Category Archives: Ireland

Review: THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL by Bateman

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TheDayOfTheJackRussellAudioAs I was wading through this book I needed something…lighter… to act as a counterweight for my poor brain which was being bombarded with horrid images that will probably give me nightmares for months. I could think of nothing better than another of (Colin) Bateman’s witty satires of the mystery genre, especially read to me by someone with the right accent for the story.

THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL follows on from 2009′s MYSTERY MAN and sees the nameless owner of Belfast mystery bookshop No Alibis (Murder is our Business) once again lukewarm on the trail of some dastardly criminals. Ignoring the case which his ex (?) girlfriend solves in 10 minutes thereby robbing our hero of the fee he was planning to charge a woman who thought she was being spied upon, this book focuses its attention on self-made businessman Billy Randall. He needs the services of a private eye because someone made a video of his giant billboard being defaced (a male appendage is painted on giant Billy’s head) and the video has become such a You Tube sensation that Randall fears his business is starting to suffer as no one can take him seriously. The case takes our hero on a strange and wonderfully madcap journey that involves taxidermy, the Chief Constable and MI5.

The hero of this series is…unlikely to say the least. A cynical, self-absorbed, hypochondriac who would be lucky to leap over a small shrub let alone a tall building he is nevertheless strangely compelling even if not likeable in the traditional sense. And he is, for me anyway, terribly funny. I’m not normally a huge fan of the first-person point of view but it works well for comic novels and ‘no-name’s’ voice is one that particularly appeals to me (though I shan’t think too deeply on what shared traits might draw me to him).  I’m not entirely sure the no-named hero shtick is sustainable (even here it was awkward) for more books but, having noticed there are two more in the series already, I’m willing to make allowances due to being so thoroughly entertained each time I pick up one of these novels.

This is definitely a book I think you should sample before purchasing – you’ll know within a few pages whether or not it’s your kind of humour – and you need to be at least a minor fan of the crime genre to really appreciate some of the jokes and digs at recent publishing trends. If you’re lucky enough to share Bateman’s absurd sense of what’s funny then you’re in for a treat. If you are an audiobook fan I’d highly recommend Stephen Armstrong’s narration – he is now the voice of mystery man for me and I am chuffed to see he’s read more of Bateman’s novels for my personal listening pleasure.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Narrator Stephen Armstrong
Publisher Whole Story Audio Books [2010]
ASIN B003UI7ZH0
Length 8 hours 27 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in the Mystery Man series

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Review: THE RAGE by Gene Kerrigan

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TheRageKerriganGene5696_f I am often out of step with Awards judging panels but in the case of those who selected THE RAGE to win the Gold Dagger for best crime novel in 2012 I am in complete agreement. It’s a cracking read.

Set in contemporary Dublin it is at its core the story of two men both battling internal demons. Vincent Naylor is newly out of jail and has begun planning a large-scale robbery. As a professional thief he is philosophical about his chances of returning to prison at some point, but seems quite determined to keep a lid on the behavioural excesses that led to his first sentence after severely beating a young man.  Bob Tidy is a long-serving Garda struggling to maintain his integrity in a world in which the distinction between right and wrong is not nearly as obvious as it ought to be. He becomes involved in a current investigation into a murdered banker because, unlikely as it seems, the gun used in the crime was apparently used in the case of a low-grade hoodlum’s death that Tidy investigated but couldn’t close. He is also contacted by an old acquaintance who notices something odd in the street she lives on. Eventually the disparate elements of this novel collide but, probably, not in the ways you’d expect.

One of the delights of the novel was knowing very little about what was going to happen and watching it play out in all its complexity. You think having so many threads in play can only result in chaos but Kerrigan resolves everything with delightful precision. It’s like watching a beautifully choreographed ballet via those wide-angle overhead cameras they have in newer theatres: your heart’s in your throat the whole time but when everyone is taking their final bows you’re equal parts relieved and exhilarated.

The backdrop to these machinations is modern Ireland a place of economic collapse and enormous social upheaval. Many people in all walks of life are still dealing with the fallout of the Ryan Report which resulted from the Commission of Inquiry into child abuse and the days of the Celtic Tiger striding the world stage are well and truly over. According to one local philosopher

After all the bullshit about the fight for freedom, about throwing off the foreign yoke – they gave the country away. The politicians fell in love with the smart fellas – gave them any law they wanted. The smart fellas made speeches and gave interviews about how smart they were, and the journalists kissed their arses. And, in the end, it was the smart fellas broke the country in pieces, without any help at all from the red brigades.

