The Last Crossing, by Brian McGilloway.

 

          Brian McGilloway divides the action of his superb story into chapters alternating between the present day, and terrible events of thirty years before, when The Troubles dominated the whole of Ireland.  No-one could ever be neutral in those times;  you were either a staunch Republican and ready to die for the cause and/or kill for it, or Northern Irish, who felt the same.                       

            Now, a Peace Agreement has been signed, and fanatical enemies of thirty years ago have supposedly jettisoned their innate hatreds and are jockeying for positions in the new government.  It’s the dawn of a new peaceful  era!

            Oh, really? 

            Thirty years ago, lovers Karen and Tony are inveigled into supporting and facilitating clandestine acts of sabotage controlled by Duggan, an acquaintance who appeals to their sad history of having family members murdered by the Military and Derry Police:  ‘It’s the least yez can do to avenge their memory!’  And that’s alright, as far as it goes, until they are party to a cold-blooded assassination performed by Duggan on his best friend, who has been unmasked as a tout, a snitch, a betrayer.  This was not what they signed up for, especially as Tony, a teacher, finds that one of his pupils, a child he knows and cares about, will become collateral damage:  he can’t let that happen.

            Thirty years later, he, Duggan and Karen are summoned by political hopeful Sean Mullan;  he’s running for office and wants to exhume the Snitch’s body from its secret hiding-place, returning the remains to the family so that they will have ‘closure’, and Mullan will be seen to be magnanimous in letting Bygones be Bygones.  The cynicism of his reasoning is breathtaking, but is so outrageous that it will be successful, as the tout’s family have been searching for him fruitlessly for many years:  they truly do want ‘closure’, and as Tony, Duggan and Karen are the only ones who know where they buried him, they are the ones who must find him again.  Except that their world has changed;  life has gotten in the way and nothing - and nobody – is the same:  Duggan is still full of hatred – ‘the war is never over’;  Tony is a solitary, childless widower, and Karen has a family but has been marked forever by the events of their youth.

            And the revelations keep coming, in Mr McGilloway’s spare, beautiful prose.  Each sentence does the work of ten and his protagonists speak to us eloquently of the dreams we all have but are seldom realised.  Superlative.  SIX STARS.     

 

 

Deacon King Kong, by James McBride.

           

            It is 1969 and Cuffy ‘Sportcoat’ Lambkin is a Deacon of Five Ends Baptist Church , but he has been a sinner for many years, being a slave to the Demon Drink called King Kong, a lethal home brew made by his friend Rufus, janitor in one of the enormous New York slum housing projects in which they both live.  That Badass King Kong makes him do awful things and then forget completely that he did them, so he reacts in shocked disbelief when he hears that he shot off the ear of the local drug dealer:  Sportcoat needs to go on the run – immediately:  when Deems Clements gets out of hospital, his revenge will be terrible.  And permanent.

James McBride’s latest novel brings to life superbly the New York of 50 years ago;  the migration of black people from other states into the already ramshackle housing projects vacated by the Jews, Irish and Italians, none of whom want to mix with Coloureds or Hispanics, and the hardscrabble life those outcasts made for themselves – even establishing their own church – until hard drugs appeared, and even worse, sold by their own people.  And sold by Deems Clements, who had been coached as a very young teenager by Sportcoat to be a baseball pitcher of enormous potential – a youngster who had a chance to leave his lowly origins through sheer talent, and what does he do?  Peddle Heroin in his neighbourhood, that’s what, selling poison for The Man.  No wonder the Deacon (heavily influenced by King Kong) shot him.  And he aimed for his head, too, but because he was so drunk he got Deems’s ear instead.

Mr McBride’s novel teems with wonderful characters, all full of life, including Potts, a sympathetic Irish policeman who is wistfully attracted to the noble and statuesque wife of the Church Pastor.  Sister Gee works as a cleaner:  ‘You an’ me, Officer.  We both clean up the dirt’. And Italian Tom Elefante (known as The Elephant – now there’s a surprise!), one of the few Italians still living in the area and working at his late father’s business of smuggling, but hugely respected because he won’t touch drugs.  But he’s 40 years old, and so lonely.  Will he ever find someone to care for?

