Gary Donnelly

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I first read this now-classic thriller thirty-odd years ago and I was interested to see how it has aged. Indeed, how I have aged. I’m inclined to say that Fredrick Forsyth’s page-turner has probably fared better than me, but I can see why it set my young mind and heart racing all those years ago.

It has a pulsing, living subject matter which was bang on the money not only for the time it was written but is still headline ready. Nazis and Nazi hunters sell books like nothing else but what was fascinating on reading this thriller again was how nuanced and contextually located the issue is in this well-researched book. Hunting Nazis down to the ends of the earth was not axiomatic in 1960s West Germany. In fact, it was unpopular and resisted by state structures which in part were infiltrated by former members and sympathisers of the infamous SS. If this sounds preposterous, consider how only recently the Special Forces section of the now united German Army was effectively closed down due to infiltration by neo-Nazis. To borrow a phrase from my native land, they haven’t gone away you know.

It is, of course, a novel of its time, and women tend to serve as sexy window dressing, remain emotionally driven and pacified with a good shagging and promises of marriage and babies. Arabs are portrayed as less sharp than Israelis and everyone else and the dialogue is written in an English idiom (sometimes lapsing into Oliver Twist stage cockney to denote class differences in West Germany), and the less said about that the better. The writing feels journalistic and expository in many parts and there’s a few sections (literally an idiot’s guide on how to build a pressure-activated bomb from odds and sods) which would surely never pass editorial now and makes me wonder how it managed to do so then.

But nevermind, wave it through, all of it. If such angular artefacts from political thrillers traumatise you, then don’t read it, I’d say Forsyth and his fans will get over it. But I strongly suggest you do, especially if you’re out to understand how to build an effective, thrilling page ripping thriller of your own. Forget about writing clubs and classes and Masters and PhDs, this is how you learn how to do it better. By reading and seeing it done by one of the best. Forsyth’s plotting is stitch perfect, from threading in vital details very early on to hiding his twist, to resolving every obstacle and problem he sets in Miller’s, his protagonist’s, way. One or two of the directional turns are achieved in a less than graceful way, but those without sin should cast the first stone and needs must. Thrillers are not real life, that’s why they are so brilliant. And when you read one as seminal and well put together as this it will make you want to write one yourself, or find the next instalment and get lost in another book. Either way, enjoy.

I read Personal, the nineteenth book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series (or perhaps more aptly the Jack Reacher institution in the world of thriller readers and writers) back to back with number four, The Visitor. In part this was just the way the chips fell, the books were handed to me in that order. But as usual, I like to read with one eye on the lessons available as a writer (and who better to teach than Lee Child). In this case, as the author of a crime and thriller series I was interested to get a sense of how well Lee Child maintains continuity and quality across an expansive series. Nailed it of course. With coffee and calculation, disposable clothing and a big man’s perennial hunger, Lee Child keeps Reacher consistent and bought as seen. That said, Reacher does grow. He is more sensual and romantically minded in the later novels and some have said amorally aggressive and ultra-violent, though I’d debate the latter. We learn more about his family and background and in Personal, there’s a glimpse of a sadder, more sensitive side to the big man as he reflects on his mother’s illness and death.

Series strengths aside, both books, as is the case with every one of the Jack Reacher romps, stand-alone and should be bought on their own merits. In Personal, I especially love how Child plays with the world and storytelling. He creates a giant that makes Reacher feel like Gulliver as he travels and we as readers feel like children being told a tall and bloody tail.

In The Visitor, I also wanted to read Child’s 4th book as I worked on my own and loved how Child experiments with the narrative. He builds tension so masterfully while making the reader privy to details and cracking the mystery. Of course, his real skill is actually luring us in and catching us out with twists and turns that show how wrong we were! 

By the standards of modern crime thrillers, often so slick and with narratives so advanced and self-consciously genre defined or redefining, Cape Fear can feel a bit blunt and clunky. But when we keep in mind that so much of modern noir from regional specialisms like my own to psychological, domestic noir thrillers, owe their shirts to MacDonald and his contemporaries, it’s time to wave the five star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ banner. Originally titled The Executioners, much chilling detail about the psychopath Max Cady and original dialogue found its way into the 1991 film made so scary by De Niro. And this speaks volumes about the power and raw energy of this thin pulp classic. Roots get lost and forgotten as admire foliage and flower but suffice to say no Cape Fear, no Hannibal Lector, no Lincoln Lawyer, no McKeague from my second DI Sheen novel Never Ask The Dead.

modern noir from regional specialisms to psychological thrillers, owe their shirts to MacDonald and his contemporaries

The PM called the burning of an effigy of Grenfell Tower on a bonfire as ‘utterly unacceptable,’ but I have to say, as much as it appals me, it does not surprise me.

