Reviewed authors

Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks, Hutchinson, ISBN 978 0 091 794 50 7

Engleby is such an essential Christmas read I am convinced Santa’s Elves have pre-empted this recommendation and are already packing them for crime fiction readers everywhere.  The story is narrated by Mike Engleby, a second year student at an ‘ancient university’. The narrative voice is simple, unembellished, yet from the start, we are convinced that we are dealing with an exceptional mind – uncompromising, fiercely intelligent, wickedly funny – and deeply disturbed. The working-class boy’s agonisingly painful progress through the public school system, his alienation which persists through university and into adulthood, is told unsentimentally, and without rancour, but we burn with shame and rage on his behalf.

A fellow student disappears, and Engleby mourns her loss, yet we feel an unease: despite his eidetic memory for facts, there are gaps in his memory of events. Engleby is compulsive, immediate and suspenseful. Crime fiction reminiscent of the early Barbara Vine novels: although there is relatively little incident, the writer keeps the reader in a state of constant dread – a truly masterful work.

Margaret Murphy

Cross by Ken Bruen
Bantam Press trade paperback
ISBN: 978059305055137

Ken Bruen’s novels reference poetry, literature and history, but at the heart of each is religion. Cross, his new Jack Taylor novel, begins with a crucifixion and explores the themes of aftermath, damnation, revenge and redemption.

One of the three definitions of the word cross, given as the epigraph to the novel, is ‘Cross: in a very bad humour’. In this latest Jack Taylor mystery, the hero is very cross – he seethes, rages and brawls until he damn near exhausts himself. But Jack has plenty of cause to be grouchy: his young friend lies in a coma, the crucifixion killer goes on to murder again, and Jack has foresworn booze.

The reader’s relationship with Jack is much like his relationship with Ridge, his friend and verbal sparring partner. Jack’s impotent fury, which we feel through him, is often hard to take. It’s visceral anguished and bitter. But it is real. And just when you feel you want to turn from the man in disgust, to leave him to wallow in his self-destructive urges, he does something surprising – something kind – like taking tea with a grieving woman as a kind of ritual solace. With Jack, there’s always a tension between the promise of redemption and an expectation of failure.

Cross is bleak and uncompromising, but there is wit and heart and soul, too, and in amongst the suffering Bruen allows us one spark of hope for the ex-guard, one glimmer of light that suggests that, damned though he is, Jack will not suffer entirely alone.

Margaret Murphy

The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp
Allison & Busby Paperback (2 April 2007)
ISBN-10: 0749081635

Eddie Elkins is not a happy bunny. He should be ecstatic. As a sleaze with a penchant for little kids, he’s the eight-foot furball all the children come running to when they visit Lamaar Studios. For a guy like Eddie this is a plum job – in the guise of Rambunctious Rabbit, the icon and emblem of the firm – he’s been given a licence to perv. But someone is out to destroy Lamaar and all it has come to represent, and Eddie is first on their list.

Not too many tears are shed for Eddie’s passing, but the next victim is not so easy to discount. Or the next.

The Rabbit Factory introduces Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, an engaging and likeable duo who complement each other in style and approach. Ordinary men with ordinary problems – not counting the brother with a contract out on him.

As the murders escalate, there are plenty of suspects, and some cheeky parallels are drawn between Lamaar and other entertainment conglomerates, which all adds to the fun. The Rabbit Factory isn’t out to make a political point – its purpose is to entertain. And that’s just what it does, from start to finish. It’s funny and fast, but with some poignant moments woven deftly into the furious pace. This is Marshall Karp’s first novel – though he has been a writer all his life. Commercials, TV sitcoms, a play, and a movie. A long apprenticeship, but one that shows in the quality of the writing.
This is a sure-fire winner.

Margaret Murphy

SHARP OBJECTS
Gillian Flynn
Weidenfeld & Nicolson £10 Hbk ISBN: 0-297-85152-7
Jan 2007
Margaret Murphy

Journalist Camille Preaker is a writer – on so many levels. Words have a visceral effect on her: they flare, buzz, itch, scream. Camille has escaped the small-town hell of Wind Gap, but returns to report on the disappearance of a child. When a body is found, and then a second child goes missing, she is sent spiralling back into the harrowing events of her own loveless childhood.

Camille calls herself ‘trash – from old money.’. Her mother owns the pig farm, the only source of industry in the town. Manipulative, damaged and needy, Adora (never ‘Mom’), is appropriately named; it’s what she demands – total adoration – and those around her who fail inn this feel her punishing disapproval. She has made a monster of Camille’s half-sister, the preening, sexually precocious child of Adora’s second marriage.

The gothic tone and setting of Sharp Objects is coupled with a building tension which gnaws at you until you dread turning the page, yet feel compelled to read on. The mystery of the girls’ disappearance, their murder and mutilation are inextricably linked to Camille – she must unravel the secrets of her childhood and the death of her own sister, while fending off the disintegration of her own personality.

Flynn achieves a wonderful balance of wit and creepy suspense which makes Sharp Objects a sure winner.

