Garnethill (Denise Mina) Chapters 28-The End

Maureen is something of an anti-hero, a bit like Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who… series; not someone your mother would approve of – ‘He took the whisky from her, poured it into the plastic cup and sipped carefully.   Maureen smiled and sat down.  “You don’t drink much, do you?  I’d have walloped that back in a oner.”  Shan looked at her can of lager.  “How the f--- can you drink that stuff?  It tastes like ethanol.”  “Yeah,” she said.  “That’s why I like it.” ’  But in the end, she does an admirable job of taking things into her own hands, much to the displeasure of the police, and doles out “justice” in a way that the police would have loved to, but never can or should.

The mystery was solved in a different way than I had anticipated.  The protagonist figures out who the killer is (at least she is fervently hoping she’s right about it!) long before this reader does, and we are kept in suspense for many chapters while she goes about setting up her revenge and the killer’s exposure.  Once she targets him and carries out her plan, there’s really not a lot of explaining to do at the end, not many loose ends to tie up.  She visits Benny in the hospital (after his drubbing by her brother Liam), mainly to ask him why he betrayed her.  She shows Siobhain the footage of the newscast of the killer’s arrest, to set her mind at ease that the danger is over.  Just minor tidying up after the climax.  Visiting Hugh at the Incest Survivor’s meeting might seem unnecessary, but it implies a future friendship of some kind for them – and after all, there is a sequel or two for this book, which I fully intend to read sometime in the next year or so!

I’m not mentioning the name of the killer here, mostly out of principle, rather than in an attempt to avoid a Spoiler.  (I mean, how many murder mysteries put the name of the killer as the title of the last chapter, anyway?!)  There is so much about this novel that is original, that doesn’t fall into the stereotypes and formulas of standard mystery-writing that it’s no wonder it won The John Creasey Award for Best First Crime Novel.  The originality alone gives it high marks in my book, but I truly liked everything about it.

Best supporting character:  Leslie, Maureen’s tough, motorcycle-riding, in-your-face bestie.   There is some nice irony as Maureen gets more courageous toward the end and Leslie begins to have second thoughts:  ‘Leslie brought out a coffee for her and sat on the settee watching her drink it.  “So, what’s the deal today, then?”  “Just hang around here with Siobhain and don’t answer the door without checking it first.  When we get to Millport all you have to do is sit tight and I’ll take care of everything.”  “Right,” said Leslie quietly.  “Maureen, you’re not going to stab him, are you?”  “Naa.” Maureen climbed out of the sleeping bag and rolled it up.  “All being well I won’t even touch him.”  Leslie nodded soberly and patted her knees with her open hands.  “Are you losing your bottle, Leslie?”  [Love this Glasgow slang!]  “Yeah,” Leslie said.  “To be honest I think I am.”  “Why?”  “Dunno.  I just don’t feel like attacking anyone at the moment.  You losing your bottle, Mauri?”  “No,” said Maureen certainly.  “I’m not.  I’m getting angrier.” ’

Maureen’s method of incapacitating the Bad Guy is brilliantly detailed in the tautly-paced climax without bogging it down at all.  Just beautiful writing.  And she didn’t even touch him, just like she said.  Well, okay, besides a couple of head butts . . .  Give us more Ms. Mina, give us all you’ve got!  I for one will be returning to this “Glaswegian dystopia” for more, thank you very much!

Join us for February's book of the month:

“The 158-Pound Marriage,” by John Irving!

Amazon.com Review

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive.

Week 1:  Chapters 1-3

(First post, 2-6-15)

Week 2:  Chapters 4-5
Week 3:  Chapters 6-7
Week 4:  Chapters 8-10

Garnethill (Denise Mina) Chapters 21-27

The plot seems to be getting confusingly complicated in this section.  Or maybe it’s just me.  In a mystery like this one, we know that clues are being revealed in a certain order – or at least it feels that way – so that the reader is being given enough information that he or she just might “solve” the puzzle of the mystery as or even before the characters do.  Some mystery writers may make a game of this, like a logic puzzle; others not so much.  It’s not clear to me how much deduction we’re expected to attempt in this story, but clues are being dropped in our laps at a pretty good clip at this point.

Often, a mystery will end with the protagonist speaking to a gathering of people – in a courtroom, for example – in which he or she reveals all, and shows how the evidence was right under our noses if we had just been clever enough to figure it out.  (If one could sit and read the book straight through, instead of over a period of several days with long interruptions, that might be possible with this story.)  But something tells me we’re not going to see that kind of wrap-up here.  It would seem out of character for a book like this.  Rather, things will come into focus suddenly with the occurrence of one event, or the killer, thinking he’s getting away with the crime, will gloatingly tell Maureen what she had missed all along.

