Review of Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan (Vintage, 2005)

Frankie Crowe is a career criminal who dreams of moving up from the junior ranks to a high flyer.  All he needs is a lucky break and a hefty pile of cash to set himself up as a player.  Justin and Angela Kennedy appear to be his meal ticket, two Celtic Tiger cubs who have become wealthy through finance and property.  Jo-Jo Mackendrick is a gangland boss, determined to protect his position and what dirty jobs do and do not happen in the city.  Crowe feels he doesn’t need Jo-Jo’s blessing, he’s earned his right to step up to the big time.  His plan is to assemble a small group of four, kidnap one of the Kennedy’s and demand a million euro ransom.  And nothing is going to get in his way: Mackendrick, the Kennedy’s or the police.  If that means the taking of lives, then so be it.

Little Criminals is a cracking read and a lesson in how write all tell and no show, using tight, sparse, expressive prose.  There isn’t a single sentence that doesn’t propel the story forward.  Rather than following one person, Kerrigan shifts the point of view, telling different elements of the story from the perspective of a handful of characters, principally the main criminal Frankie Crowe, his reluctant sidekick, Martin Paxton, kidnap victim Angela Kennedy, and copper John Grace.  The characterisation is excellent, with each character's back story, neatly and efficiently set out, with a series of wonderful scenes and realistic dialogue.  The plot is tight and gripping.  There is no real mystery element to the story, nor unlikely coincidences or melodrama, instead it simply charts how the Crowe’s attempt at making the big time unfolds, which in and of itself is highly compelling.  The whole book is wonderfully evocative of Dublin before the crash, colliding together the worlds of criminal gangs and the corporate elite.  Overall, an excellent tale, very well told.  Highly recommended.

This book was written by someone else, wasn't it?

I’ve almost finished Ghost Town by Michael Clifford, which has proved to be a very entertaining read.  I’ll try and post a review tomorrow.  The only thing that I’ve found a little unsettling is that it reads like another author's work.  If I’d been given the tome minus the cover I would have sworn it had been written by Gene Kerrigan.  It has the same voice, same style, the same locale, the same themes, and the same types of characters as Kerrigan’s books, especially The Rage and Dark Times in the City.  This is no bad thing, per se.  I’m a huge fan of Kerrigan’s writing and I’ll be buying the next Clifford book based on the quality of Ghost Town.  More just an observation.  Both Kerrigan and Clifford are reporters and columnists working for Irish papers, both are writing about the present woes of the country.  Perhaps the similarities are inevitable and coincidental.  I got the same feeling reading one of Robert Crais’ novels: it read like a Michael Connelly story and again had the same locale, same kinds of characters, same kind of storyline. 

How about you, do you ever feel you are reading a book that might have been written by another author?

Crime fiction and contemporary Ireland

First announcement of an event I'm organising. All welcome, free entry.

Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland:

An audience with Declan Burke, Gene Kerrigan and Niamh O'Connor

Tuesday, 6th March, 5-7pm, Renehan Hall, NUI Maynooth

It is perhaps no coincidence that at time of crisis and social and economic upheaval Irish crime fiction is flourishing both domestically and internationally. More than any other genre, crime fiction is said to document and help its readers make sense of the social, political and economic landscape of its setting. Talking about their own work and that of other Irish novelists, the three authors will discuss the role of the crime novel in reflecting and understanding contemporary Ireland.

Register: nirsa@nuim.ie


Declan Burke is the author of Absolute Zero Cool (2011), Crime Always Pays (2009), The Big O (2007) and Eight Ball Boogie (2003) and editor of Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the Twenty First Century (2011). He writes the influential blog, Crime Always Pays, reviews crime novels for a number of newspapers and radio programmes, and is film reviewer for The Last Word on Today FM. Absolute Zero Cool was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2011.

Gene Kerrigan is the author of four novels, The Rage (2011), Dark Times in the City (2010), Midnight Choir (2008), and Little Criminals (2007), and seven non-fiction books including Hard Cases (1996) and This Great Little Nation (1999). He is one of Ireland's leading political commentators, working as a columnist for the Sunday Independent. He won the Irish Book Award with Dark Times in the City and has been nominated for the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award.

Niamh O'Connor is the author of two novels, Taken (2011) and If I Never See You Again (2010), and the author of the true crime books, Blood Ties (2009), Cracking Crime (2001), and The Black Widow (2000). She is a journalist and true crime editor at The Sunday World. If I Never See You Again was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2010.

