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A CARRA KING
John Brady
Orion, £9.99 |
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BUY
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Reviewed by Mike Herron |
A
young American tourist goes missing in the west of Ireland ("Maybe
the locals ate him") but turns up in a car boot at Dublin
airport, his recent travels having taken in an archeological dig
in County Mayo, which might just turn out to be where
civilisation started. His multi-millionaire dad flies in from
the States with disturbing news about his son's violent habits
just as a submerged car is found near the dig, itself containing
the body of a National Museum curator …
Meanwhile, globally successful rock groups jet in and out of
Dublin, everybody slags off everybody else's birthplace, and a
local gangster's recent, violent death gets the rumour-factory
treatment: it was a Garda-approved slaying, the whisper goes;
rough justice picking up where the other kind fell short. All of
this falling into Inspector Matt Minogue's lap while his
superior's off on holiday in, where else, America. It's a
well-loaded plot, then, and if it's a touch slow at times, its
measured pace arises from care over detail, and an insistence
that every character has a voice.
There's nobody left unintroduced here, and some of the walk-ons
(like the Elvis-adoring baggage handler) seem to want to steal
the book. But Minogue provides a centre of gravity, a character
with series weight behind him (there are a number or previous
novels); he's out of the humane, book-learning school of
detectives, but this doesn't shield him from the violent
consequences of different plot-lines colliding in an altogether
satisfactory way. The writing here is first rate; a little
elliptical at times, perhaps, forcing the reader to do some of
the work, but that's how it should be. And the dialogue
sparkles. "Here, look," a subordinate says when
Minogue appears on TV. "You're baldier than I thought you
were, er, boss." That "er" is brilliantly placed.
Orion bravely refrain from comparing John Brady to Ian Rankin on
the cover, but that's the league Brady's playing in: this is
classy stuff-deeply Irish without touting for tourists-and could
get to be habit-forming.
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