Inside Straight

Ray Banks
Inside Straight

Blasted Heath, 2013

Graham Ellis for a certain offense is transferred from one Manchester’s casino to another one. It is filled with incompetent dealers and lousy managers. Ellis, one might say, is sent to rescue the wretched casino, because he is a responsible, experienced, focused, or at least he thinks so of himself. On day shifts Ellis nearly dies of boredom, until the night manager is attacked and badly beaten. Ellis then is transferred to work at night, where the activity is larger and responsibility too. But for Ellis the show isn’t over. Local crime boss, which is accountable for several casino robberies (though the police can not hang any of them on to him), speaks with Ellis, praising his skills, and then makes an offer he can not refuse.

Ray Banks himself once worked in a casino, so don’t doubt the authenticity of casino detail here. Was Banks the best pit boss at the time, now is not important, but much more important how the author controls his character. Ellis says several times – to himself and out aloud, that he is a professional and master of his craft:

«If I was best pit boss at the Palace - and I was, without question - then I was certainly the best pit boss at the Riverside.»

«I was a good pit boss. I was the best they had.»

«I'm the best pit boss they've got.»

But with the small details we make a true image of the narrator, who, perhaps, is the best in the casino, but as a person he is still an asshole. Banks is an asshole, too, because he forces the reader to root for the main character, despite - with each chapter more and more - the deformity of Ellis’ soul.

Inside Straight is a remarkably old-fashioned by today's standards thing. If the background is "updated" up to the present, then the rest - from the protagonist’s squeamishness to the ending – is vintage, but not covered in dust.

Those familiar with the works of Banks invariably will recognize the essence of the main character, which is almost the same in all the books of this writer. This is a short-tempered, somewhat naive, lad, faint-hearted, but good in the heart. Ellis of this novel in addition is a geek, recording TV shows on the VCR and collecting the figurines and posters.

Only in one scene Banks loses control of his character: a teetotal Ellis gets drunk and calls a colleague, and it is likely that Ellis would have felt that he was drunk, but Banks misses it.

Thrilling novel without a single superfluous word.

Dead Money

Ray Banks
Dead Money

Blasted Heath, 2011

Alan Slater has got problems. He sells windows, but doesn’t give a damn about job lately. He cheates on his wife, and his marriage is about to fall apart. He has fun in bed with a young student, but shecan send him away any time. But the biggest problem for Alan is his mate Les Beale of uneven temper.

Beale is a gambler, a drinker and owner of a shitty personality. Alan’s colleague in sales office, Les no longer appears to work, all the time hangs in casinos and bars, getting drunk. Les has already hit the black list of most Manchester gambling venues, and it is not surprising, taking in account his temper: at the very beginning of the novel he breaks a nose of one of Chinese gamblers.

Alan is the only one who tolerates the company of his violent friend, but his patience is going to the end. Things at work and at home are deteriorating and then Les makes Alan’s life even worse: engages in illegal card game and kills one of the gamblers. Alan realizes that his past problems are nothing compared to those that had yet to be solved.

Ray Banks, in his re-written debut, follows old traditions of noir, making his protagonist a sales agent. Give your hero profession of a salesman, and be sure that this character just will get plenty of trouble. The worse things get for Alan, the more fun for the reader. Banks knows how to make a character unstable, cruel, selfish, dark, but at the same time attractive. And what is the sales agent if he is devoid of charm?

«Dead Money» is a story about the deadline in human life, if it exists. You temporize and put off major doings and solutions to the very limit, hoping that there is still time, but it turns out that it's too late - the deadline has long past.

Ray Banks is a breath of fresh air in British literature, stinking moldy stuff of police procedurals.

The Banker’s Daughter

Emran Mian
The Banker’s Daughter

Harvill Secker, 2012

Hanna Mehdi is 20-something-year-old daughter of the former owner of a major bank in London. In is the beginning of 2008, and Hannah with her father, whom she calls Baba, for nearly three years have been living in Beirut, where they fled from England, when the bank collapsed. The bank, which was the largest Arab bank in the world, had collapsed under mysterious circumstances. People standing at the helm, managed to escape from London, and so far the public doesn’t known whether Baba lost all his money, along with all other depositors, or he shamelessly appropriated the depositors' money.

In Beirut, Hanna and her father lead a comfortable life. They live in a luxury hotel, Baba has his own yacht, Hanna wears expensive clothes. For days, Baba just drinks cocktails by the pool, and Hanna is not busy with anything special. From Beirut they will not be be forced to the interrogations, so Hanna's father is not worried that justice will reach him and his daughter here in Lebanon. But in Beirut the Mehdi family is still under cover, without revealing to anyone who they really are. Hanna graduated from the university as an art historian, pretending here that sge is an art dealer who she in general actually is. With no artistic talent, Hanna became an art dealer.

The novel opens with a scene when she sees on her father’s laptop a photo with cut-off head of a certain man on it. Hanna knows that her father and her uncle are capable of violence. She knows that in a world where her father lives, men do what they want, just to achieve their goals. But Hanna is not sure what this photo means. Maybe her father is a murderer and that he had cut off a man's head, but it is possible that someone is threatening him, frightening the old man. The girl is nervous, but does not dare to ask her father directly.

Debut novelist Mian is a man, but the novel’s written from the point of view of a woman, and it is clear that Mian coped with this challenge. While reading the book, you just do not feel that the author is of tune somewhere, or sings flat. Hanna Mehdi is a young woman, with woman's emotions, female logic, with opposition to the world of violent men, with a love of the father, which only a daughter may have. Mian made the heroine of the book not an artist, a person who creates art, but a dealer who is selling art. Choice of Hanna’s occupation emphasizes communication with her father (he and she are working with money), and some sort sensitivity, which should be characterized by a person who is close to the artistic community.

Hanna accepts everything that her father had done, forgives him, but at the same time she leaves the family. Violence, power, big games - it's not for her. The family finally broke up. Hannah is a person of modern times, a person who lives according to rational consciousness. Her father Baba is a man of the past, living by the laws of his ancestors. The banker’s daughter does not accept these old rules, she starts a new life, but she did not deny from her father, so, at the same time, she continues ancient traditions.

The novel is interesting as a slice of the British art world, and as a slice of life of high society in Britain. The author looks at the world of art and the world of big finance through the lens of the Asian world.

Novel, perhaps, does not have enough layers. The book is fairly linear, as flashbacks rather complement and reveal the characters, rather than add any story lines. Also, like it or not, but only Hanna and her father are people with good qualities, all the other characters are like the selection of almost cartoonish villains, even without guns.

Simple, but at the same time catchy prose covers simplicity of the story. The end here is open whuch just suits this book. It asks a lot of difficult questions answers for whose is not an easy find.