It isn’t only the two main characters of the novel who live in the giant grey chasm that exists between black and white, right and wrong. Even someone as seemingly inoffensive as the elderly nun who contacts Bog Tidy about the strange thing she noticed in her street lives in a world of torment. For this reason the characters in THE RAGE are hard to like but they’re equally hard to forget. Some of Kerrigan’s observations made me personally uncomfortable as I reflected on my easy judgement of people who do the wrong thing but I won’t hold it against him.

THE RAGE has so many of the elements I think necessary for great crime fiction. A fast-paced, brilliantly complex story, characters that keep you awake at night and a glimpse into a distant, tension-filled world. It is, in its way, quite profound and I know it’s a book I’ll be thinking of for a long time to come.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I plucked THE RAGE from my teetering TBR pile because I noticed it’s going to be featured in Margot Kinberg’s excellent In The Spotlight series this month. If you aren’t already you really should be a regular visitor to Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, one of the web’s most insightful and exhaustive crime fiction resources.

I’ve read another of Kerrigan’s novels, also excellent – THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Publisher Vintage Digital [2011]
ASIN B0050OM37Y
Length 304 pages
Format eBook (mobi for kindle)
Book Series standalone

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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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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
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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

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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

Happy St Patrick’s Day to all

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Imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery so I will copy Kim’s idea of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by highlighting the Irish books I have reviewed here on the blog. It’s important to note that I’m imitating the idea not the quantity as my 8 books doesn’t really stack up to Kim’s 75. But I am participating in the Irish Reading Challenge this year and have several more books on the TBR stack.

Alan Glynn’s Winterland “…one of those books that defies easy categorisation and is recommended to anyone who enjoys great writing, compelling story-telling and terrific characters”

Bateman’s Mystery Man “a loving satire on the crime fiction genre that turned me into the crazy giggling lady on public transport”

Gene Kerrigan’s The Midnight Choir “is a big novel, not in terms of length (the nine and a half hours listening time flew by) but in terms of its subject. Rather than focusing on a particular incident, investigator or criminal this book depicts a myriad of crimes perpetrated by an assortment of criminals and paints a giant canvas showing how and why crime happens.”

Ian Sansom’s Mr Dixon Disappears “if you can put aside your need for story for a couple of hours and just enjoy the beauty of funny, well constructed sentences and some charming characterisations then I highly recommend the book”

Ken Bruen’s The Dramatist “…a perfect noir tale with the best – most appropriate - ending I’ve read in forever”.

Rob Kitchin’s The Rule Book “On one level a ripping crime fiction yarn which would be pleasing enough but also made me ponder about the role we all play in making things impossible for police in with our insatiable desire for gory details and our seeming unwillingness to accept that real life is rarely, if ever, as simple as portrayed on shows like CSI” and The White Gallows “a captivating and credible reading experience, though not always a comfortable one as it raised issues that are all too real.“

Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast “not my favourite of the bunch but a very popular (and award winning) book elsewhere, a bit too testosterone-fuelled and lacking in light and shade for me“

So, Lá ‘le Pádraig sona daoibh go léir

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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

Review: The Dramatist by Ken Bruen

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Roughly as many friends told me I would love Ken Bruen as told me I wouldn’t. I would love him because he is a brilliant writer or I wouldn’t because noir is not really my thing and/or I wouldn’t ‘get’ him.

‘They’ (or half of them anyway) were right. I loved The Dramatist.

It is the fourth novel in a series featuring Jack Taylor, former policeman in the Irish Guarda with a self-destructive personality that manifests itself most obviously in a series of addictions (alcohol, booze, nicotine) and poor handling of personal relationships. At the start of The Dramatist he is newly sober (through choice) and free of illegal drugs (because his cocaine dealer is in prison). Ostensibly the plot is driven by Taylor being asked by said drug dealer to investigate the death of his sister which has been ruled an accident by police. But really it is just the continuing story of Jack’s meandering, blighted life.

I don’t know how to pitch that the story of one Irish drunk’s life is worth reading so you’ll just have to trust me. Despite the fact that Jack’s investigation runs to not much more than a couple of phone calls and badgering one of his old colleagues a few times there is a load going on here and it’s all captivating. With black ‘you should feel guilty for laughing’ humour Jack struggles with his addictions, entangles himself with women, a priest and some nasty vigilantes and observes the political and social changes in his world in a way that makes it impossible to stop reading. I should also point out that although I haven’t read the first three books in the series there are enough reminiscences to ensure I didn’t feel lost.

