Book Reviews

BY JOHN HAGAN

TO THE LIONS

HOLLY WATT RAVEN BOOKS $19.99

Previously published in the UK, Holly Watt received rave reviews for this, her first, novel. Accolades for ‘To The Lions’, included that of ‘Winner of the 2019 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award’, in addition to being acknowledged as one of the thrillers of the year (2019) by the Sunday Times, Times and the Guardian. These have all come Watt’s way – and rightly so. This is a stunning debut novel - superbly plotted, fast-paced, heart-stopping and totally entertaining. While on an undercover assignment, Casey Benedict, an investigative reporter with London’s Post newspaper, overhears a whispered conversation in her favourite nightspot leading her to believe that a coterie of rich and powerful businessmen are committing murder - just for kicks. With Post colleague, Miranda, and former Royal Marine veteran Ed, Casey sets off in search of the truth. It is a journey which takes her from the glitz of St. Tropez to the barren Algerian mountains, and in to war-torn, lawless, deserts of post-conflict Libya, where she is forced to confront the darker recesses of the human mind - including her own. The twists and turns of Casey’s investigation are fascinating and certainly ring true. Watt has undoubtly drawn on her own experiences as a former investigative journalist with the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, sharing with us some of the tricks of the trade of the professional reporter in search of a scoop. Nothing must stop the press in its quest to document the next big front-page story, no matter the cost. Watt’s punchy prose and graphic narrative helps build genuine tension, perfectly capturing the horror of the deadly situation in which Casey and her companions find themselves. At the heart of this powerful novel, peopled by a cast of convincing characters, is the scope and nature of human evil in the modern world and the gulf between the rich and those almost without hope. This sizzling, richly inventive, page-turning thriller whets my appetite for Watt’s follow up, ‘The Dead Line’, to be published later this year.

THE WILD LAUGHTER

CAOILINN HUGHES ONEWORLD $29.99

It’s an old shibboleth in the publishing business that an author is only as good as their second book. I know of many writers who have shot to prominence with a best-selling first novel only to bomb out with their second, sending a promising career into a terminal tail spin. This is Caoilinn Hughes’ second novel. Her first, ‘Orchid and the Wasp’ received rave reviews, as well as winning the prestigious Collyer Bristow Prize (2019), and being named as the ‘Best Book of the Year’ by Cosmopolitan, Sunday Independent, RTE and the Sunday Business Post. Set in Roscommon in 2008, the book follows the loves, indignities and betrayals of the Black family. Head of the clan is ‘The Chief’, a taciturn, hardworking farmer (‘dandruff flakes from his auburn-grey hair fell around him in his own weather system’) coping with his lot on the land following the devastation wreaked by the Celtic Tiger. He is aided on his smallholding by wife Nora, a chilly former nun, (’smooth as a Hunky Dory crisp in her small talk’) and his son Hart. ‘The Chief’s’ elder son Cormac (‘close-eyed, limb-chinned’,

‘part t-rex, part pelican’) is an arrogant, bullying, university graduate, eking out a nefarious living as a horse trader in Galway City. Hart, the handsome narrator, who stayed at home to help his father, poignantly documents how ‘The Chief’ is swindled out of his savings, bringing the old man to his knees, and throwing the family into chaos as it, and he, face the ultimate ethical dilemma. Hughes, with her beautiful imagery and breathtaking language, propels the reader on a vividly heady journey, exploring weakness and sacrifice, faith rewarded and loyalty abandoned. She displays a keen perceptiveness, often leavened with corrosive humour, and always fully captures the lilt, cadence and ambiance of rural Ireland. ‘The Wild Laughter’ is a novel exemplified by its deliciously crafted prose; melt-in-the-mouth prose to be savoured on the palate like a fine, full-bodied, Shiraz. This is inventive, ebullient, award winning fiction by an Irish author at the top of her game. No tail spin in evidence here. Blue skies await the accomplished Caoilinn Hughes.

