It took me a little while to get into Gallows Lane. The first 100 pages or so seemed ponderous, and somehow lacking, and I wasn’t sure about some of the police organisation and procedural elements. Slowly, however, I was drawn ever further into the book, all the careful groundwork laid out in the early stages gaining its significance as the various threads are pulled ever tighter. McGilloway’s skill is in the plotting and sense of place. He weaves several subplots in and through each other, although as with Borderlands some of the story is a little over the top, some situations are clearly plot devices, and I had difficulty believing the resolution of two strands. The result is a slow burner that shifts through the gears into a real page turner. He also does a good job of setting the reader in small town Ireland and the landscape along the Donegal/Derry border. Where the book struggles a little, I feel, is with characterisation. Devlin is well drawn and an interesting enough character – a committed family man that seems vulnerable to temptation, prepared to cut corners, occasionally hot tempered and prone to panic attacks. Many of the other characters, however, are underdeveloped. For example, we get little sense of Devlin’s wife, or the principal victims or perpetrators, or some of his colleagues, with little in the way of back stories and motivations. This is partly due to the large cast and partly due to the pacing, where characters are getting little ‘page time’. Regardless, McGilloway’s Inspector Devlin series is developing nicely and I’m looking forward to the next two books. Comparisons are often made to Rankin and Dexter, but I think Robinson and Booth are probably nearer the mark.
3 comments:
Rob - Thanks, as always, for the detailed and thoughtful review. That balance you refer to - between enough action to keep the reader interested and enough character development to make for solid characters - is a difficult one. It's very important, though, so I'm glad you brought it up.
I must admid I did not find this a very compelling book at all - I think a 2.5 from memory. I wanted to like it very much but I think the slow start ruined it for me. And its interesting you should make those two particular comparisons (Robinson and Booth) because both are writers that I have never gotten into (have read several Robinsons but only one Booth - neither are likely to crop up in my future reading)
I enjoyed this book but I think it did not quite live up to the great promise of the first, Borderlands. I think the Caroline plot is the strongest part. (A bit odd, to my mind, that I believe that in the US they are publishing this one before the first one). The next one, Bleed a River Deep, goes off the rails somewhat. However, the one after that, The Rising, is very very good indeed - luckily, the author stops the track he is on in Bleed a River and goes back to what he's best at - great police procedural, family tensions, and local political tensions.
Post a Comment