Indelible Darkness: THE HOUSE OF ASHES by Stuart Neville

In a fierce and powerful twist away from his crime fiction that roots in Ireland's "Troubles," Stuart Neville's September 7 release THE HOUSE OF ASHES (Soho Crime) is a stand-alone stirring the tides of domestic violence. Narrated in two time periods -- a dread-saturated present-day one of Sara Keane, newly arrived in Northern Ireland with an abusive and criminal husband (and his much more frightening father), and a set of multiple murder recollections from 60 years back, in the mind of the elderly Mary Jackson, more or less incarcerated in a "care" home -- this hardboiled thriller paints a shattering image of how absolute power becomes absolute control. Of life, itself.

More than the actual plot, the power of THE HOUSE OF ASHES comes from its blunt revelation of men's potential brutality. It's hard to connect this to the politically scented preceding Neville novels: There's nothing in either Sara's abusers (vintage mob-style dominators) or Mary's (three men who treat women as rape-able animals and kill of their babies) that can be tied directly to the emotional trauma of Irish life. Except one morsel, delivered early in the book through Sara's eyes:

[Sara] had met Damien at the University of Bath, he a postgrad architecture student, she in her second year of studying for a social work degree. She would never have imagined, even after they married, that she would come to live in the place he never ever called Northern Ireland. Always the North, the North of Ireland, sometimes the Six Counties, but never Northern Ireland. As if to speak its name would shame him.

Their move to a house that Damien's father has purchased and rebuilt for them—from a fire-struck wreck—is supposed to be a fresh start, removing Sara from the place where she'd had a breakdown and installing Damien as an architect in his father's property development firm.

But the arrival of a confused elderly woman at the house shatters Sara's preoccupation with staying obedient and blind, and as Mary Jackson's background becomes clear, Sara can't close her eyes to her own situation.

This is a work of psychological horror, drenched in blood, death, and sexual abuse. Perhaps only Stuart Neville could bend the arc of narrative in such a way as to make the story compelling. The terrors revealed and persisting match the book against such classics as Silence of the Lambs, but Neville leaves open the possibility that either Sara or Mary may escape the surrounding real-life nightmare.

It would be comforting to think that this fictional version is a wild exaggeration of abuse that doesn't actually take place in real life. Unfortunately, despite the persisting paranormal threads that are so classically Neville's, this crime novel makes real situations violently present and unforgettable. Read at your own risk ... but trust that the author also knows what impels survival and escape.

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

Espionage and Insight in Northern Ireland, in NORTHERN SPY from Flynn Berry

 

[Originally at New York Journal of Books]

“Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same.”

Unashamedly focused on loving and savoring her six-month-old son Finn while also working as a news producer, Tessa Daly can’t believe it when the police claim her sister Marian has joined the IRA. Though the enduring aftermath of the Troubles marks every day for Tessa, her mother, her child, and yes, her sister, it’s impossible that their lives in Northern Ireland could become militarized and criminalized in this way.

Until, somehow, it isn’t. Whether her sister’s a sort of hero for fighting against the government forces, or somehow playing a “doubles” game to move both sides toward peace, Tessa needs to know which choices are right and necessary. And whatever her own position becomes, she’s got to protect her baby first, and Marian second.

Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same. Taut and passionate, it’s a plot-driven and morally demanding narrative full of threat and heartbreak. The fiercely portrayed reality of life in a divided land and the costly choices everyone faces make this into a page-turner. Berry also excels at keeping her protagonists smart and even wise—so when things do go wrong, it’s not because of foolish mistakes.

Most importantly Tessa holds her focus:

“I wonder, would a good mother take Finn away from this place, or keep him close to his father? Would a good mother work for peace, or stay away from the conflict? Would a good mother be preoccupied with terrorism during every minute she has spent with her son this week?

I don’t want my son to have to forgive me for anything, but I can’t even tell what that might be, so how can I avoid it? … I want someone to tell me what to do. If we can stay or if we need to leave tonight, right away, the sooner the better.”

By staying in place, and maintaining loyalty to her family, Tessa’s soon a person of interest herself. The detective chasing the terrorists makes that clear: “He shakes his keys in his suit pocket, then fixes his gaze on me. ‘Tessa, what does nitrobenzene smell like?’ I blink at him. ‘I have no idea.’ Fenton considers me for a few long moments, the turns to go. He knows I’ve just lied. Nitrobenzene smells like marzipan.”

