Category Archives: Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

Wrapping up my Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

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Although I only read four books for it I did enjoy the Ireland Reading challenge, hosted by Carrie at Books & Movies, very much, not least because it introduced me to two authors who I think will become firm favourites. They couldn’t be more different.

Alan Glynn’s Winterland is a fast-paced tale of family and politics set against the backdrop of a very modern Ireland, almost at the exact point at which the country’s current economic and political woes began. I read the book at the beginning of the year but its characters and clever construction have stayed with me ever since. I recently purchased Glynn’s latest novel Bloodland which I aim to read early in the new year.

Cora Harrison’s Scales of Retribution is a slower paced tale which takes place 500 years earlier, though it is still a fiercely Irish story which incorporates a whodunnit into an exploration of Gaelic law and its superiority over English common law.

I also read Ken Bruen’s Priest which was outstanding. It loosely uses the conventions of the genre to explore recent changes in Irish society, especially the changing relationship between the Catholic church and Irish people. Of course I’ll keep reading Bruen too but I had discovered him last year (late to the party, I know) so don’t count him as a discovery of this particular challenge.

I enjoyed Jane Casey’s The Burning too but as the only one of the four books to be set outside the country it doesn’t have the same sense of Irishness as the others. It’s full of suspense though and has some well developed characters.

I do actually have a fifth book which I was going to read for the challenge. It’s Aifric Campbell‘s The Loss Adjustor but I don’t think I’ll get to it in what’s left of this year. I liked the sound of it though (even though I’m not sure it’s crime fiction at all) so I’ll read it next year even without the motivation of a challenge.

One of the things I found most noticeable when looking for books to read for this challenge was the relative dearth of female Irish crime writers. Although not absolute about it I have been trying to achieve a vaguely even gender balance in my reading and so was particularly struck by the gender disparity, especially when compared with other countries with an emerging crime fiction scene (e.g. Sweden, Australia, Scotland).

I’ve read both Tana French and Alex Barclay before and if I’m being honest neither would make it to my list of favourite authors so I was keen to try out some new writers for this challenge. I was not exactly burdened by choice, especially not of current female writers. The Irish Book Awards had a crime fiction category this year which shortlisted 5 books (scroll to the bottom of the link), of which 1 and a half were written  by women (Casey Hill is the pseudonym for a husband & wife team).  Declan Burke, champion of Irish crime fiction, lists 21 books published this year as eligible for his Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award and only 4 and a half of these are by women (Casey Hill appears here too). In fact of 101 authors listed as Irish crime writers on Burke’s site I think only 19 are women (I did check all the people with initials or gender neutral names but I could have gotten a couple wrong).

I’m not really making any  point or claiming any great insight on this issue and would welcome any thoughts from people in the know. I wonder for example whether there are loads of Irish women trying to get their crime fiction published or whether Irish women aren’t bothering to write the genre at all?

Review: Scales of Retribution by Cora Harrison

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The setting is the Kingdom of Burren on the west coast of Ireland in 1510. It is only early in his reign but King Henry VIII in England wants his empire to expand further into Ireland than the four small counties loyal to him. As the book opens King Turlough Donn O’Brien has gone off to fight the Earl of Kildare who is loyal to the English, leaving his eight-month pregnant wife Mara, who is also the kingdom’s investigating judge (the Brehon), at home. On one day Mara goes into an early and difficult labour and the kingdom’s physician Malachy dies a gruesome death. Although only barely recovered from the difficult childbirth Mara must take steps to investigate the death if an injustice is to be avoided. There is no shortage of suspects at least, with many locals having good reason to despise the greedy and incompetent man.

Good historical crime fiction has to provide a decent mystery and an engaging and at least vaguely credible historical setting. Scales of Retribution scores well on both tasks, although perhaps the historical aspects of the novel do slightly outshine the classic whodunnit. Each chapter of the novel begins by outlining some aspect of Gaelic law which is then explored in action and I found this fascinating, especially as comparisons were made to English common law (which Ireland did not adopt in full for a couple of centuries). Perhaps Harrison has selected only those elements of the older legal system that are more benign but it did seem to offer a more sensible approach to many aspects of civil life.

