The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen

The Killing of the Tinkers fulfilled and confounded my expectations all at once. As I expected, it was so funny, charming and satisfying. On the other hand, I kept finding myself surprised: surprised that Jack has returned from London and his experience there earns about a paragraph. (After all, he ended up in Ladbroke Grove, not Battersea.)

Jack Taylor is surprising in so many ways. His greatest aspiration is to drink as much as he wants and just keep reading. His wife unexpectedly turns up (A wife? Did you know he had a wife? I didn't know he had a wife) and disappears again before the end of the chapter, leaving behind beautiful boots so exceptional that their virtues must be extolled at regular intervals.

Jack's perfected hedonism, and his reading connoiseurship, does not seem to interfere with his detective work (or perhaps it does). He's been approached by the head of clans, Sweeper, to find out who has been killing young tinker men. His search for the culprit finally ends in a way that I found surprising -- and it's nagged at me ever since finishing the novel. That's the kind of guy Jack Taylor is - surprising, offering you the truly unexpected, some might say, shocking.

Jack's reading diary alone is worth the price of admission. Jack's the kind of detective who believes that when his powers of deduction lag, it's time to read the greats: Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, George Pelecanos, believing that they inspire his mystery-solving powers to come forth.. 

This book is short, snappily written, and hugely entertaining.

Woman Chased by Crows by Marc Strange

Picked up this entertaining mystery as a used book sale in a library. Sadly, I learned after I finished it that the author, Canadian Marc Strange, a former actor, screenwriter and director, known for Beachcombers, died in May 2012.

He was the author of two mystery series, the Orwell Brennan series, and the Joe Grundy series.

Woman Chased by Crows is the second in the Orwell Brennan series. set in small-town Ontario. What I liked best about this police procedural was the presence of several strong female characters. Brennan has three daughters, and the upcoming nuptials of one is one element of the plot.

Detective Adele Moen ("Del") from Metro Homicide is just as cool as you would expect someone named after a beer to be, and her temporary partner is local Detective Stacy Crean ("rhymes with brain") who together are the two women assigned to a string of mysterious murders that afflict small Ontario town Dockerty. They're both really good detectives, and they're attracted to very interesting cases.

Another thing I really liked about this book is the author's evident interest in ballet. Ballet dancers, and their travels across the globe, are at the heart of this mystery.

At the heart of the mystery is a teacher and former almost-prima-ballerina, Anya Daniel. She's a survivor, but that's not what's most interesting about her, nor her former career as a dancer. It's her raw determination. (After you recover from your sense of shock, you might feel some admiration for her - and the two detectives who save her life.) If you're interested in this novel, you might want to read the first book in the series, Follow Me Down, first.

The Guards by Ken Bruen

(This image is from John Hinde postcard collection.)

I found this crime fiction novel delightful. Funny in a wry way, with lots of slang (not all of which I understood), plenty of drinking, plenty of action, and an interesting assortment of characters besides Jack Taylor, the ex-Garda.

Jack's a drunk - no doubt about it. But that's not all he is. After getting the boot from the Garda, he becomes an unofficial private detective. He views himself as a "finder" rather than a detective, and he holds court in his unofficial office, Grogan's, a public house in the old style. (Decorations limited to a blotchy mirror and crossed hurling sticks.)

Jack really loved his father, a peaceful man who gave Jack his love of reading, and who's recently passed away. Jack knows he needs a change, and he's dreaming of finding a flat in Battersea, and, as he says, "waiting." In the meantime, a woman approaches him in Grogan's and asks him to investigate the death of her daughter, ruled a suicide. Jack's adrift and this new case brings with it a number of complications.

What's so great about this novel is that it's funny and lively all the way through, and very easy to read. Its tone reminds me of that of Get Shorty, the film made of the Elmore Leonard novel. This novel's chapters often open with an epigram: three of them are from Elmore Leonard, T. Jefferson Parker and George Pelecanos, and Bruen name checks John Sandford for good measure. If you're a fan of these authors, I think you'll like Ken Bruen, too.

There are quite a few twists in the plot, right up to the end. Most, not all, of this twists have to do with unanticipated deaths. Yes, by the end of the book you could joke that Galway is the murder capital of the world but I will say these deaths seem organic; these deaths seem like a natural outcome of the surrounding circumstances and characters.

