Mean Streets

A 16-year old girl has gone missing. a girl with a tragic past. A girl who is concealing secrets. a girl who is remarkably intelligent. And investigator Patrick Kenzie is the man who must face unimaginable drama and danger to find her……

I bought this between christmas and new year, already having heard it wasn’t as good as expected. I am, though, a big Lehane fan, or certainly a big Lehane/Kenzie/Gennaro fan. I’d loved all the previous books in the series, and ‘Coronado’ and his recent epic ‘The Given Day’, although I’d never got on with ‘Shutter Island’.

Lehane returns to the scene of ‘Gone Baby Gone’, where Kenzie was left in a moral dilemma when after a number of months he found Amanda McCready in the care of a police officer and his wife, who were trying to bring the child up properly…apart from the kidnapping bit…rather than return her to her natural, crackhead and unfit mother. Kenzie, despite severe reservations, played it by the book and took the child home, resulting in the imprisonment of the child’s uncle and the couple with whom she was staying. Since that day Kenzie has had to live with the knowledge that although technically he was correct, the rest of the world thought he was wrong, indeed it almost cost him his relationship with Gennaro, the two not speaking for eighteen months.

‘Gone, baby, gone’ was made into a film with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, that was delayed in the UK due to the similarities with the Madeleine McCann case.

In the present day, Kenzie and Gennaro have a four year old daughter, and Amanda disappears again.

This is a decent novel, if it wasn’t by Lehane. I enjoyed it, but I thought I’d enjoy it more, and therein lies the problem. Fans of the series had always wanted the author to return to the couple, but I think he left it too long. I wondered whether it was a trade off, Lehane being given the time to write ‘The Given Day’ as long as he returned with another Kenzie and Gennaro novel afterwards, but I think they may be different publishers.

It seemed a little forced to me. The author rants against modern technology, the era of texting and less conversation and manners. Nothing wrong with that but to me it seems like a protest book in a way…’hey, read this, isn’t our civilisation going to shit’ type thing, further exampled by a real rant on ‘Kenzie’s word is his bond’, presumably pointing out no-one keeps their word any more.

I found Amanda unconvincing. There’s strong and there’s strong, but she’s sixteen! It just lacked a bit of something, as though it was against the authors will, although I’ve heard that Lehane is given a very loose lead on his work.

Lehane is a superb writer, but if you’re going to start reading him, don’t start here.

Spring 1981. Newly promoted and posted to Carrickfergus CID, Detective Sergeant Duffy has hardly had a chance to unpack when he’s landed with two very different cases: what may be Northern Ireland’s first ever serial killer and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. It’s no easy job – especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with one of their sworn enemies in the UVF.

For Duffy, though, there’s no question of whose side he’s on – because as a Catholic policeman, nobody trusts him.

Ireland. a confusing place for many people, for its not an easy place to understand. The author himself has said that he’s not sure that Americans like reading about ‘The Troubles’ as it confuses their simple stereotypical viewpoint of rolling hills, rugged coastlines and Guinness, or so he’s been told.

This is not a book about rebels fighting a cause, nor does it go out of its way to damn the ‘invading’ British. This a book about the struggle between a multitude of sides too far gone, who know no difference in life than the conflict they’re involved in, where everyone involved is covered in grime, and at the time there was no end in sight.

I have been a fan of McKinty since chancing upon his Michael Forsythe trilogy, and most of his work is written with his home country as a backdrop. He has been criticised (not by me) as being too violent in the past but this flew past my eyes with more polish than his previous works.

McKinty goes bare knuckle with his characters, loosely fitting them in with existing (if unconfirmed) players in the game, and gets across the dangers of the life that Sean Duffy chooses superbly. When I was a child in the playground and we were inventing various war games there was always a limit to who anyone could be: the Germans were relatively acceptable and the little we knew of the SS were just about okay, the Japanese produced a few sideways glances and looks of distaste, the Apaches even more so, but the IRA? Maybe it was the times we lived in but if the IRA were mentioned there would be a period of silence before we all trooped off to play football….even eight year olds knew not to mess with the IRA! I’m glad I’m not in the playground today.

In truth, with the two projects that I myself have written having exiled Irishmen as the main characters, and in the same time frame, I was always going to enjoy this. What I didn’t expect was not to be able to put this down. Here I was, trying to finish my CWA Debut Dagger presentation and having just finished Patrick De Witt’s ‘The Sisters Brothers’, another I recommend (anybody who’s read it will realise the language difference between the two took a while to get used to) and I finished this book in two sittings. Now even as an avid reader, I don’t tend to fly through a book that quick.