Mara is helped in solving the mystery by the students of the small law school that she operates in the grounds of the castle. There are a half-dozen young men in various stages of study and they use the case (and previous ones if hints dropped in this book are any guide) as a way of supplementing their theoretical learning with practical experience. Suspects include a man whose much loved dog was killed by poison scattered by the physician, several members of the man’s own family and patients who he had ill-treated. A favourite custom of his was to provide incorrect ointment for some patients so that their wounds would not heal and they would need to continue paying him. This had disastrous consequences on more than one occasion and these victims (or their relatives) are also suspects. The boys carry out interviews and other aspects of the investigation and bring all the information back to Mara and the classroom for discussion and dissection, though it is Mara who provides the ultimate solution.

Mara fits in to the sub category of strong female protagonists inserted into historical fiction written by women that I discussed earlier this year. She is the only female Brehon in the country, has a lot of latitude in her professional and personal life and is a very strong character overall but she has a very human side too. For example she is unable to provide milk for her newborn baby and must use the services of a wet nurse (at first her own adult daughter and then a villager) and her jealousy that other women can do this simple thing that she cannot is well portrayed. There are plenty of other nicely drawn characters including several of the students who all have different skills and strengths. I did think there were rather a lot of people to keep track of though and think it would have been nicer for a few less characters which would have enabled the remaining ones to be portrayed in more depth.

I knew absolutely nothing about this book before starting to read it which is always the best way to approach a new author I think. I am delighted to have found this series and will definitely be adding it to my ever growing watch list. Scales of Retribution handles both aspects of its charter, historical detail and mysterious intrigue, well and is gently humorous to round things out nicely.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A hat tip to regular commenter Kathy D for recommending this series when I was looking for recommendations for female Irish crime writers. On short notice to finish the Ireland reading challenge this year I could only find this latest book in the series but I will keep an eye out for the earlier ones as I really enjoyed both the mystery and historical aspects of this one.

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My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Severn House [2011]
ISBN 9781780101026
Length 207 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series #6 in the Burren mysteries series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: The Burning by Jane Casey

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If I had a dollar for every time someone has made some variation on the “you must be twisted to read all those books about serial killers” remark I’d be a rich woman. Well, moderately wealthy anyway. The comment always makes me grind my teeth as I try to respond politely when what I really want to say is “you are a moron if you think that’s all crime fiction is about”. I avoid serial killer books with the same dedication as I avoid religious proselytisers and green peas and would not, therefore, have picked up this book (with its blurb and cover that all scream serial killer) if I didn’t implicitly trust Maxine who reviewed the book at Petrona.

As the book opens we are indeed introduced to the presence of a serial killer in London. A drunk girl gets into a taxi but soon starts to feel something is wrong. The car isn’t going in the right direction and there are other hints something is amiss…she has heard about the killer named by the media as The Burning Man who has killed four women and she worries that she is in the car with him. When DC Maeve Kerrigan is called out in the early hours of the morning to the resultant crime scene it appears the killer she and the large investigative team assigned to the case have been looking for has finally been caught red-handed. But then another body is found and it too appears to be a victim of the same killer. The DI in charge of the case is unsure enough about this victim’s connection to the other cases to make sure that Maeve investigates the new case as independently as possible, though he doesn’t reassign the case because if it should turn out to be another victim of ‘their’ killer he doesn’t want there to be any legal problems with having had doubts about the case at all. This was one of the aspects of the story that made me feel quite sorry for the police and all the second guessing they must have to do and it made me wonder how often issues like this have a detrimental impact on real investigations.

All of that setup doesn’t take very long at all and so readers soon leave behind the hunt for the serial killer and follow instead Maeve’s investigation into the death of Rebecca Haworth who was an Oxford graduate and a successful PR woman. At this point we also meet Rebecca’s best friend, Louise, and from this point onwards some chapters are told from her perspective which provides a nice contrast to the scenes which unfold from Maeve’s point of view. Between the two we are slowly shown a picture of Rebecca that was a little different from first appearances and there does not seem to be a shortage of people who might have wanted her dead if she does indeed turn out not to be the Burning Man’s latest victim. The depiction of all three woman – Maeve, Louise and Rebecca – is skilfully done and their interlocking stories made the book fly by for me.

