Library Limelights 141

Linwood Barclay. A Tap on the Window. Toronto: Seal Books/Doubleday Canada, 2013.

Reliable, trusty Barclay for trademark twists and thrills in the fictional town of Griffon in western New York. Here's another mystery dealing with child loss as two teenage girls go missing. Private detective Cal Weaver is innocently sucked into emotional and political infighting as the search goes on for the mayor's daughter Claire. Weaver's own son Scott died recently in a drug-fuelled accident; Cal and wife Donna struggle to accept it and reconcile their feelings. Cal's brother-in-law Augustus Perry is the chief of police, at loggerheads with the mayor. In fact the police are highly unpopular among the town teens whose favourite pastime seems to be driving around, or driving around seeking illicit booze.

Barclay is always a pleasure to read, dialogue rich; it's easy to enter his world of ordinary protagonist caught in extraordinary events. I found it rather inactive at first, unusual for Barclay, while Cal slogs from one parental interview to another. But the discovery of a murdered body galvanizes as-yet unseen forces. Are the cops playing straightforward or not? Dropped into the action are inserts of a strange scenario taking place behind some locked doors in Griffon―making you guess about the relevance.

One-liners:

She hadn't reached total inebriation, although I had a sense it was her destination. (68)

"We're teenagers, so we must be guilty of something, right?" (396)

Combative mayor:

Sanders nodded smugly, like he was no fool. "I know he's your brother-in-law." 

"What of it?" 

"Didn't think I knew, did you? Figured you might get that one past me." 

"I don't give a damn whether you know or not," I said. "He's my wife's brother. What's that got to do with anything?" 

"You think I'm stupid?" he asked. "You think I can't figure out what's going on here? Perry doesn't like losing leverage, does he? Doesn't like it that he's got one less person to intimidate. You can tell him I know what he's doing. You can tell him it's not working. I don't care how many cruisers he's got watching me, or how many people he thinks he can turn against me. Because that's what he's doing, you know. He's making this an 'us against them' kind of town, using fear to turn people to his side. If you're not with the great Augustus Perry, you're on the side of the criminals. Well, it's not gonna work. I'm not backing down. He doesn't run this town. He may think he does, but he doesn't." (118)

Glum teen:

"If anything, Claire's dad cares too much. That can be kind of hard to live with, too." 

"Do your parents care too much?" I said. 

"Sometimes I wish they cared a little less. My dad's on my ass all the time, and he's pissed about Hanna being over and all, but her parents, they don't care that much about what she does. She's lucky that way." 

Was that what defined luck for these kids? Parents who didn't give a shit? I seemed to recall Hanna's parents being worried about something. A business Hanna was involved in with her boyfriend that could end up biting her on the ass. 

"You and Hanna got something going on the side," I said, not asking a question. "To make some money." 

His head jerked. I'd hit a nerve. "What?" 

"What is it?" I thought immediately of Scott. "You guys selling something? You selling drugs?" (142-3)

Domestic aftermath:

Donna said, "I'll get breakfast going." 

A few minutes later, in the kitchen, things felt slightly different. Not unlike the feeling after a tornado whips through. You've been through this horrendous storm, wondering whether the roof will fly off, the walls will come crashing in, the car will get flipped over on its roof.But then the storm's roar fades away and you think it's safe to venture outside. The sun is coming out. You've lost a few trees, the power's out, half the shingles on the roof have been blown off.But you're still standing. 

We brushed against each other as we went about our morning routine without the recent awkwardness. I placed a gentle hand on her hip in a way I hadn't in some time. She made enough coffee for two. (229)

Susie Steiner. Persons Unknown. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2017.

Steiner's style is different, her plots extraordinary, her characters addictive. DI Manon Bradshaw is not a predictable cop and not the most sympathetic person at first meeting. But counterpointed by her lovable colleague Davy, she grows on you as a murder story explodes all over her private life. Manon is now living in Huntingdon again with adopted son Fly; her sister Ellie shares the house. Ellie's high-flying financier ex-husband is the victim, throwing the police into a tizzy. Mainly because Fly appears to be the killer. The side story of Birdie and Saskia is going to merge; we know it, but the cops don't.

Some Latvian thugs seem to be involved (to my amusement), although evidence is scant as the police puzzle over scenarios. At least the ubiquitous British CCTV cameras enable reconstruction of parts of the crime scene. Events are told alternately by a pregnant Manon, Davy, and Birdie—the first two still dreaming of stable partners for a relationship. Life can be a struggle for all of them, finding their own support and humour in different ways. This is dense, substantial, credible fiction ... strongly suggest you begin with Steiner's first: Missing, Presumed.

http://anotherfamdamily.blogspot.ca/2017/08/library-limelights-139.html.

Word: tesselate - to fit together tightly, as in tile floors

One-liners:

He wishes his face was more Jack Reacher, less Charlie Brown. (37)

Is Davy looking in on him through the square window in the door, then slamming it shut? (132)

Our only job is to protect children from the shoddiness of adults and I've already failed. (138)

Dual reality:

[Manon] "They don't afford a black boy the same presumption of innocence or the same need for protection as they do white boys." 