Northern Spy will be a hit for readers of Dublin noir and tartan noir, as well as those who’ve already discovered Stuart Neville’s Belfast noir with its grit and darkness. But because Berry opts to view the pain and violence through a young mother’s eyes, there’s less in-your-face blood and guts, and perhaps more agony in spite of that. Denise Mina and Tana French readers can also find familiar ground—but so in fact can any readers who treasure a well-plotted mystery with a powerful sense of how place and the near past can force a person to cross the lines they once felt were sacred.

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

Irish Noir and Heartbreak in SILENCE, Anthony Quinn

The arrival of an "international" mystery on the American market can be a mystery in itself. Irish bestselling author Anthony Quinn isn't well known -- yet -- on this side of the Atlantic, but thanks to the partnership of the Mysterious Press (Otto Penzler's creation) and Open Road Media (!), Quinn's third in his Inspector Celcius Daly series, SILENCE, is now available here.

What a great Irish police investigation! Inspector Daly is in the confusing passage of midlife as a police officer in Ireland, where "The Troubles" are supposed to be over and recovered from -- including a posh new headquarters for the police force in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In fact, policing is supposed to be free of the past, and highly professional. But Daly, in many ways a traditional police detective, isn't sure why Special Branch is housed in the same new building. Still, when Special Branch shows up at a car crash that Daly's investigating, he's sure there are powerful disclosures ahead about the victim, Father Aloysius Walsh.

What Daly doesn't expect is a personal involvement in the investigation. Father Walsh, he soon discovers, had been investigating a set of nearby murders that took place in the heyday of The Troubles, and the map of killings includes the family home where Daly still resides, alone, as his parents are dead and he really has no other personal life around him. Living in this monument to vanished parents becomes nearly intolerable when Father Walsh's murder map reveals Daly's own, unknowing role in the horrors of the past.

First, though, he'll need to try to understand the victim, this priest sprawled in a crushed car that's somehow flown off the road by some traffic cones, and into disaster.

He looked unhappy to have ended up like this, a grisly spectacle of motoring misdirection.

However, the most poignant element of the scene lay in the strange object the dead man gripped in his right hand. Daly narrowed the beam on to the stiffened fingers, which were wrapped around an untidy braid of children's rosary beads and holy medals, strands of charms tied up with wisps of broken string. He stared at this twisted pigtail of religious effects and wondered what significance they had for the dead priest. Did they represent a cry for spiritual assistance, or something more sinister? ...

The more Daly looked at the strange bundle, the more it spoke to him of something more personal: his own religion. ... He still felt the soothing power of the Church's symbols, the rosary beads and the miraculous medals, and he worried that if he removed them completely from his life, he might find himself pulled down a tapering funnel into a deeper darkness. 

In this third in the Inspector Daly series, Daly finds his sanity and his job on the line, as well as his life. Here's a tightly plotted and psychologically compelling crime novel of "today's Northern Ireland" -- and it turns out that The Troubles are far from over.

Highly recommended, even if the author does slip into a momentary jest about the crime fiction of the leader of today's Irish noir, Stuart Neville. (Watch for that moment.) Quinn's awards and nominations are quickly piling up; it's time to catch up with, and enjoy, his evocative and well-paced writing.

RAIN DOGS, Fifth Detective Sean Duffy Novel from Adrian McKinty

Setting his crime fiction during the 1980s -- The Troubles -- in Ireland gives Adrian McKinty the perfect opportunity for violence that spreads, fire and counterfire in Northern Ireland. Readers of the series know that Detective Sean Duffy is good enough to earn bigger offers in major policing. But so far, between his own hard-living choices (drinking, drugs, challenging women) and the rash of deaths that keeps breaking out among those he cares for, Duffy has stayed with the force in Belfast.

And it's in Belfast we find him at the opening of RAIN DOGS, taking extra hours of work in order to meet "the most famous man in the world," Muhammad Ali. Yes, The Champ really did visit Ireland -- land of one of his ancestors -- and Duffy even gets a handshake from the formidable and charismatic fighter. But when the day resolves into the ordinary again, and he's home with his younger girlfriend Beth, the good luck hasn't rubbed off on the rest of his life: She's leaving him, as she's told him she would. And the next morning, when a fair sort of world might allow him to enjoy snuggling with her one last time, the phone's ringing with a call to work: a politically sensitive theft, followed like clockwork by a dead body discovered in a locked ... no, not a locked room, a locked castle.