PEDANTIC

ROSS & KATHRYN PETRAS ALLEN & UNWIN $19.99

The little red tractor, featured on the cover of the March/April edition of Irish Scene, was of interest to me, particularly for the word emblazoned on the tractor’s radiator – ‘Feckit’. This was also the favourite pejorative of the irascible Father Jack in the wonderful ‘Father Ted’ TV series. But what does it actually mean? According to ‘Pedantic’ it’s ‘a gentler and more acceptable, actually familyfriendly, unsexed, quasi-variation of the basic f-bomb’. Language gurus, Petras and Petras however, go on to explain how the ‘feck’ in ‘feckless has another meaning entirely. This slim publication traces the origins and evolution of the 100 words and phrases all pernickety word nerds, or should I say ‘pedantics’, need to know - and know how to use. Included are popular Latin expressions (prima facie, quid pro quo, sine qua non), Greek derivatives (hubris, epistemology), words and phrases imported from other languages (zeitgeist, doppelganger), plus an array of words we commonly hear, and use, from the worlds of science, the arts, physics and philosophy. Differences between often misunderstood and misused words, like ‘metaphor’ and ‘simile’, ‘solecism’ and solipsism’, are addressed in this useful, well researched and beautifully written etymological compendium.

ON SEAMUS HEANEY

R F FOSTER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS $28.99

I must admit I’m somewhat apprehensive when I see an historian, even such and eminent don as Oxford University’s R F Foster, author a biographical novel, especially when the subject is such a revered and beloved Irish poet as Seamus Heaney. Perhaps it’s a throwback to my days at school when the thrust of history was seemingly on facts and dates. Heaney bestrides Irish literature like a colossus; a poet and educator, admired for creativity and intellect, but also loved for being down to earth and approachable. He never forgot his Castledawson (Co. Derry) roots, and it was this homeland in rural Ulster which provided the inspiration for many of his poems. Foster’s approach to his subject is chronologically based, leading the reader through various stages of Heaney’s life, focusing, and analyzing, the poetry and literature he produced over 74 prolific years. While Heaney received many plaudits, he also came in for criticism, as Foster divulges, from other Irish colleagues such as Edna Longley who dubbed some of Heaney’s offerings as mere ‘landscape-sex-Ireland poems’. Given that Heaney lived through the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, Foster also tackles the issue as to how Heaney struggled to address the ethical dilemma of writing about the unrest without becoming a spokesperson for either faction. His wife, Marie, confirms that Heaney was ‘really a nationalist by birth and by inclination, but that nationalism was being hijacked in a way he detested’. Heaney was in Pylos (Greece) in 1995 when he received the news that he was the recipient of a Nobel Prize for Literature, for poetry of ‘lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past’. The accolade triggered, in Heaney’s words, ‘a mostly benign avalanche’, engulfing him in copious publicity and celebrations ranging from Harvard University to his local GAA club. Foster has undoubtly been very assiduous in his research and in his examination of Heaney’s poetry. He backgrounds poetic influences together with

critical reactions emanating from colleagues, media, critics and friends. I concluded the biography thinking that a more apt title might be ‘On the POETRY of Seamus Heaney’. Foster, I believe, over emphasizes his analysis Heaney’s literary contribution, perhaps to the detriment of focusing rather more on the poet as husband, father, lecturer, Irishman and cultural icon.

BURNED

SAM M C BRIDE MERRION PRESS $30.74

A warning from the author: ‘Some of the facts in this book will seem so lavishly far-fetched that I feel it necessary to assure the reader that none of this is fictitious’. In ‘Burned’, political editor of the Belfast ‘News Letter’, Sam McBride, exposes the depths of greed, mistrust, dysfunction, mendacity, graft, abuse and menace which swirled around the Northern Ireland power sharing government over a disastrous, and expensive, four year period. It all started out as a well-intentioned scheme to reduce carbon emissions by switching from fossil fuels to renewable sources of heat. Northern Ireland’s renewable heat initiative (RHI), introduced in 2012 by the then NI Enterprise Minister, Arlene Foster, was in essence, a copy of a scheme already operative in England, with the exception of 107 crucial words which were deleted. Those words focused on cost