Review of The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (Harvill Secker 2011)

Vincent Naylor has just got out of prison for assault. His usual choice of crime is theft. Moving into an empty apartment on an unfinished development in Dublin, along with his brother Noel and two friends he immediately starts to plot his next job – an armed robbery of a security van. Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey is sailing close to the wind. He’s just been caught perjuring himself in court to protect fellow officers. Finding a link between one of his old murder cases and the execution of a banker in serious financial difficulties, Emmet Sweetman, he’s assigned to the present investigation. He’s also called in when a suspicious car is found outside the home of an old nun he has had previous dealings with. The nun’s call inadvertently unleashes a tide of violence and rage, placing Naylor and Tidey on a collision course.

Gene Kerrigan is one of Ireland’s leading columnists and a keen observer and critic of Irish social and political life. In The Rage he weaves together a whole series of astute observations regarding the financial crisis, the property bust, the Ryan Report and Church abuses, and gangland crime. The writing is superb, with prose that is engaging and well paced, credible dialogue and a range of nicely penned characters that feel like real people. Kerrigan does a fine job at tugging and twisting the various strands together to produce a compelling narrative. Whilst there are resolutions with respect to both the Sweetman and Naylor cases, I like that Kerrigan has left them somewhat ambiguous and unsettling. It fits with the whole unsettling feel of the book. For anyone who lives in Ireland what is disconcerting is that reading the novel feels like seeing society reflected back as it is, rather than simply reading a story. I was a little disappointed with his last outing, Dark Times in the City, which, whilst good, didn’t quite match up to the standard of Midnight Choir, but he’s definitely back on song with The Rage (a view shared over on Petrona). Excellent stuff.

Review of Dark Times in the City by Gene Kerrigan published by Harvill Secker (2009)

I’ve read two of Gene Kerrigan’s non-fiction books – Hard Cases: True Stories of Irish Crime and This Great Little Nation: An A-Z of Irish Scandals – and one of his previous novels, The Midnight Choir. I thought latter was a good read and had a great twist, so adding Dark Times in the City to the ‘to read’ pile was an easy choice. I picked it up in Murder Ink in Dublin.

‘I want something – I get it. That’s the way it works. We’re not equals. I say what happens.’ He leaned down, his face close enough so he could smell the fear from Finnegan. ‘I don’t have to make an effort.’ He pursed his lips, made like he was blowing out a candle. ‘Like that, you’re gone. Ten minutes later, I’ve forgotten your name. You’re not even a dead body, you’re just a missing person and your family doesn’t even have a grave to put flowers on.’

In Dark Times in the City Kerrigan gives as a good a portrayal of the relations between the new, vicious and ambitious gangsters and the older generation of Dublin’s underworld, and the ordinary folk caught in cross-fire, as any media investigative report (perhaps not unsurprisingly given he’s a highly experienced reporter). Anybody familiar with Dublin will know there have been on-going feuds between criminal gangs and tit-for-tat killings for a number of years. On Friday another gang member was shot dead at four o’clock in the afternoon in Ballyfermot, despite wearing a bullet proof vest. Kerrigan draws out what motivates the gang leaders, how they operate and the tactics they use to run their operations, and how they exert power over the innocent people living in their principle haunts, forcing them to submit to the gangster’s demands in the knowledge that going to the police will have dire consequences for them and their family and friends.

The novel’s principal character is Danny Callaghan whose has spent eight years in prison for manslaughter when he stepped into help three lads taking a beating. Eight months on the outside and repeats the mistake, intervening when two gunmen walk into a pub looking to kill petty criminal, Walter Bennett - for a short time Callaghan’s cell mate. Unsurprisingly the assassins are not happy at Callaghan’s intervention and coerce him into fulfilling Walter’s role in a struggle for territory and control between two criminal gangs, threatening him with the death of his ex-wife and her new husband if he doesn’t perform as instructed. Aided by his friend and mentor, Novak, Callaghan tries to keep himself and those that matter to him most alive as his life spirals out of control.

The writing is taut, using short half page to two page scenes to drive the narrative along. The prologue is good, but then I struggled to get into the story for the first 15 pages or so. After that the pages kept turning. The reason I think I had trouble with the opening was revealed in part three of the book which jumps back in time to provide the back story as to why Walter Bennett was the target of an assassination. Personally, I think the book would have worked a little better if it had started with this section. I don’t think it would have mattered if the reader wasn’t introduced to Callaghan until 40 or 50 pages in as the back story grabs immediately. Kerrigan is good at writing about the police and I would have also preferred to have had more scenes involving them, particularly Bob Tidey, who looked like he was going to develop into a great character and then all but disappears. Similarly there is a sub-plot with Oliver, Callaghan’s neighbour, that wasn't as fully developed as it could have been. These though are just personal plotting preferences and the book does work as is.

Dark Times in the City was an enjoyable read, though for my money not quite as good as The Midnight Choir (). I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next offering and in the meantime I’ll keep a look out for Kerrigan’s first novel, Little Criminals.