11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still timely, despite 1983 copyright, September 29, 2006
I have never been one to follow the ongoing political and religious difficulties among the different factions of Ireland. Everything I know about the IRA, I learned from the books of Daniel Silva and Frederick Forsyth, and the films of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan. But, whether you know more than I do, or have only read those books yourself, Pete Hamill's The Guns of Heaven can now be added to that list of helpful reference works, primarily because it feels as if it were written yesterday, despite its 1983 copyright date.
Sam Briscoe is a writer for a New York newspaper. Half-Irish and half-Jewish, Briscoe used to write a much-read column on Ireland (for which he is still recognized on the street, many years later), and still produces the occasional piece on the subject. On the way to visit his daughter Alice at her boarding school in Switzerland, he promises his editor he will drop by Northern Ireland (to visit his uncle) and come up with another article, thus getting the paper to pay for the trip.
This simple, highly irreverent beginning sets the scene for all that comes later in The Guns of Heaven, as Briscoe's life is turned upside down almost from the moment he steps off the plane in Belfast. There he meets Commander Steel, a mysterious leader of the Irish Republican Army, who asks Briscoe to deliver a letter for him once he gets back to New York.
From that point on, Briscoe gets signs that he is being followed, even once he arrives in Switzerland. After a dangerous car chase, he retrieves his daughter and takes her to her mother's house in Spain, whereupon he returns to New York to deliver the letter. Things from that point take a definite downturn as more people die and murderous intent comes from unexpected sources.
Pete Hamill is probably best known to fiction readers as the author of the bestselling New-York-after-9/11 realistic fantasy Forever. Even crime fiction aficionados are unlikely to be aware of the three Sam Briscoe novels he wrote early in his career, of which The Guns of Heaven is one (Dirty Laundry and The Deadly Piece are the others). His fiction is often steeped in New York atmosphere (not surprising given that Hamill has edited both the Post and the Daily News) and this one is no different.
I have to be honest and say that the whole Northern Ireland plot did not really interest me (probably because of my lack of Irish heritage), but I kept reading because of Hamill's skill at narration and description. He writes like a dream. Fans of Madison Smartt Bell's Straight Cut (another Hard Case Crime novel) will enjoy the "literary" feel of The Guns of Heaven. My favorite part of the book was an unexpected aside about Swiss pizza that die-hard New Yorker Briscoe narrates while eating lunch with his daughter:
"Pizza is the most mysterious of all foods. You find it on sale all over the world now, but for me it never works anywhere except in New York. I don't care who makes it, as long as it's made in New York: some of the best pizza I ever had was made by a Puerto Rican in an Irish dance hall in Coney Island. Not even Italy gets it right, although the cooks at least try. But the Swiss didn't have a clue about making pizza. The crust was too thin, and there was not enough cheese. The cheese wasn't mozzarella, so the long strandy texture was wrong, and the tomato sauce was watery, and the chef had covered the surface with chopped ham, olives, and mushrooms, as if an instinct for the baroque could disguise the flaws in the basic form. The thing didn't taste bad. It just wasn't pizza."
Another pleasant surprise was that there were a couple of books mentioned within the text of The Guns of Heaven that may make me curious enough to pick them up. I always pay attention to whatever books a character is reading, as it tends to give extra insight into them, even when they are reading particularly uncharacteristic choices. Briscoe is discovered reading Stendhal's treatise On Love by a few other characters, all of whom react differently to this information. It was such an odd choice (even given what we learn about Briscoe in later chapters) that I came to instantly respect the character for making it. Also, in another instance, Briscoe calls Michael Farrell's The Orange State "one of the best books on Northern Ireland," and Hamill ties Farrell in with one of the other characters, making the novel feel just that much more realistic.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good history lesson that bogs down before racing forward, May 21, 2008
When one thinks of pulp fiction and noir, a few things automatically come to mind: femme fatales, guys in trench coats, guns, night, booze. Moreover, the time period that usually comes to mind is usually any year from the time of FDR's inauguration to that of John Kennedy. That is to say, the 1930s through the 1950s. The 70s figure in the picture, too.
But the 1980s? Nah. At least, not to me. I have written that I'm fairly new to the genre of crime fiction. There may be a slew of great 80s books out there, just waiting for me. But, as of today, I don't know them. The 80s just don't seem like a noir decade to me. And that put Pete Hamill's The Guns of Heaven at a disadvantage. It takes place in 1983 and deals with the conflicts in northern Ireland.
I'm old enough to remember seeing the news coverage of the various bombings but young enough, then, not to know what it was all about. And that's where Hamill's book shined. It reminded the reader--this one 25 years later--what all the fighting was about. Unlike a Michael Crichton novel--where Crichton unloads mind-numbing facts the reader needs to know in order to understand the actions of his characters, so much data that you feel like you have to take some notes--Hamill pares the Irish troubles down to its bare facts. His asides were good and necessary.
The story is, however, um, boring. Let me try again: the first half of the book is boring. Sam Briscoe is a 40-something newspaper reporter who agrees to carry a sealed envelope from Ireland back to New York. Sam is a veteran reporter and he doesn't know that this might be a bad thing? He stops over in Switzerland to see his daughter in her boarding school. The end result is, of course, the bad guys know about her and end up kidnapping her. Hmmm, didn't see that one coming.
The second half of the book is much better as the action takes off. But unlike other books I have read recently, I never was scared for Sam. Now, that might have been in part because I listened to the book while driving but that's not all. There are plenty of books that got my heart racing so fast that I actually slowed down my driving in order to concentrate on both things better. The Guns of Heaven was not one of those books.
As a historical piece, it was fantastic. It's quaint for me, a child of the 80s, to read a book written in an earlier time; I get to experience what they experienced. Hamill's book took place in a year that I actually remember. I enjoyed reading about the state-of-the-art sound system that included tape decks and turntables. I enjoyed characters having to fish a dime out of their pockets to make calls on public phones.
The Guns of Heaven is my least favorite Hard Case Crime book to date. Perhaps it just had the unfortunate slot of being the first book I read after Money Shot. Shoot, Lucky at Cards was more entertaining. The reader, Christian Conn, was very good. His woman's voices were okay but his male voices were superb. He did a great Irish and southern accent.
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