MisterHobgoblin
5th July 2008, 07:55 PM
[I received a free review copy of this book through the Amazon Vine programme]
Adrian McKinty specialises in crime novels where baddies rise up from the pavements at every turn and where the bodies pile up in mounds.
In The Bloomsday Dead, we find Michael Forsythe - hero of two previous McKinty outings - holed up in Lima trying to hide from his enemies. And he has plenty of enemies - the kith and kin of those he has killed or conned in previous adventures.
Forsythe is tracked down by Bridget Callaghan, a former lover, former adversary whose boyfriend Forsythe had killed way back in the day. Bridget’s daughter Siobhán has gone missing in Belfast and Forythe has a chance to earn his freedom from the vendetta by tracing the daughter. The action takes place on Bloomsday, the annual celebration of the day James Joyce wrote about in Ulysses. For added poignancy, this was the 100th anniversary, and just as Bloom had wandered Dublin looking for Stephen Dedalus, so Forsythe wanders in Dublin and Belfast looking for Siobhán.
McKinty is Irish, but has lived in the USA for most of his adult life. That’s where most of his novels have been set, and it is a departure to return to Ireland. McKinty’s Ireland is one where the dogs on the streets know the names of all the gang leaders; where there is a pecking order of gangs and politics rarely raises its head; where the local paramilitary groups are in awe of Bridget Callaghan, the boss of the New York Irish Mob. This doesn’t quite ring true. Neither, I’m afraid, does the body count or the low-key reaction to it. It’s not that the writing is poor - it is well written and has some level of structure to it. It’s just that the constraint of containing all the action into the space of 20 hours or so makes for a frenetic series of high pressure encounters without much space for character development or basic reflection. There is some reflection on long ago events, principally to fill in details from the two previous novels in the trilogy (and, if I’m not mistaken, some text that looks very familiar...) but no opportunity to take stock of the current day’s events. The tight timeframe also makes for improbabilities - could Forsythe really have had his abdomen sliced open, pass out, recover and proceed to brawling, running, negotiating and intuiting all day?
I think this is a fair story, told in a pacy way with some good ideas. It just hasn’t quite been brought off. The story isn’t quite worthy of the concept.
***
Adrian McKinty specialises in crime novels where baddies rise up from the pavements at every turn and where the bodies pile up in mounds.
In The Bloomsday Dead, we find Michael Forsythe - hero of two previous McKinty outings - holed up in Lima trying to hide from his enemies. And he has plenty of enemies - the kith and kin of those he has killed or conned in previous adventures.
Forsythe is tracked down by Bridget Callaghan, a former lover, former adversary whose boyfriend Forsythe had killed way back in the day. Bridget’s daughter Siobhán has gone missing in Belfast and Forythe has a chance to earn his freedom from the vendetta by tracing the daughter. The action takes place on Bloomsday, the annual celebration of the day James Joyce wrote about in Ulysses. For added poignancy, this was the 100th anniversary, and just as Bloom had wandered Dublin looking for Stephen Dedalus, so Forsythe wanders in Dublin and Belfast looking for Siobhán.
McKinty is Irish, but has lived in the USA for most of his adult life. That’s where most of his novels have been set, and it is a departure to return to Ireland. McKinty’s Ireland is one where the dogs on the streets know the names of all the gang leaders; where there is a pecking order of gangs and politics rarely raises its head; where the local paramilitary groups are in awe of Bridget Callaghan, the boss of the New York Irish Mob. This doesn’t quite ring true. Neither, I’m afraid, does the body count or the low-key reaction to it. It’s not that the writing is poor - it is well written and has some level of structure to it. It’s just that the constraint of containing all the action into the space of 20 hours or so makes for a frenetic series of high pressure encounters without much space for character development or basic reflection. There is some reflection on long ago events, principally to fill in details from the two previous novels in the trilogy (and, if I’m not mistaken, some text that looks very familiar...) but no opportunity to take stock of the current day’s events. The tight timeframe also makes for improbabilities - could Forsythe really have had his abdomen sliced open, pass out, recover and proceed to brawling, running, negotiating and intuiting all day?
I think this is a fair story, told in a pacy way with some good ideas. It just hasn’t quite been brought off. The story isn’t quite worthy of the concept.
***