100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

New on the blog! 🇯🇵 Japanese Healing Fiction & ☕ The Perfect Winter Reads

The Instruments of Darkness

A Charlie Parker Thriller
4.28 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 29 ratings, 3 reviews)
Brief Description
‘One of the best thriller writers we have’ HARLAN COBEN ‘Dark and dangerous ... but where there is also kindness, loyalty, love’ IRISH EXAMINER In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child.... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2799
OVERNIGHT NZ-WIDE DELIVERY

Found a better price? Request a price match

A child missing. A mother accused. Charlie Parker is their only hope.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description
‘One of the best thriller writers we have’ HARLAN COBEN ‘Dark and dangerous ... but where there is also kindness, loyalty, love’ IRISH EXAMINER

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone—ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk—has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all.

Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old crooked house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built. A house, and what dwells beneath.

‘One of the greatest writers of our generation’ NICHOLAS SPARKS ‘Ireland's answer to Stephen King’ EXPRESS

Series: Charlie Parker Thriller

View all
  • The Instruments of Darkness
    ‘One of the best thriller writers we have’ HARLAN COBEN ‘Dark and dangerous ... but where there is also kindness, loyalty, love’ IRISH EXAMINER In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone—ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk—has an opinion on the...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • A Game of Ghosts
    The Number One bestseller. It is deep winter. The darkness is unending. The private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is dispatched to track him down. Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator. He is obsessively tracking a series...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • A Time of Torment
    Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart. He was imprisoned, brutalized. But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death but was saved, of the...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Burning Soul
    Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall. He is being tormented by anonymous messages, haunting reminders of his past crime, and he wants private...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Dark Hollow
    Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the capture of their killer, The Travelling Man, Charlie Parker retreats to the wintry Maine landscape of his childhood. By following in the steps of his beloved grandfather, Parker hopes to heal his spirit and get through the bitter anniversary of Jennifer and Susan's murder....
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Lovers
    When Charlie Parker was still a boy, his father, a NYPD cop, killed a young couple, a boy and a girl barely older than his son, then took his own life. There was no explanation for his actions. Stripped of his private investigator's licence, and watched by the police, Parker is working in a Portland bar, holding down a job...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Black Angel
    The Black Angel is not an object. The Black Angel is not a myth. The Black Angel lives. A young woman goes missing from the streets of New York. Those who have taken her believe that nobody cares about her, and that no one will come looking for her. They are wrong. She is 'blood' to the killer Louis, the...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Dirty South
    EVIL TAKES MANY FORMS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR CHARLIE PARKER HUNTS THEM ALL. It is 1997, and a serial killer is on the loose in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. Charlie Parker is mourning the death of his wife...
    Paperback
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Furies
    NO ONE EVER FORGETS MEETING THE SISTERS STRANGE ... The Furies: mythological snake-haired goddesses of vengeance, pursuers of those who have committed unavenged crimes. Now, private investigator Charlie Parker is drawn into a world of modern furies in two linked stories. In The Sisters Strange, the return of the criminal Raum Buker to Portland, Maine brings with it chaos and...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Reapers
    They are the Reapers, the elite among killers. Men so terrifying that their names are mentioned only in whispers. The assassin Louis is one of them. But now Louis, and his partner, Angel, are themselves targets. And there is no shortage of suspects. A wealthy recluse sends them north to a town that no longer exists on a map. A...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Whisperers
    The border between Maine and Canada is porous. Anything can be smuggled across it: drugs, cash, weapons, people. Now a group of disenchanted former soldiers has begun its own smuggling operation, and what is being moved is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Wolf in Winter
    EVIL TAKES MANY FORMS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR CHARLIE PARKER HUNTS THEM ALL. "The finest crime series currently in existence" - Independent on Sunday His client is dead. But Charlie Parker will not rest . . . The community of Prosperous, Maine, has always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children's future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781529391909

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 27 February 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Hodder Paperback

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 36.0mm

Width: 126.0mm

Height: 194.0mm

Weight: 320g

Pages: 464

About the Author

John Connolly is author of the Charlie Parker mysteries, The Book of Lost Things, the Samuel Johnson novels for young adults and, with his partner, Jennifer Ridyard, co-author of the Chronicles of the Invaders. His debut - EVERY DEAD THING - introduced the character of Private Investigator Charlie Parker, and swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers. All his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers.

