Bad Men

By: John Connolly

Narrated by: Hayward Morse

Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author John Connolly masterfully intertwines mystery, emotion, violence, and the supernatural in this raw and gripping thriller.

He has been told the girl’s last words, and he feels unaccountably afraid. The dead ones. They were dead, but they had lights. Why do the dead need light?

Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed to their enemies and slaughtered. Since then, the island has known peace. Until now. A gang of four men are descending on Sanctuary, intent on committing a brutal and relentless massacre. All that stands in their way are rookie police officer Sharon Macie and the strange, troubled officer Joe Dupree. But Joe is no ordinary policeman. He knows the island has been steeped in blood once and that it will never again tolerate the shedding of innocent blood. The band of killers who are set to desecrate Sanctuary will unleash the fury of its ghosts upon themselves and all who stand by them. On Sanctuary, all hell is about to break loose....

©2003 John Connolly. All rights reserved. (P)2003 ISIS Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Excellent story telling.

excellent story telling. Ending was not as expected but still good. You have to be open to more recent
Steven King like fantasy/horror tells.

I hoped for better

Narrator was amazing!!!! I had hoped for better from Connolly, not this time. Bye for now

Connolly visits “over-the-top”

As a huge Charlie Parker fan, I thought Bad Men was going to be nice. Sadly, while the story was built on an interesting premise, the graphic physical and sexual violence was counterproductive in my view. Admittedly , the CP stories have visited the same strange violence, but Bad Men was steeped in the same, and there was no redemption or triumph waiting at the conclusion. Almost every hero suffers the same fate as every villain and that’s a disappointing homage to the nihilism so much current literature seems to exalt. Disappointed

HORRIBLE NARRATION!!!!!

Connolly can do no wrong in my book! Unless he lets Hayward Morse narrate another of his books! I couldn't concentrate on the storyline as much since I was trying to wade through the wide range of "Simpson-esque", cartoon-like character voices assigned to the the story's characters. Several of the characters had accents that made no sense whatsoever. Morse's general narration voice was good but when he voiced an individual it was aggravating as hell, like he was struggling to win a middle-school talent show, doing unrecognizable imitations and impersonations. Was it just me or was Sharon Macy portrayed as an over exaggerated Katharine Hepburn from "Philadelphia Story"?

As far as the story... LONG LIVE JOHN CONNOLLY!!!!!

Terrible narration

Love Connelly! Story is terrific as always. I hate to jump on someone just doing his best but wow! The voices were soooo hard to listen to. Exaggerated extreme cartoon characters with super weird accents. The women were weirdly high and Dupree weirdly low. Somehow Macy was Katherine Hepburn for no reason. Why?? Ugh. Made for a tough listen.

Bad Men

Another winner from John Connolly! I LOVE his books! One of my very favorite authors!

horrible narration

Not a Charlie Parker story but John Connolly Is still great. The voices were degrading, the accents undefinable and irritating. I read the reviews añd still managed to be disappointed

A great story with lots of characters!

This was a great story that was hard to put down. I did find myself rewinding a bit because the characters are so many and I would find myself confused.

Needs a remake

I liked Mr. Morse’s narration but am still scratching my head over the choice to make the characters (men and women) sound like mentally handicapped exaggerated cartoon versions of Jimmy Stewart. Can’t imagine that’s what Mr. Connolly was going for. Great story as always from Connolly!

Good story, hampered by weak performance

A good story, particularly for fans of Connolly, though different from the Charlie Parker novels. Connolly delivers a great sense of the building conflict at the end, although the actual ending left me a little bit disappointed. The work was hampered by the performance, though. While the narrator obviously has some skills, he seemed to want to work in his bad impressions of movie starts. So one character was a bad Jimmy Stewart, another was a bad Katherine Hepburn. There seemed to be a Barbara Stanwyck and a few others I sort of recognized but couldn't place. For a bunch of characters in Maine, it was off-putting.