 

Coming from Belfast, I’m a bit of an old hand at bonfires, and their sometimes destructive power. Maybe it’s something about the fire, wild and ravaging in the darkness, the loss of individual identity in the flickering light, tapping into a deeper, more prehistoric animal in us all?

Or maybe, some people just use them as an excuse to drink too much alcohol and behave in a way that, under ordinary circumstances, they probably would not dare to do.

When I was a child, I remember collecting for a bonfire in August. In West Belfast, in those days, it was a tradition to set a bonfire alight to mark the anniversary of internment without trial. This suspension of habeas corpus had been authorised by the Northern Irish Prime Minister on the 9th of August 1971. The plan was to lift suspected Irish Republican activists (which they did) but the police and army also managed to scoop up a number of people with no political links at all (not the plan). The end result was anarchy and long-simmering resentment. Thus, I found myself scavenging wood all summer long aged about eight years old, but with no idea why I was doing it. After it was done, the waste ground was still waste ground, and the place smelled of charred wood for ages. But that empty feeling I remember having as I watched our efforts burn was not just disappointment that it was all over. It was because burning pyres as a collective act of political expression really achieved nothing of value but the destruction at its heart.

With the bonfire came the obligatory riots, in the main, damaging the areas inhabited by those doing the protesting. Finally, in the late 1980s, this collective insanity was ended by the communities involved and those who took responsibility for leading the way to a different approach to understanding and commemorating history, grievances and ideas. The West Belfast Festival (Féile an Phobail) was born and is now an internationally attended and much-lauded entertainment event. It brings in big names and lots of needed money. My parents still have a few sleepless nights, but now its because Ollie Murs is singing away in the Falls Park, not because the road is burning and the plastic bullets are firing.

Catholic areas of Northern Ireland have mostly turned away from the bonfire, but, to borrow a phrase, they haven’t gone away, you know? The 12th of July, our much better known Protestant sister, still revolves around the burning of massive bonfires on the 11th night of July, again ostensibly, to commemorate collective historical moments, these from many hundreds of years ago. But, guess what? Year in and year out there is controversy, with effigies of the Virgin Mary, Irish flags and photographs of perceived political enemies set to flame. With the rise in social media and streaming videos, we have also seen instances of hate speech chanted around the fires, and damage and destruction from poorly constructed, often massive, bonfires.

So, no, the disgusting actions of those who burnt Grenfell Tower in effigy did not really surprise me at all.

Stanley Milgram, the social psychologist, suggested in his famous obedience experiments that it’s not just the deranged and deficient who are capable of terrible atrocities and inhumanities.

Given the right social context, with and the incendiary formula of diffusion of responsibility and the melting of norms and values once shared and taken for granted, it’s you, and it’s me.

I watched middle-class men and women glibly hoist an effigy of Guy Fawkes to the top of a dry bonfire at the edge of the cricket club close to my London home on Saturday morning. I don’t know everything about the Gunpowder Plot, but I know that the real Guy Fawkes was tortured horrifically before he was put to death brutally. It gave me a chill. And it made me think, even before the news of the Grenfell Tower effigy, that there’s a better way to celebrate our liberty, our historic liberalism, our victories and our indignations than burning bonfires. My nine-year son asked me what was going on and I gave him a sanitised, and potted summary of the history of the country of his birth. My little Englishman held my hand, and I didn’t let him go.

History is best understood, not repeated in my experience.

Crook’s Hollow is a countryside noir that’s dark, claustrophobic and with more turns and unforeseen twists than the tangled roots of a rural family tree. The first of its kind I’ve read and a stunning stand alone from the reliably talented Robert Parker.

We meet the protagonist Thor Loxley at the business end of a moving combine harvester and it’s no plot spoiler to say that Rob Parker is an unforgiving god to his lead man, for whom things go steadily from bad to worse. Simple in its premise (Thor wants to know who’s out to kill him and why), the author has created in Crook’s Hollow a lesson in how to craft a tight story on a small canvas that nonetheless keeps the action coming and the reader guessing right to the end. Parker’s a dab hand at summoning time and place in sufficient detail to allow the reader to immediately immerse in his world, but never at the expense of keeping the heart of the story beating. His characters are formed with clean outlines and they are instantly with us, no name confusion or need to flick back and reintroduce. Given the fairly wide cast, it’s an achievement he should be proud of, and one that more seasoned writers I’ve read of late have some homework to catch up on.

Personally, I love Parker’s turn of phrase, use of similes and lovely metaphors. Favourites include a day “labouring along” in one of those “maternity ward pauses”, and “bulging clouds”. Oh, yeah, expect rain. Lots of rain. But also get ready for a corkscrew twist, several in fact. Another of Parker’s trademark skills at work. But I’ll stop at that, in case I spoil this for you!

A slim, trim thriller, the Carolina Reaper of crime novels, this little fella ranks tops on the Scoville scale of entertainment for countryside noir.