On Sock-Puppets: Stuart Neville Speaks

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, the mood tends to be mostly upbeat and positive over here at CAP Towers. That’s fair enough, I think, given that most crime / mystery writers tend to be mostly upbeat and positive about one another.
  Recently, though, we’ve been seeing a nasty element emerge from the so-called ‘sock-puppet’ scandals. ‘Sock-puppetry’, for those of you unaware, takes place when someone invents an online persona and uses that persona to write five-star reviews of their own work for Amazon, for example.
  In itself, and while unethical and possibly illegal, that practice seems to me to be more pitiable than anything else. And if that was as bad as ‘sock-puppetry’ got, then I could easily live with it.
  Unfortunately, power corrupts, etc. Ever since Stephen Leather announced at Harrogate that he used ‘sock-puppet’ accounts to create a word-of-mouth buzz around his books, it has become - via the good works of Jeremy Duns and Steve Mosby, for the most part - more and more apparent that ‘sock-puppetry’ can also involve a writer penning negative and malicious reviews of their peers.
  This behaviour is utterly disgraceful, and it needs to be stamped out immediately.
  Yesterday, Stuart Neville (above) blogged about his own experience of being targeted by a ‘sock-puppet’. To wit:

The issue of author ethics has been occupying many minds recently, not least of all mine. After ‘Leathergate’, the revelations about John Locke’s buying of reviews, and the most recent allegations against RJ Ellory, I’ve been agonising over my own position in this. As I’ve detailed before, I have been attacked by another author using ‘sock puppet’ accounts on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. I’ve had a good idea all along who was behind it, but until now I’ve preferred to keep that information to myself. But given all that’s happened in just a few weeks, I feel keeping quiet is no longer an option. So here goes:
  I believe the author who has targeted me, along with Declan Hughes, Laura Wilson, and others, is Belfast crime writer Sam Millar. It’s possible I’m mistaken, but I feel the evidence is overwhelming.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  On a personal note, I first heard this story about two years ago, and blogged about it then, albeit without naming names, this on the basis that the story was Stuart’s and it was his to tell. Since then, Sam Millar has not featured on these pages.
  Ironically, I got a call from my publisher on Friday, to let me know that Sam Millar had requested a copy of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which he intended to review for The New York Journal of Books.
  I have asked my publisher to politely decline Sam Millar’s request, but of course Sam Millar is entitled to review the book if he chooses. Whether the NYJB will now carry Sam Millar’s reviews is another matter entirely.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ Crime Beat

