter and her daughter.

Uh oh ……..

Law enforcement remained a profoundly sexist environment, and women would always be held to a higher standard than men under all circumstances,

The problem is, male oriented workplaces, especially cops, the armed forces etc, attract alpha males of all varieties & to have some woman come in & take their jobs, do it better than them, it’s just peeing on their parade… & not before time! :)

Nevertheless, specialized sample jars are expensive, when all that is really required for the task is a simple glass container with an airtight seal.

I worked in CSSD at one of Aucklands largest hospitals & this is SO true, anything medical suddenly costs 10 times as much as soon as it’s ’made for medical use’ from a jar, to gauze, to a pair of suture scissors. The medical field is an over exorbitant waste of money & resources that could so easily be done cheaper, but then where’s the fun ($$) in that! It is cheaper to buy, use & destroy instruments, in many many cases, than it is to buy, use, ‘clean’ & then reuse them

How peculiar it was that Cambion’s fate and Parker’s should once again intersect.

Really? I don’t find it peculiar at all, in fact this far into the books, most readers would agree with me, that the opposite would be strange

urination caused his employer. The bedpan was removed,

Why would he be using a bedpan? They’re for women, or if your doing a #2, men can just use a urinal, much easier, like using a bottle, of a type, they’re what’s used in hospitals.

the Gin Mill on Water Street

I love looking at food places from books, I’m a foodie & always love seeing different things than what we have here in NZ & this place looks fantastic, the prices are really good & I could get lost just trying to decide what to try first, ribs, believe it or not I’ve never had them except once from a pizza place but there was SO much sauce it overpowered the meat. But this place, I’m in!

‘Yeah, why?’

$$$$$$$$$…………. Show me the money.

He was no longer receiving fluids intravenously, but the needle remained inserted in the back of his hand. He disliked the feel and the sight of it. He wanted it gone.

Just spent 2 days in hospital getting blood & iron & if anyone could see the size if a bruise on my left arm, they’d faint, it’s completely purple & larger than the palm of my hand, including 1/2 my fingers.

She did it. My daughter willed him dead, and he died. My daughter. What is my daughter?

She’s special

‘But then why spare Oran?’

It’s someone he knows…. Grandfather? Teacher?

Enough, he thought. This is enough, and more.

I think I filled my younger years with everything I possibly could, because some innate part of me knew my older ones would be lonely…. Or my older years are lonely because I spent so much time doing so much when I was younger I forgot about having someone to be with when the fun finally had to stop I’ve always been all or nothing & I guess I should be grateful I at least have so many happy memories to look back on, but sometimes I wonder what the other way would of been like Then I remember I was damned before I had a choice at all

She wasn’t a bad cook, but baking was too much like science – or alchemy – for her liking.

All cooking is science, by cooking food, heating it, your changing its cellular structure & different ways of heating do it, obviously differently & so the reaction, the end result, is different. Everything you add or take away changes it. But yes baking is harder as there’s less room for error, kinda like molecular gastronomy…..

‘Prisoners were being gassed and hanged and shot! Six thousand a day at Auschwitz alone in the summer of 1944!’

Omg I had no idea, of course I knew it was bad, but this? It’s madness, how the world turned its head away until far too late I will never understand, but for the love of all that I believe in, I have no words, there are none.

He’d taken a painkiller – just some Tylenol, not the prescription stuff they’d given him before he left the hospital. He wanted to keep a clear head.

& here’s me just downed 7 x methadone tablets Paracetamol, Tylenol etc do nothing for me now, I’ve been on opioids for too long now, Dr still prescribes them for me & I give them to my Mum as I’ve lost count the amount of times I’ve said the above to him, & yet he persists to give me them.

He was lying on the ground, and I was preparing to put him in the trunk of the car, and when I looked back he was standing. Standing! I’d taken out one of his eyes. Who knows what damage I did in there, yet he was on his feet. I

I like how this curiously correlates to the story Louis just told & how ironic it makes the story adding an almost layer of realism within the book & characters. It’s little things like this, that could just go by read but not really noticed & appreciated, that make this author, the characters & the books as amazingly well done as they all are, because you NEED to notice & appreciate parts such as this to be totally captivated by the story. Kinda like you ‘can’ read the books in any order, you can with lots of books, but in order & binged truly brings your conscience into line & allows you to fall into them like soft snow or autumn leaves, a glistening ocean or a field of wildflowers, all can be enjoyed as separate, but one after the other allows you to appreciate the true natural beauty as one changes into the next.

