Lost… In The Woods

Tana French takes the reader into the woods near the Irish town of Knocknaree. Some twenty years ago, two children disappeared, leaving one catatonic and lacking any memory of what happened. Present day, the surviving child, who adopts a different first name, is Rob Ryan, and he is a detective trying to solve another crime that has happened adjacent to the same patch of woods. Ryan and his two colleagues, Cassie and Sam, work hard to figure out who killed a local ballet prodigy. In the process, Ryan goes down a horrible version of memory lane without actually recalling enough of what happened to him to make sense. He runs afoul of his superior and Cassie in the process.

In The Woods succeeds as a character study, a deep look into Rob Ryan and the scars left by his childhood tragedy. He wrestles with relationships both personal and professional. He struggles to stay focused on his job while haunted by the past. He never seems to get any traction, eventually falling to pieces. Recovering, he manages to catch a killer, but loses many things that matter in between. His descent to the edge of madness is compelling as much as it is frustrating for reasons mentioned next. As a crime story it works well, too, but only for the ballet prodigy case.

The trouble with this story is its lack of resolution. The set up is great, past and present colliding, but the reader is left holding the bag. For a sequel? For self-examination? It’s not exactly clear. I do look forward to the next installment with Cassie as the lead. Maybe she will keep it together long enough to tie up the loose ends, something important in this genre, something the author didn’t do for Rob Ryan.

Published in: on August 4, 2011 at 11:17 am  Leave a Comment  
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Hard Knocks Down Under

The Broken Shore is the first Peter Temple book I’ve read. It features Joe Cashin, a detective haunted by a splintered family, nagging injuries, and his own questions about justice under the law. The story begins with the attack and subsequent death/murder of a wealthy local man. As Cashin is on and off the case, societal tensions are exposed as well as old wounds in his own personal history. The story careens around odd corners and meanders through Cashin’s past and present, revealing the details about a place where the friction is no longer under the surface. I would have preferred a bit more plot and a bit less interdiction for family heartstrings.

Much has been made about Temple’s writing style. It does have a staccato beat, which at times can be distracting. Chapter endings are a bit like stepping off a cliff. His sparse dialog may leave you guessing sometimes, too. However, he does paint the picture of a portion of Australia many American readers may not know. I’m going read another of his books because this installment has piqued my curiosity.

Published in: on June 23, 2011 at 3:03 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Word From Jack London

“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.” So said Jack London, one of my favorite writers and a man who wrote 50 books before dying at the ripe age of 40.

One of my favorite London books is The Sea Wolf, a magnificent study of human nature, the limits of endurance, and the will to survive, all of which were typical subjects for London. I don’t know if books like this are taught these days. It’s a shame if they aren’t, and I highly recommend this and the others for their powerful portrayals of man’s ability to overcome. Too often in modern writing, failure is laudable, chicanery portrayed as wisdom, and competence derided as arrogance. This attitude is nonsense peddled by the feel-gooders who lack the honesty to recognize nothing improves without the sting of failure as a guide to what doesn’t work. Then again, that class of parasites doesn’t mind if nothing improves as they usually have a cushy seat under their posterior.

I would like to give credit once again to Jack London for producing books that influenced my own writing. In particular, readers will see a bit of the London archetype in Tommy Bonk, the lead character in my novel, Bonk’s Bar. There’s also Nathan Beck, in An Island Away. As London said, I sought out inspiration, not with a club mind you, but voraciously read excellent books of his and others, studying the techniques employed to tell a story. While classroom instruction with fine teachers provided a foundation and valuable feedback for my early efforts, nothing assisted me more in the process than carefully analyzing well-written books. I highly recommend it for anyone considering taking the plunge with pen and paper.

Published in: on June 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Ghosts of Belfast

The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville, is a descent into revenge hades. Gerry Fegan, a former IRA killer literally sees ghosts of his victims. It is the appearance of these ghosts that slowly drives him to confront his past and do something about it. Slow by slow, Fegan seeks out those who gave him orders or facilited death. It is this path that forms the spine of the story. Along the way, Fegan meets Marie and her daughter Ellen, who are also trapped in the cycle of revenge exacted by the various factions in Northern Ireland’s troubles. Marie has her own hidden past, but she’s living up to it, going straight in her own way, defying the prejudices of the past by living boldly in the present. Then there is Campbell, the British Government undercover agent pursuing Fegan, another character with more baggage than can fit on the plane. These three and more are on a collision course with misery that unfolds as paybacks become ever more costly.

There is a level of brutality in The Ghosts of Belfast that may be appropriate to the subject matter. At the same time, I hoped for a bit more sophistication such as a protagonist trying to clear his conscience using more than a gun and his heart on a sleeve. The relationship between Fegan and Marie showed great promise at the beginning but never gained traction through the story to a level that would have made it more than a damsel in distress plot point. What Neville does best is to expose the double-triple crosses of the guerilla life and the consequences these shabby alliances create. He portrays the thugs for what they are: less than intelligent men bent on using their fists for no good reason at all. So it is that in this portrayal of a Northern Ireland subculture nobody wins, everyone pays, and corruption rules the day. This book will best be enjoyed by those who like a slow-burn slug fest complete with brawls, trick shots, and death defying duality.

Published in: on April 23, 2011 at 11:34 am  Leave a Comment  
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