Martin’s list of names apparently contains a major piece of the puzzle, but it’s hard to see how at this point.  ‘ “Those are the ones I remember,” he said.  “There’ll be some I’ve forgotten, but those are the full-timers who were moved after the scandal.”  She folded it up and slipped it into the condom pocket of her jeans.’  Wait – condom pocket?  Is that a reference to the little sewn in pocket that some denim pants brands have just above the front pocket?  All this time . . .  Actually it has several traditional uses:  watches on chains, tickets, change, gold nuggets for miners.  But according to one source, at the Levis factory itself they have indeed been called condom pockets by some.  I’m now ready for “Jeopardy!”

When the police allow Maureen to move back into her apartment, they inform her that she will have to clean up all her boyfriend’s blood on her own.  This, knowing her psychiatric history and the fact that she has been suicidal at times in the past.  Pretty cold-blooded.  Her brother offers to help her clean it up, but, remembering that the police had made wreck of his place in their search for evidence, she says, ‘ “You’ve got your own house to worry about.  I think I’d rather do it alone anyway.”  It might have been the void left by her lapsed Catholicism but important events prompted her need for ritual.  Certain things had to be done in certain ways to mark the end of the cycle of events; like secular voodoo, it helped to resolve matters, signifying and punctuating.’

Officers McEwan and McAskill agree to accompany Maureen to the Equal Café, her local greasy spoon after helping her lug the bloody living room carpet down the stairs.  ‘ “I found a stain in the cupboard,” said Maureen, shaking her sore hands.  “Yeah?” puffed McAskill.  “Yeah.”  He brushed off the front of his coat and rubbed his hands together.  “What was it, Hugh?”  “What was what?”  “What was in the cupboard?”  “I can’t tell you that, Maureen.”  “Why?”  “We’ll need it to identify the killer.  If it leaks, it’s useless.” ‘ And at the Equal Café they order something called the “all-day breakfast,”  consisting of:  ‘a runny fried egg, a potato scone, black pudding, Lorne sausage, mushrooms, fried tomato and bacon.’  One wonders just what someone might be doing “all-day” after a breakfast like that one . . .

 

Next Week:  Conclusion - Chapters 28-38



 

 

February's book of the month:

“The 158-Pound Marriage,” by John Irving!

Amazon.com Review

The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive.

Week 1:  Chapters 1-3

(First post, 2-6-15)

Week 2:  Chapters 4-5
Week 3:  Chapters 6-7
Week 4:  Chapters 8-10

Garnethill (Denise Mina) Chapters 9-20

It has been pointed out to me that crime novels seem to always go on and on about smoking and drinking, the characters incessantly smoking and drinking.  Well, this story is certainly no exception.  Our protagonist comes from a family of alcoholism and is herself arguably a certifiable alcoholic.  ‘Maureen had never been happier to see a bottle of whisky.  She ordered a large Glenfiddich with ice and lime cordial . . . The barman looked at the drink as he put it on the bar.  “If the bar manager came in and saw me serving a malt whisky with lime juice, I just – I don’t know what he’d say.” ‘She downs it and asks for another.  ‘He put it down and asked what the drink was called.  “Whisky with lime in it,” said Maureen and moved to a table.’  A couple of pages later, ‘. . . her mind kept wandering back to the bottle of Glenfiddich at the far end of the gantry.  She could see it in her mind’s eye, lit up from behind like a holy vision.’  Well this is Scotland; and it is a fine single malt whisky!

Other great passages are placed here and there like rose bushes around the next corner:  ‘The clinic operated out of a converted creamery, built as part of the Levanglen Lunatic Asylum estate . . . The walls were painted yellow and covered in posters of puppies and kittens and monkeys.  When it was full of patients the maniacally cheerful room looked like a sarcastic joke.’   It is at another mental institution – Maureen is familiar with them all at this point in her life – that we finally get a major clue, just a few pages before the halfway point in the book, as to why the murder was committed.

