GREAT READS FOR JUNE, 2015
The
Whites, by Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt.
It
is my misfortune that I have not read any of Richard Price’s previous
novels. After reading ‘The Whites’ I now
want to devour all earlier work, regardless of whether he uses a pseudonym or
not! According to the cover notes, ‘The
Whites’ is his first thriller – well, I certainly hope it won’t be his
last: Mr Price is a master of suspense
and knows better than most writers of the genre exactly how to keep the reader
turning the pages at a furious rate. His
characters are larger than life but live and breathe as we do, trying to make
the most of their existence on this earth for themselves and their loved ones –
which is the sole aim of Billy Graves.
Billy Graves is an NYPD detective permanently working on
the night shift, not by choice but as punishment for a long ago mistake he
made, aiming to shoot a criminal but bringing down a 10 year-old boy as
well. His atonement will last for the
rest of his life but he is supported by his wife Carmen, a registered nurse,
his family and a group of staunch friends, ex-cops who are now all retired but
have one thing in common: they call
themselves the Wild Geese, and are completely loyal to each other. Their aim is to eventually bring to justice
criminals who quite literally have gotten away with murder, and every member of
the Wild Geese has a ‘pet’ crim, one that they wish the most painful death
imaginable on. These monsters are known
as ‘the Whites’.
Billy’s own particular monster is Curtis Taft, killer of
his ex-girlfriend, her 14 year-old niece and her 4 year old daughter,
afterwards going home to sleep with his new girlfriend. Billy wants him dead, but not before he
suffers first.
The other WGs feel exactly the same way but are seemingly
astonished when the Whites, one by one, start to die or disappear presumed
dead, and it is Billy’s job as the only unretired member of the band to
investigate the homicides. What he
discovers fills him with dread, but worse things are to follow: someone is stalking his family.
His son comes home from school having been patted on the
back by a stranger who left a red handprint on his jacket – red paint, but
looking like the real thing; Billy’s
father, an ex-policeman in the early stages of dementia is collected from home
and taken to his old beat miles away,
causing the family terrible consternation until he is found; and a bag of red-stained children’s clothing
is thrown on Billy’s lawn – paint again, but the inference is clear.
Suspense mounts with every page,
despite the reader being informed in the first few chapters of the stalker’s
identity for Mr Price (Brandt?) has created a character with which the reader
has a real love/hate relationship. He is
a master observer of the myriad faults of human nature, and just how far a man
can go to protect those dear to him before he finds it impossible to live with
himself. This is a great story from a
very fine writer. Highly recommended.
Susan
Wilson’s ‘One Good Dog’ was the first of her books that I lucked onto in our
library; how fortunate was I to discover
her, for to any animal-lover she is the
author of choice. So far in my
experience, no-one is better than she at writing of the great bond between man
and dog; the power of such a friendship
to redeem a damaged human – and the terrible cruelty that man can inflict on a
creature who is prepared to trust him completely.
Cooper
Harrison is just such a damaged human.
He was formerly a member of Boston’s K-9 unit, happy in his work, his
marriage, and with Argos, his beloved Alsatian partner: what a team they were! Until Argos is killed in action and Cooper is
badly wounded, and try as he might, he can’t manage his life after such a
tragedy. His wounds are severe but are
nothing compared to the grief he feels at the loss of his devoted canine friend. Gradually his formerly ordered life starts to
unravel: his marriage fails; he resigns from the force, and if it weren’t
for an offer of a job as Animal Control Officer from the Chief of Police of his
former home town, Harmony Farms, his future would be unthinkable.
As
it is, Cooper knows he must ‘man up’;
‘get over it’(!) and ‘stop feeling sorry for himself’, but Harmony Farms
is not the place where he wants to rehabilitate himself, for he left a father
who was the town drunk, and an older brother, a vicious bully who decided that
selling drugs would be his occupation of choice – until he was caught and got a
twelve-year sentence for drug-trafficking.
He will have finished his sentence soon.
They are the last people that Cooper wants to make contact with; that was why he left Harmony Farms the day
after he graduated high school; to get
away from his pathetically dysfunctional home life and turn himself into the
opposite of what his father and brother were.
He intends to avoid them as much as he can – if possible.
