Review: THE LONESOME HEART IS ANGRY by Paul Charles

Born in Derry, but living in London for most of his adult life, Paul Charles first came to our attention with the Camden Town-set series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, publishing his debut, I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass, in 1997.
  There have been ten Christy Kennedy books in total, and Charles has also written a pair of crime novels set in rural Donegal, but he goes back to his roots for The Lonesome Heart is Angry (New Island Books), which is set in the early 1960s in the fictional Co. Derry town of Castlemartin, which also provided the backdrop to The Last Dance (2012).
  The opening brings to mind both John B. Keane and Sam Hanna Bell’s December Bride. Michael Gilmour, Castlemartin’s resident matchmaker, is shocked when he is approached by the twins Pat and Joe Kane, local farmers in need of a wife. Unfortunately, they intend sharing a single wife. Outraged by the impropriety, not to mention the potential damage to his own reputation, Gilmour sends them on their way, only to be deeply wounded when his beloved sister-in-law, Maggie, agrees to accept the twins’ unusual terms and conditions and marries Pat Kane.
  It’s not long before Michael Gilmour’s instincts about the ‘unnatural’ arrangement are proved correct. Joe disappears after a vicious and very public fight between the brothers, and the rumours of the local gossips force District Detective Inspector Doyle – a devotee of the methods of Sherlock Holmes – to investigate the intimate lives of the Kane clan …
  The Lonesome Heart is Angry is a delightfully genteel mystery novel, one that is very firmly rooted in the ‘cosy’ end of the spectrum. Apart from a couple of instances of fisticuffs, there is little here that remotely approaches the blood, gore and violence that characterises much of contemporary crime fiction. The diminutive Detective Inspector Doyle – aka ‘Wee Doyle’ – may well be investigating the disappearance and possible murder of Joe Kane, but that narrative strand is only one aspect of Paul Charles’ own exploration of a gentler, kinder time and place. His affection for his cast of quirky characters is palpable, as is his description of the town of Castlemartin itself, a fictional version of Charles’ own hometown of Magherafelt.
  The folksy, conversational tone, however, is bittersweet. The matchmaker, the bumbling policeman and the idyllic rural setting give the novel an old-fashioned air, but Castlemartin is a town in the early stages of a cultural revolution. The soundtrack in the local cafés and fairgrounds is jarring: The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles. Charles, who has spent most of his life working as a music promoter – his clients include Tom Waits, Christy Moore, Elvis Costello and The Waterboys – even has Wee Doyle’s investigation turn on a crucial clue provided by a Beatles single. Change is coming to Castlemartin and washing away the old values, and even paragons of virtue such as Michael Gilmour and Detective Inspector Doyle aren’t able to stem the tide.
  Curiously, perhaps, and in common with John McAllister’s similarly set The Station Sergeant (2012), religion and sectarian conflict play no part in The Lonesome Heart is Angry. The citizens of Castlemartin are entirely pragmatic when it comes to rules, laws and commandments, Heaven-sent or otherwise, adapting instead to circumstance as they see fit and bending to authority, as Wee Doyle discovers when he starts asking his questions, only when it suits their own agenda.
  It all sounds deliciously idyllic, of course, but the fate of Joe, Pat and Maggie Kane suggests that no society or community can thrive indefinitely if it is composed of moral anarchists, regardless of how friendly and sociable they might appear to be. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner

“The Beatles And The Stones / Sucked The Marrow Out Of Bone …”

The Grand Viz puttled off to the theatre on Monday night, as is his wont, to see Big Love by Charles Mee at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre. Big Love is based on Aeschylus’ (right) The Suppliants, plus fragments of the second and third part of a trilogy since long lost, which allowed Mee a large dollop of artistic licence. Anyhoo, the general gist is that 50 Greek brides are coerced into marrying their cousins, and agree a pact to murder all 50 husbands rather than submit to force. Racy stuff, no doubt, and something Quentin Tarantino is no doubt looking into as you read.
  But what caught the Grand Viz’s attention was the programme notes, in which Mee ventures a rather radical idea thusly:

‘There are those who take their Greek tragedy very seriously – so seriously that they believe if this trilogy [The Suppliants] of Aeschylus had survived, rather than his Oresteia, that the world today would be an entirely different place, with a foundation myth that would have made us much better off. The story of the Oresteia is that a dreadful act is committed and a cycle of revenge put in place, brothers murdering nephews, fathers murdering their children, children murdering their mother – until finally the goddess Athena comes down to earth and convenes a trial, renders a verdict, and a system of justice is established, and the cycle of revenge is ended.
  ‘The story of the trilogy of The Suppliants is that, after an immense bloodbath, Aphrodite appears, and absolves the homicidal 49 brides-to-be of their crime – suggesting that, as dreadful as their acts had been, no purpose was served by a cycle of revenge or even by a system of justice. Rather, the brides-to-be should be forgiven. The world should be governed not by the principle of ‘justice’ but by the principles of mercy, forgiveness, compassion and social love.’

    The world would be a better place if the consequence of murder and rape was compassion and forgiveness? To the Grand Viz’s way of thinking, this is – not to put too fine a point on it – balderdash. Or is the Grand Viz simply conditioned by 2,500 years of patriarchal programming? And here’s a thought – would Mee be so free and easy with his mercy and social love if the original play had been about fifty brides-to-be who slaughter their prospective husbands? And – lawksamussy! – what would happen to the crime-and-punishment narrative of crime fiction were notions such as justice and revenge to become obsolete?
  Personally, the Grand Viz tends to think that all that ’60s peace-‘n’-love and social justice is a very good idea, but only in theory and with the benefit of hindsight, too much dope and a soundtrack of The Beatles and The Stones. His emotional reaction to issues of crime and misdemeanours, on the other hand, harks back a couple of thousand years, predates Aeschylus, and can be gisted thusly: an eye for an eye.* The question then becomes what kind of society you want to live in, one governed by logic or emotion.
  A final question – is it possible to write a crime novel according to Charles Mee’s suggestion that, ‘The world should be governed not by the principle of ‘justice’ but by the principles of mercy, forgiveness, compassion and social love’?
  Answers on the back of a used fifty in the usual box, please. The vid, by the way, is of the House of Love doing The Beatles and The Stones. Roll it there, Collette …

* It doesn’t make us all blind, by the way. It leaves us keeping an eye on one another.