control. This vital omission meant that the financial support available to users far outstripped the cost of heating. In effect, for every £1 spent on purchasing fuel, users could claim back a government subsidy of £1.60. Exploitation was rampant, with many chicken farmers running their boilers 24/7. Numerous agriculturists made money by abandoning stock and arable crops in favour of merely cranking up boilers to heat empty sheds. One farmer anticipated making, at least, £1 million over the 20 year life of the scheme. The joke around the traps was that those farmers with appropriate boilers needed oven gloves to open their sheds. Boilers meant profits; the more you burned the more you made; boiler manufacturers openly advertised products as ‘cash for ash’ enhancers. Incentivised waste was pandemic. Foster was notified about the scheme’s abuses in 2013 and again in 2014. In response, RHI was continued and extended. The gravy train rolled on, and by March 2016, an estimated £490 million had been wasted. Matters were brought to a head thanks to in-depth investigations and on-air revelations by BBC NI, with Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) minister, Jonathon Bell, blowing the whistle in a sensational, and emotional, TV interview. But what if the real reason for stripping out RHI cost controls was not to divert a few hundred thousand pounds to NI farmers, but to channel hundreds of millions of pounds into the coffers of a multinational agribusiness? Brazilian owned, Moy Park, a NI industrial behemoth, slaughters about six million chickens weekly to supply the ten largest UK supermarkets, in addition to McDonalds and KFC. Following the introduction of RHI, Moy Park expanded rapidly resulting in an almost doubling of its valuation by 2015. Sam McBride deftly and forensically teases out the links between politicians, their advisors, public servants, NI farmers and Moy Park by fastidiously following the money (and email) trail. He raises profound questions about governance and accountability. Who was really running NI? Certainly it was not the elected politicians (Foster never even read her own department’s RHI legislation). Disturbingly real authority was seemingly in the hands of two DUP special advisors and a shadowy ex-IRA ‘hit man’. Arguably what kept the Stormont power sharing government going was the shared desire of both the DUP and Sinn Fein for supremacy and influence in their own communities. By 2017, when the RHI scandal was at its zenith, Sinn Fein demanded that Foster, now First Minister, should resign. Foster declined; Sinn Fein withdrew from Stormont, and power sharing government collapsed. This must surely be one of the most disturbing and revelatory books in the history of Northern Ireland. McBride has produced a pacy, balanced and exemplary insight into how not to run major projects THE IRISH SCENE | 84

and how not to govern a society. He has produced a compelling expose of a system gone rotten and an unedifying examination of those responsible. For NI, the real consequences of the RHI debacle are yet to be fully realized.

BURIED

LYNDA LA PLANTE ALLEN & UNWIN $32.99

La Plante is a prolific author of thrillers with 33 crime novels to her name. Beginning with ‘The Legacy’ in 1987, she followed this with the Prime Suspect series, which featured Helen Mirren as the brittle, BACKPACKERS • TOURISTS WINDSURFERS • SURFBOARDS dogged and alcoholic, DCI Jane Tennison. Other TV blockbusters such as ‘Trial and Retribution’ and ‘The If YOU would like your Commander’ followed securing La Plante a hallowed BAGGAGE, suitcase, place in the Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame. backpacks, windsurfers In ‘Buried’, La Plante introduces a new ‘hero’, DC and surfboards SENT Jack Warr, a west-country copper who has transferred to the Serious Crime Squad in London to be near BACK to your home his surgeon girlfriend, Maggie. Unfortunately, Jack country/city while initially seems to lack the ambition and drive needed you tour AUSTRALIA to progress through the ranks of the SCQ, until he gets the opportunity to prove himself when an unrecognisable burned body is discovered in a rural cottage. Lying in the fireplace of the room where the We are the people to contact! body was found are the charred remains of almost £2 We have been in the Perth International million, which the police link to a decade old unsolved Airport for over 20 years and offer a case involving a gigantic haul from a mail train money back guarantee service. robbery. In tandem with his crime investigation, Jack, having been adopted, is also seeking to discover who is his biological father. Incidents uncovered by Jack during his inquiries, convinces him that ‘his father’ may have had some connection to the train robbery, arson and murder. Is his father a crook, and is he still Please be aware the airlines will not accept any check-in baggage that weighs more than 32kgs in one item nor can you carry more than 7kgs on the aircraft. 25 YEARS EXPERIENCE alive? During his crime investigations, Jack encounters four redoubtable female ex-prisoners, now all going straight, but who had links to the robbery. What part, if any, did these women play in the train heist, and where is the rest of the money from the operation, and UNACCOMPANIED BAGGAGE AND CARGO who has benefitted? Sadly, this is not La Plante at her finest; in fact, it’s a Phone: +61 8 9477 1080 bit of a pot boiler with all the traits of a procedural soap opera. Missing are the grittiness, tension, pace Fax: +61 8 9477 1191 and characterisation of the Tennison trilogy. Alas, most of the principal individuals in ‘Buried’, including Phone Jarrad Lewis Mobile: 0411 081 311 | Email: jarrad@exportair.com.au Jack Warr, lack depth and, at times, the narrative appears somewhat convoluted and far-fetched. Little in this sub-par outing, to suggest that Jack Warr will www.exportair.com.au have a bright literary future. THE IRISH SCENE | 85