Maybe its because its my era, or maybe because its roughly connected to my own writing, I cannot praise this book highly enough. I find it uncomfortably early to think that will be the best book that I read this year, but I believe that will be the case.

Buy it.

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Chris Hawk’s daughter has been accused of murder and she look’s as guilty as sin. If Chris is to find out what really happened, he needs to learn everything about his daughter, but he’s beginning to realise he hardly knows her at all.

Chris wants to believe Olivia is innocent, but belief is only the first step. Now he has to prove it.

And all the while, her enemies are waiting, baying for her blood……

When this one came through the letterbox, I must admit that I wasn’t sure it was quite for me. I’d never heard of Brian Freeman for a start, and the book just came over as a bit of a Patricia Cornwell novel for some unknown reason, a type that I tend to struggle with.

So when I finished my previous novel, I looked at my couch which had a number of new books recently purchased sitting on it, and pondered my kindle which had about the same number stored and unread. No, I thought, I best give it a go, and picked it up wondering how you explained not finishing a book you’d said you’d review.

The next thing I knew I was on page 150!

First and foremost, this is a brave book. It deals with a lot of hard subjects: family seperation, family illness, coping with cancer, coping with being thrown back together in times of stress, coping with coping, and obviously having to deal with the fact that it appears your daughter is a murderer. There’s also a real biggie taboo thrown in but its a plot spoiler so you’ll have to read it for that.

Chris Hawk is a man desperate to prove his daughters innocence, desperate to believe her when no one else will. Everyone assumes she’s guilty as it looks an open and shut case. The motive is there and she’s been placed at the scene, and more to the point she had a gun in her hand. Whilst doing this he has to cope with the understanding why his wife left him and the confusing signals involved now that they have to deal with each other again. Chris is desperate not to see his family split further apart, whilst dealing with his own faults and those at the centre of the murder investigation.

The pages turned quickly enough, and it dragged me in with me finishing it within four days. The plot was solid although I did see through it a little, but I didn’t see through the ending.

If I was going to be really nit picky, the finale was a bit Scooby Doo for me. Where the main baddy is involved in a conversation explaining everything where really he doesn’t have to. Its a hard trick to pull off in fairness and certainly didnt detract from the book itself.

A good read, recommended.

UK police thriller – pacy page-turner, with plenty of implausible twists worthy of a fantasy novel.

Below is part of the book’s blurb: a standard teaser that’s becoming passé. I suspect the proliferation of crime novels on the market necessitates such ‘stimuli’ to attract readers, but the same seasoned material is pedalled out time and again.

‘A man, a woman, a sadistic killer. As they race towards a terrifying confrontation only one thing is certain: they’re all going to fight very hard just to stay alive.’

Wow – I don’t think. Come on – this is par for the course. Can’t publishers dream-up something new?

This is the ninth book by the author – and it’s good, but not great. All of Kernick’s books have similar plots: main character (DI Tina Boyd) with a drink problem has a single-minded cavalier approach to policing. Add main character undercover cop (Sean Egan) who is determined to be more ruthless than the criminals in the name of justice. Mix in a serial killer whose alleged killing of one victim is linked to a much wider criminal conspiracy – and watch the body count rise.

The action scenes teeter on the edge of credibility, e.g. the undercover cop, Sean Egan manages to perform heroics worthy of Robocop whilst on crutches, plus having a bandaged gut-shot exit wound the size of a golf ball.

The master criminal seems to have the constitution of a Terminator robot, despite Egan’s attempts to nail him. At the climax with DI Boyd eventually appearing on centre stage (without a glass of wine in her hand and bemoaning the fact that her career would be finished – yet again) to confront the master criminal, and miraculously with one bullet left in Egan’s gun, and with the last ten seconds of Egan’s life ebbing away… there is a dramatic twist.

I have to admire the pace, but I felt the characterisation lacked sparkle – there were no relationship issues – the insipid love interest between Sean and Tina never got to first base – and the serial killer (what serial killer?) was a sham who never came into the picture except to provide background to the story. That was a bit naughty.

I also didn’t like the ‘prologue’ – it just didn’t work. Maybe the publishers thought that an action scene would hook readers in straight away – but it just confused the story and gave away what was going to happen at the end. Ignore it – start straight into Chapter One.

However – I doubt that my less than favourable critique would inhibit any Kernick fan from buying it. Three stars for pace.

His earlier books were far better. Your choice.