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

This novel is the first in the Inspector Rebus series, by Ian Rankin. I saw Ian Rankin interviewed on a book talk show. Rankin said that he enjoyed using crime fiction to talk about social issues. That made me want to read his work. He's also a bestselling author.

In Knots and Crosses, Rebus is part of a task force working on the murders of two girls. The investigation is not going well; the police believe that there must be some common link between the girls, some way that they are coming into contact with the serial killer. But despite hundreds of hours of interviews of neighbors and people who knew the girls, they can't discover the how the killer is picking his victims.

Rebus is having a tough time in his life; he's divorced from his wife and his daughter, now 12, is living with his ex-wife and he when he does spend time with his daughter he finds it hard to connect with her. The police are stymied; they continue to interview neighbors and people who knew the victims but they can't discover the how the killer is picking his victims.

Rebus is having a tough time in his life; he's divorced from his wife and his daughter, now 12, is living with his ex-wife and he finds it hard to connect with her.


His father has recently died, and he's not close to his brother, Michael, a stage hypnotist. He barely knows Michael as an adult; when he drops in without calling to visit his brother,

He's ex-Army, but he never talks about his Army years. His career in the police has not been easy; the Army got him his job and the other cops know this and resent this.

He doesn't want to be assigned to the task force, partly because he has other cases on his plate, but also because he understands that he's likely to be assigned to go door-to-door to interview neighbors, looking for any kind of clue, and that's he likely to be assigned to review old case files on individuals who have been suspected on crimes in the past. Sure enough, he's assigned to file review duty and just hates it.

Rebus is trying to form a new relationship with a colleague, Gill, someone he knows from work but connects with at a party.

This mix of loneliness, frustration, and stasis mark the first half of the novel. In the second half of the novel, the action picks up quickly and becomes very exciting. The trauma that Rebus suffers from the Army is explained, and as the action resolves it's easy to see the point that Rankin wanted to make.

The "missing connection" the police finally discover is rather moving, in its way. Surprisingly, I found this novel cheering and impressive. Rebus often ruminates on the history of crime in Edinburgh (and notes with contempt the tourists photographing the statue of Greyfriars Bobby). Edinburgh is a city known for the flowering of the Englightenment that took place there in the 18th century (so amazing in that even today, Edinburgh has only 500,000 people living there, and Scotland's status as an independent nation had been under attack since James VI became James I, and certainly by the time of the Act of Union in 1707); in a way, I see this novel as an assertion of the value of those ideals.

Brighton by Michael Harvey/The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

Brighton by Michael Harvey is a wonderful novel.  It's very true that if you like Dennis Lehane you'll like this novel.  It's not just that it's set in Boston but that it also features a pretty clear-eyed view of the tensions inherent in the urban scene.

This novel is very suspenseful and in part, that's because the author carefully offers tidbits of information as you go along but also because there is a major plot twist at the end of novel which I didn't anticipate.  There were no red herrings, however, which I appreciate.  Michael Harvey's use of street slang and highly poetic metaphor side-by-side delighted me.  It's so fun, and somewhat unusual, to be surprised by excellence and beauty in prose style.

The Whites is a wonderful novel.  I read Brighton and The Whites back to back and as much as I enjoyed Brighton I loved The Whites even more.  It's hard for me to figure out why.  Part of it may be just that there was so much going on in The Whites: the protagonist has his dementia-burdened father at home, a man who slips in and out of the present but is capable of dispensing wisdom, intimidating his son, and helping his son out of a big, big jam regardless.  His friends from the force are all so interesting as individuals.  There's a lot of details about how we live now.

In both novels there are elements that strain credulity but to me that is more than counterbalanced by the richness of characterizations, the excellence with which the plot has been structured, and the realistic view of urban life.

Children of the Revolution by Peter Robinson

This is a novel in the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson, a Yorkshire-born Canadian crime writer.  I'd read a good review and I thought I might enjoy it.

Inspector Banks is called to the scene of a suspicious death.  A man in his sixties has been found on an old railway right-of-way that has been converted into a paved walk.  The embankment is steep enough, and the site far enough away from the nearest village, that the place seems strangely isolated and is mostly frequently by dogwalkers.

The deceased, Gavin Miller, is a disgraced college professor who had fallen on hard times.  And he has 5,000 pounds in his pocket when he's found.

The occasion of Miller's dismissal on sexual misconduct charges produces three suspects; a former student is another; and finally, the circle Miller knew as an undergraduate at the University of Essex provide another two. The character Miller, like the author himself, travels to Canada for his master's degree.