The story is told in Jack’s first-person point of view which is normally not something I enjoy but is well-suited here as it allows us to see the best and the worst of Jack who may not be likable but is compelling. Friends, of the kind that don’t mind being dismissed most of the time, and the inevitable enemies swirl in and around Jack’s life. Sometimes he is nice to them, like the lovely moment when he tries to cheer up the elderly lady who runs the small hotel he lives in, but more often he isn’t, because it just doesn’t come naturally. All of them though are totally believable and I really did get sucked into this world. I was going to say ‘drawn into’ but that would suggest I had a choice and after the first 10 minutes or so I had to keep listening.

To be fair the other half of my friends were right too, I don’t always enjoy noir. It’s not the darkness of the subject I mind nearly as much as when there is absolute certainty from the outset that the darkness will prevail.  Where there is certainty there is boredom for me as a reader. I like most of all to be kept wondering. What Bruen does to perfection  with The Dramatist is tease readers with the possibility that things might not end in darkness after all. While there are events in the story that are very dark indeed there are also incidents in which things for Jack border on peachy and therein lies the tantalising hook. Will this incident trigger his downward spiral? Or that one? Or might there not be a downturn at all? Until the last moment of the book I didn’t know and that’s all I can ask.

If you’ve read Charles Ardai’s brilliant definition of noir (and if you haven’t, go now) then you’ll know that

“In noir novels…any apparent order is generally illusory; things don’t work the way they’re supposed to; justice is rare and, when present, often accidental….It’s a broken promise. It’s a book that betrays us and that we love for it…”

That’s The Dramatist in a nutshell: accidental justice and a brutally broken promise. It was the end that tipped the book from good to great for me. It’s 36 hours since I uttered a loud “no” upon hearing the completely unexpected event as I walked through my office building’s lobby and I still can’t quite rid myself of a lingering sadness (not to mention the funny looks I’m still getting from the security guards who were on duty at the time). But I also know that the ending was the perfect one for the book and that’s such a rare thing to find that I will savour it, sadness and all.

What about the audio book?

With the story being written from the first person point of view and with Gerry O’Brien’s mild Irish lilt I really felt like Jack Taylor was telling me his own story in his own words.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Narrator Gerry O’Brien
Publisher Isis Audio Books [this edition 2010, originally 2003]
ISBN N/A (audio download)
Length 4 hours 24 minutes
Format download from audible.com
Source My collection

Review: The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville

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The premise of The Ghosts of Belfast, which I listened to in a superb narration by Gerard Doyle, is engaging and the narrative realistic in the way it depicts Gerry Fegan’s journey through one of the modern world’s most troubled political contexts. Fegan is an IRA killer released early from prison (in concessions provided to the Republicans as part of the peace process). He is haunted, literally, by the ghosts of twelve people he killed in various incidents while an active IRA member and the ghosts want him to kill the people who ordered or were otherwise responsible for their deaths. The process of Fegan tracking down the various activists, politicians and priests he is to kill allows for the revelation of his personal back story and, by extension, a potted history of ‘The Troubles’ while simultaneous current events depict how various members of the community are trying to find a place for themselves in their new, precariously peaceful society.

These days the crime genre produces some of the most insightful fiction about our society and this seems to be particularly true in the context of the world’s social and political ‘hot spots’ for want of a better term. In this sense Neville’s achievement is outstanding: mercilessly depicting the hypocrisy and self-interest that motivated most of the political and paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland rather than high-minded religious or political beliefs many participants would like to have us, and probably themselves, believe.

For me though The Ghosts of Belfast suffers in a story-telling sense. My main problem is that it does not offer a single positive or light note amidst its unrelenting grimness and violence. This singular tone gave the book a fairly hopeless inevitability and by the last couple of hours, which was basically a slaughter fest of the most repulsive kind, I had lost track of, and interest in, who was being horribly killed and why.

I also struggled with the characterisations. The men are all fueled by testosterone, hatred and narcissism in varying degrees and engage in endless coercion, torture and murder with a total lack of humanity. Even their leisure activity is the most repugnant form of ‘entertainment’ I can imagine. The women (of whom there are very few) are equally one-dimensional saintly mothers (and one thieving whore). The one exception to this is Marie McKenna who has defied community leaders for many years but in the end she stopped short of being the kind of interesting figure that compels me to keep reading. She really was not much more than an adjunct to the male characters in the story and some of her actions, particularly the ease with which she chose to believe Fegan’s lies and promises, stretched the bounds of my credibility. Ultimately there was really no one I could care about or empathise with or be hopeful for and I’m afraid, perhaps mistakenly, I do look for these elements if a book is to be a fully satisfying reading experience.

