Rob Kitchin's Blog, page 171

Marching toward Inishglora

A fine spray from the Atlantic rollers pounding to the shore drifted over the long strand.  JJ Lavelle stared at the horizon and the low, black isle of Inishglora.  He slowly removed his jacket dropping it to the wet sand, followed by his shirt.  He slipped his feet from worn, brown brogues, tugged off two odd socks, then undid his belt and let his trousers drop.  Standing in a vest and underpants he walked towards the sea and into the shallows.  The rush of a breaker surged over his thighs and he marched on undeterred into the freezing, churning water.

Review of Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd (2012, Bloomsbury)

Lysander Rief, a young actor, has travelled to Vienna - the birthplace of his mother - to attend a psychiatrist in order to tackle a neurosis.  In the waiting room he meets the beautiful and precocious artist, Hettie Ball.  They start an affair which endangers them both, Rief eventually fleeing the city in early 1914.  A few months later, the Great War starts and Rief leaves the London stage to sign up for the army.  From there he is recruited into wartime intelligence due to his time in Vienna and sent to Switzerland via the trenches, tasked with discovering the identity of a spy in the war office.  Listless and unsure who to trust, Rief sets about the task, aware that his personal and work life have become horribly enmeshed.

Waiting for Sunrise is a detailed character study of Lysander Rief -- an actor from a wealthy background who holds a dark secret that casts a neurotic shadow over his life.  In seeking to rid himself of the shadow he gets drawn into an affair and pulled into the orbit of the intelligence services.  Both provide replacement shadows that haunt him and need resolution, and the story is essentially his journey to come to terms with his neuroses and find a steady and secure path.  That journey, however, is complex and dangerous, both in Vienna prior to the Great War and during the war itself.  Boyd fills Rief’s world with an interesting set of characters and social situations, and there is a strong sense of social history and place.  The prose is evocative and the plot unfolds in a steady, unhurried pace, and is nicely balanced with a subtle sense of intrigue.  And yet, for some reason, I wasn’t entirely convinced or captivated by the story; it seemed to lack something that left it a bit hollow -- a mix of direction, tension, urgency, a lead character one identified with or rooted for as opposed to simply viewing, I think.  Overall, then, an enjoyable, atmospheric read that lacked an edge.

The Reckoning by Jane Casey (Ebury Press, 2011)

DC Maeve Kerrigan has been paired with the abrasive DI Derwent to investigate the murders of two men previously convicted for sex offences who were killed within a few hours of each other.  It appears that someone is targeting paedophiles and torturing them mercilessly before killing them.  In both cases, the men claimed to be innocent and they had managed to maintain the support of others, and since leaving prison had kept a low profile.  When a third body turns up it’s clear that someone has access to highly restricted records and that they’re moving quickly.  The challenge is not only catching the killer, but protecting his future potential victims.  Kerrigan and Derwent are determined to achieve both, but they have an awkward and fractious relationship.  Moreover, Kerrigan has a messy love life with another member of the squad that’s proving to be a distraction.  Just as they seem to crack the case it veers off on a perpendicular trajectory, with the stakes and pressure raised to another level.

I found The Reckoning to be somewhat of a curious read.  At one level, I thoroughly enjoyed the story.  The writing was engaging, the procedural elements are well done, there’s a nice mix of characters, and the plot has a nice puzzle.  The twist halfway through was well executed and worked to elevate the plot above usual police procedural fare.  That said, the story was a little uneven in pacing, was a little clichéd in terms of character traits (the world weary superintendent, over-bearing, misogynist DI, headstrong DC, etc), though this is becoming difficult to avoid in a saturated genre, and there were a couple of clunky plot devices.  Kerrigan’s romance with her colleague, Rob, was often drawn out and worked to slow the storytelling at times (e.g., pages 90-123 is basically a set of conversations between them that could have been 8-10 pages and still have conveyed the same sentiments).  Moreover, her inability to commit to a relationship with him seemed contrived and a little ridiculous -- it made her appear as a serious, committed copper with a Bridget Jones complex that I just didn’t fully buy.  As the story neared its conclusion it relies on two elements that I always find somewhat annoying (a highly unlikely coincidence and a critical piece of evidence being delivered on a platter for no discernible reason).  Finally, towards the end, the narrative swaps from Maeve’s perspective to Rob’s, but whereas Maeve’s voice is strong and compelling, Rob’s felt flat and lifeless.  I realise that sounds quite negative, but as noted, The Reckoning is enjoyable, compelling and clever; with a little editing it would have been a real standout.