Banks is divorced and spends a lot of his free time at home, listening to jazz and pop while sipping Laphraoig and listening to the rain on his conservatory roof. Loving Van Morrison - and wondering what a Veedon Fleece is - comes up twice in the novel, as well as references to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and other bands of the '60's and '70s.

I found the opening somewhat clunky and prosaic - both the pace at which the tale was told and the character of Inspector Banks himself. (Inspector Banks is refreshingly normal, strategizing ways to get home without driving after going to the pub, for instance.)  Yet I quickly fell under the spell, which is saying quite a lot, I think. I recall that when I read Harlan Coben's Six Years, the unpacking of the mystery - and the many road trips, between New England and Virginia, if I remember correctly - seemed a bit tedious. (I suppose the TV equivalent is folks getting in or out of their cars.)

Golden Egg by Donna Leon

The Publishers Weekly review of this book concludes this way:  "Appreciative of feminine charms, the deeply uxorious Brunetti amply displays the keen intelligence and wry humor that has endeared this series to so many."

I always feel suspicious whenver I see the word uxorious: it reminds me of when Jonathan Franzen didn't want to be named an Oprah author because he believed men would not buy his book.

By the way, the Merriam-Webster.com definition of uxorious is:  having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife.

Can't agree with Publishers Weekly's assessment:  I'd say Commissario Guido Brunetti is smart.

When his wife calls him at work to tell him some sad news, that the disabled man who worked at their neighborhood cleaners has died and that she feels bad because she doesn't know how to help or to honor this man's life, he clearly feels that she is being oversensitive.  But he is careful to hear her out, to sound saddened as well, and to call her a pet name as he ends the phone conversation.

It is his wife Paola's concern for the dead man, David Cavanella, that starts in motion Commisario Brunetti's investigation of what appears at first to be an accidental death.  The investigation is difficult:  the dead man's mother shuts her door in Brunetti's face.  He figures a roundabout direction is the best way to investigate further:  the neighbors aren't talking either, and he wonders if his colleague Vianello's wife would be the right kind of person winkle some truth out of the neighbors. But Vianello, somewhat to Brunetti's surprise, turns him down.  Eventually, he turns to his Neapolitan colleague, Griffoni, and also has seeks the help of another colleague, the redoubtable Elettra, his superior's well-informed secretary and a longtime ally.  And, he learns a lot about all of his colleagues, as they struggle over their abilities to manipulate suspects and the tug of loyalties to family and work that sometimes conflict.

The theme, to me, is surprising:  it's about bad, I mean really bad parenting.  Guido and Paola make a strong and convenient contrast.  It's also about the joys of language, perhaps not surprising for an author (and her audience). As wholesome and happy and Guido's family seems, the dark mystery he unravels is very dark indeed.

Pleasantville by Attica Locke

This is the first book I've read by Attica Locke, and I really enjoyed it.  It's the story of a lawyer, Jay Porter, who's at a low ebb in his life when he becomes caught up in a series of events, including a murder, a criminal trial, some political dirty- and double-dealing, for which he's quite unprepared.  As the novel opens, he is gripped with grief for his dead wife and struggling to care for his two children.

It all starts with a break-in at his office in an old Victorian house.  He calls the police, and they come, look over the house, fill out a report, and leave.  Then he goes upstairs and finds an intruder who laughs at him before escaping out an upstairs window.  Downstairs, he begins to clean up the broken glass only to realize that the front window was broken from inside, not outside.  He then finds a business card with his address written on the back.  The front of the business card shows the name of a lawyer at Cole Oil. a local polluter whom he had successfully sued in a class action suit but which has failed to pay any part of the settlement amount.

He's disturbed and confused by all of this, but his grief-induced numbness is something he's feeling more strongly than fear or anger.

Shortly thereafter, an African-American girl is reported missing, and she was last seen in Pleasantville, an attractive middle-class African-American neighborhood in Houston.  This affects Jay greatly because he knows many people in Pleasantville and because this is the third such disappearance in several years, and his wife, as she lay dying, was particularly affected by the trauma of the parents of one of the other victims.

Much to his surprise, he finds himself involved in the disappearance/murder case, and eventually, manages to resolve the class action suit.

This book is wonderfully plotted, and very exciting. I enjoy accounts of courtroom tactics, and there's some of that here in the presentation of the criminal case he defends.

