The Last Tiger

Tony Black
The Last Tiger

Cargo Publishing, 2014

In 1909 a ship with the settlers comes to Tasmania. Among them is the hero of this book, a boy with a Japanese name for some reason, Myko, and his parents. Myko and his family are refugees from the Lithuanian town of Sakiai, oppressed not by the Bolsheviks, but by the Tsarist regime. The story of emigration will be revealed gradually, in parallel with developments of the plot on distant Tasmania.
Having sold his watch to a pawnbroker, Myko’s father Petras produces money for food. He and his family will live in a small community where all residents raise sheep in order to live. On arrival to the camp, Myko and his family listen a lively story about local beasts - tigers, which are setting fear in people and hunt the sheep. Tigers do not eat carrion, and only drink the blood of the murdered victims.

The family immediately is drawn into work. Father with men are watching sheep, Myko helps with the housework, and the boy's mother washes clothes and prepares food. Myko meets his first friend on a new land - a girl Tilly. She will remain his only friend, and indeed on the island it seems there are almost no children.

Scotsman Black tries himself in the genre of historical drama, which is quite unexpected. Black started with crime thrillers about an alcoholic\washed-up journalist\P.I. Gus Dury, where violence, strong language and whiskey flowed freely, and then switched to the police procedurals. Black in his crime novels kept two features from book to book: he always wrote short and biting prose, but he had problems with plots. Energetic style and moderately sympathetic protagonist make the writer's books quite enjoyable, but I was often disappointed.

It was quite a surprise to read The Last Tiger, in which there was practically nothing from the former Black. Broken style is replaced with the correct, proper-styled prose and obscene language disappeared from the author's prose at all. And it is possible to accept the result: only talented writer can have so radically changes in the style and theme.

Modified style has not not slowed down dynamic prose. From the flaskbacks of the protagonist we gradually learn the background of the family runaway and the secret of disappearance of Myko’s younger brother, because at the very beginning of the book we do not know why of the two brothers only one came to Tasmania. Both storylines keep the suspense until the very end. Emotional tension is what Black has always been able to create.

Perhaps I shall seem overly demanding, but for me the story was too simple. The book lacks any other secondary plotline or some plot twists. But Black in his previous books didn’t have complex plots.
The novel still captivates with a morally clean protagonist. Rarely we see in today's prose a character like Myko, experiencing someone else's tragedy, able to feel the pain of nature damaged by humans.

Not quite clear to me were a few moments in the novel. If Myko’s family arrived on the island from Lithuania, what language did Myko speak so he could easily socialize with other settlers? And what kind of repression has been committed by the Tsarist army against the Lithuanian families? The Bolsheviks had not yet come to power. But this is perhaps my gap in Lithuanian history.

The Last Tiger is a novel not without flaws, but a radical change in the author’s direction is the cause for applause.

The Good Lord Bird

James McBride
The Good Lord Bird

Riverhead, 2013

The novel is written as a memoir of Henry Shackleford which was found in the middle of the XX century. It told the story of the only Negro survivor of the Battle of Harpers Ferry in 1859.
The story begins four years before the battle, when Henry and his devout father lived in a small town in Kansas. In the barber shop, where the father of 12 -year-old Henry worked, comes abolitionist John Brown. There he clashes with local slaveholder, after which Henry’s father is killed, and Brown takes the boy with him. Because of baggy clothes, more like rags, Brown takes Henry for a girl, because all colored look the same for a white man. Kidnapped Henry decided not to cross Brown, and so the next four years of his life he will impersonate a girl, wearing women's clothes and responding to the name Henrietta. «But the Old Man heard Pa say “Henry ain’t a,” and took it to be “Henrietta,” which is how the Old Man’s mind worked. Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man.» Henry gets the nickname Little Onion after him eating lucky mascot in the form of dried onion, belonging to Brown.

Brown and his army of 12 people have been known throughout America, although they are nothing special. They are starving, stealing from Pro Slavers food, weapons and horses, freeing chaoticly blacks from slavery against the will of the blacks. Brown's army includes his sons and a few sorry-looking farmers.

Brown himself is very devout man, and has a habit to to pray to God at the wrong time. He eats almost nothing, literally eating the holy spirit, can not sleep for days and naps right on the horse, but prays countless times a day, even when «using the privy». But Brown is willing to tolerate infidelity, if a person opposes slavery. But if someone says to the Old Man's face that he is pro slavery, the Old Man could kill him right on the spot.

