Brief Mention: THE NAMING OF THE BIRDS by Paraic O'Donnell

I found Paraic O'Donnell's two earlier books, The Maker of Swans and The House on Vesper Sands, so compelling that I've shelved them in my "read again" section. Haunting and full of the unexpected, they situate at the intersection of literary fiction and crime fiction.

So I bought his third book this summer, THE NAMING OF THE BIRDS. This one's more squarely crime fiction, but evocative and often mysterious. If you're an Irish crime fiction fan, grab a copy. If you long for justice for children and especially the orphaned, you'll also want this. It's not about birds (or about Adam and Genesis) -- the title is a misnomer that way -- but oh, what a good read.

Powerful Trilogy by Tarn Richardson Concludes -- But Only in the UK So Far

Every now and then, a moment comes along when readers can make a huge difference in getting a good book published. This is one of them -- because the third volume of Tarn Richardson's stunning "The Darkest Hand Trilogy" has been published in the United Kingdom. But not yet in the United States. Overlook, the US publisher for the series, needs to see sales jump for the first and second books, and to hear from readers who want the third one NOW ... instead of in 2018, which is when the title is tentatively pushed back to, in the Overlook Press schedule.

Which of course immediately raises the question, why do you want these powerful World War I crime novels for your shelf, and how will Tarn Richardson's work pull readers into the desperate and dangerous adventures of rogue Catholic inquisitor Poldek Tacit?

Let's back up a bit -- to the three premises of the earlier volumes, The Damned and The Fallen. Poldek Tacit was raised by the Catholic Church to be one of its inquisitors, and that's premise number one: that the most powerful religious structure of modern history, one that still has its own city and its annointed God-listening leader, could have maintained a hidden force to fight evil and the inevitable corruptions of the faith that it brings: the Catholic Inquisition, a corps of dedicated trained experts in exorcising demons, battling Satanic forces, and preventing any earthly appearance of the AntiChrist.

Premise two, which calls for an almost equal suspension of disbelief -- or perhaps more realistically, for accepting an unusual metaphor for what a powerful church might bring into existence -- is that the church Poldek Tacit serves has created a dreadful half-caste of former humans that live in the dark places of the world and take the form of flesh-hungry werewolves. Starved and tormented though these half beasts may be, they still may have human emotions and loyalties. And Poldek finds himself in league with one such werewolf, Sandrine, whose loving loyalty toward a former soldier of the world war brings her into the fight against the surging evil in the world.

Premise three is the most outrageous, but the most compelling, despite its "paranormal" slant: that there might exist with the Catholic Church and among its priests and bishops a corps of power-hungry, devil-eager men, known as The Darkest Hand, determined to bring about the re-emergence of the AntiChrist, and thus the End Days of the World -- and that the otherwise irrational mass carnage taking place in the years of World War I, the Great War, is actually an intentional sacrifice of the innocent and brave, a killing spree intended as a worship effort toward the leader of the forces of evil.

If you've been reading the surging amount of World War I crime fiction (and literary fiction) being published, this leap of metaphor may begin to make astonishing and uncomfortable sense. How could we explain in any rational way how so many nations in Europe plunged into killing so many young men in such horrible ways? The "shell shock" that plagues Charles Todd's detective protagonist Ian Rutledge comes across as a probably very rational reaction to trench warfare, poison gases that made the act of breathing into a short path to death, and gruesome bayoneted killings where people walked or "swam" among body parts and their detritus, struggling to reach safety.

[Spoiler alert] At the end of the second volume, The Fallen, not only have we seen the forces of goodness fail and fall, but dark hero Poldek Tacit himself tumbles from the heights into certain death below -- we stagger with grief, along with his beloved Isabella and his close friends. Although Poldek has his own confusing inner spirits that shout evil to him, his actions are reliably those of a strong warrior for the good, and his loss is terrible.

But readers of the first two volumes won't be surprised when they meet Poldek again in the third, THE RISEN. As with the fall of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, we long to find a loophole to the contract with disaster. And although Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series remains dead in body after the sixth title, he's not the protagonist of the series -- it's Harry who must survive to the next book. Similarly, it's hard to picture a third volume here without Poldek in some form.

But like Graham Greene's whiskey priest, or even Le Carré's George Smiley, there are enormous flaws in Poldek Tacit. And the closer the series gets to an actual rising of the AntiChrist, the louder the invasion of Poldek's soul and mind becomes.

Meanwhile The Darkest Hand assembles its final plan. Javier Adansoni, within the Vatican, defines its reasoning:

"We have done what needed to be done. To persevere. To triumph. Ask yourself, would any other faith not do as we have done to ensure its continuance? Are we so different from other religions who try to enforce their creed upon others? No! We are simply better prepared and better provisioned for the task."

The group's members explain to each other how they have trapped and tormented Poldek Tacit over the years -- although they don't at first realize he may have survived their attacks.

Meanwhile, Tacit's re-entry into his own small counterattacking force of four people -- Tacit, Isabella, Sandrine, and Henry -- breathes some hope back into their effort. But first they need to figure out what the other forces in play are up to, especially those of the priest-turned-wolf Poré, who appears to be on the side of the Darkest Hand in some confusing way. Poldek Tacit begins to wrestle with the details:

But all he could say was, "I need more to go on. More than Seven Archangels!" And then he paused and said, "Unless ..."

"Unless what?" asked Henry, sitting forward, his eyebrows arched. He recognised the keen light in Tacit's dark eyes, a look always adopted when the Inquisitor had discovered a vital clue. He was pleased to see it. It meant that this feral distant man, the one who seemed so remote and indifferent to all they had told him, was now snagged by its mystery.