I like books that have light and shade, highs and lows, a range of emotional levels and here I just did not find any of these elements. Perhaps our anti-hero’s efforts to silence the voices in his head were supposed to provide them or perhaps the author doesn’t find such things necessary. Either way an entire book about a killer who demonstrates his regret at his previous killings by carrying out more killings was neither vaguely sympathetic nor unpredictable enough to really sustain my engagement for 11 hours.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 2.5/5

Narrator Gerard Doyle; Publisher Audible Inc [2009]; Length 11 hours 2 minutes

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Ghosts of Belfast (released as The Twelve in the UK) has been reviewed in mostly far more glowing terms than I have done above at Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction, Mysteries in Paradise and Petrona (where Maxine shares some of my feelings about the novel).

Review: The White Gallows by Rob Kitchin

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My copy of the second novel featuring Ireland’s Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy was a gift from the author. It’s official publication date is 12 June 2010 which, depending on where you live, is today or tomorrow.

One Sunday morning DS Colm McEvoy is called to a scene where a young man’s brutally beaten body has been discovered. The DI already there frustrates McEvoy with his unilluminating single-word answers to questions about the case, but the reality is they don’t know who the man is or anything much else about him. Despite having this and several other investigations on his plate, McEvoy is then asked to check into the death of Albert Koch, one of Ireland’s’ wealthiest businessmen. Koch was elderly and his death was signed off as natural by his doctor but a local Garda is suspicious and believes the situation warrants attention by a senior officer. It soon becomes clear that Koch was murdered and McEvoy must investigate the man’s family and his past, thereby opening himself up to confrontation, political pressure and the uncovering of nasty surprises while he juggles all his other work and a fairly tenuous hold on his personal life.

There are things I would like to discuss about this book but can’t do so without giving away plot spoilers which I am loath to do both because it is generally a loathsome thing to do and because I found the story genuinely unpredictable and want you to have the same experience should you choose to read the book. Suffice it to say there is a lot going on within this story both with the various cases McEvoy is responsible for and in his private life. Although the book does jump around between events the structure is logical and the harried, sometimes jerky way that the story is revealed is perfectly suited to the harried, sometimes jerky lives that the under-resourced and badly stretched Irish police force are living.

As was the case with the first book in this series, The Rule Book, there is an almost hyper-realism to the way that police work is depicted here. Forensic answers do not materialise miraculously in shiny laboratories to offer the solution to a baffling case just in the nick of time, police officers do not have the luxury of working on one case at a time even if it is the murder of a VIP and criminals do not always get caught. With the real world economic downturn in Ireland being reflected in the book, the resources of the police are so ridiculously thin on the ground that the criminals have good reason to believe they can get away with anything. At one point some of them take a bold and horrifying action which badly injures one of McEvoy’s colleagues and further depletes the strained police force as personnel are re-deployed to deal with the new crisis.

Like many fictional coppers Colm McEvoy has some personal flaws but they haven’t overcome him to the point where all his actions have become predictable which makes for entertaining reading. It’s probably because I share this trait but I like the fact that even though he knows it’s not going to go well for him he often can’t stop himself from saying the wrong thing in many situations. In this story it has been a year since McEvoy’s wife Maggie died and her sister plans a memorial service which McEvoy is hesitant about attending, preferring to keep his grief and sense of loss private. I can also empathise with being considered odd for this kind of thinking in a world in which living as publicly as possible is considered the norm. So much of the book focuses on McEvoy that most of the other characters struggle to have terribly meaty appearances but there are some terrific scenes with some of McEvoy’s colleagues and his young daughter Gemma offers some nice lighter moments.

Because The White Gallows is so realistic there were times I was uneasy with it, such as when McEvoy seemed unable to grasp that, assuming Albert Koch’s entire family didn’t gang up and kill him Murder on the Orient Express-style, the law-abiding citizens among Koch’s relatives had every right to feel aggrieved at being treated fairly shoddily bu the police during their grief. I’m sure this is a common occurrence in the real world too and it saddens me to think that police are forced, by their experiences and their daily grind, to treat everyone as guilty until proven innocent and that people so treated are unlikely to ever have a positive view of the police force again.

