Disappeared

Anthony Quinn
Disappeared

Head of Zeus, 2014

Retired Special Branch agent David Hughes, suffereing from Alzheimer, disappears from his home, where his sister is looking after him. Because the old spy is almost helpless, the police assumes Hughes was kidnapped or even worse. Soon a retired legal clerk is found murdered and tortured under the tree. The victim, Joseph Devin, had a murky past, and his death is somehow connected to the disappearance of Hughes.

The main protagonist of the story, transferred from Belfast to small town in Northern Ireland, Inspector Celcius Daly doesn’t know that. In fact, he even doesn’t realize that both men worked with Special Branch, where Hughes was a detective, and devin was an informer. Daly is assigned to investigate both crimes, he hits many dead ends (no surprise because Special Branch doesn’t want Daly to mess in their business), until he makes a connection, linking Devlin and Hughes to another disappeared man from 1989, Olilver Jordan, who, it’s been said, was an informer for Special Branch while being in IRA.

I expected from Disappeared something more, and after finishing it it became evident to me that behind us is a mediocre thriller, poorly written, poorly structured and not involving at all.
Sentence by sentence, Quinn writes not that bad, for he was a journalist, and he mastered a bit of a craft. Once sentences start to form paragraphs and chapters, the prose become one crumbly bulk barely moving forward. The novel suffers from the need to follow all the rules of modern british crime thriller, and these rules, it seems, are handed out to writers by editors. Here we have a lone sleuth, who returned home, secrets of the past, chapters written from POV of many side characters only making already muddy picture more blurred. Quinn as a slave obediently follows these rules, only as a storyteller he is nothing special, with not enough abilities to pull his novel, relying on clichés and types, through. After promising start with the background of Northern Ireland after the Troubles, the story bogs down, turning into a beaten plot when policeman hunts down the murderer.

Dragging style is complemented with emotional void of the prose. Tragedies of the past and modern political atmosphere in NI as important topics aren’t worked out. Behind us is a mystery, or thriller to be more precise, where not sufferings of soul and analysis of an issue matter but only when the main hero catches the villain.

Disappeared is a poorly structured thriller, it shouldn’t be called a mystery. The final disappoints, first, because instead of fiar solution Daly would present, we get unconvincing confessions from the main villain, and second, the villain itself and his motives materializes from the air, so much for the fair play. All motives are motivless, the final reveals plot holes, and the novel leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Piercing topic of lives in NI after the bombings and killings stopped was trampled to the ground.

I will add the author to my blacklist, where 90% of British thriller writers already are.

Black Lake

Johanna Lane
Black Lake

Tinder Press, 2014

The novel begins in fact with the end: the peak of events is right here, in the initial chapter, and everything that happens on the following pages is the background, the characters study, attempt to understand the causes of the incident.

Dulough, estate with house-castle, located in the north of Ireland, near the ocean, was inherited by John Campbell, one of the main characters of the book, the father of the family which is at the center of the novel. Besides John here live his wife Marianne and their two children - the eldest daughter Kate and son Philip. Due to excessive cost of maintaining of the estate, John is forced to pass the estate over to the government. The family for the season has to move to a small cottage where their servants lived. Philip will drown in the sea, Kate will be sent to the boarding school (previously she studied at home), and Marianne will be stressed, she will become strange, without her husband's consent will pick her daughter up from school and will close herself with Kate in a large ballroom on the third floor of the castle and will refuse to leave. John and Mrs. Connelly, the servant, will bring the food to mother and daughter every day, John will allow to his family stay in self-imposed captivity. Only a few weeks later, John will call the police and his wife's parents, to move Marianne from the room with force. Police breaks down the door, and John will give his wife to her parents.

After this disarming beginning the novel brings us back to the time when John still only signs documents with the municipal authorities. The middle part of the novel is written from the perspective of John and Philip. John's father died long ago, and his mother died shortly before John had married. John and his brother inherited from his mother some funds, as well as Dulough. Brother has takes a portion of the money, and John receives the rest, with the agreement that John will keep the estate, and he also will live in the family castle, and his brother would go to Dublin.

Black Lake unravels in the opposite direction, from the tragic finale to the melancholy beginning. Lane as on purpose throws intrigue on the very first page, as if to say, do not wait a thriller from me, I have more important things to do than tickle nerves. The plot is really very simple and can squeeze into dozen sentences.

The novel works as a location study. Each character of the Campbell family separately is flat character, fabric, which lacks the contour. It is not so important because each character is projected onto the Dulough. Outside the castle, none of these characters would have existed. Novel’s characters are only thinking about the castle, the whole point of their existence is to be tied to it. In the text of the novel there aren’t clues that Dulough is a cursed place, nevertheless the book's characters’ thoughts clearly hint to the bad luck of the castle. Dulough dominates Campbells. Especially adults understand it. John and Marianne become hostages of the estate. John because of his volition gives the catle to possess him (not vice versa), although Dulough is obviously a burden to him.

Marianne is oppressed by empty space. The castle is sucking out her life force, making her miserable.

The most tragic events of the book is ouside of the pages, and yet the book turned out pretty grim. Despite the fact that the ending is already known, there is still a kind of feeling, as if something else happens, even more tragic. Lane knows how to convey despair, anxiety, loneliness. I suppose that so dark prose will not be to everybody's taste.

The novel leaves hope, although it is very illusive hope: heroes remain in Dulough, and it is unlikely that they ever get out of this place. Black Lake is a deep and very dark novel, as the title promises.

The Rage

Gene Kerrigan
Rage

Vintage UK, 2012

The Rage tells the parallel stories of three dissimilar people whose fates intersect at one point. Rage from the title of the book is a feeling that drives one of the heroes of the book. Vincent Naylor was released from prison ten days ago and is back in business. Naylor worked for a local small-time hood, but he did the time for assault. Being free, Naylor plans to quit his outbreaks of aggression and focus only on that unlawful deals that does not bring not as much jail time as money. Overheard a chatter of a former guard in taxi, Naylor immediately plans robbery of a armored truck. He takes his older brother, and two of his cronies in his team.

Another two story lines are related, but are not associated with the Naylor’s subplot. Detective Bob Tidy is completing all the loose ends in his investigations, when he is attached to a group of detectives working on the murder of a banker in his own home. Tidy, honest and conscientious cop, sometimes bends the law himself, visits a nun Maura Coady, when she reports something suspicious outside her window on the street.

All three lines intersect in the final, as it happens in the good books, though not completely. The Rage is only nominally police procedural: here there is a detective and the sensational murder, Tidy even finds some clues already closing to finding the killer. But the "police" part of the novel stands out in the sense that the main plot intersect with it only at a tangent. Kerrigan is not interested in a puzzle, but in the mechanics of the police work, in the relationships between higher ranks and ordinary detectives. On Tidy’s example it clearly shows that the initiative and insight are not welcome in police work.

But the main subplot with Naylor’s robbery presents a few surprises. Kerrigan has no illusions: most of the criminals are not geniuses, capable of impunity and leaving no trace, they are tough and cruel people, driven by their instincts and emotions. Naylor does not even dream that he will commit one crime after another and avoid prison. He only hopes that he would go to jail for something that will bring him satisfaction.

Against the plot twists and turns, Kerrigan puts into the mouths of his characters personal feelings about the fate of Ireland: the economy is falling apart, the banks have ruined the country, and all the people suffer. It is interesting that almost all the characters in the novel go the hard way through an economic decline - except Naylor. He just robs armored truck not because of a revenge to banks for the crisis in the economy, but simply because he had overheard a good plan for a robbery.

The Rage is head and shoulders above any contemporary British procedural. No rage, only sheer pleasure.