Lazy Sunday Service

Back on June 30th I was bemoaning the slow progress I'd been making on drafting an academic book I'm writing.  I had only managed to put together three and half chapters.  Since then I've made reasonably good progress, writing another four and half chapters plus the preface, and also a chapter for an edited book.  That leaves three chapters left to write by the end of the year, which is manageable.  I'm glad I've got this project back on track as I was starting to get worried about meeting the deadline.  Back to research and note taking again now.  I'm certainly learning a lot writing this book as I'm reading across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, industry, and the popular press and media.  Always a good thing.

My posts this week

Review of Ishmael Toffee by Roger Smith
Sensationalist taglines and blurbs
Review of A Nail Through the Heart by Tim Hallinan
Is the housing market really picking up in Dublin?
Battle of wits
More negative evidence re. supposed pick up in the housing market

Battle of wits

‘It’s a battle of wits.’  Charlie set the trap down.

‘It’s a man trying to murder a mouse.’

‘A mouse who’s a crafty bugger.’

                        *
‘Well?’

‘It’s empty.  Give it time.  That’s only the first night.’


                        *
‘The cheese didn’t work?’

‘Not yet.’

‘That’s five days now.’

‘Don’t worry, we’re luring him into a false sense of security.’


                        *
Thwack!

Charlie looked up.  ‘Did you hear that?  We got the bugger.’


                        *
‘Does the trap make them vanish?’

‘Little sod managed to steal it.’

‘He has you outwitted, Charlie.  He’ll die a natural death before you catch him.’

‘He’s on borrowed time.’

‘Yes, yours.’





A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of A Nail Through the Heart by Tim Hallinan (Harper, 2007)

Poke Rafferty is a writer of ‘off-the-beaten-track’ travel guides to South East Asia.  He’s settled in Bangkok, taken in a young street girl, Miaow, who he’s trying to adopt, has an ex go-go dancer as a girlfriend, Rose, who has set up her own cleaning business, and is friends with, Arthit, an honest cop serving in a largely corrupt police force.  Not long after agreeing to help Superman, Miaow’s friend from the street who has a reputation for being difficult and violent, Raffrety is asked by an Australian woman to find her missing uncle, a long time resident in the city.  He reluctantly agrees as a favour to Arthit.  His investigation soon leads him to the unsettling and dangerous Madame Wing, who wants him to find the person trying to blackmail her.  Given the money on offer, Rafferty agrees.  His two cases are seemingly disconnected, but both lead to very dark places.  Unable to disentangle himself, he needs to find a solution that administers justice but does not threaten his new family, a task that seems all but impossible.

The strength of A Nail Through the Heart is the sense of place and contextualisation; Poke Rafferty is a travel writer in Bangkok and, likewise, Hallinan gives a good Western perspective and explanation of the city and culture.  The story, however, suffers from a couple of shortcomings: I did not sufficiently believe in the main character, nor in the plot.  Poke Rafferty came across as somewhat schizophrenic – hyper-sensitive and caring to the point of being sappy with his adopted family and certain others, yet hardnosed, threatening, and at times violent with others.  He’s either tiptoeing over eggshells or creating them and the two halves felt disconnected.  The main two plotlines are interesting and unfold at a good pace, but too many elements are over-contrived and clunky, and there were too many subplots.  It was if Hallinan decided to try cram as much action and emotive darkness into one story as possible.  Sometimes less is more.  This was a shame as it’s clear he’s a good writer and the set-up and setting have a lot of promise.  Overall, a reasonably entertaining read, and I’d try the next in the series, but this felt over-written.

