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A Waste of Shame
Jim Lusby
Orion £9.99 |
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Reviewed by Kieth Miles |
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For those unfamiliar with Jim Lusby's work,
this is an ideal introduction. A WASTE OF SHAME shows him at his
best - quirky, original, devious and chilling. Detective
Inspector Carl McCadden is sent to a remote village in West Cork
to investigate the murder and sexual mutilation of a woman in
her nineties, who has been living as a recluse. Local police
believe that she was killed in the course of a bungled robbery
and they arrest two suspects.
McCadden has his own theories and - as a hated outsider - he
has to overcome a whole series of obstacles before he can put
them to the test.
The narrative control is excellent. Lusby knows exactly what to
reveal at each stage, enriching the texture of the novel by
shifting between first and third-person narrators. As befits a
nation in the grip of it own history, the decisive clues lie
deep in the past. McCadden follows the trail relentlessly and
discovers that the murder victim, Hannah Fraule, was not always
the devout Catholic that she became in later years. There are
surprises at every turn and Lusby keeps us guessing until the
very end.
Lusby is particularly good at evoking atmosphere. The scene of
the crime is described with wonderful precision and the arrest
of the two suspects - following a bizarre christening at the
local church - is another convincing set-piece. Good and evil
are entwined so closely that moral ambiguities pop up all over
the place.
McCadden is an interesting protagonist. Cool, incisive and
uncompromising, he conducts his investigation with a
single-mindedness that eventually brings results. He has no
illusions about some of his colleagues. Police brutality and
corruption are all too evident. Political and religious tyrrany
are the dominant themes but the title of the book - taken from a
Shakespeare sonnet - warns us that sex has a crucial role to
play as well.
It's only on the finishing strait that the novel starts to
falter. The last few pages are disappointing because the arrest
of the killer takes place offstage and is merely reported to
McCadden. Having tracked the man through the novel, McCadden
surely deserved a confrontation with him so that a more dramatic
conclusion could be devised.
Apart from this blemish, A WASTE OF SHAME is a fine novel,
beautifully-written and highly recommended to anyone about to
drive around those quaint little Irish villages - the perfect
antidote to the Ballykissangel Tendency. Keith Miles
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