Better The Evil You Know

I finished Patrick McGinley’s BOGMAIL during the week, and a very fine read it is too. Republished by New Island Books as a ‘Modern Irish Classic’, it is neither a ‘whodunit’ nor a ‘whydunit’ – we know from very early on who killed the barman Eamonn Eales, and why. But BOGMAIL’S pleasures lie elsewhere, not least in its beautiful descriptions of its rural Donegal village setting and mountainous hinterland, the whimsical humour and linguistic gymnastics that echo Flann O’Brien, and the occasional foray into philosophical conundrum.
  At one point McGinley touches on something intrinsic to the crime / mystery novel, which is the existence of evil. I’m not noticeably religious myself, and I don’t believe that Evil exists as a force of nature in the same way as, say, gravity does – although there’s no doubt that there are people and acts that can be described as evil. Anyway, McGinley offers this, during a conversation between his main characters, Roarty and Potter:

  ‘It’s good to be confronted with evil if only because it reminds you of the residue of good within you.’
  ‘Why call it “evil”? Why not “disorder”? Use the word “evil” and you are swamped in theology.” (pg 213)

  Is evil a necessary by-product of theology? An old-fashioned superstition? Or is it out there somewhere, a physical force lurking in the unseen and unknowable dark matter of the universe?
  Answers on a used twenty to the usual address.

When The Going Gets Turf …

There’s a very timely offering on the way from New Island Books next month, when they publish Patrick McGinley’s BOGMAIL, one of the great Irish crime novels. First published in 1978, it’s being reissued as part of the Modern Irish Classics series. To wit:

A truly funny and stunningly well-told tale of murder in a small Irish village near Donegal, BOGMAIL is a classic of modern Irish literature. Set in a remote village in the west of Ireland, the action begins with a murder when Roarty, a publican and former priest, kills his bartender then buries his body in a bog. It’s not long before Roarty starts getting blackmail letters, and matters quickly spiral out of his control. Twisty, turny and enlivened with colour that echoes the landscape and surroundings, BOGMAIL was Patrick McGinley’s first novel, yet it remains just as fresh today as the day it first appeared. BOGMAIL got the five-star treatment from Time magazine and The New York Times, and it was nominated for Best Novel in the 1981 Edgars.

  So there you have it. It’s donkey’s years since I first read BOGMAIL, so I’ll be giving it a whirl again in the very near future, just as soon (koff) as my fabulous new copy arrives from New Island Books …