Recovered physically but not emotionally from an accident which cost the life of his fiancée, followed by a downward spiral which led to his breaking of a superior officer’s nose, J McNee has wisely left the CID and has been working as a private investigator in his home town of Dundee, Scotland. Morose and cynical, he suffers from agonizing psychosomatic injuries which sometimes nearly paralyze him as a result of the violence of his past life. When he is asked to investigate a missing person by reporter Cameron Connolly, a wheelchair-bound man whose spine was broken by members of the local drug trade which he had been investigating, McNee takes the job, “off the books,” working in parallel with the Dundee CID. The missing person is Mary Furst, a fourteen-year-old girl, a promising student and artist, who is also the god-daughter of David Burns, a thug who is “knuckle deep in drug money, extortion, rackets, underground deals, and blackmail.”
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Posted in 9a-2011 Reviews, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Imagined Time, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Psychological study on Mar 16th, 2011
Darlng Jim has every characteristic that I usually avoid in novels–it’s melodramatic, gothic, completely unrealistic, filled with horror and romance and magic, and over-the-top with coincidence, bloody medieval battles, and men turning into wolves. And I enjoyed every minute of it! From the opening pages to the absolutely perfect (and perfectly outrageous) ending, I was under its spell, smiling at the author’s deliberate manipulation of my feelings, his unembarrassed use of well-worn plot devices, and his comic book style of narrative which kept the action coming and coming and coming—a book to be read for pure, unadulterated fun! Danish author Christian Moerk “breaks the rules” by setting this terrific story in Ireland, both contemporary and ancient, and does so with panache and flair–and with a huge smile on his face.
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Nominated for the Booker Prize in 1982, when it was first published in London, Wish Her Safe at Home is a startling novel with an even more startling main character, Rachel Waring, a forty-seven-year-old woman who has a dead end job, a cynical roommate, and no friends. Brought up by an overbearing mother whose sense of “correct behavior” seems to have ruined any chances Rachel might have had for a happy life, she is lonely and repressed, with absolutely no understanding of how to meet and make connections with strangers. Every event here is filtered through Rachel’s own mind, and when she becomes the sole beneficiary of an elderly aunt’s Georgian home in Bristol, she decides to leave London and her roommate. Once ensconced in the old house, which she proceeds to refurbish and refurnish, however, she becomes a “new woman.” As her voice becomes increasingly confidential and revelatory, the involved reader cannot help but recognize with alarm the growing contrast between Rachel as she sees herself and Rachel as she appears to the rest of the world. Classic psychological novel.
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A man’s compulsion to do what he considers good and right, even though it requires him to act in ways that society and the law consider morally and legally wrong, permeates this book on all levels, with several characters assuming this role of “Redeemer” in their actions throughout the novel. Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, in this fourth novel of the Harry Hole series to be published in English, introduces three seemingly disparate plot lines in this thriller set in Oslo—a hired assassin from Croatia is fulfilling contract killings in Europe and has just arrived in Oslo for his last job; the Salvation Army, its officers and soldiers, are trying to fulfill their mission by providing food, clothing, and shelter to those most in need of their help, no questions asked; and Harry Hole, an alcoholic police inspector, who is sometimes off-the-wagon, is still trying to find the Big Boss behind the gun-running and related crimes which brought down one of his fellow police inspectors in The Devil’s Star, the previous novel in this series. Despite his unwillingness (and sometimes inability) to follow the rules, Harry believes in justice, no matter how it is brought about. He, too, can be a Redeemer.
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By combining all three of the John Turner trilogy under one title, author James Sallis creates one of the most unforgettable characters ever seen, in a series of stunning, connected novels. However dramatic, skillfully developed, and intelligently written each novel is separately (and one could argue convincingly that each of these is individually a prize-winner deserving of the best of the year award for noir fiction), the idea of reading them all in one package is a no-brainer. Sallis is a writer of the first order, one of the best contemporary novelists in America today. Note that I say “novelists,” without adding any limitations, such as “mystery writer,” “thriller writer,” or “southern gothic writer.” Sallis is a writer so good that he should be known by every lover of literary fiction in America by now.
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