YMMV / Charlie Parker Series

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: The Great Lost Bear, the bar Parker works at from time to time, is a real place. Connolly gave away signed Great Lost Bear bumper stickers with signed copies of the Burning Soul.
• Badass Decay: Angel, from The Killing Kind onwards.
• Complete Monster: Both from The Black Angel:
  • Garcia, the latest recruit of the Believers, is a Serial Killer with a habit of kidnapping prostitutes, murdering them, and then using their bones for art projects - including the twisted sculpture of the Black Angel itself. It's also implied that before coming to America, he did even worse.
  • Brightwell is the immortal second-in-command of the Believers, who assists Garcia in the worst of his exploits while also going about much of the Black Angel's dirty work across the centuries: murder, torture, brutal assaults upon defenseless monks and a host of other offenses. For good measure, he has a nasty habit of consuming the souls of his victims and adding them to "the great chorus within..."
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Louis and Angel, enough to get their own book. The Collector as well.
• Iron Woobie: Angel, with Louis' help.
• Nightmare Fuel: So much so that John Connolly has stated that if he could go back and write the first few books again, the first change he'd make would be to tone down the horror. Particularly the infant deaths and the details of what The Travelling Man does to his victims.
  • Later books are still pretty horrifying. The entire town of Prosperous in The Wolf in Winter, for example.
• One-Scene Wonder: The English theologian in The Wolf in Winter.
• So Okay, It's Average: To be expected at some point in a long running novel series, many of the books get this reaction. In particular, any book between The Black Angel and The Wrath of Angels might get this reaction depending on who you ask, though from The Wolf in Winter onward the reception has become almost universally positive again.
• Stoic Woobie: Of all people, Louis.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: many of the characters who are introduced only to be killed off a few chapters - or even pages - later can fall into this, thanks to the work Connolly puts in to giving each and every one of them a unique personality and background.
• Ugly Cute: Probably Angel.