What makes this novel different from an ordinary police procedural is that Porter defends his client without solving the case, and, more importantly, the urban setting and the sharply drawn characters. Sometimes Porter tells you who these people - who he's mostly known for years - are, but mostly, their character is revealed through their actions, which is much more interesting.

If you like Scott Turow, or if you liked John Grisham's Sycamore Row, you'll probably enjoy Pleasantville.

Attica Locke is also the author of Black Water Rising, also featuring Jay Porter, and Cutting Season. And she's also a writer and co-producer for the TV show Empire.

The Secret Place by Tana French

I really loved this novel, and I highly recommend it.

Holly Mackey is a teenager, a boarder at St. Kilda's, a tony girl's prep school in Dublin.  Her dad is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad, and his name is Frank Mackey.  (Readers of Tana French's other mystery novels will remember him; her other novels are In The Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor.)

The novel's story begins when she brings a photo to the police, and specifically, to Detective Stephen Moran.  The photo came from a bulletin board in the top floor hallway of St. Kilda's called The Secret Place.  It's a place where the students can share secrets, anonymously.

A year earlier, a student from the neighboring school for boys, St. Colm's, had been found murdered on the grounds of St. Kilda's.  All the students of both schools were interviewed, but the  police investigation has come to a dead end.

Now, someone has placed a photo of the dead boy on the Secret Place bulletin board, with letters cut out from newspaper or magazine, in the style of a ransom note, which spell out, "I know who killed him."

Detective Stephen Moran's career has also stalled.  He got a break early in his career, permitting him to become the youngest detective in the Cold Cases unit, but he's now been spinning his wheels there for several years; he wants to work for the Murder Squad, but sees no opportunity to get himself noticed.  Then Holly brings him the photo of the murdered boy she's taken down from the Secret Place.

Moran know that there's is one detective on the Murder Squad who doesn't have a partner because her partner recently retired,   He knows that this is his one big chance.  If he can get himself assigned to this case, and he can solve the crime, there's a strong chance he might get promoted to the Murder Squad.  If he can't solve the case, his time in the Cold Cases area will probably stretch out until his retirement.

There's just one more snag.  The detective who worked the case earlier, Conway, is a woman, who's tough, smart, combative and hugely unpopular.  Can he solve the case?  Can he get along with Conway long enough to do so?

This novel is really about teenage girls, and what's unique about this stage of mental and social development.  It's also about the tense relationship between Conway and Moran, and the mind games that they employ as they attempt to winkle the truth out of the teenage girls they're interviewing.

What makes this novel so wonderful are the sharply drawn characters.  This was also true of Faithful Place, the other novel by French that I've read.  And the dialogue.  French has a wonderful talent for capturing dialogue.  French carefully unfolds the details of the plot, Conway and Moran's relationship, and the girls' relationships.

It's a long book, with chapters that alternate telling the story of the girls, and telling the story of how Moran skillfully navigates distrustful Conway, the interrogations, and finally, Frank Mackey.  I tried to read the book in three days, and the first 200 pages just flew by, but I found I just couldn't do it. Expect to spend a week, and give this wonderful book the time it deserves.

If you're a European reader of this blog, you should know that when you read the blog, Google leaves cookies on your computer.

12/7/2018

The "Dublin Murder Squad" novels:
 this

1. In the woods

2. The likeness

3. Faithful Place

4. Broken Harbor

5. The secret place

6. The trespasser

Her latest novel, The Witch Elm (a standalone), came out in October.

After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman

Felix Brewer is a successful bookmaker until he's convicted by the Feds.  Unable to face imprisonment, he leaves his wife, three daughters and a mistress behind.

When his girlfriend, Julie Saxony, disappears ten years later, it's widely assumed that  she's left town to join him.

When her decomposed body is found in a local park, it's obvious that she hasn't left to join her lover. The police work the case, but are unable to close it.

A retired detective, bereft by the loss of his wife to cancer, goes to work as an independent contractor for Baltimore's police department, working cold cases.  He chooses his own hours and chooses his own cases.

One day he opens the Julie Saxony file, and the picture he sees there, of a beautiful blonde woman with breatakingly beautiful blue eyes, makes him choose her for his next cold case investigation.

I really enjoyed this book.  It was certainly suspenseful - it's a murder mystery, after all - but what was really interesting about this novel was Lippman's exploration of the lives, burdens and conflicts of the wife, daughters and mistress left behind.