Hard Revolution, by George Pelecanos
Orion Books ISBN 075 285 630 8

   Hard Revolution is about choice and lack of choice, actions and consequences. Fans will be delighted to discover something of black PI Derek Strange’s youth in this tale which spans a decade of reforms and increasing racial tension in America, culminating in the Washington riots of 1968. Hard Revolution reflects Pelecanos’s interest in racial politics and gives a richly drawn history of the time. There is a prodigious amount of name-checking which does not enrich or enlighten, however: the cars, the music, the streets – even the stores on the streets are catalogued in lists that are best skimmed by all but the most assiduous reader.
   A black youth with a promising future is run down in a racial attack. Three white men plan a bank robbery while three black men plan to hold up a store. They want the same things: money, nice things, respect, and they hate in the same way, without reason or thought. The depiction of unfulfilled talent represented by Dennis, Derek’s older brother, is unflinchingly portrayed, as are the racial inequalities and injustices of the time. In the kind of reversal that elevates this book above the average crime novel, Strange’s assumptions and prejudices are challenged by his white, Princeton-educated partner Troy Peters.
    ‘When he looked at Peters he saw a white man first and a man second,’    Strange realises.
There is much to like in this novel: Pelecanos illustrates the ease with which a man may slide into crime and degradation – not with one pivotal act, but by a series of small, seemingly insignificant choices which set him on a path. The choices Strange makes explain why he becomes a cop – and why he does not remain one. Like Robert Frost, he took the road less travelled, and for Strange, that has made all the difference.

The Cutting Room, by Louise Welsh
Canongate, ISBN 1841954047

   The Cutting Room is ostensibly a detective story, an amateur sleuth doing what amateur sleuths do – bumbling about, bashing into clues rather than tracking them down, and putting themselves and others in jeopardy. But Louise Welsh’s debut novel is so much more than this: it is about enduring friendship and loyalty and morality as much as it is about the amorality of sadistic torture and murder. The characters in this novel are complex and interesting; in particular Rilke, the drunken auctioneer whose homosexual encounters are more about rut than romance. Nevertheless, he has a strong sense of right and wrong and is prepared to risk his life to discover the truth about a possible murder that happened before he was born.
   There are some superb vignettes, such as a scene near the end of the novel in which we get a glimpse into the psyche of ‘characters’ in the auction room on the morning of an important sale. The playfulness as well as the pathos of an existence rummaging through the cast-offs of other people’s lives is brought brilliantly to life. Such apparently effortless writing comes from skilful crafting, so it was a surprise that the denouement was based on a premise that tested the bounds of plausibility. But it seems churlish to mention it, because this is a novel by a highly accomplished writer.
   There was an almost Shakespearean elegiac quality to Welsh’s analysis of love in her chapter on the nature of pornography, and just at the moment that the reader might begin to turn away, she adds a touch of humour, bringing the whole subject back to earth with an archness to which the reader responds with pleasure, as a knowing participant. At other times, she uses a shorthand which is experimental in its presentation, as in the bidding scene in the chapter entitled Caveat Emptor.
Louise Welsh’s first novel was a real thrill to read – the thrill of discovering a new writer with a big talent.

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0 340 82759 9

   Haunted Ground begins with a description of turf-cutting that is reminiscent of Seamus Heaney’s poem Digging. Landscape and heightened atmospherics are used skilfully throughout Erin Hart’s debut novel; from the opening paragraph the landscape of the west of Ireland is marked out as important in shaping the personalities and the lives of its inhabitants.
   When the severed head of a young woman is found in an ancient bog, Cormac Maguire, the archaeologist sent to investigate, together with pathologist Nora Gavin are faced with mysteries and animosities between the native Irish and the planters which go back hundreds of years.
Haunted Ground is a Gothic tale of death and disappointment, murder and loss, but it also deals with the broader issues of Ireland’s tragic history. The various threads are laid out one by one: an ancient story of murder and infanticide, a very modern disappearance of mother and child, the murder of Nora Gavin’s sister.
   The discovery of the decapitated head sets tongues wagging: Hugo Osborne’s wife vanished two years ago, along with her little boy. Is Hugo responsible? There are many in the village who think so, and his friendship with Una McGann, a woman with her own secrets, is seen by many as proof of his earlier infidelities. Past and present converge in a plot as deftly interwoven as the warp and weft of one of Una McGann’s tapestries.
Hart captures beautifully the cadence and rhythms of Irish speech, and although the American Doctor Gavin’s voice was not distinctive enough for me, the ambivalence of the Irish people towards the ‘American tourists’ seeking their lost roots is cleverly echoed by the Irish passion for folklore and musical traditions which resonates throughout the novel.

The Untouchable, by John Banville

   In The Untouchable, Banville unfolds, with teasing flourishes, a compelling tale of intrigue, obsession and betrayal. Written as a retrospective - the memoirs of a spy - the narrative provides excitement and humour with poignant counter-point. Victor Maskell is elegant, urbane and witty, a seductive anti-hero, whose persuasive powers draw us in only to exultantly confound us.
Banville’s prose is finely crafted, each sentence perfectly balanced. The Untouchable is a ‘mine of precious stones’ with a gem on every page that will make you smile or sigh or laugh with sheer delight.