‘Were you … angry?’ A pause. Another nod.

Just came to me, it should of before this, but it’s not exactly the same thing… Stephen Kings Firestarter, a little girl whose emotions, especially angry ones, have a real world projection that she cannot control. The movie sucked, even King didn’t like it, but then SO many books made into movies turn disastrous that it’s not surprising that most authors just don’t allow it.

the late Earl Steiger.

Here’s something that could have ‘been something’ in Bloom getting shot, could Sam have sent the bullet that was going to go to Charlie, deflected it, & it accidentally got her instead? Maybe the author felt it was pushing things by adding something like that?….

Of the many ends that he might meet, Baulman had always been most fearful of dementia. The idea of slowly losing himself appalled him,

Ditto, going blind following hot on its trail,especially as right now I’m totally blind in my right eye, praying that surgery can fix it, but they’ve already told me it’s going to be ‘iffy’ & I’m petrified

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep, but he’d learned to grab a nap whenever he could, and anyway, it left more time for reading. But still he was troubled when he forgot the name of an acquaintance, living or dead, or couldn’t bring to mind quickly enough a favorite film, or the title of a novel.

Ditto

He tried to shut his ears to the wailing of an old woman somewhere to his left – ‘No!’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to! No, no, no, no, no …’ –

That’s always happening too, even last night in hospital one bed over from me there was a poor old dear saying pretty much exactly that… “No! No! Take me back! Take me back to where I was! Where’s my walker?! I want my walker! Take me back!” That’s ^ exactly what she was saying, nonstop, it’s annoying, but it’s sad too & you need to have some compassion & understanding as you never know, it really could be you, she wasn’t totally aware of what she was saying/doing, she was past the point of being able to control herself or know where she was, maybe not even who she was, although…. I did joke with the nurse to not tell her or let her see, that I had a walker! lol, she might of pinched it… Well not really, she wasn’t exactly mobile & able to make a good getaway, even I could of caught her… Although the picture of her shuffling down the corridor with my walker giving backwards glances to see if I was catching up & me sleep deprived, totally anemic, dragging my blood IV stand, with the blood pressure cuff dangling off one arm & my walking stick in the other, hell bent on getting my walker back, while patients & staff stood back, mouths gaping & placing bets… I’d be guessing it would have been a highlight of the day, maybe even the week!

Some might have called them ghosts, or specters, but he didn’t hold with such labels. They suggested incorporeality, and what he had seen in those rooms – and elsewhere too – had a substance to them, a lethality. Ethereal wisps couldn’t write warnings to the living or draw blood from hunters and killers.

Energy does not easily dissipate, even after much time has passed, it’s still there, waiting for something to brush alongside it, awaken it from a slumber that it was too hardened to, too hardened to adjust to any real rest, it’s ever there & gnaws at what it can to remind us that all can never be well, until all has been justified to itself, & that, that is a long road to travel…

What was it?

It’s more, it’s not evil, it’s not wrong, she just has a pull towards being more thsn just us, & maybe her sister is part of it, maybe Charlie is, but she’s not to be feared, she just has an ability to transverse planes…

It was slave labor of the worst kind: twenty thousand died of exhaustion, disease, starvation, in accidents, or at the end of a noose. In 1947, the Americans tried nineteen former Nordhausen guards and kapos at Dachau, of whom fifteen were convicted and one executed. In an act of gross hypocrisy, the Americans also recruited Arthur Rudolph, one of the Nordhausen rocket scientists, under Operation Paperclip, and he went on to enjoy a distinguished career at NASA before being thrown out of the country in the 1980s.

The US, I want to say was just as bad, but they weren’t, however their government had piles of secret & not so secret trials & tests on its own citizens, it treated anyone ‘different’ disgustingly, trials of drugs & chemicals on black Americans, lobotomies, sterilization - of people they decided were not fit to have a child, how they treated the native Indians, the list goes on. Hitler didn’t start it, but he took it, just about as far as it could go, the world was suddenly shown the repugnant conclusion of where all of this would go, & thank god took a step back & halted most things, along with the war to stop the fatal endings that NO living creature should suffer through.