Her characters are well delineated and they behave in unpredictable ways that seem fresh and original,

This is the rare suspense novel with fully developed characters struggling with real lives.  This is not a Tess Monaghan novel, but she makes an appearance at the end of the story.

I talked to a friend of mine about whether or not this novel was enjoyed by her mystery book group. She said the folks in her mystery book group liked the novel well enough, but that they thought it was not a mystery.  I said,  "How can they say that?  There's a body and there's a detective."  She said, "Well, they said that what the novel was really about was the lives of the women left behind." That's true:  that is what this novel is really about.  It is a very suspenseful novel, however, and I think many mystery readers will still enjoy it,

The Drop by Dennis Lehane

This is the second Dennis Lehane book I've read; I first became interested in him when Mystic River came out and he did a radio interview in which he talked about his experiences working in the child welfare system.

But everyone's a grown-up in this book.  I really did enjoy it, although I found the violence surprising and somewhat unsettling, as I did when I read A Drink Before the War (although not as much).

But for all its grit, this novel has a great happy ending payoff that includes a dog.  What more could you ask for?  Good writing, deft characterization, suspense, happy ending and a dog!

This is an easy, quick read.  I think it took me three to four hours.  It has something for everyone: suspense, a heist, a mystery, a romance and a dog!  Oh, and it starts over Christmas!  If you like suspense in an urban setting, and you don't mind a happy ending, I would definitely recommend this novel.  

Ratlines by Stuart Neville

I feel very enthusiastic about this book.  I think I chose to read it because I wondered if it was the sort of things that would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.

I think it would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.  There's less emphasis here on military operations but plenty of action and adventure and most of the men in the story are ex-military.

I enjoyed it more because there was more of a backstory, not just for the protagonist (an agent with military intelligence), but for the villains.

The first chapter definitely reminded me of The Eye of the Needle, especially the way that you're just plunged into the story.  Although it's a dark story, it's interesting.  I certainly felt inspired to go on.

I wasn't familiar with the term "ratlines" which means the escape routes Nazis took to places like Ireland and Argentina.  Of course, ex-Nazis also came to the U.S.  Interesting, a new novel has just been published, called Warburg in Rome, which is about the Catholic Church's involvement in "ratlines."  There was also a film about an ex-Nazi in flight, The Statement, from 2003, which starred Michael Caine.

There's a bit of Irish history here, especially about Ireland's complicated neutrality during the Second World War.  Ireland's then government viewed neutrality as necessary, but the personal history of the protagonist demonstrates how complicated Ireland's position was.

My Irish history is spotty but at the start of the Second World War, the Irish Republic was less than two decades old.  Ireland had struggled for centuries to achieve independence, and could easily have been invaded by Britain.  How Britain felt about Ireland in 1939, I don't know.  But I do know that in the 16th and 17th centuries, Britain feared attack through Ireland.

Yet many Irish men fought for the British, as did Albert Ryan, this novel's protagonist, an ex-military man bored by civilian life and now working for the Directorate of Irish intelligence.  Shosrtly before John F. Kennedy, the Irish-American president, is to visit Ireland in August, 1963.  His boss farms him out to Charles Haughey; Haughey's goal is to hush up the problem as much as possible.  He knows that publicity about the sanctuary Ireland has given ex-Nazis will sour the good feelings produced by the president's visit.

Ryan is troubled by his mission, which is to get down to the bottom of a series of murders of ex-Nazis who've found refuge in Ireland.  He feels that finding the killers is nearly the same thing as protecting Otto Skorzeny and the other ex-Nazis in the novel.

The second half of the book is full of double-cross and even triple-cross, with plenty of action and suspense. I was surprised by the book's ending.  There are at least two scenes of torture.  I tend to ignore these kinds of things when I come across them in books, and I imagine that others do, too, but I felt my recommendation had to include that notice.

Neville provides a bibliography of some of the sources he used in researching his novel:

Fugitive Ireland:  European Minority Nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, 1937-2008, by Daniel Leach.  Four Courts Press.

Commando Extraordinary:  Otto Skorzeny, by Charles Foley, Cassell Military Classics.

Rescuing Mussolini:  Gran Sasso 1943, by Robert Forcyzyk, Osprey Publishing.

Haughey's Millions:  Charlie's Money Trail, by Colm Keena, Gill & Macmillan.

JFK in Ireland:  Four Days that Changed a President, by Ryan Tubridy, Collins.