Sensationalist taglines and blurbs

I finished reading Jane Casey's The Reckoning last night.  I enjoyed it and will publish a review early next week.  When I finished the book, I re-read the cover tagline and back cover blurb.  They've been written to give a certain impression of the book, but are really quite misleading.


Cover tagline: The police call it murder.  He calls it justice.
Back cover blurb:
To the public, he's a hero: a killer who targets convicted paedophiles.
 
Two men are dead already - tortured to death.
 
Even the police don't regard the cases as a priority. Most feel that two dead paedophiles is a step in the right direction.
 
But to DC Maeve Kerrigan, no one should be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Young and inexperienced, Kerrigan wants to believe that murder is murder no matter what the sins of the victim. Only, as the killer's violence begins to escalate, she is forced to confront exactly how far she's prepared to go to ensure justice is served...

He does not call it justice.  He's not a hero to the public; the public do not know about him because the police do not tell them.  In fact the public and media are entirely absent from the book.  The police do regard it as a priority and they throw more resources at the case, not less, as it escalates.  Kerrigan does not have to confront exactly how far she's prepared to go to ensure justice is served, she already knows and she never waivers from the task at hand.

Usually this kind of blurb writing, which bares a superficial resemblence to the story, wouldn't really bother me, but for some reason it tweaked a nerve very late last night.  Oh well.  The book's still worth a read.

Review of Ishmael Toffee by Roger Smith (Tin Town, 2012)

Ishmael Toffee has just been released from Pollsmoor prison after serving twenty years for multiple murders, both outside and inside its walls.  Having lost the urge to kill and discovered gardening it’s felt that he no longer poses a threat to society, but is at high risk of being murdered if he continues to serve time.  Paroled, he returns The Flats, the massive ramshackle shanty at the edge of Cape Town and starts work a gardener in a rich, white household.  The father is standoffish and the maid has no time for him.  The young daughter though is fascinated by his gang tattoos.  They quickly form an awkward friendship, then the child asks for help.  She is being sexually abused by the father, hence the suicide of her mother a few months previously.  Ishmael knows that by helping her is asking for serious trouble, but he also can’t leave her to fend for herself.

Roger Smith’s stories always pack a powerful punch and so it is with Ishmael Toffee, a novella set in Cape Town, South Africa.  The plot is quite linear and has a certain inevitability of outcome, but that matters little.  Smith writes with a visceral urgency, every sentence propelling the story forward.  The story immediately hooks the reader in and drags them on an emotive ride as Ishmael, with his bloody, remorseless past, is re-cast as an anti-hero, who for the first time in his life is looking out for more than just himself.  The characterisation and contextualisation is excellent and the story harrowing but compelling.  Overall, a quick but gripping read.

Lazy Sunday Service

A very quiet week with my head down writing on ethics and big data and trying not to become too paranoid about the dark undertones of dataveillance.  To keep the dark theme going, in the evenings I've read Tim Hallinan's A Nail Through the Heart and Roger Smith's Ishmael Toffee, and I'm now halfway through The Reckoning by Jane Casey.  All of which highlight what a messed up and often sick world with live in.  I think I might need to read something fluffy, light and funny next, though I don't see much of that in the TBR pile.

My posts this week:
Review of The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt by Douglas Lindsay
Review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Launch of The Doll's House by Louise Phillips
Review of The Lost by Claire McGowan
We're not losing any more

We’re not losing any more

‘There’s four dead in the corner field.  One ewe and three lambs.’

‘The O’Connor dogs.’

‘Probably.’

‘That’s that then.  I’m getting the gun.’  He headed for the farmhouse. 

‘Tom.  You can’t just go and shoot them.’  Mary trotted after him.

‘I damn well can!  They have a taste for it now; they’ll be back for more.’

‘We’ve no proof it was them.’

‘It was them.’

‘It could have been a fox.’

‘Foxes kill for food, not for fun.  They’ve been loose in the field before.’

‘It could ...’

‘We’re not losing any more.’  He lifted the shotgun from its case.




A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.