Long frustrating hours of work follow, with nothing seeming to fit. In the usual life of Duffy, each return to the car means another exam of the undercarriage for a mercury tilt-switch bomb, easy to tuck under a police officer's vehicle for another killing in the endless enmity of Northern Irish life, Prods (Protestants) against Catholics, British rule against home rule. Any progress for Belfast will depend on a hand from elsewhere, especially a financial one. Could a Finnish corporation buy into the barren Belfast landscape and bring work to the battered city? This too puts pressure on Duffy: Solve the case so the visiting dignitaries can go home. And by no means can he consider any of them to be suspects in what must, after all, be suicide of a depressed journalist. Yes?

No. McKinty interleaves risk and assault with insight and companionship. Duffy's interactions with his team include solid partnership with the tough and seasoned Sergeant McCrabben, and generous mentoring for young Lawson, whose main roles involve placing phone calls and carrying report.

"Stomach contents? Where's the full autopsy report?"

"Hasn't arrived yet," Lawson said.

"What's the holdup?"

"Uhm, I don't know. I did call them, sir. Apparently there's some kind of problem. The pathologist is carrying out more tests."

"Why?"

"They wouldn't tell me." ....

"Well, find out, Lawson. You can't let these people run roughshod over you. You're a policeman."

McKinty's wry humor enlivens many of the scenes, but make no mistake -- this is police investigation in a dangerous time, and Sean Duffy may get some fun from teasing his team a bit, but death, well, that's something he takes seriously. And personally.

The locked-castle problem, the suicide that's a murder, the bombs and riots ... this is Duffy's Belfast. I enjoyed book 4 (Gun Street Girl) a lot, and saw some bits here that fitted with the earlier book, but mostly RAIN DOGS reads just fine on its own. Good twists, affection balanced with work, quick pace, well-managed suspense, yes, it all adds up to another great read from McKinty.

And if the ending seemed just a bit unusual for this series, well, I figure that's because book six will depend on these pieces falling into place. No spoilers, but I'd like to hear your opinion of the finale, especially if you'vee read the earlier books in the series. Deal?

Make time for this one. Seventh Street Books released RAIN DOGS in America today. That gives you just a little more than a week to get your copy, devour it, and be properly in the mood for a darkly enjoyable St. Patrick's Day.

Depths of Evil, Roots of Crime, in THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND, Stuart Neville

Stuart Neville is the master of "Belfast Noir," gritty crime fiction set in and around Belfast, Northern Ireland. The port city is a living memorial to "The Troubles" -- the political and religious fever that drove Neville's earlier series, where violence kept emerging in successive family generations, responding to the horrors and repression of the 20th century (which, let's face it, were rooted in turn in the "Potato Famine" oppression).

In THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND, Neville forsakes his series and its close ties to recent history. Instead, through two powerful women in law enforcement and a pair of very damaged brothers, he probes the nature of evil and the way it spreads. The contagion of the murder committed by 12-year-old Ciaran Devine and his older brother Thomas has infected DCI Serena Flanagan, who received Ciaran's confession eight years earlier.

Flanagan's never quite believed the confession, though. Maternal instincts, perhaps? The young foster child seemed too vulnerable, too much manipulated by his darker brother. And it's clear to Flanagan that Ciaran's insistence on being the only killer of the boys' foster father -- leaving Thomas as accomplice -- has saved Thomas from a lengthy prison sentence and made sure that Ciaran's own was "just" the eight years assigned to a child.

Flanagan's kept her doubts close to her chest. But that, in turn, has festered: Her return to police work at the same time of Ciaran's release from prison is a return from radiation treatment for breast cancer. Although she's not especially introspective, Neville leaves little doubt that Flanagan's urge to pull young Ciaran -- now a hormonally confused young man -- to her breast may be a toxic mistake.

Then there's Paula Cunningham, the dedicated Probation Service officer who'll escort Ciaran out of prison and into the monitored life ahead of him.

