Customer Reviews

Beast of Burden (Cal Innes)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If "the F-bomb" is one of your euphemisms...

If you don't want to turn to the Urban Dictionary to understand what's happening...

If you're looking for a happy ending...

If you think a poofta is something you use to apply dusting powder...

...then this book isn't for you.

But if you want a gritty tale about a driven man, victim of a stroke, whipping boy of a powerful vindictive family, a wary survivor... then perhaps it is.

Cal Innes is recently out of prison, coming to terms with the effects of his stroke, which leaves him struggling for the right words and walking warily and unsteadily with a cane. He's working (kind of) as a PI out of a boxing gym for ex-cons, run by his friends Paulo and Frank, who have a few dark secrets of their own. Enter Morris Tiernan, Manchester ganglord, the Uncle himself and big time bad guy, who wants Cal to find his son Mo. The problem is, Mo and Morris and Morris' daughter Allison are responsible not only for the death of Cal's brother, but for Cal's jail time and just about everything else that's wrong with Cal's life. Besides which Cal's pretty sure Mo is dead. Add to this equation a sadistic rogue copper with anger management and revenge issues, who's convinced Cal is up to no good and will stop at almost nothing to throw him back in jail.

So, while finding Mo Tiernan doesn't sound like his dream job, it's a job, and Cal takes it. It leads him though slums and alleys and bars and squats confirming what he already knew - that Mo Tiernan is quite dead.

This is the fourth and final book in the Cal Innes series. It's the only one I read, and it does stand on its own. To understand the undercurrents, it would probably be helpful to read the three earlier books in which, as another reviewer tells us, Cal has been "run over by a car, beaten within an inch of his life, shot in the ear, left for dead on a desert roadside, and halfway blown up by a car bomb. " So I guess he's used to the abuse.

With that in mind, here's my Top ten List of Things That are Great About "Beast of Burden."

10. You will learn all sorts of Manchester slang. Much of it should probably not be used in polite company. Much can be understood by context. The rest can be looked up in the online Urban Dictionary.

9. Worth it for the description of the author alone: Ray Banks has been a double-glazing salesman, a croupier, a dole monkey (Jobless northerner, usually 18-30, lacks basic language skills. Hangs around bus shelters and kiddies parks waiting for the day he can go collect his benefits. Thank you Urban Dictionary, once again), and a disgruntled temp.

8. A reminder that drugs are bad for you. (Okay. You probably didn't need a reminder, but this is quite a graphic reminder in case you were feeling tempted.)

7. A jolting view of the darker side of Manchester. If you've only read about it in travel books, this will give you another perspective entirely.

6. Different points of view. Each chapter is written either from Cal Innes' point of view, or that of Detective Sergeant "Donkey" Donkin. It reveals two different personal hells. But you'll have no trouble deciding who the good guy is.

5. Some of the most colorful use of expletives in crime fiction.

4. It's modern noir. The genre is not dead. It is alive and kicking.

3. Dark as it is, the work has a sense of humor. Sure, Cal is limping along, struggling to form words. Still, for Theater of the Bizarre and Strange, I recommend the scene where he decides to apply for a barrista job in a trendy coffee shop.

2. It's fast-paced. The story moves. The characters are well-developed. You might not want to know them, but you'll start to understand them.

1. Sometimes the good guy doesn't seem like that good a guy. And often bad things happen to the good guy. But seeing our good guy trying to do a good thing, knowing the repercussions will be disastrous, kind of shows us that Don Quixote lives on.

Tilt on.

First, this is not a casual lets-take-it-to-the-beach book. I'm not even sure it's bedside reading but it's eminently readable.

Cal Innes has not had the best of lives and, as the story starts, he's not in a position to see much improvement. Freshly sprung from prison he has to construct a life based on his past which hardly provides solid material. Author Banks is careful to give us all sides of the story about him from quite divergent viewpoints none of which add up to the golden haired boy as hero. Set in the grit of the English Midlands, he's a type well known and recognized there, the con not quite bad but one of which to be wary. The exteriors and interiors are palpable really to the point of making one want to open a window to smell fresh air. This is particularly true when he establishes himself as a private investigator using a gym as his "office".

It's a tightly woven story that may seem confusing but the events are on the level even if the people aren't. The language may or may not distract you but if a lava flow of profanity will offend, back off. Also, the dialect may puzzle American readers. It's graphic to the point that at moments, if you're a man, you may feel your testicles in your throat. You come to sympathize with Cal if not empathize with him.

For a certain kind of reader-one, for example, who loved, not liked "Fight Club" this is your meat, red, rare and, in it's own way chewable. While you cannot put it down, you may find yourself averting your eyes as you turn the page.