A great veneer of exuberant humour has been employed to temper the horror and sadness of the characters’ existences, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that black lives have always mattered – and always will.  SIX STARS.

        

             

The Dickens Boy, by Tom Keneally.

         In 1868, the author Charles Dickens is beloved by the world.  His books hold the English-speaking world in thrall, and each new publication, many of which started  life in episode form, is awaited with breathless anticipation:  he is a sorely-needed literary god, not least in Australia, that raw, new colony peopled by gentlemen, remittance men – and convicts, sent there for ‘The Term of their Natural Lives’.  Imagine the delight, the honour that people feel to know that the Great Man has decided to send two of his sons to New South Wales, ostensibly to Make Men of Them. 

            Fair enough.  Twenty-five year old Alfred is the first to be sent to make his mark as a gentleman drover, but Edward, youngest of the ten Dickens children (nicknamed Plorn, and as a child baptised by his father as ‘the jolliest boy in the world) is just sixteen when he makes the three-month ocean journey.  He is sent to work in the Outback because his illustrious Pa doesn’t think Plorn is ‘applying himself’ – which may be true:  Plorn is not known for academic brilliance, nor has he read a single one of his father’s novels, a secret he keeps with utmost guilt.  His only talent is cricket:  he’s a very useful all-rounder!

            Revered Australian author Tom Keneally tells Plorn’s story with great empathy of the completely different lifestyle he must accustom himself to, from food (mutton, damper and black tea for most meals) rough-and-ready colleagues (some of them shifty indeed) to the utter vastness of the landscape and the varieties of sheep that the drovers manage.  Words like ‘flock’ don’t apply here where sheep number in the hundreds of thousands – a ‘mob’ of sheep is more appropriate;  likewise the incongruity of calling boundary fences ‘paddocks’, which must be patrolled even though each paddock may stretch for fifty miles.  She’s a Big Country alright, but even more exotic and alien to Plorn are the Aborigines, some of whom work with him and are protected by his Boss.  He is fascinated by them, intrigued by their customs and agog at their equestrian skills – yes, Plorn, that homesick boy longing for England and his beloved family, believes he has truly found his niche:  he is ‘applying himself’, and hopes Pa will approve.

            Mr Keneally has recreated brilliantly Charles Dickens’s literary and family life, including his cruel treatment of Catherine, mother of his ten children, and his continuing affair with actress Ellen Ternan :  only a  master novelist could reimagine Plorn and Alfred’s  consternation at the liaison, revealed publicly at Dickens’s tragic death in 1870, but Tom Keneally has recounted Plorn’s small triumphs  and great tragedies most fittingly:  Plorn the Dickens Boy has applied himself well!  FIVE STARS.    

Broken, by Don Winslow.

            What an absolute pleasure it is to read this latest  by Don Winslow, because the quality of his writing is so reliable.  The reader knows that there’ll be no slacking off because the author is bored with his characters or fed up with the plot – in these five short stories, the opposite is true as Mr Winslow thrills, charms and horrifies us with the richness and humour of his prose and the harsh and terrible reality of criminal greed and corruption, especially among those who paint themselves whiter than us all.

            ‘Broken’ is first, telling the story of a Police family:  Mum Eva operates the department switchboard, her husband has recently retired from the police and she has two sons who have taken his place;  son Andy is a high-flying Drug Squad detective, and younger brother Danny is a patrolman.  Danny is ‘The Nice One’.  The sensitive one.  And he is the one who is kidnapped from his patrol car, tortured and murdered because brother Andy sent the wrong message to a drug dealer.  Eva and her family want – need revenge, and she instructs Andy accordingly.  Danny is avenged, but nobody feels better for it:  as she knows all too well, 'it don’t matter how you come into the world, you leave it broken'.

