Review: UNDER THE NIGHT by Alan Glynn

Alan Glynn’s UNDER THE NIGHT (Faber) opens in Manhattan in 1953, with ad man Ned Sweeney experiencing supernatural clarity and intelligence after being slipped a good old-fashioned Mickey Finn. In a parallel narrative set sixty years later, Ned’s grandson and political researcher Ray Sweeney begins to hear rumours about the fabled MDT-48, a drug employed by the CIA in its MK-Ultra experiments in mind control. Both a prequel to and sequel of Glynn’s debut The Dark Fields (2001), Under the Night is a wild ride through history’s back channels, as Ned encounters Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Dylan Thomas, and winds up in the remote heart of the Pacific watching the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb. Meanwhile, Ray discovers himself the unlikely confidante of ex-CIA man Clay Proctor, a former adviser to President Nixon and a man who knows where a good many bodies are buried. Shot through with Glynn’s leitmotif of justifiable paranoia, it’s a tantalising tale of what-ifs and could-have-beens as Ned and Ray separately piece together an appalling account of a ‘deep state’ manipulation of the American public on a staggering scale. ~ Declan Burke

  This review first appeared in the Irish Times’ crime fiction review column for October. Also reviewed were the latest titles from Michael Connelly, Ann Cleeves, SJ Morden and Robert Galbraith. For more, clickety-click here …

Funky Friday’s Freaky-Deak

It’s Friday, it’s funky, to wit: Publishers Weekly announces that Benny Blanco’s THE LEMUR is slated to appear as a Spring 2007 Audio, despite the fact that it’s currently being serialised in the New York Times and it won’t be published as an actual, y’know, novel until June … Harrumph, etc. Staying with the pseudonymous Black family: the first sighting of the upcoming Ingrid Black novel, THE NIGHT SHIFT, hoves into view over an October-shaped horizon, with the blurb elves at Michael Joseph / Penguin declaiming thusly: “It takes a lot to spook ex-FBI agent Saxon, but with a serial killer on the loose in Dublin, this is going to be a Halloween night to remember. Ingrid Black’s novel is a dark and inventive real-time thriller …” Hurrah! Two fascinating pieces for anyone still flogging the horse called ‘crime fiction is as good as that literary rubbish any day’: Charles McGrath had an excellent piece entitled ‘Great Literature? Depends Whodunit’ in the New York Times, while Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George compile The Literary Police Blotter at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Camus, Shakespeare, Kafka, Homer, Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Dostoevsky and Cervantes are among the usual suspects being interrogated for writing ‘classic’ crime narratives … Staying with classic crime narratives: Twenty Major’s genre-busting opus THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK goes on the shelves next month – catch up here with Twenty’s drinking buddy Lucky Luciano, the ‘compassionate assassin’ … Finally, and by popular demand, it’s another Jim Steinman classic for the Funky Friday vid: yep, it’s Bonnie Tyler lacerating her vocal cords on Holding Out for a Hero from the soundtrack of FOOTLOOSE, complete with Kevin Bacon, subtitles and a pretty blatant nod (even leaving aside the chicky-run tractors) to REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (jump here for Marlon Brando’s screen-test as Jim Stark). Roll it there, Collette …