Customer Reviews

The Midnight Choir

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Take Joseph Wambaugh's keen insight to life within the precinct house, combine it with Ken Bruen's lean, raw prose and that shade of noir uniquely Irish, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from Gene Kerrigan and his blockbuster second novel, "The Midnight Choir". By telling a "Hill Street Blues-like" series of seemingly unconnected events unfolding over a week in Galway and Dublin, Kerrigan weaves the threads together in a mystery uncommon in its depth - a cleverly drawn tale that relies on moral dilemma and irony as much as the action and thrills more common in a novel of this genre.

"Midnight Choir" is the story of Detective Inspector Harry Synott, a veteran Irish cop whose sense of the law and justice is somewhat ambiguous, making him an enigma on the force, hated by most, revered by others, but never completely trusted by any. Author Kerrigan eases the reader easily into a comfortable rhythm, introducing the reader to a number of the relatively petty crimes one would expect in the day of the life of any big city cop: a jumper on a Galway pub roof, a mugging with a syringe of tainted blood as the weapon, date rape, a jewelry store robbery. But the stakes are raised when of one these transgressions leads to a Dublin home containing a couple of freshly-slashed corpses, and before you can order up your second Guinness, the reader's beginning to realize that this is not your typical police thriller, and that the crafty Kerrigan is operating on a level few popular authors ever reach. Complementing the slick plotting is a set of richly drawn and believable characters - characters with flaws and vulnerabilities that bend and twist together and keep the lines blurred between the guys wearing white or black hats. This is gritty and realistic, and while not as violent as Bruen, Charlie Stella, or Duane Swierczynski, it is just as dark and ultimately more subconsciously impactful.

In short, "The Midnight Choir" is one of the most thoughtful and intelligent crime novels of the past several years. One can only hope that Kerrigan keeps writing, and that this talented new author finds an increasing audience for his fiction on this side of the Atlantic. A novel you'll not easily forget - don't miss it.

These days, practioners of 'Noir' procedurals seem to be going through the motions, whether it's Connelly or Lehane. Kerrigan is simply a more intelligent writer. This isn't a showy work, but the more you read on, the better you realize it is. It's not just the plot, that moves together and apart in ways that always surprise you and never seem forced. It's also the language, simple and direct and the city of Dublin, which seems like it's getting its first gritty close-up after decades of fondness. An absolute pleasure to stumble across, you can only hope that Kerrigan continues to produce novels of this quality.

"Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free."
Leonard Cohen

What do Detective Inspector Harry Synott, Dixie Peyton, Joshua Boyce, Mr Garcia, the Irish Mob, and the Garda ( Ireland's State Police) all have in common? Corruption, poverty, addiction, and all the ills that a society has in common. These stories all take place in or near Dublin. The old Dublin is gone, the new Irish Mafia is here and they are tough. Nothing, absolutely nothing stops them. The criminals are smart. And, the Garda? They have their own rules, you protect your own.

Gene Kerrigan has written a brilliant novel. There are so many twists and turns and at the same time the author is able to bring it all together with such simplicity that you don't see it coming. Det.Inspec. Synott is one of the good guys we are led to believe. He ratted on some fellow Garda and it has followed him from one assignment to the other. 'They' will never forget and they let Harry know that, day after day, year after year.

We follow Harry and the other characters through three or four cases. What we see is not always what we get. Is Harry really a hero, or is he part of the deceit that seems to be part of every scene? Harry is an old friend of John Grace, who is taking early retirement and goes through his files of old cases with Harry. We met John Grace in Kerrigan;s first novel, 'Little Criminals'. We begin to get the true picture of Harry and his moral perspective. As the story evolves we find that life is indeed full of surprises.

I loved this book. It is at times violent, but always brilliant. The way in which the plots overlap and sometimes merge is uncanny. In the end we know that good and evil lurks behind every tree, and we have both in us, but there is a good reason to feel positive in this world.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 09-01-08

Yeats Is Dead! A Mystery By Fifteen Irish Writers

Hard Cases

Garda Detective Inspector Harry Synnott sometimes ignores the niceties of Irish law when the evidence against a felon does not meet court standards, but he abhors the violence with which his fellow Gardai sometimes beat prisoners to get information. In clear prose which often contains bits of black humor and a great deal of irony, Irish author Gene Kerrigan sets the primary story of this police procedural in Dublin, and the secondary, companion story in Galway, until they overlap.

The Galway story seems simple enough: Two Gardai save a man threatening suicide from the roof of a pub, only to discover that the man's clothes are covered in blood. He will not tell his name, and the only statement he makes is an enigmatic, "I'd never hurt a woman before." He has few connections to Dublin.

In Dublin, Harry Synnott, mired in police politics, is being shunned for having testified against his fellow officers in the beating of a prisoner. Synnott and Detective Garda Rose Cheney are investigating allegations of rape and abuse brought by a young woman against the son of a wealthy businessman who has top-notch lawyers. They are also trying to get help for Dixie Peyton, a poor junkie, sometimes an informer, who has robbed a tourist couple. In a third thread, Joshua Boyce, a businessman with an indeterminate business, commits a robbery in which a man dies. The Irish mob enters the picture. As the details of these cases unfold and overlap during the space of one week, one of Synnott's old cases, the "Swanson Avenue" case, casts its long shadow and eventually raises serious questions about justice, responsibility, and guilt.

