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Criticalmick
is now following Paul Brazill's reviews
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Non Serviam or Job's A Good'Un (?)
The first page of Captain Joseph Williams Barbelo's tornado reads "In Mad Mick We Trust," so naturally I felt all buttered up. Aw shucks, lil' ol me? I dove into Chapter Zero (Yes, Barbelo's Blood has a Chater Zero- ...more
Non Serviam or Job's A Good'Un (?)
The first page of Captain Joseph Williams Barbelo's tornado reads "In Mad Mick We Trust," so naturally I felt all buttered up. Aw shucks, lil' ol me? I dove into Chapter Zero (Yes, Barbelo's Blood has a Chater Zero- two of them, in fact) and into a bloody confrontation in a London underpass in Thatcher's brutal 1980's. Three addicts with a cutthroat razor believe they have an easy mark in an eighty-two year old one-legged geezer pegging back to his tower block from the pub.
Guess again, silly bunnies.
Our foul-mouthed, pint-swilling, horny old narrator Joseph W. Barbelo is a veteran of every British conflict since the First World War. For an ex-black ops commando these punk muggers, gangland enforcers, and random jumped-up social welfare office pricks are but a source of amusement. With an antique sword cane (his "Happy Stick"), lead pipe or even just lighter fluid, vaseline and a bottle of Jif, Barbelo sends 'em by hundreds to the Happy Place. It's all part of the Craft, catch-madrift?
After twenty years in retirement, Barbelo's attempted mugging comes as a welcome awakening. Deciding that he needs a hobby, he tracks down the surviving punks, manipulates them in an amusing fashion into a major confrontation, and then announces that he is taking over their entire criminal operation. Enlisting the assistance of an old war buddy, Sid the Yid, for a pub-lunch summit with these South London Hounds, Barbelo convinces them to restructure their firm into a pyramid with him at the top.
And that all happens in the first sixty-two pages, when Barbelo is not relating whacked-out nightmares or falling for his hot young mad Irish love interest. It all goes completely U-Turn after that. Rather than an offbeat organized crime novel full of mad energy and masterful phrasing, Barbelo's Blood leaps into science fiction, conspiracy theory, political diatribe, and supernatural fantasy. Brid, the love interest of Barbelo and of Sid, introduces them to a whole new dimension of reality where Inner Orders, Illuminati, Dream Masters and Creators are apparently duking it out. Some of the agents of the evil powers, the feharchrove, walk our Earth disguised as Yardies and whatnot. And there's something about a Locale 22 where the Nazis won the war. After exposure to that action, Barbelo begins stockpiling weapons and planning to blow up Parliament. (The one in "our" London, not the one guarded by British SS.)
The IRA, gnostic texts, governmental psyops, assassination of US Air Force generals who look like John Wayne, Satanic child-sacrificing baddies in the House of Lords, Stealer's Wheel, the illegality of the EU, predators who live in houses full of inflatable wank dolls dressed up in Santa gear and tinsel, multidimensional lesbian biker warriors, curing cancer with a nine-volt battery and a matchbox, Operation Northwoods, military-grade LSD, time travel, Paradise Lost, the tarot deck, fate, geothermal energy that could power a planet of fifty billion, MI18 and MI13, the guns of Brixton, Locale 1, Locale 32, Locale 33, the answer to why flouride is in the drinking water- Barbelo's Blood has an anarchaic bit of everything. I suppose that the Dumbo and earless Mickey Mouse hoisting AK-47's on the cover should have been a clue.
Barbelo's Blood reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces- it's either brilliance or ravings, I'm baffled which. As a novel, it would have carried more impact if it had been disciplined into half of its 439 pages and remained focused on one of its themes- Lawful Rebellion, for instance. It's hard to imagine a mainstream reader getting all the way through this novel with a coherent understanding of what's going on. It will, however, be very popular with the G8 protestors who burn down McDonalds restaurants, drink only the purest bottled water and swallow any illicit chemical that has been put into the form of a pill.
Critical Mick says: Barbelo's Blood is a tornado rather than a novel- a mesmerizing tower of bits picked up from everywhere, swirling at incredibly high speeds and leaving a path of destruction. I like my writing spiced pretty high- but Galway resident Joseph Ferri's memoir/account/epic/polemic is a Locale or two away from my Happy Place. (less)
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Tourists! Your Bloomin' Attention Please!
Every year, tens of thousands of Irish-Americans touch down in Dublin city, their holidays devoted to the goal of soaking up their ancestral culture like so many hyphenated sponges. Many of these visitors purc...more
Tourists! Your Bloomin' Attention Please!
Every year, tens of thousands of Irish-Americans touch down in Dublin city, their holidays devoted to the goal of soaking up their ancestral culture like so many hyphenated sponges. Many of these visitors purchase Ulysses, a masterpiece by one of the 20th century's most influential authors, James Joyce (1882-1941).