Her friend Martin, who works at the Northern Psychiatric Hospital as a “porter” – apparently quite low on the food chain – says, ‘ “There’s something very bad happening and I don’t want to be involved in it, right?” . . . He said that several years ago there had been some sort of problem in George 1 [a psychiatric ward].  The women in the ward were all getting much worse.  It turned out that someone was interfering with them sexually . . . “Did they prosecute someone?”  “Have you been to George 1?”  “No.”  “Oh, God, the poor souls can hardly talk.  They couldn’t go to court – half of them don’t know their own names.” ’ (Did I mention this novel was “dark”?)  The implication is that the murder of Maureen’s boyfriend, of which she was set up to look like the murderer, was committed to keep him from revealing some dirty deeds indeed that had gone on at this Mental Hospital.

The setting continues to be important to the mood of the story.  ‘The light in Scotland is low in the autumn, gracing even the most mundane objects with dramatic chiaroscuro.’  And walking down Maryhill Road ‘the area had suddenly become desolate.  Subsiding buildings had been bolstered up or else abandoned, their windows and doors boarded up with fibreglass.   The city surveyors had always known there was an ancient mine there; they thought it was safe but the medieval miners had left weaker struts in it than they had supposed.  Maryhill was falling into a five-hundred-year-old hole.’  Cool!  Who wants to go with me to visit Glasgow!

‘Maureen lay down among the dog ends and looked up at the tree tops, empty tears running into her hair . . .’  “Dog ends”?  The last time I remember hearing that term was back in the early 70s:  ‘Neck hurting bad, as he bends to pick a dog end.  He goes down to the bog and warms his feet.’  from the song Aqualung by Jethro Tull, 1971.  ‘The unsmoked end of a cigarette or cigar.’  Now I know!

Next Week:  Chapters 21-27

Week 4:  Chapters 28-38

Garnethill (Denise Mina) Chapters 1-8

The history behind this book is interesting.  The author, coming from a low socio-economic stratum of Glasgow, Scotland, passed the exams to get into the Law School at Glasgow University, and received a grant to research a PhD thesis at Strathclyde University, but “misused” the grant, staying home to write her first novel, “Garnethill.”  The novel won the John Creasey Award for Best First Crime Novel.  It’s easy to see why.

Another example of one of my favorite genres, the “Tartan Noir” novels – “dark” crime novels by Scottish writers set in Scottish cities – this one is different from others I’ve admired in several ways.  The protagonist, instead of being a detective or crime researcher, is a young lady much like the author, who works at a movie-house and has a past history as a psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse at the hands, etc. of her father.  (Did I mention this novel was “dark”?)  Scottish writers tend to use Scottish colloquialisms and slang, often without seeming to be aware that American readers might be thrown off a little (or, “a wee bit”).   Denise Mina’s use of “Scottishisms” is more extreme than some, but rarely to the point of confusing the reader.  In fact it adds a wee bit to the fun of reading a story set in a foreign country.

The writing style, the characters, and the plotting are all very direct.  After being introduced to the protagonist Maureen, and a couple of her friends in Chapter 1, we are immediately plunged into the crime scene in Chapter 2, which begins, ‘Douglas was tied into the blue kitchen chair with several strands of rope.  His throat had been cut clean across, right back to the vertebrae. . .’  Yep, it’s a murder mystery all right!  The important characters are all given enough depth to come across as much more than caricatures or stereotypes right down to the supporting role police office types who hover in the background.

Again, local color is added through the use of colloquialisms and slang:  a man is seen “havering around in the lobby,” a plainclothes policeman at the crime scene ‘ “You lot,” he said tetchily to the assembled neighbors…’ and Maureen says, ‘ “Would either of you have a cigarette I could blag?” and ‘ “I’ll be back by half-one” ‘ meaning either half past one or half an hour before one.  “Auch” is used as a mild expletive to indicate frustration at the beginning of a sentence.  I have previously mentioned a Scottish writer overusing the term “pulling a face” and we find it used once in the first quarter of this book as well.  There are Scottish writers who have written stories in which the Scottish brogue is presented as faithfully as possible, making for very difficult reading for Americans and English readers as well I gather.  Even Sir Walter Scott would give some of his more “backward” characters barely comprehensible lines.

The story follows Maureen through the realistically random events of the next few days after the murder of her married boyfriend, as the police question her and everyone she is close to, with apparently no suspects higher on the list than Maureen herself.  In the process, we get a glimpse of what life might be like for a typical young Glaswegian (that’s right: a person from Glasgow is a “Glaswegian” – go figure) as well as a not-so-typical girl with some major psychological baggage to contend with.  It’s not clear just how much that past is going to haunt her, but the Cupboard where she was found after an episode is already a factor.

Next Week:  Chapters 9-20

Week 3:  Chapters 21-27
Week 4:  Chapters 28-38