Review: THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway

THE NAMELESS DEAD (Macmillan) is the fifth in Brian McGilloway’s Donegal-set series to feature Garda Detective Ben Devlin. He is also the author of a standalone novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST (2011).
  Whilst investigating a tip-off on the small island of Islandmore, in the middle of the River Foyle, the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains discovers the body of a man believed to have been murdered by the IRA some thirty years before. They also turn up a number of other corpses, those of infants, all of whom appear to have suffered from a condition that would have killed them at birth - apart from one, which appears to have been strangled to death.
  Detective Inspector Ben Devlin, operating out of Lifford on the border with Northern Ireland, wants to investigate the death of the strangled infant. Unfortunately, the legislation is crystal-clear: any evidence uncovered by the CLVR cannot lead to prosecution.
  Devlin, a devout Catholic and a family man, refuses to allow the matter to rest, determined that the infant, and those others buried with it, will not be left in the limbo of the nameless dead …
  Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation in recent years as a thoughtful, intelligent crime novelist whose stories, set on the border - between Lifford and Strabane and the Republic and Northern Ireland, but between old and new Ireland too - are told with a quiet authority.
  One of the most interesting features of his novels is that Devlin is the antithesis of the traditional crime fiction policeman, who tends to be dysfunctional, alcoholic, haunted by demons, and a loner.
  Devlin, by contrast, is a happily married man with a quiet but strong religious faith, who works well as part of a team, and particularly with his peer on the other side of the border, the PSNI’s Jim Hendry. These characteristics feed into how the Devlin novels evolve: Devlin is doggedly in pursuit of rightness and justice not simply as theories or philosophies, but because he believes that it is in their observance that society functions best.
  Naturally, as a policeman, Devlin tends to see society at its worst; as a novelist, McGilloway crafts his stories so that the political is very much personal for Devlin, as various aspects of investigations impact on his own family home, and Devlin is forced to question his own morality. For example, when his daughter is physically assaulted by a teenage thug, everyone - his peers, his daughter, his wife - expects Devlin to break the law in order to revenge his daughter. Can he allow himself do that and still exert moral power in his own home, and in his own conscience?
  What sets THE NAMELESS DEAD apart, however, is its subject matter: the fate of the ‘nameless dead’, the forgotten infants, one of which is murdered, gives the novel an elegiac tone, and a poignant one; there were a number of times when I found myself reading with a lump in my throat.
  The Ian Rankin-esque title is fully deserved: THE NAMELESS DEAD is one of the most insightful and affecting novels you’ll read this year. - Declan Burke

We Love Lucy

The Ireland AM programme over on TV3 has been very supportive of Irish crime writers over the last few years, even going so far as to sponsor the Crime Fiction gong at the annual Irish Book Awards bunfight. Brian McGilloway was on the couch recently, talking about his latest offering, LITTLE GIRL LOST - which is terrific, by the way - and discussing the challenge of switching horses midstream, particularly when you’ve established a critically acclaimed series character like Ben Devlin, to write a standalone. The good news is that it sounds as if there’ll be more to come from DS Lucy Black, the heroine of LITTLE GIRL LOST who dabbles in the Freudian darkness of fairytales, even if Brian is currently working on a brand new Devlin. Mr McGilloway, with these very fine novels you are surely spoiling us …
  For the six-minute interview, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, and staying with Ireland AM, the programme has been kind enough to invite Eoin McNamee and yours truly onto the couch on Wednesday morning, June 8th, to chat about our mutual love of horoscopes, unicorns and toe jewellery. I can’t speak for Eoin, but I’ll be doing my damnedest to shoehorn in a mention of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which launches the night before in the award-winning Gutter Bookshop, Temple Bar, Dublin, where all will be made very welcome indeed. As it stands, the authors attending include John Connolly, Arlene Hunt, Tana French, Eoin McNamee, Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes, Gene Kerrigan, Jane Casey, Kevin McCarthy and Niamh O’Connor, an array of talent so stellar that the Gutter Bookshop may well develop its own gravity and collapse into a black hole, thus wiping out an entire generation of Irish crime writers in one fell swoop, and leaving the field free for yours truly, who will have nipped outside for a crafty smoke just as gravity starts to suck them all in. A cunning plan? I like to think so …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: McGilloway, Paretsky, Nadelson, Hiaasen and Fitzgerald

The latest of my monthly crime fiction columns for the Irish Times appeared yesterday, featuring Brian McGilloway, Sara Paretsky, Reggie Nadelson, Carl Hiaasen and Conor Fitzgerald. It ran a lot like this:

Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation with his Donegal-set series of Inspector Devlin novels, but LITTLE GIRL LOST (Macmillan, £12.99) is a standalone set in Derry, featuring DS Lucy Black of the PSNI. While investigating a case of a missing teenager, Black discovers a younger girl wandering through a snowstorm in her pyjamas. Her reward is an unwanted transfer to the Public Protection Unit, although Black has more pressing, personal concerns: she is the prime carer for her father, a former RUC officer who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while her ultimate superior is her mother, who walked out on Lucy’s family some decades previously. Effortlessly blending Black’s personal woes into her professional life, McGilloway weaves a taut police procedural in an unadorned style that belies the story’s complexity. With a backdrop provided by the PSNI’s ongoing evolution as a police force, and the tension inherent in the force’s attempts to police a vibrant Derry that is in the process of shaking off the shackles of its recent history, McGilloway has tapped into a fascinating and febrile setting. Black, meanwhile, is reminiscent of Jane Casey’s DC Maeve Kerrigan, a painfully self-conscious but thoroughly competent young woman whose ability to do her job has very little do with her gender. All told, it’s an impressive statement of intent from an author whose reputation grows with each successive release.
  BLOOD COUNT (Atlantic Books, £12.99) is the ninth in Reggie Nadelson’s series of Artie Cohen novels, in which the hardboiled cop investigates a series of unusual deaths in an upmarket Harlem apartment building. The fact that Artie’s on-off love interest Lily appears to be implicated in the deaths complicates matters, and renders Artie something of an ambiguous narrator, which in turn gives the reader a delicious frisson of being party to the subversion of both law and morality Nadelson unveils. It’s an issue-driven novel, as Nadelson invokes the recent history of the Soviet Union’s collapse, sleeper agents, and the complicated relationship between Communist Russia and the historically dispossessed African-Americans. The story takes place in the wake of Barack Obama’s election, which has the benefit of investing the historical elements with a contemporary immediacy, but there are times when Nadelson forsakes Artie Cohen’s hardnosed realism in order to hammer home a political message. The net result is a potentially enthralling snapshot of melting-pot New York that is at times undermined by the author’s digressions into the realms of polemic.
  Sara Paretsky is no less issue-driven in BODY WORK (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99), the 14th novel to feature her iconic private eye, VI ‘Vic’ Warshawski. An artist’s right to portray herself onstage as she sees fit leads to the murder of a young woman, and Warshawski’s investigations subsequently uncover a conspiracy of silence generated by corporate giant Tintrey, a firm which offers security consultancy in Iraq. The consequences of sending unprepared and poorly outfitted men and women to war becomes a major theme, but Paretsky is too canny to allow her political concerns to dominate the narrative at the expense of pace, story and character. Warshawski, nearing 50, is a self-described feminist and street-fighter, a very modern woman who nonetheless harks back to the classic knight errants of private detective lore, as originally created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. The mix is a potent one, and BODY WORK confirms, yet again, Paretsky’s status as one of the great crime authors of her generation.
  STAR ISLAND (Sphere, £14.99) is Carl Hiaasen’s 12th adult crime novel, a blackly comic caper that features his recurring anti-hero Skink, the former Florida governor who now lives half-wild in the Everglades. A multi-character tale, it centres on wild-child pop star Cherry Pye and her ‘undercover stunt double’, Ann DeLuisa, who impersonates Cherry when the star is too befuddled with drugs and booze to function. Blackmail, kidnap and violence enter the picture when a sleazy paparazzo gets Cherry in his sights, and soon Hiaasen is merrily plumbing the sludgy depths of modern America as he pops off deadpan zingers at a host of targets, most notably the puddle-shallow cult of celebrity. Despite the many and (deliberately) implausible twists and turns, STAR ISLAND sticks to Hiaasen’s tried and trusted formula, delivering a polished comedy that will delight newcomers and satisfy established fans.
  Set in Rome, featuring an American-born Italian police detective, and written by an Irishman, THE FATAL TOUCH (Bloomsbury, £11.99) is Conor Fitzgerald’s sequel to last year’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME. Commissioner Alec Blume investigates the murky world of art forgery, aided and abetted by his colleague Caterina Mattiola, former policeman Beppe Paolini, the mysterious Colonel Farenelli, and the memoirs left behind by a dead forger, the Irish artist-in-exile Henry Treacy. Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Blume himself is a loner, an outsider and a potential alcoholic, but Fitzgerald cleverly reworks the police procedural’s conventions, much as the forger Treacy pays homage to the Old Masters, and makes a distinctive hero of Blume, particularly in terms of his ability to not only adjust to the corruption that is integral to Italian policing, but to employ it on his own terms. Chief among Blume’s virtues is his laconic sense of humour, which gives rise to deliciously dry and deadpan observations on virtually every page, most of them at Blume’s expense. Meanwhile, Treacy’s memoirs provide a secondary narrative strand that is equally compelling, and which neatly feed into the main story despite Treacy’s penchant for baroque and self-serving prose. The blend results in a scintillating novel that confirms and enhances Fitzgerald’s burgeoning reputation. - Declan Burke

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

The Girl, The Thief, The Priest And Their Lovers

I read Brian McGilloway’s new standalone, LITTLE GIRL LOST, last week, and a terrific piece of writing it is too. It feels a bit like I’m betraying the very pleasant Inspector Ben Devlin in saying so, but DS Lucy Black, the protagonist of LGL, is potentially a more intriguing character, while the writing is beautifully spare and unadorned. I’ll be reviewing LITTLE GIRL LOST in due course, but the first sighting of a review of the novel appeared in the Irish Independent, with the gist running thusly:

