The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on October 26, 2021

Charlie Parker makes only cameo appearances in the nineteenth Charlie Parker novel. His dangerous friends Louis and Angel carry the novel, traveling to Europe on a dark mission that places Parker at risk despite his absence. Shaking up the series by giving collateral characters a starring role is a bold move that Parker has made before, always with a strong payoff. The Nameless Ones is one of the best recent efforts from a writer who produces nothing but excellent thrillers.

The Nameless Ones is a tale of two Serbian brothers, Radovan and Spiridon Vuksan. They are villains. The brothers and the criminals who work with or against them dominate the story. Louis and Angel have their moments, but the plot focuses on the brothers’ increasingly desperate attempts to survive the various forces that want to end their existence.

An FBI Agent named Ross has a history with Parker. That history began with the death of Parker’s wife and daughter. More recently, it includes an adventure that Parker had in the Netherlands and the death of a man named Armitage, whose phone (according to Ross) showed communications with the Vuksans. The Vuksans learned from Armitage that their cousin died at the hands of Louis, who was doing a favor for an old friend named De Jaeger. When Spiridon (the less reasonable brother) tortures and kills De Jaeger and his family in a scene that is all the more gruesome for being understated, Louis has new deaths to avenge.

The Vuksans have more enemies than Louis to worry about, but none more formidable. The Serbian and American governments would both like to consign the Vuksans to oblivion. Radovan would like to disappear, although not by dying. He tasks a shady Austrian lawyer named Frend to acquire fake passports that will allow the Vuksans to retire in a foreign land. Spiridon is less interested in retirement. The brothers quarrel about Spiridon’s wish to return to Serbia, where he will surely be punished for his history of war crimes.

Parker novels almost always have an element of the supernatural. In some novels, the supernatural dominates the story. In others, including The Nameless Ones, it lurks in the background. The supernatural element here is a woman named Zorya who kills ruthlessly for Spiridon. Zorya has the appearance of a child but has lived a long existence on the border of life and death. The only thing that frightens her is Parker’s dead daughter.

The novel’s supernatural terror is less frightening than its depiction of the evil war criminals and the various thugs and henchmen who populate their world. Frend, whose estranged daughter conspires against him to help Louis, is one of the novel’s few sympathetic characters, although he is far from a good person. Good people are rare in Charlie Parker novels. On a continuum from purely good to purely evil, Louis and Angel are somewhere in the middle, capable of empathy that motivates extreme but focused violence. Most of the other characters are scattered along the evil side of the continuum, with Spiridon and his ghost woman at the dark end and Riordan approaching it. Ross is the kind of ambiguous character who would rather not know how someone like Louis accomplishes the government’s ends as long as they are accomplished. Series readers might be happy to see the Fulci brothers make a brief return. They provide a bit of comic relief for those who have a taste for very dark comedy.

The novel gives the reader a more informative look at Serbia’s dark history than the rather sunny Wikipedia entry provides. John Connolly brings all of the novel’s locations alive, from Amsterdam to Vienna to South Africa. As always, Connolly’s graceful prose is masterful. He is among my favorite prose stylists in crime fiction. With its dense and intricate plot, its complex characters, and its insightful examination of evil men in evil times, The Nameless One showcases Connolly at the top of his game.

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