Cunningham had entered the Probation Service twelve years ago ... As a postgraduate student, she had spent summers working on the wards of psychiatric units, then a year in Maghaberry prison, counselling inmates. She had learned things in those days that would stay with her until her last breath, like the terrible cost of casual violence, and how poorly the system dealt with those who inflicted it.

But was the action of the Devine boys casual violence, or was it planned revenge? And what revenge may the surviving family member of that long-ago foster household desire?

While the twisted menace of Ciaran and Thomas is a meticulous portrait of how abuse can blossom as violence, Neville's compelling investigation of what drives DCI Flanagan becomes the counterstroke of the plot.

Flanagan had seen many murder scenes. The ugliness of the act, the indignity of it. ... Sudden and violent death rarely visited those with stable lives, with loving families, with purpose to their days. More often than not, murder happened on drunken nights between friends brought together by their mutual dependencies, petty arguments exploding into bloodshed, kitchen knives buried in throats, heads cracked open by heavy objects. No planning, no intent, only rage unleashed.

But this was different.

Flanagan's effort to get Ciaran to tell the truth involves showing him that he can survive without being a puppet of his malicious older brother. But by threatening the bond of the brothers, Flanagan unleashes a tide of rage and violence against all the people around them -- especially these two women in law enforcement. Is it worth it? How good are her instincts? What evidence can there be, or what subsequent admissions?

Don't look for quintessential "Irishness" in this one -- aside from the scraps of Belfast language and the slightly different criminal justice system, THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND could take place in any harsh urban environment, even in a suburb. And that broad application, coupled with relentless insight into abuse and its consequences, is what makes this book an instant classic of crime and investigation.

There's a rumor that Flanagan will be a series character herself. That's good news: Stuart Neville's decision to confront crime's long roots may benefit us all. And to publisher Soho Crime, again -- thanks.

Policing With "The Troubles": Adrian McKinty's 4th in Series, GUN STREET GIRL

It's Belfast, Ireland, in 1985 -- and any de facto truce between the religious parties on hand is about to blow up. Meanwhile, Inspector Sean Duffy hasn't had enough sleep to investigate a crime scene, but there's little choice when his new young boss calls him to sort out a violent scene at the local upscale brothel. McArthur's eager for Duffy's help resolving a scene that involves a public relations catastrophe. Within a few more paragraphs, we know a lot more about Duffy himself, as he interviews the "working girl" facing him:

"All right. What happened, love?" I asked her.

"The gentleman and I were about to get down to business. And he said I should have some ... rocket fuel, he called it. I said no. He said come on and try it, it would make us go all night. I said no. He gets all eggy and starts screaming and yelling and I says, right, I'm calling security. He goes bonkers and tries to bloody choke me and I pick up the lampshade and clock him with it."

"Good for you," I replied.

"And I immediately called Carrickfergus RUC. I'll have no nonsense like this in my establishment," the woman in the red wig said. Obviously the lady of the house. ...

"Where is this rocket fuel?" I asked.

Chief Inspector McArthur handed me a large bag of white powder. Enough to power an army. I tasted it. High-quality coke cut with nothing. Probably pharma cocaine manufactured in Germany, worth a bloody fortune. I sealed up the bag and put it in my jacket pocket.

"Have you weighed the cocaine?" I asked the Chief Inspector.

"No."

Excellent. "I'll do it at the station and enter it into evidence."

Clever Inspector Duffy, right? But the real problem in the scene is the identity of the brothel customer, which the Chief Inspector already knows -- so after a bit more clarification, Duffy arranges for the players to pressure each other into a solution, just the way he's used to doing in his own neighborhood, where he's the lone Catholic on a block of Protestant roughnecks. And for that matter, at the station, where again he's the only Catholic in a team that's in danger daily.

Duffy's quick wit and smart actions serve him well, but in the next case about to drop on his shoulders, a double murder followed by a pair of apparent suicides, it's the other part of his nature that's going to hang him up: always a significant detail just out of reach. And although he has a steady habit of checking under his car for bombs each time he returns to it, there are other dangers he isn't noticing in time to stop the damage.