Those tourists are big fat suckers. I tried reading Ulysses when studying literature at UCD. I worked hard on that novel for months. In despair I reported slow progress to my tutor. "What guidebook are you using?" he inquired. Guidebooks? What? "You're not trying to follow Ulysses without assistance, are you?" It turns out that there's more academic scholarship on Joyce than there is on Shakespeare, and even with PhD's most of those authorities can't comprehend what's going on.
Ulysses! Just read the wikipedia entry, fellow DFA's. Otherwise you'll go home with an impression that Irish writers (and their colossal guidebooks) are something to spend a fortune on, get three chapters into and then leave with a lightened heart in the Departures bin at Dublin Airport. Let me recommend instead a book accessible to readers who are not assumed to be proficient in Victorian etiquette and ancient Greek.
Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead takes place in a single day- the sixteenth of June, 2004. That's the centenary of the events in Joyce's novel, which since 1954 has been celebrated annually as Bloomsday. Joyce's goal was to distil all of life and being into one day. McKinty manages much the same, only with a lot more action. Through a series of chapters which mirror those of Ulysses, his hero Michael Forsythe must come out of his twelve-year Witness Protection Program refuge, battle for his life, find a missing child and survive some of the most dangerous figures on three continents.
That's one of the qualities I love about The Bloomsday Dead- Joyce limited all of Leopold Bloom's wanderings to one city. Michael Forsythe's day takes him through four nations with Jack Bauer-like speed. (If you enjoyed 24 before its characters, tortures and twists became cliché, this Dead trilogy delivers.) McKinty's descriptions of each locale are written with red-hot clarity and style far more memorable than any tourist guide-book. Here's a brief episode, completely free of plot spoilers, that takes place in Belfast:
I couldn't go farther down the street because the cops had blocked off the road for a march and "historical pageant" by a small group of Independent Apprentice Boys who were re-enacting a scene from the siege of Derry. The IAB were in full regalia, sweating in the humidity. Dark suits, black ties, black bowler hats, and orange-colored sashes. The scene was the famous one where the Protestant apprentice boys locked the gates of Derry to stop the Catholic armies from capturing the city- an actually historical event that had happened over three hundred years ago. I had never heard of the re-enactment being performed in Belfast before. They'd probably gotten a cultural grant from the European Community. The "Boys" were actually forty- and fifty-year-old men with beer guts, bad mustaches, and hair so unkempt Vidal Sassoon would have broken down and wept. They were all obviously the worse for drink. The Catholic army this afternoon was an intoxicated man in a green sweater with a pikestaff.
"You're not getting in," one of the Boys was saying to him.
"Aye, no fucking way," said the other.
"We're shutting the gates," a third managed between belches.
The man in the green sweater did not seem that put out. Right in front of me, another of the Apprentice Boys climbed on top of a parked car and began stamping on the roof. It had an Irish Republic license plate and the Boy was obviously under the impression that it, too, was a representative of King James's Catholic army. A peeler went over and told him to get down. The peeler was old, fat, and bored. He tapped his service revolver once and the Boy, spooked, got off the roof.
-Page 110, Chapter: The "Rat's Nest (Belfast, June 16, 2:15 PM)"
Forsythe barrels through a world full of such vivid images. I am deliberately not revealing a single beat of the plot, and encourage any interested reader to ignore the blurb on the novel's back. Let this one take you itself.
First-class tickets! Crooked politicians! The FBI! Cops with Glocks! Milkshakes! Tire irons, .38's, RPG's and flick knives! Literary allusions! Guys who lick money to prove it is poison-free! And a scorching hot redhead! The Bloomsday Dead has every element that a completely satisfying thriller should have- and it sends the reader away with vivid imagery of Dublin and Belfast. This is brass-knuckled, brainy, climactically cracking good craic.
Though The Bloomsday Dead is the concluding instalment in McKinty's Michael Forsythe series, there's no gaps evident. I picked it up on a friend's recommendation and read it straight through without any head scratching. My few niggles are that some of the Joyce similarities felt forced (the first line, for instance) and some of the baddies are similar to what's appeared in books before.
Critical Mick says: I recommend Denis McEoin/Jonathan Aycliffe's
The Lost
over Stoker's Dracula, too, so I may well be making enemies. Still, for a tour and a taste of Irish culture, skip Ulysses and pick up a masterpiece guaranteed to send you home happy, educated and enlightened- Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead. This one was shortlisted for the 2009 Oo award for Best Book Mick Read in 2009.(less)
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Ten Things You Must Know About The Twelve
Ten. C.S. Lewis, like Stuart Neville, was born in Belfast. Both became writers. Both wrote extraordinary popular fiction which used elements of the fantastic to expose deeper themes.
Nine. Can redemption be fou...more
Ten Things You Must Know About The Twelve
Ten. C.S. Lewis, like Stuart Neville, was born in Belfast. Both became writers. Both wrote extraordinary popular fiction which used elements of the fantastic to expose deeper themes.
Nine. Can redemption be found in the bottom of a glass? The first paragraph of
The Ghosts of Belfast
, reads: "Maybe if he had one more drink they'd leave him alone. Gerry Fagan told himself that lie before every swallow. He chased the whiskey's burn with a cool black mouthful of Guinness and placed the glass back on the table. Look up and they'll be gone, he thought.