And
he does, for the most part. And he is
surprised to find that the work of being a glorified dog-catcher is not as
onerous as he first thought. In his
wrangling of and search for missing pets he reacquaints himself with good
people from his youth, people who don’t regard him as a laughing-stock because
of his family. Even though he swears he
won’t do the job for more than a year, he finds a certain satisfaction in
caring for animals and rehoming strays during the day – but the nights are hard
to bear: that is when the nightmares
take over. Since he lost Argos,
dreamless sleep has become a rarity, and continues as he hears reports of a
skinny yellow dog, a stray that favours its hind leg but is still agile enough
to raid trash cans and slink around chicken coops. Yep, all part of the day’s work: Cooper will trap the dog, find out who owns
it (or not) and proceed to the next case.
In a perfect world – for what he discovers when the dog is eventually
found is a case of such blatant cruelty that his old policing instincts come to
the fore. Whoever did this must be found
and punished. If the same terrible abuse
were done to a human being the guilty one would be imprisoned for years: it should not be any different for a helpless
animal.
Once
again, Susan Wilson tugs at the heart-strings, but she is such a quality writer
that the reader feels privileged to enter Cooper’s story, harrowing as it is. All her characters are true-blue, even
Cooper’s sorry father and brother, the lesson being that not everyone is beyond
redemption, as long as the will to change is still alive. Highly recommended.
The
Good Luck of Right Now, by Matthew Quick
Bartholomew
Neil has lived with his staunchly Catholic mother in the same house in
Philadelphia for all of his thirty-eight years.
He never knew his father, believing his mum when she said that his
father was slain by the Ku Klux Klan when Bartholomew was a baby, ‘because the
KKK hates Catholics as well as Negroes and Jews’. Fair enough;
his mum is all he needs in his life;
she is his guardian, his friend, and his haven from the cruelty and
bullying he experienced all through school because of his size and inability to
express himself. Though lonely for the
feminine companionship that ‘normal’ men seem to come by so easily, Bartholomew
is reasonably content with his life – indeed he expects nothing will ever
change: escorting his mum to mass; the frequent visits of one of the parish
priests, Father MacNamee, to their home for meals and religious advice; his daily visits to the local library, there
to pretend to read the newspapers so that he can admire a shy volunteer
librarian - until his mother dies of brain cancer.
Bartholomew is completely unmanned, and more shocks are
in store: found in his mother’s underwear drawer while he is packing up her
clothes is a letter – well, a ‘Free Tibet’ circular really, from Richard
Gere. RICHARD GERE, THE MOVIE STAR! Why was Mum corresponding with Richard Gere
in the last stages of her life? What can
this mean? Could there be … A Cosmic
Connection? (Bartholomew is a great
believer in the Jungian theory of Synchronicity). To add to his grief and confusion, his
trusted mentor Father MacNamee suddenly and publicly unfrocks himself in front
of a gaping congregation – then moves in with Bartholomew, complete with a vast
supply of whisky.
The only way that Bartholomew can cope with all these
massive changes is to write to Richard Gere, believing that letters to someone
his mother admired will help him make
sense of his awkward, ignorant life:
‘People often find it hard to converse with me, which is why I don’t
talk much to strangers and prefer writing letters in which there is room to
record everything, unlike real life conversations where you have to fight and
fight to fit in your words, and almost always lose.’
Matthew Quick leads the willing reader beautifully
through Bartholomew’s subsequent adventures, recounted in meticulous detail by
Bartholomew to Dear Mr Richard Gere as he meets various grief counsellors,
tries to keep Father Bartholomew away from the bottle, (for the good ex-priest
seems determined to drink himself to death), meets a foul-mouthed movie usher
at grief counselling who is mourning the death of his cat – but turns out to be
the brother of his heart’s delight, the shy volunteer librarian – and he
finally, FINALLY gets to meet her, to
have an actual conversation with her!
Bartholomew’s heart is full, and so is the reader’s as Mr
Quick takes all his misfit characters on an unexpected trip to Canada, where
much will be revealed, including the identity of Bartholomew’s long-lost father;
where he will gain comfort in his sorrow
from new friends and new unlikely situations; and an entirely new feeling of strength as he
discovers how dependable he really is.
Mr Quick’s story has it all: laugh-out-loud humour; enormous empathy for people (and there are so
many) who can’t conform to what we consider normal behaviour; brilliantly observed characters imbued with a
zest for life that permeates every page, and that rare thing: the talent to make the reader wish the story
would not end. Highly recommended.
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