Although the book is more of a psychological suspense than anything else there are also elements of the police procedural too, especially the office politics of the work. Maeve is subject to relatively mild sexism and racism from her colleagues but she also has an intelligent and fair boss which provides a nice balance. Her personal life is not the picture of health unfortunately, as her wealthy boyfriend can’t quite understand the demands of her job, and this thread also plays out credibly across the novel.

I did find the resolution to this novel fairly easy to spot but I did enjoy watching how Casey would get us to the end I expected. The plotting is certainly logical and did have some nicely unpredictable twists along the way and the way that readers are drawn into the lives of the characters makes this well worth reading. If you’re looking for a book about the hunt for a serial killer you’ll need to go elsewhere but if you’re after a thoughtfully layered novel of suspense then you could do a lot worse than read The Burning.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Burning has been reviewed at Euro Crime, Petrona and The Book Whsiperer

I’m counting this towards my Irish Reading challenge as the author is Irish and one of the two main protagonists is of Irish heritage and this issue is addressed as one of the minor plot threads of the novel. Having read two books by male authors for this challenge I was looking for female Irish crime writers who set their books in Ireland and so far have come up blank so this will have to count.

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My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Ebury Digital [2010]
ISBN 9781409005018
Length 327 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series standalone (?).
Source I bought it

This post is published at http://reactionstoreading.com if you are seeing it at another site then it has been stolen and/or used entirely without permission.

Review: Priest by Ken Bruen

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Priest opens with its anti-hero, Jack Taylor, having been virtually catatonic in an asylum for five months, following the event that occurred at the very end of The Dramatist. If you have read the earlier novel you will not think that unreasonable at all (and if you haven’t Jack does explain early on what led him to his current low point). But a chance encounter pulls him out of his fugue state in time to leave the institution and be called upon by his old nemesis, Father Malachy to investigate the beheading of a local priest.

That synopsis makes the book sound more like a traditional crime novel than it really is, when really the crimes are a device for Bruen to explore the changes he has observed in Irish society. The most significant of these is the impact of the exposure of widespread paedophilia by Catholic priests and the sustained cover-up by the Church. The impact on individuals, as Jack tracks down two men who were abused by the recently murdered priest, is beautifully depicted, though, of course, extremely sad. And through the first-person telling of the story by Jack we also see the impact on the wider society which was once, in various ways, held together by the Church and its representatives (the priests) and is now adrift somewhat without the familiar anchor. Having been raised Catholic (now lapsed) I have read and watched whatever I can get my hands on about this theme, both fiction and non-fiction, and I cannot recall having read anything which depicts the far-reaching impacts of this series of events as thoughtfully, intelligently and accurately as has been done here. Bruen has teased out what the media coverage, with its sensational headlines and moving on to the next story after 5 minutes, always misses: the lasting impact on victims, their families and all the connected people who’ve had their beliefs shattered.

Jack is more ‘together’ than he thinks he has a right to be here, though ‘together’ is a relative term. He acquires a home (several at one point), and a trainee and does his job with a little more dedication than in the previous novel though he is, at heart, one of life’s losers which is soon borne out. Though he is a loser with the soul of a poet and his ode to Ireland, and its people, which is partly what this book felt like to me, is quite haunting. As is his depiction of both alcoholism and depression and their effects upon the sufferer, which makes more sense and has more clarity than most of the non-fiction you’ll read on either subject.