News from a New Republic:  Ireland in the 1950s, by Tom Garvin, Gill & Macmillan.

Neville states that Cathal O'Shannon's documentary Ireland's Nazis "first planted the seeds of this story" in his mind.

Ratking by Michael Dibdin

Ratking is the first novel the British writer Michael Dibdin wrote about Aurelio Zen, the Venetian-born Roman detective with an unfortunate reputation for integrity. This novel was published in the U.S. in 1988. It won the Gold Dagger award in that year.

Dibdin taught in Perugia for four years; that seems to be where he got the inspiration to set this novel in Perugia.

Several of his novels have been made into a detective series starring Rufus Sewell that is being shown on Masterpiece Theatre here (Vendetta, Cabal and Ratking). The series is quite stylish (Sewell is always wearing sunglasses and a dark suit with a skinny tie, making him a dour and intimidating reminder of Marcello Mastroianno), with great music. Sewell's stillness reminds me of that old bromide: "If you want to get someone's attention, just whisper."

In Ratking, an influential man pulls some strings to get officials at the Ministry of the Interior to look into a kidnapping case that has been dragging on for months. Kidnapping is a growth industry and the police are stretched pretty thin, so Enrico Mancini calls on Aurelio Zen. Zen is surprised to be sent to Perugia; ever since he became obsessed with the death of a colleague working on the Aldo Moro kidnapping case (1978), he had been removed from active duty and had labored in the career desert “Housekeeping” section of the Interior Ministry, an internal exile.

Zen recognizes what he’s up against from the very beginning. He has a police driver who, he guesses, is reporting on his movements and actions to the higher-ups in Rome. He’s resented by the Perugian cops, who make it clear that he’s not welcome, and by the investigating judge, who has a grand, and Zen thinks, unlikely conspiracy theory, and by the victim’s family, who are not cooperating with the authorities and don’t want Zen either.

Before he’s been in Perugia 24 hours, he’s been insulted by the local police, invited to a disastrous dinner with the kidnap victim’s family, and learned that the family attorney who’s been acting as a go-between for the family with the kidnappers has been shot. He knows he’s in a weak position and will have to tread very carefully.

Meanwhile, there are lovely little bits of local color. The restauranteur who bemoans the current interest in dieting, which he says is ruining the restaurant business (that which the Huns, Goths, and Turks could not do, dieting is doing).

Eating is a central metaphor. An ambitious man with stomach problems cannot eat because of his condition but as a child was always hungry, wishing he were as big as his brother. When Zen’s neglected American girlfriend comes to visit him in Perugia, the picnic she plans proves to be a disaster, auguring a sad denouement. When she breaks up with him, he fears what’s coming because he’s astounded to learn that she plans to feed him “American-style” hamburgers from a packet.

A late train inspires an agitated discussion of whether the culture of the North or the South is superior, and whether Italian lack of concern with train timetables is a priceless national treasure. Zen often thinks of his father, who died in the Second World War, and his childhood in Venice. He remembers that Perugia’s warren of streets perched on a hilltop grew out of a need for defence, as did the founding of his home city, Venice, on islands in a lagoon.

Despite Zen’s care, events quickly spiral out of control. He finally resorts to colorful ruses to bring his investigation to a close.

Zen is a detective who’s outwardly placid and hard to provoke and a pretty good political player but whose ongoing sense of sorrow about the early death of his father, his grief over losing his American girlfriend, and his clever playacting as a detective makes him a little more interesting and this story a little more thrilling than your average English country house mystery.

The significance of the title is explained by Bartocci, the magistrate:

“.. The condition of this conspiracy is that we’re all part of it,” Bartocci retorted. “It’s like a ratking.”

“A what?”

“A ratking. Do you know what that is?”

Zen shrugged. “The king rat, I suppose. The dominant animal in the pack.”

Bartocci shook his head. “That’s what everyone thinks. But they’re wrong. A ratking is something that happens when too many rats have to live in too small a space under too much pressure. Their tails become entwined and the more they strain and stretch to free themselves the tighter grows the knot binding them, until at last it becomes a solid mass of embedded tissue. And the creature thus formed, as many as thirty rats tied together by the tail, is called a ratking. You wouldn’t expect such a living contradiction to survive, would you? That’s the most amazing thing of all. Most of the ratkings that are discovered, in the plaster of old houses or beneath the floorboards of a barn, are healthy and flourishing..