Starting reading this novel, I was afraid that I would not understand it. American history, though short, has its key moments and niceties. My fears were vain: the book, albeit based on real historical events, leaves room for fiction, and in the course of reading the overall picture becomes clear.

Despite the seriousness of these events and their impact on American history, the novel is largely farcical, almost without a single positive character. Historical figures appear in a burlesque manner, and fictional protagonists stand out with stupidity, ignorance, greed, cowardice and duplicity. The narrator Onion spares no one, himself included, with his mordant comments. Douglas here is a womanizer and a lush, Tubman is Generale, Brown is a crazy preacher, con man, arrogant rogue. Americans certainly imagined their heroes not like this.

Since the book is a memoir written by already a mature man, Henry had time to think about everything that it happened, evaluate the actions and deeds of the Old Man and his army. Narrative voice here are both naive (12 -year-old child) and cynical (older man).

Largely because of Henry’s voice this is such a funny book. There are enough monets to laugh out loud, from Onion’s comments to dialogues between simple uneducated blacks. One of the funniest scenes is about a federal agent when Onion warns Old Man about a possible approximation of an agent: "Captain! I smell bear!" All because Brown told the boy that an agent smells of bear, because «uses bear grease to oil his hair».

Mocking everyone, Henry is not building no illusions about himself and the entire Negro race. For several years Henry wore dresses because he was afraid to be a man. Like any other black person he was taught to lie and cheat, being smarter than white masters for a few positions, and Henry lied and cheated.

History is devoid of logic, this book teaches us. In the history there are no straight lines, on the contrary, history is full of curves. Disappointing truth about the Negro race is expressed in the words of the narrator: if not whites, Negroes would never fight for their freedom. Blacks would rather run than go with a weapon on their master. «Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro but the Negro.»

The Good Lord Bird is written on «black» English, but not in its extreme form when you not so much reading as decrypting the written. Memoirs are written by semi-literate man who never learned to speak and write by all the rules.

The novel can be characterized with its slightly distorted title , - good lord novel.

The Eighth Black Book of Horror

The Eighth Black Book of Horror
Selected by Charles Black

Mortbury Press, 2011

I highly praised the two previous "Black Books" and even became a fan of the series. Charles Black who compiled and edited these books was doing a great job, managing to select for the series from this small press high-quality stories, written by the famous writers and by very little known outside the genre and the UK. Top short stories from previous books were, first of all, well-told stories, but at the same time, they still scared readers (although the horror genre is such a thing that you never know what can really scare, because one is scared of one thing and the other by another thing).

No matter how good the two previous anthologies of the series were, we have to admit that this book, the eighth, bears no comparison with the previous ones. Moreover, “The Eighth Black Book” is a complete failure. Usually, if the anthology contains at least one outstanding story, the book can not be named a failure. In this anthology, there are no outstanding stories, and just a handful of good ones. A good part of the stories I could not even finish reading to the end, they were so formulaic and ineptly written.

The main problem of almost all the stories in this collection (and even the stories by professionals suffer from this problem) is a lack of a coherent story. As a rule, the author has an idea how to "scare" (in quotes because in 95% of cases it is not scary) the reader, but this simply is not enough. Before we get to the scary and shocking, according to the authors, end, we have to wade through a mountain of cliches, or through a sluggish backstory, or even through the stiffness and awkwardness of style.

The best (although they are still pretty average in quality) stories of the collection are «Home By the Sea» by Stephen Bacon, «The Other Tenant» by Mark Samuels and «How The Other Half Dies» by John Llewellyn Probert. They are all moderately scary, with the "shocking" endings, to the extent clichéd, but pleasurable.

Let's hope the next book in the series will be on the level with the sixth and seventh volumes, not this one.

Truth Lies Bleeding

Tony Black

Truth Lies Bleeding


Preface Publishing, 2011

Detective Inspector Rob Brennan after the murder of his brother spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, recovering from the shock. Returning to work, Brennan rips right from the chief right to investigate the brutal murder of a young girl whose body was brutally mutilated. The body can not yet be identified, but the Brennan suspects that the girl was a local, as the killer, trying to disguise with the cruelty ordinary murder after rape. At the same time, the local crime boss Deil McArdle (the Deil, as he is called) agrees to crank a small crime, working with German mobsters, and Barry Tierney, a small criminal, brings a baby into the apartment of his drug addict girlfriend. In addition to investigating the murder of a girl, Brennan also must deal with the murderers of his brother.