            The next three stories are gems, comparatively gore-free and full of sly or laugh-out-loud humour;  with continuing characters,  con-men and thieves of varying intelligence, but the story that will stay with me permanently is ‘The Last Ride’, the story of Good Ole Texan Boy Cal Strickland, not much motivated to do anything except his job as a Border Guard – until he becomes incensed at the new law that came in via the new President (Hell, Cal voted for him!) that separates asylum-seeker refugees from their children, resulting in parents being deported, and their children permanently lost in ‘the system’.  This doesn’t sit at all well with Cal, particularly when he comes across a little 6 year-old Honduran girl in a cage:  WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIS COUNTRY??!!

            And Cal is so horrified by her circumstances that he, a law-abiding (former) Trump supporter, decides to take the law into his own hands, and attempt to return the little girl to her deported Mum – knowing that should he be successful, his life as he knows it will be over, for no-one humiliates Washington and gets away with it.

            Mr Winslow is an enormously powerful writer and he demonstrates with every new novel that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.  This is a mighty book.  SIX STARS.

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins.

Young Adults.

          The acclaimed author of ‘The Hunger Games’ Suzanne Collins has done it again:  created another heart-stopping episode in her Dystopian fantasy series of America ‘After the War’, this time giving her millions of fans (including me!) a forerunner to Katniss Everdeen’s heroic exploits for her people in the first trilogy.

            In this prequel we follow the teenage life of President Snow – hard to believe such a man was ever a young man with normal hopes and dreams, but as a teenager, Coriolanus Snow (Ms Collins has a lot of fun with Latin names for her characters here) is no different from his other classmates at the Academy, an elite school in the Capitol, famed for producing future leaders – and he has a shameful secret:  despite living in a penthouse in one of the most desirable apartment buildings in the city, he, his Grandmother and cousin Tigris are struggling to put food on the table;  their family’s former rich holdings were all destroyed in the war, and Tigris has had to work long hours at menial work to keep the household afloat.  The Snows could not bear the humiliation and shame of their neighbours learning of their dire straits, so try to keep up appearances, and Coriolanus is very accomplished at presenting himself as that which he is not – rich.

            A prize-winning opportunity arises with the introduction of ‘mentoring’ tributes for the latest Hunger Games, providing back-up and support for whomever is chosen for Mentors to sponsor.  Initially Coriolanus is hugely disappointed in Lucy Gray Baird, his tribute from District Twelve – she doesn’t look like she’d last five minutes up against all the other desperate youngsters, though most of them do look half-starved and ill.  Oh well, time will tell, and it does:  readers are treated to another horrific, hair-raising and tragic account of the Hunger Games, resulting in victory for Lucy Gray, and humiliating disgrace for Coriolanus who, instead of realising his ambition of going to university, is shipped off to District Twelve as a lowly PeaceKeeper.

            And his rich, would-be friend Sejanus goes too, but for entirely different reasons:  he wants to escape from the Capitol, that hotbed of privilege and corruption, and join rebels that surely hide in District Twelve.  He wants to live a peaceful, honourable life some day. 

            Ms Collins brilliantly conducts us all yet again through a tightly plotted and suspenseful adventure that juggles ambitions, excuses and rationalisation with morals, principles and ideals:  guess who comes out on top?  SIX STARS  

Magpie Lane, by Lucy Atkins.

            A Scottish Nanny is being interviewed by two detectives in the university city of Oxford:  they wish to know her version of events leading up to the disappearance of her eight-year-old charge, Felicity, the daughter of a new, hugely influential and charismatic College Master.  What is the child like?  Has she many friends?  Does she ‘get on’ with her new, pregnant stepmother, glamorous Mariah?  Is she still grieving for her mother, dead for four years?  For Felicity suffers from a number of psychological problems, not least ‘selective mutism; she communicates with no-one except her father – and that seldom because of the demands of his job and social life.