She knows this from experience rather than from any study and she feels it sadly, rather than as a lefty crusade, as he seems to. She cannot change this difficulty for Fly, the way the world mistakes him time and again. How fraught with peril life will be for him. All she wants is for him to survive despite it and prosper. She'd had to have "the conversation" with him, back in London, when he was repeatedly being stopped and searched: her sermon on how to behave with the police. Don't get their backs up, don't be impolite, don't question their authority. And she'd thought, as she said it, that what she was really saying was, "You cannot be fully yourself in this situation. You must reduce yourself, because the justice system that protects me is a risk to you." (193-4)

The cop shop:

[Birdie] I went to my local nick, couldn't think what else to do.Reception was the colour of sick. Yellow floor, yellow walls. The desk was being a sliding window, it's thick frame painted blur gloss. An empty chair on the other side of the glass. I pressed on the intercom. Eventually, someone said, "Yes?" like I'd interrupted their favourite TV show. 

"I need to talk to a police officer." 

"Have you called the main switchboard telephone number? It's there, on the wall." 

"Why would I do that when I'm here, in person?" 

"What's it about?" 

Well, how do you answer that in a nutshell? A murder. A prostitution racket. The City and all its money. The death of a child. A cover-up. 

"Well, it's a bit complicated," I said. (241-2)

Game-changer:

[Davy] Davy is surprised to feel sorry for Derry―Derry who strides about HQ like some grim-reaper colossus; busy, busy, busy. Derry who depends on minions falling on his expertise. Derry who wears bow ties as if he were a private school headmaster. At this moment, he looks frightened and old. 

"It seems I may have been wrong. I would like to show this to colleagues," he says to Mark. 

"Of course," Mark says. 

Davy steps out of the way and avoids Derry's eye on the way out, not wishing to add to his humiliation. It is very hard to climb down. The shame and then, waiting in a dank pool at the bottom, guilt. (314)

Denise Mina. The Long Drop. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2017.

You've gotta have some Scots blood to appreciate Mina in her true grit element―she is right down to business in her bailiwick, the shady underside of Glasgow. Based on the 1950s true story of Peter Manuel, one of the last men hanged in Scotland, the novel is a character study more than anything. Mina fictionally explores a relationship between Manuel and William Watts, who lost three members of his family to the killer. Because the mind of the killer―in the author's rendition―is so vacillating, the convolutions in chronology and in the trial itself are not an easy read.

Manuel's self-identity as a story-teller leads his audience and the reader to other possible scenarios. His mental stability was never really considered at trial. As only Mina can do, the pages bristle with lives lived―not well, but scrabbling against poverty and/or consumed with small ambitions. Personal foibles leaven a night of bar-hopping; the history of the relevant guns is a showpiece of cunning. The decaying (now-destroyed) old tenements of the poor and the ubiquitous hole-in-the-wall bars are testament to Glesga's once-reputation for endemic alcoholism. A thorny, thoughtful read from a brilliant writer.

One-liners:

This is when Manuel loves Glasgow, when it's defenceless and the people are still.

Talking to Cameron is like talking to a wall with eyebrows. (195)

"My knees are broken with praying for you." (224)

Self-confidence:

Watt sees himself as the coming man. He's a businessman, not a tradesman, his path will be through the Merchants House, but still, as he locks his car door, his eyes linger on the warm windows of their sister association, the Trades Hall. He thinks he will soon take his place in that line of dynamic men who made the world cleave to their will. This they did by having the mettle to do things others would find distasteful. They gain mastery by enslaving weaker men, by profiteering, doing that which must be done, by meeting Peter Manuel. It is a timely reminder of what he is doing this for. The lights warm the back of his fat neck as he crosses the road away from it. (69)

Truth blinkered:

Everyone is lying. 

Day five of the trial is a whistle-stop tour of Glasgow's underbelly. There are two handguns on the productions table in the middle of the court: the Webley used to kill the Watts and the Beretta used to murder the Smart family. Sworn witnesses tell the court that these guns have tumbled from hand to hand, unbidden. They have dropped themselves into paper bags, hidden themselves away on the top shelves in cupboards. No one ever buys them, no one ever sells them, though, it is admitted, unrelated fivers have passed from hand to hand, always in the opposite direction from the guns, during approximately the same time frame. Buying guns is illegal and has a steep sentencing tariff. This deception is understandable. (115)

A time of clubs:

Both Watt and Manuel have been to the club before. That's not surprising. Every man of interest in Glasgow has been in the Gordon Club at one time or another. This is a time of clubs. Men with common interests meet in closed rooms and make deals, lend money, decide outcomes before formal negotiations are even timetabled. Still, though, the Gordon is special. It is a social portal through which the bottom and the top can meet and drink and talk, in the absence of women and church and moralising judgement. 

The Gordon Club is a thrumming valve in Glasgow's mercantile heart. But mostly it isn't about deals. Mostly it is about bonhomie and men acknowledging their common interests across the chasm of class distinction. But it's no place for the faint-heated, it takes audacity to be part of this. It hazards disgrace. (126-7)