It fits the fantasy life many of us might like to imagine from the safety of the printed page but makes you want to side with Cal, fight with Cal, be perplexed with Cal.. but always from a distance. Good writing, good read.

The last of Ray Banks' brilliant Cal Innes quartet isn't just a cracking crime novel. It's also a chunk of searing, social realism that contains gripping character studies.

Beast Of Burden shows Ray Banks to be a writer at the peak of his powers. Magnificent.

I happen to be a huge fan of film noir, where tough guys who never got any breaks exist just on the edge, balancing what's right and what's legal with what makes them a living. Some of my favorite movies are films like Maltese Falcon, where Bogart plays a tough guy. Books by Raymond Chandler, or my new favorite, Ian Rankin's detective Rebus, who can't stand himself, and neither can anyone else. These gritty, down on their luck guys who want only to be accepted or to succeed, in a world that seems stacked against them, make for great stories.

With Detective Rebus, Rankin has a great anti-hero who is complex and dark. Rankin also uses the Scottish character and the setting of Edinburgh as a vibrant part of the story, almost a character in itself. Banks places his character, Cal Innes, even further down the food chain. Brother to a junkie, Cal spent time in prison and had a stroke, losing some of his ability to talk and to walk. Cal carries on a private investigation business skirting just around the law, and around the criminal elements in Manchester. Banks doesn't capitalize on Manchester and the setting nearly as much as Rankin does, but he does use local slang that forces the reader to accept the people and the culture of a down on its luck manufacturing town where there seem to be few positive options.

Innes faces off with perhaps the worst kind of cop - a dirty cop with a high opinion of himself, willing to break any rule or law to get his way. "Donkey" Donkin plays poorly with others in his station, the other police are accustomed to workshop language, polite manners and coddling criminals, while Donkin sees opportunity to run the station and the town. Innes and Donkin lock horns in ways that you can't anticipate at first, and Innes does Donkin's job far better than Donkin does.

I'm reviewing Beast of Burden without having read the prior novels in the sequence. It's not too much to say that Beast of Burden is a culmination of a story line that has a predictable yet poignant ending. I look forward to going back and reading all of Bank's series with Innes as the lead. There's always room for another dark, conflicted lead character in a pulp fiction on my bookshelf.

This is the real deal--crime fiction that rises to the level of literary art. The final novel in the Cal Innes series, the story stands alone, so there is no reason for the reader coming to Ray Banks for the first time to hesitate to read Beast of Burden.

The story is straightforward enough. A criminal named Tiernan has asked a broken PI (Cal Innes) who has just lost his brother Declan to an overdose to investigate the disappearance of his son, Mo. Also on the case is a corrupt DS named Donkin.

The narrative switches, chapter by chapter, between Innes and Donkin and we get a hint of Les Miserables, with Donkin playing Javert to Innes' Jean Valjean. The real roots of the story lie elsewhere, however. With its stark situation and desperate dialogue I am reminded of the best writing of George V. Higgins and with its family-saga overtones with incest in the backstory we're not very far from Chinatown. However, the ultimate vibe comes from Greek tragedy, a realization that begins to dawn about two-thirds of the way through--the deep sense that none of this is going anywhere good and that fate is going to beat justice to a small, quivering pulp. There are hints of goodness and notes of redemption, but this is dark, dark stuff from the get-go that gathers momentum page by page.

The reader should know that the novel is set in Manchester and that the dialogue is packed with copper idiom and Brit curses. For some this could be a significant impediment. The up side of this is that it creates brilliant atmospherics. The writing is absolutely pitch perfect.

So if you're up for something stark, gritty, violent and very, very fine, Beast of Burden is for you.

My only criticism is that there is some implausibility in the speed with which the novel's characters recover from brutal beatings. The enormity of the violence is mitigated in the process, but the success of a novel such as this hinges on its realism and the instant recoveries are not going to happen in the actual alleys of Manchester.

Still, this is a very fine novel. Highly recommended.

I've been reading Ray Banks novels about private investigator Cal Innes since the beginning with 'Saturday's Child'. Along the way Cal has found himself moving from England to Los Angeles (and eventually back to England), and also finds that trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes. Staying out of prison is usually his primary goal (and he doesn't always reach his goals), as well as fighting off all manners of lowlife's along the way. Cal smokes too much, does too many pills, and drinks way too much for his own good (and he pays for it all)...but given his "jobs", he needs to be numb in order to deal with them. Finally, in this last book (of four) Cal finds himself in worse shape than ever, but only physically (as usual)...he still has his fighting spirit intact. And he'll need that fighting spirit to deal with maniac detective Donkin in a fight to the finish. I really enjoyed the way Banks writes Cal's language and attitude, it drips off of the page and almost leaves a cigarette burn and whiskey stain with it. Great stuff. I'll miss Cal, but I look forward to where Ray Banks takes us next.

