Crime: Vincent Banville reviews three books by Irish crime writers, but wonders why some feel the need to adopt pen names.
Why, one wonders, do Irish crime writers feel the need to adopt pen names? Peter Cunningham writes under Peter Benjamin and the esteemed brother has chosen the name Benjamin Black as his nom de plume for his first foray into crime fiction. Of the present crop Cormac Millar is really Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, who teaches Italian in Trinity College and is the son of the late Eilís Dillon, John Creed is the novelist Eoin McNamee, and we have to take it on trust that Patrick Dunne is who he says he is, a former producer of the Gerry Ryan show and a man whose first two books were bestsellers in Germany.
In The Grounds Millar nee Ó Cuilleanáin reintroduces us to ex-Civil Servant Seamus Joyce, who is now retired and living in Germany with his girlfriend, Heidi. Lying low after the drugs prevention unit he was in charge of went disastrously wrong, he reluctantly takes on a consultancy to look into the affairs of a small Irish university on behalf of an American senator who wishes to take it over.
Needless to say his investigation unearths the proverbial can of worms. All is not well in King's College, up in the Phoenix Park - a college, by the way, that was invented by Eilís Dillon for her novel Death in the Quadrangle - and Seamus is not long on the job before nefarious deeds occur, including murder.
It's always difficult to know how much to give away when reviewing crime novels, but suffice to say that mysterious documents are at the core of the narrative, and that the past plays a very large part in the unravelling of the plot. A large swathe of repeated speech to explain what was going on rather takes from the climax, but The Grounds is a solid piece of work that should do well for its author.
Creed, nee McNamee (whose first book for children is reviewed on facing page) also brings back an old friend, Jack Valentine, for his third reincarnation. A former espionage agent, who is now an art dealer, Valentine lives on the coast of Northern Ireland and tries to keep his nose out of things that go bang in the night. Of course he fails magnificently. In this outing he is helping an old neighbour to bring closure to the death of his brother, who was lost at sea back in the early 1950s. However, the inquest in Belfast is adjourned at the bequest of a shifty lawyer, and soon afterwards a sniper shoots a young girl reporter, who has acquired information.Valentine also begins to see some familiar faces from his past, and when he investigates he comes across a plot which had been set up to smuggle chemical weapons into Iraq in order to then discover them as weapons of mass destruction.
There is a shoot-em-up climax before things are settled, allowing Valentine to go back to his art dealing until the advent of his next adventure: a brutal, complex spy thriller.
Patrick Dunne's The Lazarus Bell is a more spooky piece of work than either of the other two. The protagonist here is archaeologist Illaun Bowe and, when we first meet her, she is supervising the unearthing of a lead coffin from a plague graveyard in the village of Castleboyne in the Irish midlands.
Inside the coffin is a beautifully carved wooden Madonna, possibly priceless in value. When the casket is uncovered, a black liquid oozes out and gets over one of the workers. He begins to show signs of an unpleasant disease and soon dies in agony. The villagers are up in arms, believing that the new immigrants to the place have brought the sickness, while the Dept of Health imposes a quarantine.
Needless to say, our heroine Illaun gets to the heart of the problem, which takes in Aids, the belief that sleeping with a virgin cures it, and other such gory matters. Another solid piece of work, The Lazarus Bell shows that Irish crime writing is in good hands.
Vincent Banville's last thriller was Cannon Law (New Island)
The Grounds. By Cormac Millar, Penguin Ireland, 369pp. £10.99
Black Cat Black Dog. By John Creed, Faber, 283pp. £9.99
The Lazarus Bell. By Patrick Dunne, Tivoli, 436pp. €9.99