The rest of the characters are somewhat minor players who surround Jack for the most part but even if their appearance is fleeting they’re all brilliantly drawn. One who stood out for me was a nun who looked after Father Joyce (prior to his beheading). I might have grown up half a world away from Ireland but I know nuns exactly like her: sharing both behaviour and fears. Bruen has captured perfectly the impact the Church’s hierarchy enforced social deprivations has on such a person.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Jack Taylor and his exploits make for melancholy reading but Bruen manages, through a combination of humour and wonderfully crisp writing that doesn’t enable the reader to wallow in despair, to make it an enjoyable experience. I’m being a bit harsh in not giving the book a full 5 stars but the ending was a smidgen less brilliant than the ending of its predecessor so I thought it only fair to knock off a half a star.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Priest has been reviewed at Kittling Books,  Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog

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My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.kenbruen.com/
Publisher Corgi Books [2010]
ISBN 9781409085461
Length 183 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series #5 in the Jack Taylor series
Source I bought it

Review: Winterland by Alan Glynn

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Winterland opens with the gangland-style murder of young Noel Rafferty in the beer garden of a Dublin pub. His family, including his aunts and one uncle, gather at his grief-stricken mother’s home to offer their support, though given his shady dealings in things criminal no one is terribly surprised that Noel’s life has ended in such a way.  His youngest Aunt, Gina, was closer to him in age than she is to any of her siblings but she hardly ever saw her nephew, having grown weary of hearing about the trouble he has gotten into. However, when another member of the family dies on the same evening Gina starts to wonder if there isn’t something far more sinister at play.

I loved the way the story is constructed. It’s almost more like a play in the way action moves from one setting to another. At the beginning of each set piece you think things are going to unfold in a particular way but Glynn manages to twist and turn things very cleverly so that virtually nothing you expect to happen eventuates, while surprises happen all the way along. Of course it doesn’t hurt that the entire story takes place against the backdrop of a very modern Ireland seemingly at the exact moment when the country’s status as the Celtic tiger of the world economy was coming grievously unstuck and those with any political clout at all were doing whatever it took to stay afloat. This gives the book both intensity and a truly contemporary feel. You really do feel like you might be reading the real story behind the news headlines.

There are two main characters who carry the story and both of them are brilliantly drawn. Gina Rafferty becomes increasingly angry but she doesn’t automatically know how to channel her misgivings and rage so she makes mistakes, some of which are deadly. Her yearning to do the right thing by her family member is palpable though and she does not give up even when it seems like the only way to save her life. The other character who we see most of is Paddy Norton, a property developer and political player from the old days who is still playing puppet master to today’s political elite. His need to have things happen the way he wants them to drives everything he does and watching him deal with the fallout when things go awry is mesmerizing.

There are other brilliant characters and enough stories within stories that a lesser writer would have lost several of the threads but Glynn holds this all together superbly. It is probably misleading to label this crime fiction as it has few of the conventions of the genre and, sadly enough, the label will turn some people off. This is one of those books that defies easy categorisation and is recommended to anyone who enjoys great writing, compelling story-telling and terrific characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I read this as my first book to count towards the Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

Winterland has been reviewed at Petrona and Reading Matters.

Keishon at Just Another Crime Fiction Blog also discussed it last year after not finishing the book. Her post and the comments it generated also make terrific reading about the nature and value of book reviewing in the modern world.

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My rating 4/5
Publisher Faber and Faber [this edition 2010, original edition 2009]
ISBN 9780571250042
Length 468 pages
Format paperback
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

The Ireland Reading Challenge 2011

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I’m fully prepared to admit that my signing up for 2011 challenges has gone a bit over the top but I am quite determined to read mostly from the books I own right now for the next 12 months or so. Signing up for the challenges so publicly is supposed to keep me on the straight and narrow.

The Ireland Reading Challenge being hosted by Carrie at Books and Movies is a new one for me but when I checked my TBR pile I realise I have at least 4 books that would qualify for the challenge so I thought why not? There are 3 levels to choose from and I am going for the middle level, Luck O’ The Irish which just happens to require the reading of 4 books (like it was made for me).

These are the books I already own that are set in Ireland or are by Irish writers.

  • Alan Glynn – Winterland
  • Declan Hughes – The Colour of Blood
  • Ian Sansom – The Bad Book Affair
  • Ken Bruen – Priest