Kerrigan keeps the action crisp and fast-paced, with plenty of complications to keep the reader busy. What makes this novel different from so many of this genre is that he is also outstanding at creating characters with whom the reader develops empathy--Synnott and Dixie Peyton and her son, in particular. Synnott, himself, is likable and basically good-hearted, but he is easily distracted and fails those who depend on him, including his family. His final recognition of his failings comes dramatically and brutally, and the reader is left to ponder whether he will be able to deal with his self-realization. Dark and sad in its vision of humanity, even with the bleak humor that is scattered throughout, this dramatic and tense novel questions the relationship between freedom and responsibility, between order and justice, and between principles and expediency. n Mary Whipple

Gene Kerrigan is a terrific writer of gritty and realistic tales of contemporary Ireland. Here he depicts the pre-bust Celtic Tiger of fat-cat developers in a gentrifying Dublin and just down the way the ever-seedy world of small-time crooks and crime bosses. His central character is veteran detective Harry Synott, who is investigating a robbery and a rape, working his informants and considering a promotion to a Euro-cop agency on the continent. But on the other side of Ireland, in Galway, a double-murder raises doubts about an earlier murder in Dublin that Synott solved years before and the man who cracked the case.

Gene Kerrigan's second foray into fiction is a well written treat that should be missed by no one. The story unfolds from the point of view of criminals and cops alike, with the shift in viewpoints adding richly to the plot. The characters are well writ, the dialog is sharp and full of the vernacular. As one might expect in contemporary noir, the line between villains and the forces of 'good' is a thin one that gets increasingly frayed as the tale progresses.

Kerrigan knows his Dublin as well as Ian Rankin knows his Edinburgh, and delights in telling us about it, and how it has changed as the economy transformed from perennial loser of Europe to the Celtic Tiger. He's particularly good in showing us the pretensions of the new economy and the similarity of human character whether high brow or low.

I found the protagonists appealing, despite some monstrous character flaws. I also found the way he wove seemingly disparate cases into one interwoven picture to be quite clever. The end of the book tied everything up nicely, but i found myself wishing it had gone on for another hundred pages or so. He had me that hooked.

Given that the is a rough overlay from his first work of fiction, Little Criminals, one can only hope that he is building a multi-volume body of work compromising unique and interconnected characters as Simon Kernick is doing with his tales of modern London.

I recommend Kerrigan highly.

I was tremendously impressed with the author's facility in presenting things from the point of view of people all across the social spectrum. Things were well plotted, never boring, and tied together in surprising ways at the end. I heartily recommend this book.

Written by a veteran journalist, this excellent Irish police procedural hits all the right notes as it follows three cases over the course of a week. At the center of the book is Detective Inspector Synnott, a highly skilled detective who's somewhat of a black sheep among the police force for reasons that aren't immediately revealed. However, the book opens in Galway, as two uniformed plods deal with a man about to jump off a building. After taking him into custody, they see he's covered in dried blood -- but whose blood that is, how it got there, and what this has to do with the rest of the story takes the course of the week to unravel.

Meanwhile, in Dublin, Synnott and his female partner, Detective Cheney, handle a rape case involving the son of a prominent businessman. When a jewelry store is robbed (in a great sequence the reader is privy to from start to end), Synnott concentrates on that, while Cheney heads the rape investigation. This is pretty straightforward procedural stuff, as Cheney digs into the rapist's past for evidence of past misdeeds, and Synnott is sure he knows who pulled the heist, but can't come up with any evidence. A fourth storyline involves Dixie Peyton, a desperate snitch of Synnott's, whose bright future as a young mother and fitness instructor was derailed several years ago by the death of her hoodlum husband.

While the weaving together of these four storylines would be entertaining enough, what makes it truly memorable is how Kerrigan wraps them all in a gray coat of murky morality. The tension between law and justice is an age old one, and has cropped up plenty in crime fiction and film -- but Synnott is one of the most engaging embodiments of that tension I've come across in quite a while. Although he fits the standard fictional police detective template pretty well (middle-aged, divorced, emotionally closed, virtually friendless, poor relationship with his son, lives spartanly in a soulless flat), he's not quite as straightforward as he seems -- which is all one can say without spoiling the story.

There are other twists within the various storylines to keep things lively, including a rather intriguing subplot involving the jeweler. Kerrigan also uses elements of the story to underscore the dramatic socioeconomic changes Ireland has seen in the last two decades. But this is all kept more or less in the background, where it belongs, as the focus remains on Synnott and his attempt to mete out justice. A top-notch crime novel that will have me seeking out Kerrigan's past fiction and keeping an eye out for whatever he does next.

This is a terrific crime story written by a veteran newman who knows his newly rich country all too well...Those seeking quaint stories about lads and lassies dancing at the crossroads will be disappointed, but those who like their characters flawed and very human will find it hard to put this book down. Ireland in this century is no different from any place else.... suffering the same malaises that globalisation, and lots of money, bring. I discovered Kerrigan's fiction via The New York Times review of Irish crime writers...also worth seeking out is Ken Bruen, from Galway. He has a great way with words too.

soooooooooooooooo clever. the protagonist is kind of hinky and you start to buy into him but he does such screwed up things and then you realize how the author takes you down a strange path. i think this writer is THE BEST one out there right now. I really enjoyed this book. He has the whole Irish thing down man. This book works on so many layers and I'd have to say that it it for sure a classic.