I found The White Gallows a captivating and credible reading experience, though not always a comfortable one as it raised issues that are all too real. Its complexity and unrelenting grittiness reminded me a little of the setting and main character of R D Wingfield’s Jack Frost novels. I heartily recommend it to fans of traditional police procedurals and those who like their tales to unfold with the kind uncertainty that warrants staying awake long enough to read just one more chapter.

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My rating 4/5

Publisher Indepenpress [2010]; ISBN 9781907499371; Length 322 pages

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The White Gallows has also been reviewed at International Noir Fiction (although this review does give away more about the plot than I have done so be warned) and Mack Captures Crime

I reviewed The Rule Book, the first book in this series, earlier this year.

Rob Kitchin has answered the 9 murder mystery questions Craig Sisterson poses to crime writers everywhere on his excellent blog Crime Watch

Review: The Rule Book by Rob Kitchin

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Rob Kitchin’s The Rule Book arrived on my doorstep* at precisely the moment I closed the back cover on P D Martin’s The Killing Hands.  I decided this was a serendipitous event and rather than waste any time pondering which book to pluck out of the TBR bookcase next I headed straight to Ireland for my second book in the 2010 Global Reading Challenge.

At a Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in the mountains outside Dublin a young woman has been killed: affixed to a bed via a sword threading through her mouth and neck. Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy is put in charge of the case which soon turns from a routine murder investigation into something far more sinister. The girl’s killer, who calls himself The Raven, has left calling cards and the first chapter of a book about how to commit the perfect series of murders. If he is to be believed there will be six more murders over the subsequent days and McEvoy and the team don’t have nearly enough information to even know where to start looking for him.

This book is the best I can ever recall reading in the way it depicts the wretched desperation that the police must experience in the face of something as truly awful as people being randomly and brutally killed and being unable to wade through the morass of evidence in time to save lives. So often in fictional hunts for serial killers (especially on TV shows like Criminal Minds) investigators take such things in their stride which is at least as disturbing to me as the killings themselves. The Rule Book really gave me a sense of how hideous it must be to know people are relying on you for their safety but despite the fact you’re working all hours and trying your best you just can’t get the right answers in time.

On top of feeling like he’s letting down an entire city McEvoy struggles throughout the book to deal with his own recent widowhood, the increasingly nasty office politics that inevitably surround such a high-profile case and the pure madness that is the modern media (another aspect to the story that I thought was depicted in a depressingly accurate way). He’s a fantastic character: far from perfect but never giving up despite provocation and I can’t be the only one who just wanted to give the man a hug. The other characters are also realistic though not all as sympathetic. McEvoy’s immediate superior, DCS Tony Bishop, whose skills seem to be more in the arse-covering line than the detecting line, is an all too familiar beast but there are friends too for McEvoy in the form of a humorous pathologist and a profiler brought in towards the end of the case.

When I saw that the book was a about a serial killer I was a little worried because they’re not my favourite kind of crime novel (I know there are not nearly so many serial killers in the world as there are in fiction so I sometimes struggle with the credibility factor) but the subject was handled well. Even though there are snippets of action seen from the killer’s point of view the book is really about the events that happen and the people who are investigating them. The story is full of suspense as ‘we’ (and it does feel like ‘we’) race along with police to see if The Raven can be stopped in time.

I was also pleased to find The Rule Book has a very solid sense of its location. From the iconic picture of the statue of Big Jim Larkin in Dublin’s city centre on the cover to the use of local language, particularly in dialogue, to descriptions of an interesting variety of locations in and around the city this is a very Irish book. I have visited Dublin a couple of times and I found myself easily able to transport myself back there while reading along.

On one level this is a ripping crime fiction yarn which would be pleasing enough but there’s more to it than that. It also made me ponder about the role we all play in making things impossible for police in such circumstances with our insatiable desire for gory details and our seeming unwillingness to accept that real life is rarely, if ever, as simple as portrayed on shows like CSI. The Rule Book is more polished, intelligent and compelling than we have a right to expect from a debut crime fiction writer. I truly hope that Kitchin’s problems in finding a publisher for his next project are only temporary.

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My rating 4.5/5

Publisher: Pen Press [2009]; ISBN: 978-1-906710-57-6 Length: 352 pages Setting Dublin, Ireland, present-day

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The Rule Book has also been reviewed at Crime Scraps, DJs Krimiblog and Mack Captures Crime

*That is literally true, the delivery guy lands my packages from Book Depository on my front porch welcome mat without ever bringing his snazzy vespa to a complete halt and no, thank you, we will not be discussing how much practice he’s had to perfect his throwing techniques for the easily recognisable packages from Book Depository.