Looking for the person who isn’t clapping

PERHAPS no other living Irish writer is as successful as John Connolly. His books have sold more than 10 million copies, although curiously – for critics, not for the author himself – none of them are set in Ireland or deal with Irish characters.

For his 13th book, The Whisperers, another in the vaunted Charlie Parker detective series, Connolly uses the war in Iraq and a cadre of disturbed military veterans returned to their home state of Maine as a vehicle to tackle the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder.