This week: latest from John Banville - who doesn’t need an introduction
This week there’s the latest crime novel from John Banville, who doesn’t need an introduction. There’s also a novel set in Belfast, where a drunken assault at a party is to have consequences. There’s a novel about an unusual nun who decides to take matters into her own hands after an arson attack on her school. Finally, there’s a kind of Gothic novel, based on fact, about a murder trial where the testimony of a ghost was admitted as evidence in court.
The Lock Up, John Banville, Faber, €16.99
John Banville has elevated the crime novel to a level that’s almost impossible for other crime novelists to attain and his latest venture, where he pairs off pathologist Quirke with detective inspector St John Strafford in a Dublin very few of us even remember, is just sublime. A woman is found dead in a lock-up garage near Mount Street. She’s young and pretty (or was) and the death has all the hallmarks of a suicide. She’s inside her car, has a hosepipe connected to the exhaust, and had sealed off the space as well as she could.
But Strafford smells a rat. And Quirke, after performing a post-mortem, is equally suspicious. But who would want to murder this girl, and why? The investigation will lead them to a family of Germans who have spent the last few years living in the southeast of the country. And that family has a curious history back in Germany, before they managed to escape to Ireland in the final days of WWII. Full of twists and turns, as dark as pitch and beautifully atmospheric, this novel is knit together with exquisite precision. This is vintage Banville.
Scorched Grace, Margot Douaihy, Pushkin Press, €13.99
Sr Holiday, a nun with a colourful past and a member of the order of the Sisters of the Sublime Blood, finds herself with no option but to investigate herself the arson attack on her school and convent, which badly injures two people and kills one. A most unlikely candidate for the nunnery, Sr Holiday has been an enthusiastic lesbian, a punk rock musician, a keen drug user and an all-round hellraiser. But that’s all behind her now. She still, however, bears some of the scars, like her myriad tattoos and a nicotine habit (see what I did there?) she can’t seem to shake. The police don’t show much interest in the case and aren’t making any headway. And so, the sister takes the matter into her own hands.
Set in New Orleans, but with a protagonist from the Bronx, this is an amusing caper as the cussin’ and swearin’, hard-drinking nun takes on the bad guys, at great danger to herself. The plot swings between the present day and her former life as a punk rock guitarist, her childhood days being raised by her parents, a policeman and an ex-nun, and a tragedy in her past for which she feels she must atone – hence taking holy orders. This is the first in a crime series involving Sr Holiday as the sleuth and with such an original and off-beat protagonist, it should fly.
The Red Bird Sings, Aoife Fitzpatrick, Virago, €17.99
This debut novel, based on fact and written by a Dublin author, is the story of the trial of Trout Shue, a blacksmith in Greenbrier County in West Virginia, who was found guilty in 1897 of the murder of his wife Zona, according to Zona’s ghost who ‘came back’ to tell the real story about her death. Initially Zona was certified as having died from heart failure. But Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, who claimed to have psychic abilities, insisted that her daughter’s ghost kept returning to her bedside to say that she was murdered by her husband. Eventually Mary Jane Heaster persuaded the authorities to exhume Zona’s body for a more thorough examination. She was subsequently found to have been strangled. And while her husband was in custody pending his murder trial, some deeply incriminating details about his past began to surface, especially about two previous wives nobody knew he had.
The author tells this unbelievable, yet true, story from a feminist point of view. Most of the story is from the victim’s mother and her best friend, an ambitious young journalist. It is beautifully told, the writing is elegant and completely immersed in the place and time. An astonishing read.
Close to Home, Michael Magee, Hamish Hamilton, €17.99
A gritty novel set in working class Belfast, this is the story of Seán Maguire, a quiet young Catholic man who thumps a guy after being provoked at a party, and of the consequences that follow. Or at least that’s partly what it’s about. It’s also about the idea that you can never go home again. Seán was raised on the ‘mean’ streets of west Belfast, Bobby Sands country, a place of poverty, violent crime and no hope. But he did get out to go to college. All the way to Liverpool. He’s back now, looking for work, finding his degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, doing shifts in bars and nightclubs, snorting coke as casually as some people might light a fag.
He’s got a ‘hard man’ brother Anto, who seems to get away with everything, and he tries to reconnect with old school friends, but he’s now neither one thing nor the other. He’s not the working-class kid from Belfast he once was, but he doesn’t seem to belong anywhere else either. It’s a superb debut from Magee, who’s the editor of the literary journal Tangerine, and one to remind us that there is such a thing as masculinity without the ‘toxic’ in front of it, and while women hold up half the sky, men hold up the other half.
FOOTNOTES
For music fans of a certain vintage, band manager extraordinaire Paul Charles, whose clients include Van Morrison, Dexys Midnight Runners, Gerry Rafferty and The Waterboys, has a book coming out on May 19 titled Adventures in Wonderland. He’ll also be a guest at the upcoming International Literature Festival in Dublin if you’re of a mind to book a ticket.