Also by John Connolly

View all
  • Inherit the Dead
    Inherit the Dead is a gripping collaboration featuring twenty of the most acclaimed mystery novelists of our time, weaving a spellbinding tale filled with love, betrayal, and suspense. This captivating narrative follows Pericles "Perry" Christo, a once-respected police detective whose life unravels amidst a corruption scandal, leaving him disgraced and isolated from his family. Transformed into a private investigator trying...
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3900
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Book of Lost Things Illustrated Edition
    'Once upon a time, there was a boy who lost his mother . . .' As twelve-year-old David takes refuge from his grief in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds the real world and the fantasy world begin to blend. That is when bad things start to happen. That is when the Crooked Man...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Land of Lost Things
    THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue... 'Book lovers and fans of John Connolly will not be disappointed by this remarkable standalone novel' INDEPENDENT 'Will wholly satisfy fans of The Book of Lost Things. The tale is fully immersed in the otherworld of fantasy and fairytale... the novel...
    Paperback
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Land of Lost Things
    Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue... Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to her the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back...
    Paperback
    $2999
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • A Game of Ghosts
    The Number One bestseller. It is deep winter. The darkness is unending. The private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is dispatched to track him down. Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator. He is obsessively tracking a series...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Nocturnes
    John Connolly turns his pen to the short story to give us a volume of chilling tales of the supernatural. In this macabre collection, echoing masters of the genre from M R James to Stephen King, Connolly delves into our darkest fears—lost lovers, missing children, subterranean creatures, and predatory demons. Framing the collection are two substantial novellas: The Cancer Cowboy...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • A Song of Shadows
    EVIL TAKES MANY FORMS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR CHARLIE PARKER HUNTS THEM ALL. Broken, but undeterred, private detective Charlie Parker faces the darkest of dark forces in a case with its roots in the second world war, and a concentration camp unlike any other . . . Recovering from a near-fatal shooting and tormented by memories of a world beyond this one,...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • A Time of Torment
    Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart. He was imprisoned, brutalized. But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death but was saved, of the...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Daggers Drawn
    Daggers Drawn is an edgy, twisted, and disturbing anthology, presenting the first Crime Writers’ Association Daggers Award retrospective. It features 19 visceral and thrilling stories from bestselling authors such as Ian Rankin, Jeffery Deaver, John Connolly, Denise Mina, John Harvey, and more. Nineteen CWA Dagger Award-winning short stories come together in this collection, showcasing the best of the best in...
    Paperback
    $2200
    Elsewhere:
    $2599
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Daggers Drawn
    Daggers Drawn: Nineteen CWA Dagger award-winning short stories from the best of the best in crime fiction. Maxim Jakubowski has edited all the great names in crime fiction, and stories from his anthologies have won the CWA Dagger six times. Now, he has collected 19 Dagger award-winning stories in one volume, making it the first retrospective deep dive into the...
    Hardback
    $4499
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Burning Soul
    Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall. He is being tormented by anonymous messages, haunting reminders of his past crime, and he wants private...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Dark Hollow
    Still raw from the brutal slayings of his wife and daughter, and the events surrounding the capture of their killer, The Travelling Man, Charlie Parker retreats to the wintry Maine landscape of his childhood. By following in the steps of his beloved grandfather, Parker hopes to heal his spirit and get through the bitter anniversary of Jennifer and Susan's murder....
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Shadow Step
    The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists. The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ('in the shadow') Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Backorder
    Ships mid August
  • New Release
    Some Sort of Justice
    The first time in print for the million-copy-selling crime writer. This time, a cast of good coppers, a wily ex-detective and a shadowy, well-connected operative are brought together by an aristocratic fatality. Only there's no body, no forensics—and enemies in the highest places. When Caroline Thorpe succeeded in casting doubt on the verdict of the inquest into her brother's death,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Ending Writes Itself
    Secrets don't stay secret for long in publishing Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives. ‘This is a house of novelists, not murderers. You dream up crimes. You don’t commit them.’ ‘But a writer has. And so, who better than a writer to catch them?’ World famous author Arthur Fletch is...
    Paperback
    $2800
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    Neighbourhood Watch
    Neighbourhood Watch is a sharp, stylish thriller with a killer opening hook, a generous dose of dark humour, and a truly distinctive voice. ― Christian White The annual Curlew Street scarecrow competition is back, and the residents of Melbourne’s inner north have never seen an entry like it. Shirt bloody, head and arms slumped over a scarecrow crucifix: Victoria’s most...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • For All the Dead Girls
    Tough and gutsy PI Lou Alcott returns with a terrifyingly gritty new case that takes her deep into the dark web. Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Bublitz and Jane Caro. While juggling a missing person case with unexpected ties close to home and saving an innocent woman and her child from a dangerous domestic situation, Lou ends up in the...
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (1)
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Don’t Let Him In
    Prepare to be hooked—the no. 1 Sunday Times and multi-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new, spine-tingling thriller. He's the perfect man. He says he loves you. You think he might even be made for you. Before long he's moved into your house—and into your heart. And then he leaves for days at a time. You don't know where...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 80,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.