“Brian McGilloway is the author of four critically acclaimed Inspector Devlin police procedurals set in his hometown of Derry. This standalone thriller is cleverly constructed, packed with vibrant and believable characters and admirably free of the clichés of the genre. It confirms him as one of the most original voices in the notably expanding field of Irish crime fiction and this reviewer, for one, would like to read more of DS Lucy Black.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF - currently shortlisted for the Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Fiction Award - was belatedly reviewed in the Irish Times last weekend. To wit:

“Ryan’s absorbing page-turner is a worthy contender,” says Kevin Sweeney. “The mystery at the heart of THE HOLY THIEF is intriguing, with unflinchingly graphic descriptions of torture and murder. But it is Ryan’s details of life in the bad old USSR that make the story so engrossing.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Finally, over at Book Reporter, Joe Hartlaub is impressed with Gerard O’Donovan’s THE PRIEST, a novel which we haven’t really being giving a fair crack of the whip here at CAP Towers:

“THE PRIEST by Gerard O’Donovan comes with advance heralding that would have given the Silver Surfer a run for his money. Having read the book from cover to cover in one sitting, I am here to tell you that the praise is richly deserved … THE PRIEST is an addictive beginning by an author who is positioning himself as a major talent.”

  For the rest, you know what to do …
  So there you have it: three Irish crime writers feeling the lurve. Incidentally, Brian McGilloway will be appearing at No Alibis in Belfast on Friday night to announce the arrival of LITTLE GIRL LOST, where he’ll be joined by some whippersnapper called John Connolly, who may or may not be reading from his latest tome, HELL’S BELLS. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Sugar And Spice And All Things Nice …

… that’s what little girls are made of. Brian McGilloway’s LITTLE GIRL LOST, on the other hand, appears to be made of rather sterner stuff. Quoth the blurb elves:

During a winter blizzard a small girl is found wandering half-naked at the edge of an ancient woodland. Her hands are covered in blood, but it is not her own. Unwilling or unable to speak, the only person she seems to trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective Sergeant Lucy Vaughan. DS Vaughan is baffled to find herself suddenly transferred from a high-profile case involving the kidnapping of a prominent businessman’s teenage daughter, to the newly formed Public Protection Unit. Meanwhile, she has her own problems: caring for her Alzheimer’s-stricken father, and avoiding conflict with her surly Assistant Chief Constable – who also happens to be her mother. As she struggles to identify the unclaimed child, Lucy begins to realise that this case and the kidnapping may be linked – by events that occurred during the blackest days of the country’s recent history, events that also defined her own girlhood. LITTLE GIRL LOST is a devastating page-turner about corruption, greed and vengeance, and a father’s love for his daughter.

  Fans of McGilloway’s Inspector Devlin may be disappointed to learn that LITTLE GIRL LOST is not the latest in that particular series, but is instead a standalone novel (or very possibly the first in an entirely new series). For what it’s worth, I’m always intrigued when a writer decides to stretch him or herself by stepping out of their comfort zone. The Devlin series is a critically acclaimed one, and has nabbed a number of short-list nominations for McGilloway, so I’m sure it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to stick with the tried and tested, especially as he’s still a relatively young writer. Kudos to him, then, for striking out in a new direction; and kudos too to his publisher for embracing the change, particularly as the current climate in mainstream publishing is characterised by caution and conservatism.
  The bottom line, I suppose, is that a good writer is a good writer, regardless of his of her characters, themes or settings. In the past I’ve heard John Connolly declare that the way to build a successful publishing platform is a number of novels that deliver ‘the same again, only different’ - which advice may be slightly tongue-in-cheek, given that Connolly himself is prone to diversions such as THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS and THE GATES (the former, incidentally, will be getting a mass paperback release in the US this year, while the latter gets a sequel, HELL’S BELLS, in May).
  As an occasional author myself, I like to mix it up. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was / is a first-person private eye novel; THE BIG O was / is a multi-character crime caper; and BAD FOR GOOD (aka THE BABY KILLERS) was / is … well, I’m still not entirely sure what that sucker is, although it does revel in the subtitle ‘A Gonzo Noir’. Meanwhile, I’ve written a sequel to THE BIG O, and I’ve written two more first-person private eye novels, but the idea of getting locked in to one character or type of story is not something that appeals; the story I’m ‘working on’ now is as different to the stories I’ve already written as BAD FOR GOOD was different to THE BIG O. I suppose it comes down to the fact that, as a reader, I like to read widely, in all genres and none; so it’s hardly surprising that when I do turn to writing, that I prefer to write different kinds of stories too.
  The Big Q here, though, is whether Brian McGilloway’s fans will be happy to take the new direction on board when LITTLE GIRL LOST is published in May. If a new Chandler novel, for example, was discovered, would I be delighted or disappointed to learn that it wasn’t a Marlowe novel? The question, I suppose, is whether we read an author for the author or for his characters. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how McGilloway, a very highly rated writer here at CAP Towers, handles his new material. Roll on May …