Frank Parrish is a NYPD detective in RJ Ellory’s SAINTS OF NEW YORK (Orion, £12.99, pb), a man who becomes obsessed with the murder of teenage girls. Parrish is initially a conventional character, a hard-drinking loner who subverts the justice system, but it’s hard not to share his obsession, particularly as the young women are being killed for the purpose of snuff movies. Parrish is also haunted by his father’s reputation as one of the eponymous saints, a legendary cop who played a major part in breaking the Mafia’s stranglehold on organised crime in New York, although Frank is convinced that his father was a Mafia pawn. A pleasingly methodical and realistic police procedural, ‘Saints of New York’ is equally impressive as a psychological study of a man on the edge of the abyss, and Ellory invests his gripping plot and strong characterisations with an existential angst that at times makes for harrowing reading.
  Last seen in GONE, BABY, GONE (2008), Dennis Lehane’s private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro return in MOONLIGHT MILE (Little, Brown, £15.99, pb). The pair have given up their dangerous lives, and have settled into domestic bliss, but Patrick finds himself dragged back into the squalid world he once knew when Amanda McCready, the four-year-old girl he returned to her unfit mother in GONE, BABY, GONE, goes missing again. Likeable but lethal Slavic mobsters provide the narrative tension, and Lehane maintains a page-turning pace courtesy of Patrick’s laconic narration, a downbeat and blackly humorous style that is entirely appropriate for Lehane’s depiction of the banality of evil. Oddly, however, there is a sense that danger is always kept at arm’s length. Recently a father, as is Lehane himself, Patrick prioritises his family over his self-imposed duty to the missing girl. While this may well be an eminently pragmatic way of dealing with drug-fuelled killers, and further subverts the fictional private eye’s time-honoured but implausibly noble instincts to solve a case at all cost, it does have the effect of blunting the novel’s impact.
  Teresa Solano’s A SHORTCUT TO PARADISE (Bitter Lemon Press, £8.99, pb) is a Barcelona-set comic crime offering which heralds the return of the non-identical detective twins Borja and Eduard. The pair are commissioned to investigate the murder of Marina Dolc, bestselling populist writer, on the night she received a prestigious literary award. Was one of Dolc’s rivals the killer? The reader knows from the outset that the hapless novelist (and runner-up) Amadeu Cabestany wasn’t responsible for Dolc’s death, but Cabestany affords Solana ample opportunity to loose comic barbs at the literary snobbishness that denigrates genre fiction in general and crime fiction in particular. The joke wears thin after a while, but Solano also has important things to say, albeit in a deceptively light and humorous fashion, about the global economic downturn, and how formerly upstanding citizens can be driven to criminal actions by forces beyond their control. Given that one of crime fiction’s most important functions is social commentary, Solana’s novel offers a valuable insight into contemporary Spanish life.
  Susanna Gregory’s A BODY IN THE THAMES (Sphere, £19.99, hb) offers an equally fascinating glimpse of a particular time and place, in this case Restoration London. The sixth outing for professional intelligencer - aka spy - Thomas Chaloner, it takes for its backdrop the peace negotiations between the English and the Dutch during the long, hot summer of 1664, as both countries, in theory at least, strive to avoid war. Chaloner investigates the death of his former brother-in-law, Dutch diplomat Willen Hanse, who may well have been murdered by war-mongering hawks from either delegation. Wonderfully researched, the novel is pungent with historical detail, nuggets of which provide any reader who is even vaguely familiar with modern London with plenty of material to delight in. Unfortunately, Gregory’s prose, and particularly her dialogue, is rather stilted, while most of the characters - although based on historical personages - are little more than stiffly drawn ciphers for greed, power and lust.
  Sam Hawken’s debut THE DEAD WOMEN OF JUAREZ (Serpent’s Tail, £10.99, pb) offers another compelling setting, Ciudad Juarez on the US-Mexican border, a city in which locals believe the number of women who have disappeared since 1993, probably murdered, exceeds 5,000. The novel opens with punch-drunk American boxer Kelly Courter attempting to trace his missing girlfriend, Paloma, although the issue is complicated by the fact that Paloma is the sister of Estéban, Kelly’s friend and sometime partner in illicit drug-dealing. These facts are known to Rafael Sevilla, a Juárez police detective, who also takes an interest in Paloma’s disappearance, an interest that is as personal as it is professional. Hawken trades in gritty realism and a haunting sense of loss and hopelessness, and while the novel is very much a singular achievement, it does bring to mind favourable comparisons with Richard Ford’s THE ULTMATE GOOD LUCK (1981).
  The latest in Joseph Wambaugh’s series of ‘Hollywood’ novels, HOLLYWOOD HILLS (Corvus, £16.99, hb) brings together a colourful collection of LAPD cops who work out of the notorious Hollywood Station, splicing their more bizarre tales of working the La-La-Land beat with those of scammers, thieves and reprobates. The multiple storylines and initially bewildering cast of characters may leave some readers disorientated at the beginning, but Wambaugh is a masterful storyteller (this is his 18th novel), and it’s not long before the various elements coalesce into a dazzling mosaic that offers caper-style comedy, downbeat heroics, heartbreakingly authentic detail and unconventional but effective police procedural work. For those unfamiliar with the ‘Hollywood’ novels, Elmore Leonard may prove a useful reference point, with the crucial difference being that Wambaugh’s characters understand that Hollywood is a surreal stage, and that each must play their part to the hilt. - Declan Burke

  This column was first published in the Irish Times.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: SAINTS OF NEW YORK by RJ Ellory

