Crime FileA show of strength by Irish authors confirms crime writing is the coming genre on the local scene, writes Michael Painter
Declan Burke had won me over before I'd even started his book with his epigraph from what I consider to be the best noir thriller ever written: Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. Set in the north-west, possibly Sligo, Eightball Boogie features degenerate do-anything-for-a-buck Harry Rigby and his relationship with his girlfriend, Denise, cigarettes, drink, drugs and his psychotic brother Gonzo. On the trail of the inside story of why Imelda Sheridan, wife of independent politician Tony Sheridan, had her throat cut on her own doorstep, he cuts a swathe through the downside of his home place like an old testament avenger. Caught in the middle between feuding paramilitaries and rogue cops, he has to rely on his own innate powers of survival to come out only slightly damaged, but the fact that he does leads one to believe that we haven't heard the last of him. New author Burke writes a staccato prose that ideally suits his purpose, and his narrative booms along as attention-grippingly as a Harley Davidson with the silencer missing. Downbeat but exhilarating.
Recently, Bloomsbury published a crime compendium that ignored completely Irish efforts in the genre, which seemed strange given recent successes in the field. The big one in recent years in this area is John Connolly, but although he was born and lives in Ireland, his crime novels have no Irish content. However, there are a number of other practitioners working the coalface here. Women are much to the fore, with Gemma O'Connor and Julie Parsons writing very fine suspense novels, and Pauline McLynn and Maggie Gibson serving up female private detectives. Over in Galway, Ken Bruen's soured ex-policeman, Jack Taylor, pokes around in the underbelly of the city, while down in Waterford Jim Lusby's Carl McCaddon does likewise. Eugene McEldowney has written a number of police procedurals featuring ex-RUC Superintendent Cecil Megarry, and in Dublin Vincent Banville's private eye, John Blaine, treads the mean streets. Peter Benjamin (né Cunningham) and Paul Kilduff write international thrillers set in the financial world, while Paul Carson has penned a number of medical thrillers. With Eightball Boogie, Declan Burke now joins the posse writing noteworthy crime fiction here, as does Brian Gallagher.
Rather more traditional and even a little old-fashioned, Gallagher's Payback is in the mode of the international thriller, with wicked Abdullah Majid out to assassinate every Foreign Minister in the EU - a lot of people would like to see these fat cats take a fall, but killing them seems more than a little over the top! Out to prevent such a massacre are police officers Jack Thompson and Penny Harte, aided by intrepid hack Laura Kennedy, who stumbled on the conspiracy in the first place. Flitting from Budapest to the Lebanon to Marbella to Dublin, the story picks up pace, especially in the action sequences. However, the prose often gets bogged down in explication and the characters rarely rise above the stereotypical. But the book is an easy read and with summer, we hope, coming in, beach reading becomes a necessity.
Lost Light is is something to be savoured: a new thriller featuring old sourpuss Harry Bosch. Now resigned from the LAPD, Harry stubbornly refuses to sink gracefully into the sunset. When he left the department he took with him a file of a cold case where a film production assistant, a girl, was murdered a week before a $2m robbery on the movie set. No one was ever found for the killing and Harry, who played a peripheral part in the original investigation, determines to reactivate the case. Immediately, as is his wont, he puts his former associates' noses out of joint, then annoys higher ups in the FBI, who believe that the stolen money was used to set up a terrorist training camp. Weaving a complex plot - nobody does it better - Connelly holds the reader's attention right up to the satisfying denouncement. As happens in a lot of his books, however, he just has to stick on a bit at the end that takes from the tautness of the rest. We'll forgive him, though, if he brings Harry back again, more contrary than ever.
Lawrence Block, another old pro, is at the top of his form with Small Town. This is the big book that Block has been promising for quite a long time, with his beloved New York the central character. This is a beleaguered post 9/11 city, its inhabitants still struggling to shake off the awful realisation that they and their metropolis are not invulnerable to the designs of wicked men and women. And as if the terrorism of outsiders is not enough, a serial killer called The Carpenter is at work closer to home. Working with a large cast of characters, Block exhibits technical as well as analytical expertise in telling his tale, the result a wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking read. Much more than a mundane thriller, Small Town is full of the experiences of lives lived at the edge, in the high rises and on the sidewalks of New York.
Persuader is the seventh book detailing the tumultuous life of Jack Reacher, a kind of Fugitive-cum-Avenger figure, who travels across America, righting wrongs and removing bad guys with extreme prejudice. In these books there are no grey areas: the fellows in the white Stetsons are good, those with pencil moustaches and black hats are wicked. Jack is Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis all rolled into one, a superman for our time, always on the lookout for maidens in distress, wrongs to set right, and villains to decimate. In this present episode he has to re-kill a scumbag that he has already dispatched some years before, while at the same time going on the run after killing a cop. Strictly judgemental as regards virtue and vice, Persuader is a romp, but a well-written one that gallops along with the pace of a bullet from the muzzle of a Colt Magnum.
Set in Arizona and featuring small town Sheriff Joanna Brady, Partner in Crime is a most satisfying and well-written crime novel. Faint praise? Not at all. I read this book over a couple of weeks, slowly and willing it not to end. It is full of well-drawn characters, a thoughtfully complex plot, insightful dialogue and a few sharply delineated action sequences. Brady is a fully rounded figure and, when ex-Seattle homicide detective J. P. Beaumont partners her, she takes on an extra dimension that invigorates the entire narrative. Recommended unreservedly.
Michael Painter is a writer and critic
Eightball Boogie By Declan Burke Sitric Books, 12.99
Payback By Brian GallagherPoolbeg, 9.99
Lost Light By Michael Connelly Orion, £17.99
Small Town By Lawrence Block Orion, £12.99
Persuader By Lee Child Bantam Press, 13.99