Eight. The Twelve who torment this former IRA gunman Gerry Fagan are visions of the people he has slain: three British soldiers, two members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, two UFF men, an RUC officer, and four civilians (one an infant) as collateral damage. Are these (as Fagan's prison psychologist stated) manifestations of his guilt? Or is their origin supernatural?
Seven. Either way, when the spectres begin demanding bloody vengeance from Fagan, it makes a hell of a good crime novel. The victims that Fagan's phantoms demand may now cloak themselves with respectability and wear politicians' suits, but underneath they remain the same hard schemers. These sharp survivors determine quickly that someone is stacking up bodies across Northern Ireland, and they have not forgotten their very efficient ways of pursuing who is responsible. In this book, Neville very cleverly makes an investigation into the nature of responsibility.
Six. The Ghosts of Belfast, also known as The Twelve, merits comparison with the best crime stories of recent decades. If Gerald Seymour (author of
Harry's Game
and
Field of Blood
) loved Martin Scorsese's The Departed so much that he somehow had sex with it, the bastard child would be Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast.
Five. Like fellow Oo nominee The Bloomsday Dead, the action in Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast takes place in today's Northern Ireland. From immigration to economic development to politics to crime to lingering sectarian hatred, Stuart Neville delivers a post-Troubles portrait that is brutal and fascinating.
Four. The character of Gerry Fagan is more than a loose nut that has worked its way free and gone jamming up the works. Glimpses of his past and budding attachments present him as a complex character. Fagan feels a strong attraction to tall, ash-blonde reporter Marie McKenna: a local outcast for taking up with a traitorous Catholic member of the RUC, seven years past. Can he, who has never known it, find love? What about the more realistic goal: a degree of comfort?
Three. The theme of old loyalties questioned and reversed in today's complex political environment is also explored through deadly Scottish interloper Davy Campbell. A former member of the Black Watch, amazingly serving the Republican movement-? And now thrown in (when introduced) with a splinter group holding up post offices south of the border-? One of the most interesting players in The Ghosts of Belfast, Campbell is as surprising a force as Fagan. Or is there just a violence in both men that needs expression-?
Two. Stuart Neville's writing is fast-paced and character-driven, with more depth, pressure and rapid turns than a submarine battle. Great forces are engaged, and things long buried come exploding to the surface.
One. Critical Mick says: for these reasons, Mr. Neville's absorbing debut novel, The Ghosts of Belfast, was hereby awarded the 2009 Oo award for Best Book Read in 2009.(less)
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Rappman Begins
Bang! Bang! Bang! Stab! Stab! Stab! Bad guys go "Mhoo ha ha ha ha!" The Blonde chick says "Tee hee! My hero!"
Vince Flynn has accomplished what Vanilla Ice never could. Here's Rapp for Republicans. Yes, even for your Dad. Flynn's hero, M...more
Rappman Begins
Bang! Bang! Bang! Stab! Stab! Stab! Bad guys go "Mhoo ha ha ha ha!" The Blonde chick says "Tee hee! My hero!"
Vince Flynn has accomplished what Vanilla Ice never could. Here's Rapp for Republicans. Yes, even for your Dad. Flynn's hero, Mitch Rapp, is a maverick super spy who does the dirty work that the CIA legally cannot, and he does it without ever losing a wink of sleep. In book after book, Mitch beats the snot out of all sorts of assorted foreign baddies while women swoon.
Potted plot: in "American Assassain" it is revealed how young Rapp grew from college puke to blackest of black ops operatives. There are some evil Muslim terrorists and evil Russians and evil German bankers, all of whom get blown up or shot or knifed. One is shot and knifed, just to be sure.
"American Assassain" is not to be confused with the movies "Ninja Assassain" or "American Ninja." It's all action and equally ridiculous. It's fun (1) if you're into that kind of thing and (2) in the mood, but Flynn's world is no more real than either of those flicks. I get the feeling that skimming the National Geographic article about the rebuilding of Beruit is as close as he's come to research. Maybe there was a condensed version in Reader's Digest.
While entertaining, this novel's characters and settings offer no surprises. Rapp is so perfect, he's boring: within five minutes of arriving at the secret CIA training base, his untrained civilian ass has clobbered the top dog instructor. Only a cheap shot to the nuts keeps him from humiliating the gruff ol' stock character. If that is not a sign to remove the brain before continuing, I don't know what is. It's clear Rapp will overcome every danger: all that colors the series of following conflicts is the detail of the guns used in each action sequence.
As for Lebanon, there's more observation, truth and depth in one page of Martin Malone than in all of "American Assassain." In fairness, Malone neglected to include any poodles. If you are a poodle nut then you may prefer Vince Flynn.
Critical Mick says: corn is a healthy part of any diet. It's nice when it is popped and is taken with a little butter and salt. The odd Vince Flynn won't do any harm.(less)
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