SAINTS OF NEW YORK is a hardboiled police procedural set in contemporary New York, and has for its main protagonist Frank Parrish, who is on the face of it a stereotypical crime fiction protagonist. He is a NYPD detective who is married to the job at the expense of his family; he is divorced from his wife, and has strained relationships with his son and daughter. He is a heavy drinker and has a haunted past which largely relates to his relationship with his dead father, who was a renowned NYPD cop in his time. He has difficulty communicating with those he loves, and is also regarded as something of a loner by his co-workers. He is also under investigation by Internal Affairs, and may well be one wrong move away from being fired.
  By the same token, Ellory is a good enough writer to create a unique character in Frank Parrish. Parrish is compelling in his downward spiral, and the character reminded me very much of a policeman version of Travis Bickle, or of the bad lieutenant played by Harvey Keitel in the movie of the same name, albeit a ‘bad lieutenant’ whose instincts are for justice and the general good of society.
  It’s difficult for the reader not to share Parrish’s obsession. Parrish is absorbed by a case in which teenage girls are abducted and filmed having sex, before being killed and having their bodies dumped. Parrish quickly begins to suspect that he is infiltrating a snuff movie ring, which may or may not be facilitated by a social worker specialising in adopted teenagers.
  It helps hugely that Ellory gets under the skin of New York every bit as effectively as he inhabits Parrish’s skin. SAINTS OF NEW YORK has a real tang of authenticity, which is important given that the story depends heavily on the kind of geographical detail that only native New Yorkers might know. This is worth noting, if only because Ellory is a British writer, albeit one who has set all his novels in America.
  Among the minor characters who populate the novel are Parrish’s new partner, Jimmy Radick, and his daughter, Caitlin. Less peripheral characters are Parrish’s therapist, Dr Marie Griffin, and Parrish’s dead father, John, a legendary NYPD cop and one of the original ‘Saints of New York’, whose shadow still looms large in Frank’s life.
  For much of the novel, Frank Parrish is convinced that his father, John Parrish, was a facilitator for the Mob, who certainly took pay-offs in order that the Mob could infiltrate JFK Airport, and who may or may not have actually killed to order on behalf of the Mob. One of Frank’s obsessions is the difference between the private and the public John Parrish, and one of the reasons Frank drinks is the pressure to live up to the reputation of a man whom he believes to be utterly corrupt.
  John Parrish was involved with a number of gangsters, the most famous of whom was Jimmy Burke, a character fans of the movie Goodfellas will be familiar with. Parrish tells his therapist, Marie, many stories about his father - about the real John Parrish. One of the stories, and the one that underpins his relationship with his father, concerns itself with John Parrish’s involvement in the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK which forms the backbone to the Goodfellas story, and which was conducted by Jimmy Burke, who was played by Robert De Niro in the movie.
  I was surprised that Ellory devoted so much of the book to such a well known story, and curious as to his motives for doing so. Certainly Frank’s bid to come to terms with his father’s reputation makes for a fascinating strand of the novel, but I’m not sure that inserting a real-life story into the narrative wasn’t more of a distraction than a benefit.
  Another quirky aspect to the story is the way Ellory writes the interaction between Frank and his therapist, Dr Marie Griffin, which is achieved in chapters that are utterly devoid of any descriptive elements, and consist solely of dialogue. Ellory is an excellent descriptive writer, perhaps because of his background in photography and graphic studies, and the novel benefits hugely from his atmospheric descriptions of New York. I’m curious as to why he would deliberately eschew that skill during the conversations between Frank and Marie - although it has to be said, the conceit creates a superb intensity between the pair.
  The victims in the novel, teenage girls who are abducted and killed, are particularly vulnerable, given that they are for the most part adopted, or come from broken homes. While it might seem like something of a cliché, it’s entirely reasonable that the hardboiled, cynical Frank should respond to these victims so comprehensively, not least because their deaths cause him to reflexively think of his own daughter, Caitlin, who lives and works not too from the scenes of the crimes.
  As is usual in crime novels, the protagonist, Frank, becomes entirely consumed by the fate of the killer’s victims. Solving the case becomes Frank’s potential shot at redemption, but Ellory goes way past the clichés in outlining Frank’s empathy for the teenage girls. This is particularly true of the tone. I’ve described SAINTS OF NEW YORK as hardboiled, but there are times when it goes beyond that to verge on the existential. Some of the passages in SAINTS are a very grim kind of Zen. For example, on pg 88, when Parrish thinks about one of the victims:

“And it wasn’t simply that she reminded him of Caitlin [his daughter]. It wasn’t that she was orphaned or had a piece-of-shit junkie brother. It wasn’t that her St. Francis of Assisi friends considered her quiet and funny and pretty and sweet. It was something else. A reminder that if there was no one there to look after you, no one to keep an eye on things, then the world and all its wonders would devour you in a heartbeat.
  “You were there, and then you were gone.”

  And again, on pg 139, when Parrish is thinking about his job:

“Spend thirty years a cop you’re gonna die a cop. There was no easy way out of it. It was not a job, it was a vocation. After that it became a passion, an addiction, a crutch, a belief. Either that, or you got out. Cops didn’t marry well. They were lousy fathers. They walked out of the house into a world that no one else could see, as if only they could perceive the thin veneer that lay between what people believed was reality and reality itself. Reality was behind the crime scene tape. Reality was found at the tip of a stiletto, down the muzzle of a .38, back of a sawn-off Mossberg pump-action shotgun as it unloaded its guts into half a dozen diners in a restaurant on Myrtle Avenue. Reality was a stabbing, a beating, a strangulation, a drowning, a suicide, an overdose, a hanging. Reality was twelve-year-old junkies, fifteen-year-old hookers. It was stealing and running and hiding, and backing up into a corner while the world looked for you, and knowing full well that soon the world would find you and it would all be over.”

  All told, SAINTS OF NEW YORK is a powerful crime novel, inventively rich in its use of language, absorbing in its intensity. Highly recommended. - Declan Burke

GALLOWS LANE: Vote Early, Vote Often

Good news for mild-mannered, Derry-based English teachers everywhere: Brian McGilloway’s GALLOWS LANE has made the cut for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and belated congratulations to him. The full short-list runneth thusly:

IN THE DARK – Mark Billingham
THE SURROGATE – Tania Carver
A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE – RJ Ellory
THE CROSSING PLACES – Elly Griffiths
DEAD TOMORROW – Peter James
GALLOWS LANE – Brian McGilloway
DOORS OPEN – Ian Rankin
CHILD 44 – Tom Rob Smith

  It’s a strong list, so whoever wins it will have their work cut out, and good luck to all contenders. If you’re Irish, however, and given that the government is waffling on about how an exports-led ‘creative economy’ will lead us out of recession, it’s your patriotic duty to vote Brian. The voting form can be found here, people, and the closing date for voting is July 21st: you know what to do …