“..What we’re dealing with is not a creature but a condition. The condition of being crucified to your fellows, squealing madly, biting, spitting, lashing out, yet somehow surviving, somehow even vilely flourishing! ..The ratking is self-regulating. It responds automatically and effectively to any threat. Each rat defends the interests of the others. The strength of each is the strength of all.”

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

I had long been wanting to read something by Dennis Lehane (I'd heard him speak about his work as a social worker in Boston on NPR as part of the publicity for the Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River, based on Lehane's novel of the same name), and something or things that he said moved me and I made a mental note that I wanted to read Lehane sometime. Moonlight Mile is on the bestseller lists now, and I’m sure that prompted me to be interested in this novel.

I chose this novel because it was the first in a series and I think it’s generally better to read the first book in the series first. Well, now I have.

Did anyone else read this novel?

I found the first four chapters or so a bit of a slog. Perhaps that’s a rookie finding his footing: I think this was Lehane’s first novel. In fact, I accidentally skipped a few pages in what I think was the fourth chapter and when I realized I had, I said to myself, "That's okay. It was boring, anyway." I thought his portrait of the Irish pols was utterly cliched and somehow unengaging. If his point was that these old-time politicians acted like they were members of a street gang, I got his point.

However, there were some other things I liked very much about this novel. I liked the portrait of the two black sisters; his attempts to both understand and manipulate them remind me of some things I have experienced. Because this is new to me, in the larger context of my life, I admire Lehane for bringing it to life on the page: the hopelessness, the wariness and lack of trust.

Lehane's portraits of Patrick and his feelings about Angie, his work partner and obsession interest, seem weaker to me, probably just because I did not find them as engaging. But, I did find Angie to be a strong and complicated character, and found something in her complicated relationship with her husband rang very true. Patrick loves Angie but is unable to woo her. That makes their relationship a kind of platonic office romance, but Patrick thinks of it constantly and I think his obsession exhausts him.

Somehow, “A Drink Before the War,” was a title that initially made me think of espionage. When you come to the scene in the novel from which that phrase is taken, you’ll see how very far it is from menace disguised by good manners.

I think one could get swept up in the staggering rising action as the novel draws to a close and miss that it raises some very troubling questions. I see that there are themes in Lehane’s work and I admire his attempt to grapple with questions and issues I find too overwhelming to contemplate for very long.

One other point I'd like to make: right now I'm reading Jo Nesbo's "The Devil's Star." It's set in Norway and the detectives in it look to America for information about the patterns and behaviors of serial killers. I find myself thinking about the violence in The Reliable Wife and in this novel and find myself wondering, is violence among us, even within the family, the natural consequence of unbearable pressures?

6/13/2018

I think if you liked this book, you would probably also like The Whites by Richard Price (writing as Harry Brandt) and Brighton by Michael Harvey. When people ask me what kind of book I like, I never know what to say, but I think this is the kind of book I like: urban setting with sharply drawn characters.

Elegy for April by Benjamin Black

(I do not know the photographer of this image, but it came from structurae .net, an international database and gallery of structures on 8/18/19). 

Elegy for April by Benjamin Black (the pen name of Irish mystery writer John Banville) is the third in the Quirke series.

Quirke is a pathologist living and working in Dublin in the 1950's. His grown daughter, Phoebe, lives in town and works in a hat shop. She socializes with a group of four very disparate friends: Jimmy Minor, a reporter for a Dublin paper; Isabel Galloway, an actress at the Gate Theatre; Patrick Ojukwu, a Nigerian surgery student; and April Latimer, a well-connected junior doctor at a Dublin hospital.

After Phoebe doesn't hear from April for a week, she shares her concern with her friend, Jimmy. Jimmy laughs off her concerns -- after all, their friend April is known to be a little wild and certainly impulsive. She may have left town for an short holiday. As time passes with no word of April, Phoebe slowly realizes how much she misses April and how little she knows her.

She turns to Quirke for help. Quirke, awkwardly recovering from a stint in rehab, uses his contacts in the police and medical establishments to begin to investigate April's disappearance.

After I finished this novel, I went onto Amazon to see what other readers thought of it. One reader complained about the plotting but acknowledged that if you're reading Benjamin Black, you're not reading for the plot. (As for the plot of this novel, I imagine many readers might find the conclusion less than satisfactory -- not all the ends are tied up -- but I think it's an ending entirely consistent with the novel and a drizzly Dublin winter). For as another reader pointed out, Black is a poetical prose stylist.

