If the Felix Castor books are a mix of hard-boiled detective novels into the fantasy genre, The Killing Kind (and the rest of the Charlie Parker novels) are the flip side of the coin, putting some ghosts into a hard-boiled detective novel. The ghosts don't really have a plot function as such (in fact, they're completely passive; they never even speak); instead, they're there to add another layer of dread and horror to this tale, already brimming with atmosphere.
I think the presence of ghosts in the novel also serves to give the human villains a sort of supernatural tinge, even though they're never explicitly presented as being anything other than human. By allowing the possibility for one sort of supernatural occurrence, Connolly seems to leave the door open for others. And, in a lot of ways, The Killing Kind could be read as a horror novel. The main antagonist would work just fine in a horror novel, and he and his sister are very spooky when working in tandem. They have an almost preternatural ability to appear in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I think it would bother me in a more realistic-seeming novel.
On the other hand, the detective elements are also well-done, and I find myself looking forward to more of Connolly's blend of horror and hard-boiled fiction.
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