Irish Investigations

April in Spain refers to the month as well as a person. It’s not a particularly clever pun, and to me, this was reflective of the novel as well. Is it a mystery? Not a very successful one, as the facts are laid out fairly early in the novel. Is it a thriller? There is tension building up as the pyscho killer heads towards his goal, but there are enough digressions on the way that it loses momentum and never maintains the sustained suspense of, say, The Day of the Jackal. Is it a social-interest novel about the Irish? The regular mentions of murder rather undercut the social commentary.

The premise is simple enough. A pathologist is on vacation in Spain with his psychiatrist wife, and sees a young Irish doctor who he recognizes as April Latimer, an old friend of his daughter’s who supposedly died several years ago. He calls up his daughter Phoebe, who promptly informs April’s uncle and the police. The uncle, who is a high-ranking government minister, sends a hitman to kill April so as to prevent her spilling any family secrets. Meanwhile, Phoebe also arrives in Spain with an attendant Detective Stafford.

Set in the 1950s, this is meant to be a character-driven novel, and the first sections are devoted to the loving relationship between the pathologist Dr Quirke and his wife Evelyn and their opinions about Spain and tourists. Nice enough, but it seems to have little to do with the rest of the novel.

Every character has a traumatic past, some only hinted at, until it is becomes ludicrously over-the-top. Dr Quirke is an alcoholic, always just one drink away from hopeless inebriation. Evelyn has had an extended family die in Nazi concentration camps, and also has lost a baby. The hitman was abused by Catholic priests at an orphanage. The detective has just been abandoned by his wife. A particularly massive dose of melodrama is built into the past history of April Latimer: parental incest, followed by fraternal incest, a father who shot himself, a brother who drove off a cliff, an incestuous pregnancy, and years of apparent promiscuity.

Yet, April seems largely unscathed by this history. She not only survived the trauma, but successfully made her way through medical school during all this. She kept her abuse secret throughout her life, even with her closest friends, but upon a single question by Phoebe promptly spills the entire miserable story.

So much for the plot, but what of the writing? Each character is introduced with a detailed description of mixed quality.

[Strafford] was thin to the point of gauntness, with pale, bony wrists and peculiar, pale soft hair.

What exactly is peculiar about Strafford’s hair? Perhaps one needs to have read all the previous novels to know.

There are occasional descriptions that are quite appealing and specific:

Hackett’s voice reminded her of the tea in the cafe, strong, brown, warm and bittersweet. [p159]

The accent was Dublin, south-side, middle-class. [p33]

Most of the women characters are problematic, and their actions even more so. Phoebe makes an amazingly unwise decision, and the hyper-calm Evelyn reacts even more oddly to a live shooting situation. Worst of all is the Spanish sex worker who is barely named; having just met the hitman Terry, she devotes herself to him, returning enthusiastically to him for more sex after a long day of servicing her clients. Even after he intentionally breaks her wrist, she lovingly cares for him. What could possibly be her motivation? Certainly, women stay with their abusers, but in this case Terry has no history with her, is not apparently attractive, does not pay her, and is not generous, loving, kind, or protective.

It’s all rather uneven, with an abrupt, unsatisfying ending.

I was startled to learn that John Banville is a Booker Prize winner for The Sea. Given that I have generally enjoyed the Booker authors and books, it seemed only fair to give him another shot, so I tried Snow. I was relieved when it turned out to be considerably more coherent than April in Spain.

Snow starts off with a priest murdered in a country home in Ireland, during a heavy snow. The priest has not just been stabbed in the neck, but his genitalia have been cut off. As any reader of mystery novels would surmise, this suggests a sexual intent or connection.

Aha, the classic mystery device: a small cast of suspects, with the motive doubtless hidden in the characters’ pasts. Every mystery reader will know what probing questions to ask.

But not Detective Inspector Strafford. He is bafflingly incurious for a detective. Here’s the dead priest’s sister:

“[My father] would have let poor Tom sleep at night instead of making him worry and fret.”

They were silent for a moment, as if at the passing of some dark thing on the air.

p158

That’s it, Strafford moves on to another topic.

Strafford had the feeling something had occurred that he had missed. It was something to do with the priest and his father.

p158

But no further questions?

Likewise, the body has been moved, tidied up, and the carpets cleaned, but the detective seems uninterested in who did the cleaning and why. Is this supposed to reflect the state of police investigations in 1950s Ireland?

As with April in Spain, there is a convenient woman who climbs into bed with Strafford, asking nothing in return. There are other women characters, but Strafford is far more interested in his own attraction to them than in asking them tough questions.

In both these novels, sexual abuse by Catholic priests in orphanages is a major theme. The motive for the murder will not surprise any reader, therefore.

Complaints about the characters aside, this novel is still better crafted than April in Spain. It is atmospheric, if that atmosphere is a bit heavy-handed (‘black-branched trees’,’pristine snow’, fresh blood stark against the snow’ and so on) Characters are brought onscene one by one, and though their personalities remain largely obscure, the descriptive writing is quite pleasing.

She drew back the blanket under which she was sitting and scratched her ankle. She was barefoot, and wore no stockings. There was a chilblain on her little toe, delicately pink and shiny, like her nostrils. Her skin had two shades, milk, and strawberries crushed in milk.

p200

Banville attempts to nod and wink at the Agatha Christie country house murders, but in this novel, the sex and gory details are too intense for this to be successful. (It’s much better and quite charmingly done in Lawrence Block’s The Burglar in the Library)

I haven’t read Banville’s Booker novel, but colour me unimpressed by his crime fiction.