A River Red with Blood is the 23^rd book in the wildly popular Charlie Parker series. Like the books before it, this one owned me from the first page until the last. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler books for the review copy. This book will be available to the North American public June 2, 2026. Frankly, I don’t know how you’re going to wait that long!

For the uninitiated, Parker is a former cop that decided to rely on extralegal means to avenge the murders of his wife and daughter. He left the force, tracked down the killers, and has worked since then as a private detective, albeit one with a private arrangement with an agent of the government.  As one of the bad guys muses, “the private investigator…has a deserved reputation for tenacity, resilience, and violence.”

Now he is looking into the death of Scott Theriault, a young man that died after escaping from The Spero School, a tough-love environment to which parents sometimes sent their recalcitrant teens. Parents don’t know, however, that the school is run by some of the baddest of the baddies. Dante Santopietro is its principal and founder, and his favorite source of recreation, when not working, is to travel to far flung places with a compatriot and find a young woman to kidnap and kill. This dark source of pleasure is known to himself and his partners as “the Game.” But of course, Parker doesn’t know this at the outset. He’s trying to find out why Scott died, and also what happened to Mallory Norton, the girl that Scott had been ducking out of school to meet, and who is now missing.

One of the greatest joys of reading this series is the recurring cast of characters that keeps Parker company. His two closest friends, Louis and Angel, are rough men, unafraid to use force as needed, but also fiercely loyal to Parker. Like Parker, they are no longer young; Angel is being treated for cancer, and Louis has recently learned there is a contract out on him. And it is Parker’s dead daughter, Jennifer, that comes to Louis to warn him. Jennifer is also a recurring character, and a dynamic one. The melding of these additional threads is done expertly and seamlessly.

Sometimes additional muscle is needed, often for the purpose of guarding someone involved in the storyline, and that is when the Fulci brothers are called in. The Fulci brothers are refrigerator sized men that add a unique combination of humor and satisfaction, and as with Angel and Louis, I smile whenever they reenter the narrative.

I could go on, and will do so with even the slightest encouragement, but my descriptions pale in comparison to what the novel itself does. For those that love the genre, this story, and this series, is highly recommended.