Book Review of The Resident by David Jackson

This is a compelling tale of Thomas Brogan, a self-described “serial killer” who is, technically speaking, more of a spree killer. Despite the somewhat nightmarish content, it is strangely easy to read, which is a bit disturbing in itself.

The main plot device is a row of terraced houses with interconnecting loft spaces, and this works very well and is quite plausible, because I can remember a junior school classmate who exploited just such a situation to commit his own little crime spree: in that case, the long row of 1960s terraced houses had a communal loft space which gave access to the tops of stud walls all the way along. My classmate exploited this situation to steal all sorts of things from all sorts of places, and hide them by tying bits of string to each valuable item and hanging them down inside the stud walls, where even police searches of the loft failed to find them. The masterplan was ruined, however, when one of the stolen items proved to be an alarm clock, which my classmate neglected to disarm before lowering it into its hiding place.

These communal loft spaces predictably turned out to be a lethal fire risk, however, especially in more modern terraces with stud walls as described above, and local councils made efforts to get them all fire-walled in the seventies and eighties. So it is also quite plausible that such a loft-space would be partitioned in the course of the story. I am not sure if any still exist in England, in fact: they may do, but they shouldn’t, for reasons that have nothing to do with serial killers.

The story is narrated largely by Brogan arguing with a voice in his own head, which lays the back story out nicely.

However, the one fault with this novel is that the author allows himself to fall into the trap of thinking that the back story of a serial killer has to include a real-life horror scene of some kind, for them to want to inflict similar horrors on others. This isn’t necessarily true. Often, the actual triggers are so banal that investigators think they must have missed something more significant. The biggest risk is not a horror scene in early childhood: young children undoubtedly suffer from such experiences, but without being turned into monsters. What creates the monsters is instability at home affecting male children between nine and eleven years old, or children in that age range being subjected to unremedied bullying in any setting. The lack of remedy or resolution matters, and the absence of a stable, preferably loving, relationship with a male parent or authority figure. This is not meant to be an attack on single Mums, it is an observation that absent or abusive fathers or carers can create threats to society as a whole. The author gets this bit pretty much right, but only after he’s put in the seemingly obligatory nightmare scene in early childhood, which confuses the issue.

There is a good surprise ending to the book. 

The Resident by David Jackson is published by Serpent’s Tail/Profile Books on 16/7/2020

Book Review of The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina

This is an excellent novel about a community forming around a Japanese garden -and a phone box- that allows the bereaved to talk to those whom they have lost. None of the modern Western cliches: “closure”, “coming to terms”, “moving on” or the new one: “life affirming” really apply. Japanese people do not move on from dead loved ones, nor do they wish to close them off from their present and future lives and, instead of coming to terms with their loss, they communicate with those they have lost and, in this novel, those whom they have gained.

The setting is between a terrible Tsunami and a massive Typhoon, but some of the bereavements are the consequence of individual illness or accident, including a stupid accident. One of them isn’t strictly speaking a bereavement at all. There is an extraordinary amount of kindness and respect in this book and there is no religious exclusivity: the characters are interested in each other’s insights regardless of where they get them from. I commend this book to all readers; atheists may have to work at it to some extent, but the small effort involved will be worth it.

The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is published on 25/6/2020 by Manilla Press.

Book Review of Dark Waters by G.R. Halliday

Scottish Noir isn’t as well defined in the public consciousness as Nordic Noir but most people will know when they see it, especially when they read this book. Someone once wrote in The Guardian (it must have been Nancy Banks-Smith) apropos of a BBC wildlife documentary, that a Scottish Wildcat was a Tabby with knuckledusters. G.R. Halliday is sort of John Fowles with knuckledusters, even though no actual knuckleduster is referenced in the text. The author is properly Scottish and there would be Hell to pay if an English author wrote Scottish characters quite like this.

Everyone is flawed and taboos of all sorts are broken, though not trivial ones. A Scottish biker-gang leader widely believed to be responsible for a Manson-family type double murder proves to be one of the more helpful characters which the heroine, Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy, encounters. Tension is maintained throughout and the police find that the available leads do not build a case so much as a nightmare. Even once the heroine knows what is actually going on, she is consigned to helplessness by the situation she uncovers. And some matters remain unresolved. Perhaps for future novels, perhaps forever.

This is a good and compelling read, but it is unlikely that Tourism Scotland are going to happily endorse it for sale in souvenir shops and there are shocks as well as mysteries, and some very disturbing ideas and images are conveyed by the text. Spike Milligan couldn’t think of a fate worse than death: G.R. Halliday has a brave and bold try at inventing one.

Dark Waters is published by Random House, Vintage Publishing on 16/7/2020