Tony Black, who has written four novels about Gus Dury, for a time abandoned his serial hero and launched a new series of police procedurals about Inspector Brennan. Of the two novels about Dury what I read, one was good, one was bad, and «Truth Lies Bleeding» did not become too successful start of the series. Black writes the same scathing prose, and Brennan is a worthy successor to Dury. He is sharp on the tongue; he is always displeased with something, with troubles in his personal life. The first half of the book is good because you can enjoy the leisurely development of events, savoring some moments: the dialogue between criminals, Brennan’s rudeness, insider’s police wars. The good thing about «Truth Lies Bleeding» is the way Black writes intrigue within the police department. It is interesting to watch how the inspectors are fighting for a particular investigation, how the inspectors are trying to curry favor with his superiors, how the authorities urge their subordinates. And Brennan, of course, is not the one who is easy to handle:

«Brennan hadn't wanted the leave; the Chief Super had insisted on it. She'd wanted to put him out because he wasn'ta yes-man. Galloway was a typical careerist: she surrounded herself with the types that were no challenge to her. People like the boy, Stevie McGuire. He was a no-hoper, perfect material for promotion in Galloway's ranks. More like McGuire beneath her and her ascent was assured, carried high on their shoulders. Providing she could keep the likes of Brennan in check, that is. She still needed to rely on someone providing the clear-up rates if she was to get the Chief Constable's job»

The second half of the book is disappointing in that Brennan does not think hard, and the killer himself finally comes into his hands. And the background of murder and all subsequent events seem ridiculous and absurdly false. Everything too easy comes to happy ending.

Let's hope in the next book in the series Tony Black makes Brennan sweat.

Long Time Dead

Tony Black
Long Time Dead

Preface Publishing, 2010

Alcoholic Gus Dury is back in business, though not in the best shape. At the beginning of the novel Dury is on a hospital bed: because of the endless consumption of alcohol his hands are trembling, and, worst of all, Dury begins hallucinating. The doctor strongly recommends the patient to refuse alcohol; otherwise a quick death waits Dury. Dury’s life is completely falling apart:, he finally broke up with his wife, he hasn’t any job, he really has nowhere to live, so if Durie will stop drink, it would be quite unbearable for him. His friend Hod is no better condition: his business has come to an end, and he still owes money to the local thug: the prospects of become dead are the same as that of Durie. Hod finds escape out of the situation: the movie star Gillian Laird’s son Ben found hanged, maybe it's not suicide, and Hod offers Gus take the case, ripped off the rich ladies hefty sum. Decently dressed, the two friends pay Laird a visit, and Dury’s ability to carry on a conversation in the most difficult circumstances brings them what they wanted: the actress hired them to investigate the death of her son. Ben Laird is far from an angel, how he is imagined by his mother: drug trafficking, the supply of interested students in prostitutes, excessive ambition. Dury has no time to even really take up the investigation, as he finds another hanged, Joe Calder, head of the form, where Ben Laird studied. And between these two deaths there is clearly a connection.

If the previous book Tony Black’s book about the Scottish detective-alcoholic Dury was quite unsuccessful, then this is the two heads above. Black removed from the «Long Time Black» everything that hindered the previous novel. Dury is the same sympathetic to the working class hater of the rich, with the same conservative lifestyle "before had been better," sharp-tongued (sentences in the book can be compared with sips of whiskey, as the same short and scorching) pushing forward, but with remnants of conscience. The most exact words about Dury says his mother, when comparing him with his father: «I know you have the same dark place inside of you, son ... but you have a better heart than him. Please, son ... try and listen to that heart of yours, and not the other place».

Dury in this novel is hardly a detective in the classic sense, he doesn’t solve the case, thinking only his head: how there is something would be solved if he is either drunk or with a hangover that could barely stand on his feet and spit blood.

Black in this book presented not only a detective intrigue, but, more importantly, the story of a man who is on the edge and have not given much thought, would he remain alive or not: all that he had he already lost.

This is a book that is worth a drink in one gulp.