I admit I was a bit disconcerted when I started this book at the two first viewpoints that switch back and forth. But they sorted out pretty quickly, each character's viewpoint is labeled when he's on stage. The two are Cal Innes, a PI not long out of prison, a man who'd had a massive, drug induced stroke, having to use a cane to walk and barely able to talk, and his nemesis, Detective Sergeant "Donkey" Donkins, a slightly bent cop who doesn't like Innes and has a quick temper.

Cal is asked by crime lord Morris Tiernan, the head of the family responsible for his condition and his brother's suicide induced drug overdose, to find his son, Mo, who'd disappeared. Donkins is on the case also.

Eminently readable, we sail along watching Cal pursue his own agenda against the Tiernans, watching the violent Donkins trying to pin something on Cal, both headed toward the inevitable collision.

Really enjoyed this one.

"Beast of Burden" is a great read - and definitely the first one for this reviewer with the most liberal dose of the f-bomb yet seen in prose.

But all of the coarse language works; it fits with the gritty side of Manchester revealed in Ray Banks' last installment of the Cal Innes stories. Banks conjures up a good story told through the perspective of Cal Innes, a street thug recovering from a drug-related stroke and trying to go straight, and Detective Sergeant Donkin, an old-school bruiser cop who finds himself at odds with the modern police force. The two men collide when Innes is tasked with locating a gangster's unloved but missing son and Donkin is looking for Innes.

The characters are richly described by their actions and the world around them; we see a young man given a second chance at a nearly self-destroyed life who won't hesitate to seek revenge given the chance, and a beat cop whose bruiser tactics are as much a symptom as the cause of his broken home life. This is where we see Ray Banks' talent: he has created complex characters who will make you feel one way (love `em, hate `em) at first, but will then change as the story develops.

The language can be hard to follow as an American but it adds to the scenery and mood of the story. This is a tale of hard lives in a hard town.

I didn't expect to like this though I'm not sure why. There's not a redeemable character in this lot yet I found their lives darkly compelling. I read on wondering who would come out on top; either the dirty and/or inept cops or the non-repentant criminals who've just left jail (and are probably headed straight back). This is a very British novel. It's set in Manchester and I can only assume all the slang I didn't understand hails from her rough streets. That might put some readers off but the language was wonderfully inventive. For all I know Banks made it up himself. Of course I don't have much street cred on the Los Angeles streets right outside my window so I'm not a good judge.

The main character is Callum Innes who's a recovering drug addict just out of prison and trying to get back on his feet. No easy task since he's had a stroke that left the right side of his body damaged. Speaking and walking are difficult. He's also feeling grief over his brother's recent fatal drug overdose. Cal's trying to make a go of it by working as a private eye. One night at a bar Morris Tiernan wrangles Cal into finding his missing son and he's willing to pay big bucks. This might sound like a good thing but Tiernan and his family are Cal's nemeses. Bottom line is Cal has no choice in the matter. Tiernan is too powerful in their milieu so Cal agrees and decides to run his investigation in his own unique way. This is the first Banks novel I've read and it's the fourth in a series. It's a complete novel in itself though. I didn't feel lost concerning events from the other books.

3.5/5

Beast of Burden is the last of the fine series about a down and out young man in Manchester. Pivoting away from the narrative of the third book in the series, Beast is told from only two points of view; Innes's and the detective who swears to get him, DS "Donkey" Donkin.

The book finds Innes crippled by a drug fueled stroke, and involved once more with the deadly crime family lead by Morris Tiernan. Innes has a lot of history with them, and when one member of that family is found murdered, Tiernan enlists Innes to find the culprit.

"Donkey" has a pathological hatred of Innes and just assumes he is guilty of the murder, harassing him at every turn, while seeing his own life spiral out of control. As the characters march inexorably to the denouement, one feels that they are almost preordained to play out their lives. Banks is a skilled writer and his first person perspectives of the two protagonists are spot on. This was of telling the story is quite a change for Banks, and one that is quite a credit to his writing skill.

Despite the fact there is a lot not to like in Cal, I found myself very sympathetic to him. It is as if underneath all that post-modern malaise, there is a true innocent, damned in advance to play out a life that few would want to lead. The tension in the book stays high throughout.

I'm sorry we won't be seeing more of Innes and Donkin, but the ride was great. If you're intrigued, please be sure to read this series in order. The motivations of the characters are highly dependent upon what has happened to them before.