            Dee is eager to answer their questions accurately;  the sooner they can find her damaged little girl, the better – but she gradually sees that the questions take a sinister turn, one slanted by Felicity’s parents to portray Dee as having a negative influence on the child, innocently caused by  gradually winning Felicity’s trust with affection and support, virtues spectacularly lacking in the little girl’s life.  Felicity now ‘speaks’ to Dee reasonably often, even less to her father, and never to Mariah:  it’s painfully clear where her loyalties lie.

An added and frankly eerie complication is that the ancient house they have been allocated seems to have more than its fair share of Things That Go Bump In The Night, and Mariah’s attempts to redecorate in cool Nordic colours (she’s from Denmark) horrify the other Oxford Dons, stout supporters of 400 year old traditions:  could they have given this illustrious position to someone Gravely Unsuitable?

Ms Atkins takes us on an intimate tour of the great city, bastion of all that is noble in Western thought, ‘of history, literature, philosophy, politics, art and scientific discovery’, but she cleverly presents quite a different side to those who frequent its dreaming spires:  lofty thought still descends regularly into dog-eat-dog rivalry, arrogance and ignoble disapproval.  This is no place for Felicity’s spectacularly dysfunctional family, still less for her, and the new information that a child may have been murdered in Felicity’s bedroom a century before fills Dee with dread: are they haunted, and where is her poor, damaged, mute little girl?

Ms Atkins has created an intelligent and fascinating mystery, with strong, credible characters and a pace that doesn’t falter;  add to that a wealth of intriguing historical details about Oxford luminaries of the past, and we have the perfectly written ingredients for a great reading experience.  FIVE STARS         

Crooked River, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

            I have been languishing on my chaise-longue (not really:  I don’t have one), in a decline because I have been deprived for too long of the latest adventures of fearless, resourceful and brilliant FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast – what have Preston and Child been doing?  Having a holiday?   At the very least they should have been satisfying their legions of fans with a bloodthirsty new mystery that only that silver-haired, silver-tongued and silver-eyed polymath could solve.  The wait has been disappointingly long:  I shall say nothing more, except that it’s about time!

            Our hero and his mysterious ward Constance Greene (she wears a lot of organdy;  he wears a white silk suit, making him resemble an Albino Drug Lord) are enjoying a luxurious vacation on an unnamed island off the coast of Florida, when they are visited by his new superior ADC Walter Pickett:  Pendergast’s help and input are needed ASAP as dozens of shoes of the same variety have drifted onto the shore of two of Florida’s most charming off-shore island tourist beaches.  This would be minor news – but for the fact that each shoe is filled with a foot, amputated in the crudest possible fashion.  Needless to say, Pendergast’s curiosity is indeed aroused and he swings into action, first recruiting FBI Agent Coldmoon, his colleague from ‘Verses for the Dead’.  Agent Coldmoon is vacationing too, and is most reluctant to be involved – unless he’s an equal partner:  none of this junior colleague shit – he wants recognition for nearly getting totalled in the Everglades.  It’s time to acknowledge his talent.

            Well, if that’s the price, so be it.  Agent Pendergast knows how and when to relent:  as we all know, there are many different ways to skin a cat, and he, Coldmoon and Constance are launched on another hair-raising, bloodthirsty quest for answers, including the fact that whatever knowledge they glean is available also to a very formidable enemy:  everything they find out has been hacked. 

            As the mystery gradually reveals itself the danger multiplies ten-fold, with Pendergast’s life within an inch of being snuffed out (again!), but Coldmoon demonstrates his worth as a true partner, and Constance appears as the Cavalry – in the nick of time, naturally, slaying all before her.  What a woman!  And where did she learn to operate (let alone carry – she’s a slight wee thing!) a military machine gun?  Well, as we all know, all things are possible in a Pendergast adventure;  the trick is to make it believable – and above all, entertaining:  Preston and Child are masters at it.  FIVE STARS.