From here, THE RISEN becomes a race against the clock and against the forces of The Darkest Hand, as the team presses all its resources -- and recruits a few more -- into stopping the rituals and slaughter that are swiftly opening a portal to the End Times of the world.

The final stunning twist to the actions of evil makes a bitter sense out of another terrible aspect of the years 1917 and 1918. But for that, you'll need to read THE RISEN, which ends with an author note reminding us that "World War One was responsible for the deaths of 10,000,000 soldiers and 7,000,000 civilians and achieved no tangible benefits to mankind other than in the science of medicine. It resulted in the annihilation of an entire generation of young men, bankrupted nations ... eventually dragged the world into a second world war."

Is it outrageous to apply this to the times in which we live today? I think the fit is frightening, as our nation jockeys for dominance with another nuclear power, wrestles with the costs and pain of diversity, struggles to assert moral value during terrible choices. Tarn Richardson's series is a darned good read, jammed with suspense and the efforts that are required to remain humane during dark times. It is, painfully, more than fiction, I fear.

Now, to circle back to where this began: To get your third volume, THE RISEN, you have several options. You can, of course, spend extra funds to import a British copy. Or you can take direct action here: Make sure you've purchased -- and that Overlook knows you have -- the first two volumes of the trilogy. Then tell the publisher you want the third volume, THE RISEN, as soon as possible. Here's an e-mail for the press: publicity@overlookny.com

The Overlook website is http://www.overlookpress.com and its Facebook page is here. 

Let's see what we can do to move THE RISEN onto US bookstore shelves -- and our own.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

World War I and the Inquisition? Yes! Well Worth Reading THE DAMNED from Tarn Richardon

The British have known Inquisitor Poldek Tacit since January 1 of 2015 -- today, thanks to Overlook Press, Tarn Richardson's powerful debut thriller THE DAMNED featuring the rough-living Jesuit arrives for American and Canadian readers. Clear your calendar; I couldn't put this book down.

And I was so reluctant to start reading! Subtitled "The Darkest Hour Trilogy Book 1," THE DAMNED has a cemetery monument topped with a cross on the cover, and the cover text reveals the presence of werewolves in this World War I crime novel. Oh dear!

But fortunately, I've recently become an ardent fan of John Connolly's Maine-based books of crime where evil wears paranormal garb, so I'm a bit more open that I used to be to accepting this kind of twist in a murder mystery IF it's really, really well written.

And Tarn Richardson can definitely write a rattling good tale, with page-turning suspense that never slows down. The book opens in the front-line trenches of Arras, France, in 1914, where the gas, the mud, and the deadly shelling of the nearby German lines turn each battle's movements into a dance of terror and death. For Lieutenant Henry Frost, caught between war's clearly mad leadership and the impending deaths of his men, every effort of courage and gallantry is also a losing effort. When the German shelling abruptly ceases, it's tempting to celebrate -- until Frost and his forces realize the horror of what's actually taken place.

And as the war lines writhe and suffer, Poldek Tacit, an Inquisitor sent by the Vatican against the forces of evil, faces his nemesis in France. Unexpectedly assisting him in investigating who is dying why, in the run-up to the anticipated Mass for Peace, is Sister Isabella, the most unlikely "Sister" that Tacit has ever met. Deliberately sexualized in appearance, she's a Vatican inquisitor of sorts herself, sent forth to "test the faith" of the Church's hardened fighters in the field.

As townspeople, combatants, and even priest around them die, Tacit and Sister Isabella finally take off the gloves and attack each other, with Tacit accusing her of deliberately enticing him:

"Do they think I've fallen from the path with more than my drinking and my faith? Thought that I would be tempted? That I would wish to f*** a whore of the Vatican?"

The words tormented and disgusted her. "How dare you!" roared Isabella, storming forward to strike him. Her hands were drawn white with rage. "How dare you call me such a thing?"

"Well, look at you. You never looked like any Sister I've ever seen!" he cried, climbing out of his chair.

"And you're not like any Inquisitor, Inquisitor! What happened to the man who's hanging [as a portrait] on the wall of the Vatican! The Inquisitor of honor? The one with a light in his eyes and an urgency in his features?"

"He got old."

But this failure of teamwork can't be allowed to stand, because indeed the Church has cause to believe in the evil that's multiplying within the landscape. And unless the bitter Inquisitor with his silver bullets and the angry Sister figure out how to reach and stop that evil, World War I and the Mass for Peace may be even more of a disaster than the armed forces can imagine.

Did I "buy" the notion of an alternate World War I, of werewolves, of a secret and ongoing Inquisition led by the Catholic church? Actually, yes -- the horrors of shell shock, poison gas, and international machinations that we're learning about a century after the Great War, make Richardson's additions to the landscape seem just one small step further in danger and darkness. And Poldek Tacit, a violent but oddly honorable version of Graham Greene's "whisky priest," is a perfect fit in this world gone mad.

So who do you suppose the true villain is? By the end of THE DAMNED, the sacrifices that Tacit needs to make are clear. And I found I was eager for the second and third books of the trilogy. I hope Overlook won't wait too long to move them in our direction.

By the way, THE DAMNED is a debut novel, and only a roughness in the pacing gives this away; the author's writing career is eccentric and includes digital media -- which makes sense, as there's a sense of cameras rolling and dramatic shifts of light with the twists of plot. Overlook's print runs are not huge -- make sure to get your first-edition hardcover ASAP, before a lot of people start grabbing them.