Like McKinty's earlier three books in the Detective Sean Duffy series (one of them reviewed here), the plot's tight in GUN STREET GIRL, the action fast, and Duffy -- despite his self-medicating lifestyle -- is an achingly likeable cop who's been pushed out of any chance of promotion. That is, until an agent from MI5 steps back into his life, in the most confusing of ways.

Count on dark situations, crimes stacking up, not all that much direct gore actually but a lot of emotional pain, and a poignant share of Duffy's enduring confusion about the women who entrap him. Add a very human version of the Irish protests and violence of that year, with the flavor of the month being loss ... and grief ... and soon Duffy's lifestyle is making way too much sense.

I was sorry the book ended. I could have gone on for a lot longer, looking over this detective's shoulder and noting the way his heart, like the heart of Ireland, was breaking over and over.

Highly recommended. And very, very satisfying.

UK cover.

Release Day: THE FINAL SILENCE, Belfast Very Very Noir, from Stuart Neville

The fifth book in Stuart Neville's Belfast, Northern Ireland, series reached publication today. That's a very good thing. THE FINAL SILENCE continues the harsh, difficult saga of (now former) police inspector Jack Lennon, as he fights for a medical pension, for a chance to raise his own daughter, and for his self-respect.

But all his battles happen on the killing ground of murderers and perverts, and this one opens in the home of a recently dead man, Raymond Drew. His niece Rea Carlyle -- herself the daughter of an up-and-coming politician, Graham Carlyle, who's so close to what he wants that he can't afford to let anyone stand in the way -- sees her own chances improving when her parents offer to give her the newly vacant house where Raymond lived in solitude for so many years. It's easy enough to clear out the few impersonal items her uncle lived with. But a locked door to one more room commands Rea's attention, and when, solo, she manages to pry the door open, the journal of perversion and murder that she discovers turns loose the forces of darkness around her.

A recent roundup of "Nordic noir" by New York Times reviewer Marilyn Stasio pointed out that the crush of dark Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers that recently raced to translation into English (following the path of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) build their power from the force of politics in those wintry nations. It's not just their national entanglements with Germany during the two "World Wars" that pounds through these books, but also mass murders, ethnic prejudice, torn social fabric in the transformation of rural peoples into crowded urban lifestyles. (I recommend it: here.)

Similarly, Neville's Belfast series has taken the pain and horror of Northern Ireland's history and used it to construct malicious gangsters, potent sociopaths, family networks of poisonous loyalties. Through Inspector Jack Lennon and his intermittently psychic daughter Ellen, and a few other "sensitive" if dangerous acquaintances, Neville has poured the horrors of the Irish past into both killers and hauntings. He's made it clear that the ghosts that threaten us are the guilty crimes of our pasts -- and he's done it with adept storytelling.

Now, in THE FINAL SILENCE, Neville lets the force of history slip backstage as he focuses on Jack Lennon and the crushed and disgraced career that Jack's dragging behind him like a deadened limb. Somewhere in the discovered journal and the devastated family that's linked to it, Jack Lennon sees the "one more crime" that demands his skills, whether or not he's officially on the case. But how successful can a man be whose life is such a train wreck? One of the few retired officers who still believes in Jack Lennon is his old colleague Chief Inspector Uprichard -- but even he turns blunt with Jack, despite sharing a shard of personal loss with him. What does it matter if such a sorry wreck as Jack Lennon says he's sorry for Uprichard?

"I don't need your pity," Uprichard said. "I just need you to understand that I won't help you if you won't help yourself. You've been digging yourself into this hole for how long now? When are you going to reach the bottom? You've all but lost your career. Your daughter's gone. You've got a cop after you for murder. How much worse does it have to get for you, Jack, before you stop digging?"

And yet with all that -- and all the blood and threat around Jack -- there is, as it has been before in Neville's work, a question of the dogged human capacity for loyalty and love that might, just might, put an end to a series of deaths.

But really -- what will it take for Jack Lennon to give up self-medicating and forge a new partnership with a real investigator? And what else does he have to lose?

Neville's pace and relentless pressure on his characters create a book that can't be put down (at least, if you're willing to read your way into such darkness to start with). A police manhunt by broken people who can't help fighting for justice ... yes, that's well worth reading, in this latest Belfast neo-noir. And no, you won't need to read the other four first. But each of them is different, and powerful, and I recommend them all. From Soho Crime, once again.