His poetry is hidden. It's in the colorful and sometimes abrupt adjectives he uses. Gosh, I'm so impressed.

Sometimes when I have wondered, "What is it that I love about cities? Why do I love the Near North Side or Southwark?" I try to answer myself by saying, "I love abrupt juxtapositions." Certainly, city life gives us plenty of those. And so does Black's prose.

Here's a little bit from the novel:

"The light from the lamp on Huband Bridge was a soft, gray globe streaming outwards in all directions. It glimmered on the stone arch and made a ghost of the young willow tree leaning on the canal bank there .. Dimly for a moment he seemed to catch the babbling voices of all of his dead."

The Woman In White, by Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White was one of the books that my online book club read this year.

This book was one I'd been curious about for a while. It was made into a Masterpiece Theatre presentation a few years ago, and I knew that some folks feel that it's the first detective novel. One writer opined that it is not really a detective novel but an example of an extinct genre, the "sensation novel."

Wikipedia explains the "sensation novel" this way: "Typically the sensation novel focused on shocking subject matter including adultery, theft, kidnapping, insanity, bigamy, forgery, seduction and murder.[1] It distinguished itself from other contemporary genres, including the Gothic novel, by setting these themes in ordinary, familiar and often domestic settings, thereby undermining the common Victorian-era assumption that sensational events were something foreign and divorced from comfortable middle-class life."

Sure enough, The Woman in White does include adultery, theft, kidnapping, forgery, seduction and insanity. I don't think that there's any bigamy. Oh, I forgot, there is murder...and a fire! I suppose a scene with a fire, especially if it's a major plot point, should score extra points.

Some of the sensation of the novel left me cold. I found myself looking for something I could identify with and found very little. This is not really a criticism. My feelings about the novel are really a reflection of my personal taste, and as we know, "there's no accounting for taste."

The novel concerns itself primarily with one man (who's offstage for much of the novel) and two sisters. One of the sisters is a very strong person, and I find myself feeling that you could argue that she explodes the convention of Victorian womanhood by being strong and independent.

I found myself feeling a little uncomfortable with her characterization, however. Her only aspiration for herself was her wish to remain close to her half-sister. That certainly was consistent with the Victorian ethos. One of the villains of the piece frequently mentions how much he admires her yet he certainly sees her as a threat to his own plans. Is his admiration sincere? I think it is actually an expression of hostility.

The novel was serialized, as many novels were at that time. As a result, it's probably longer than it otherwise would have been (writers were paid by the word) and its plot might have been more cohesive had it not been serialized.

Wilkie Collins was not a conventional person. His father had been an accomplished painter. Collins had two mistresses and never married. That Bohemianism does not appear in the novel; in fact, the heroine rejects the man she loves to marry a man chosen by her father who has much more money (or is thought to--the perils faced by an heiress in the marriage market is a theme that makes an appearance here).

What I do love is Marian's character. She is brave. She is a realist. She does try to temper her realism with kindness and restraint.

Faithful Place by Tana French

I think I first began to be interested in Tana French as an author when I saw that folks at my library were reading her two earlier books, The Likeness and In the Woods.


I became more interested when I realized that she writes mysteries.




So I brought home Faithful Place as part of the usual stack of books I bring home but may or may not read.





I've just been surfing the web, and came across a short piece on Agatha Christie by Nicholas Blincoe.  He points out that Edmund Wilson criticized her work for its apparent contentment at remaining at the surface of things:  "Christie has no interest in dramatising the emotional impact of events on her characters."


The opposite is true of French's Faithful Place, and that's ultimately what I love about it.  Central character Frank's emotions are patiently dissected as they flow and change, as he reminisces about the past that resurfaces in the novel, his obsessive first love and his very complicated feelings about his family.


That is what I love about the novel.  That the novel is partly about coming to terms with one's difficult childhood, as well as the painful loss of first love and the difficulty of letting go, add to its appeal to me.  Frank's a plenty complicated guy; the world he used to inhabit so complicated that Frank considers at least four suspects for a recently rediscovered murder.  And, Frank is dynamic -- the action of the novel changes him by the end.  


Finally, French has an ear.  She has a gift for dialogue so lifelike that I found myself adopting some Dublin speech mannerisms. And the Dublin language she recreates here is especially vivid.