‘Go now,’ he told Baulman, ‘and don’t come here again.’

You have to wonder how many families, people there are, whose bloodline includes Nazis, & who either do, or do not, know it. For myself I’d be horrified, I couldn’t imagine finding out that your father, your uncle etc etc was a Nazi, no words…

why did she then move to Boreas?’ Isha began wringing her hands again. ‘Because I am a nosy, demanding old woman. Because even in separate houses, there was not enough space for us. I think she felt that I was always looking over her shoulder, always criticizing.’ ‘And were you?’ The tears came again. ‘I think that I was. And now she is gone.’

It’s a generational thing, a friend & I have discussed this issue & it seems those who came before Gen X tend to have a different relationship with their children than mothers do now & it’s a shame as it does put stress on how they get along, the parents for the large part, my way or the highway & the children are like “cya later!”…. ^That’s a slightly flippant generalization, but still accurate nonetheless ^

She was the sole survivor of an experimental concentration camp.

You know, her being the ‘sole’ survivor of the camp, is something us readers are taking for granted, a great plot twist would be that she wasn’t, Jewish, that she was a Nazi, or affiliated with them, after all, there’s nobody else alive to say anything different……

the woman,

I’m thinking still my plot twist could be right, they keep saying ‘the woman’ …..

He closed his eyes and tried to create a narrative that would satisfactorily explain all of the killings.

I know one….

He was familiar with the family.

Yeah, like when the boy recognized him…. I had been thinking grandfather or uncle or something, but then I thought priest, but if it was any of those,it would have been said by now….

And here, in the place in which he had almost died, the home that he had once shared with Rachel and Sam, he felt suddenly overwhelmed by emotion – rage, gratitude, guilt, regret. He sat in his office chair, buried his face in his hands, and did not move for a long time.

Be careful, for how long you stare into the infinite darkness of the abyss, because while you do, it also stares back into you, & what it may leave behind is not the same as what it found It’s not word for word as I’ve edited it slightly as I can’t rethink real one quote word for word, so I’ve essentially used what I can to write a new-ish one, which I kinda like

And he knew.

Ding ding Ding Ding ding Ding ^That’s my wild plot twist comes true alarm bell^

Her eyes were bright, and he remembered reading that the eyes did not age. They did not grow, nor did they change. He wondered if this was true.

What utter rubbish! Tell that to anyone who’s had eye problems I’ve had cataract surgery on my left eye 2yrs ago, I’m now sitting here totally blind in my right eye waiting on surgery that ‘may’ fix it, but it may not as it’s so bad as getting public health care has such a long waiting list, people die waiting! So eyes not changing as you age is not true, not even slightly.

‘Do you know how many people cried out to God at the end in Lubsko, in Birkenau, in Dachau?’ she said. ‘Can you imagine all those voices screaming together, begging for rescue, for mercy, for an end to pain, for the annihilation of their tormentors? And do you know how many of them were answered? Tell me. Speak the number. No? Then let me say it for you: none. There was no answer. There was no mercy. From that, what can we say of God? Either that He does not exist, or He turned away from His own creation, and would not listen to their cries. What have we to fear from a being like that, even if He is real? How could He even look us in the eye and pass sentence upon us?

I think the same, it’s one people always think, not just about this, but god not helping in general, but I just had a thought… You know how you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone? Or you need to see the horror of something to finally have to change it?…. Thrni guess there’s an argument that the utter horror of ww2 was a wake-up call, as are other things like it, we’re being shown that we have to act, we must act, before it’s too late, & if we don’t?…. Then we see the horror of thst plsyed out, hopefully for it to at some point be enough, for it to be stopped.

but Ross thought that he knew more about Parker than just about any man on earth.

Uhhh not quite, there’s Louis & Angel for s start…..

‘And because they’re listening,’ she said, and her tone almost stilled his heart. ‘They’re always listening. We have to be careful, Daddy, because they’ll hear. They’ll hear, and they’ll come …’

Good god, I don’t think I’ve ever read the last few lines in a book, & been so utterly grateful that I have ALL the next books, bought, downloaded & ready to read!