Saturday's Child (Cal Innes) [Hardcover]

Ray Banks (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cal Innes | Publication Date: January 7, 2008

Cal Innes is fresh out of prison and ducking a past muddied with ties to local gang lord "Uncle" Morris Tiernan. But when Tiernan finds out Innes is working as an unlicensed PI and calls in a favor Innes doesn’t owe, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan’s psychotic son, Mo. Ordered to track down a rogue casino dealer who’s absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes finds that the case points north to Newcastle. With Tiernan’s son on his tail and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back in jail, Saturday’s child has to work hard to keep living.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British author Banks fulfills the promise of 2000's The Big Blind with this tough and assured crime novel. Callum Innes, recently released from prison, works as an unlicensed PI in Manchester, England. His brother, Declan, has gone home to Edinburgh to kick his heroin habit, and Innes is determined to stay straight this time as well. Morris Tiernan, local crime boss and Innes's former employer, however, insists that he complete one final job: tracking down the blackjack dealer who has disappeared with Tiernan's 16-year-old daughter, Alison, and a sizable chunk of his money. Complicating matters is Tiernan's son, Morris Junior (or Mo), a psychotic speed freak, who vows to overthrow his father's underworld reign. Mo despises Innes, envies the respect his father gives him and decides to show them both what he's really capable of. The results, inevitably, are both comically inept and violent. Some American readers may struggle a bit with Tiernan's street dialect, but like Ken Bruen and Allan Guthrie, Banks is updating the noir novel with an utterly original sensibility. (Jan.)
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Review

UK PRAISE FOR SATURDAY’S CHILD

 

"Ray Banks steps up into the majors. This is already the best UK novel of the year and I’d love to read what tops it."—Ken Bruen, Shamus Award–winning author of The Guards
  
"Banks is part of the post-Rankin generation for whom hardboiled is not just a state of mind but a reality. Tough-guy colloquial prose and a pace fast enough to skin a rabbit, at the service of a tale of down-and-dirty realism: this is fiery stuff."—The Guardian (London)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (January 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151013225
• ISBN-13: 978-0151013227
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,070,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rejoice that this UK crime thriller has landed on the US shores, January 10, 2008

By 

M. Mara - See all my reviews

This review is from: Saturday's Child (Cal Innes) (Hardcover)

SATURDAY'S CHILD by Ray Banks is about as good as modern crime novels get. It's got plenty of blood, street action, and a semi-sympathetic anti-hero protagonist for you to root for and shake your head at, by turns. Cal Innes is the kind of character you learn to love despite all his failures, mistakes, and generally abrasive personality. Because through his own internal dialogue we come to understand him, even those parts of him that we wish we didn't. SATURDAY'S CHILD is a fast-paced, action-packed, completely cynical story written in a lean mean style. ALthough some of the UK idioms may be losto n US readers, don't let it stop you--the language is all part of the draw and atmosphere. If you're a fan of neo-noir writing, give this one a try along with works by Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, and Allan Guthrie.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The difference between a pub and a bar is that a bar has more mirrors to show you how [messed] up you are.", January 2, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Saturday's Child (Cal Innes) (Hardcover)

Dark, violent, and filled with non-stop action, this British PI novel, set on the meanest streets of Manchester and Newcastle, features Cal Innes, a PI who claims that he became a detective because "I got good at tracking down ex-offenders, maybe because I was one." Newly released from prison, Cal has been talked into doing a "favor" for Morris Tiernan, a Manchester crime lord responsible for more than thirty murders. Afraid that his psychopathic son Mo will mess up the job, Tiernan has "persuaded" Cal to find Rob Stokes, a dealer in Tiernan's private gambling club who stole ten thousand dollars and disappeared. Once Cal finds Stokes, he is to contact the sadistic Mo, who will then take over.

Cal and Mo have a "history." Cal considers Mo responsible for the more than two years he had to spend in jail. Mo, in turn, is jealous that his father has assigned Cal to find Stokes, and he wants to find Stokes first. The narrative, alternating between the point of view of Cal Innes and that of Mo Tiernan, is easy to follow, since Mo is terminally dense, and his narrative, peppered with local street slang and obscenities, becomes mordantly humorous. Cal, who often finds his fists more useful than his brain, is not much more literate than Mo, but he is looking for a direction in life--if only to stay out of jail--and he does understand how the world works.

As the search for Stokes moves from Manchester to Newcastle, where Stokes appears to have fled with a sixteen-year-old girl, the action--and gore--ratchet up. Cal is not only dodging vicious Mo Tiernan, he is also trying to avoid a brutal Manchester policeman who has accused him of assault. As Cal comes closer to finding Stokes and the girl, he also becomes a real detective, discovering aspects of Mo Tiernan's life which make the search for Stokes and the girl even more pressing--and make Mo's determination to find and stop Cal more urgent.

Bleak and full of violence, the novel features fights, an attempted drowning by toilet bowl, beatings, and legs broken by cricket bat--and that's by the "good guys"! Cal, of course, is on both the giving and receiving ends of this brutality. The characters throughout the novel are universally unlikable, the twists and turns of the action reveal even more depravity than previously imagined, and the "surprise" ending brings no catharsis with it. Banks creates vivid scenes filled with specific details--everything from brands of cars, complete with dents, to close-up depictions of torture and maiming. Focused on man's inhumanity to man and the unavoidability of misery, this is noir fiction at its "noir-est." n Mary Whipple

The Big Blind

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Back then I was my own worst enemy. Nothing's changed.", December 30, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Saturday's Child (Cal Innes) (Hardcover)

Saturday's Child is in a world of hurt. After doing two and a half years of a five year stretch, out on parole with six months left to do, Callum Innes is a backroom PI, without a license but doing all right. Until "Uncle" Morris Tiernan calls in a favor Cal doesn't owe. Nobody turns Tiernan down. With thirty-seven dead men behind his name, Tiernan is not a man to ignore. The job he wants Cal to do is simple: locate a card dealer who took off with a bundle of Tiernan's money and call Tiernan's son, Mo, a drug-addled thug. Expecting to do the job himself, Mo cops an attitude towards Innes, determined to put Cal in his place and prove to his father that he is the right man for the job. With his two equally pathetic sidekicks, Mo sets out to shadow Cal and mess up the investigation and the investigator, stopping along the way for random acts of violence and tough-guy posturing, fueled by an assortment of pills that would take down an elephant.

Cal isn't making much progress when he learns that the missing guy may be in Newcastle, up the road from Manchester. And he finds out there is another twist to this plot, an essential link Uncle Morris left out when he hired Innes. Like Mo, Cal has his own demons, notably a tendency to get drunk and lose his place, often falling into trouble for lack of clear thinking. But Cal is a stand-up guy who only wants to finish a dirty job and stay out of jail for another ride. Bruised and battered by the freaks along the way who don't appreciate his questions, Cal is working in the dark, frequently blindsided by unforeseen circumstances: "Fear, otherwise known as the body's own caffeine."

A would-be hard man in a world of petty crooks and posers, Innes is about to make good on the case when events once more spiral into chaos, Mo's lack of impulse control and street patois filling the odd chapter with the menace of the unpredictable. Banks writes with authority and a keen voice, his transplanted lad from Leith struggling to survive the ordeals of Manchester, dodging career criminals like Tiernan and his dodgy son and not doing too good a job of it. Throw in a violent cop who targets Innes for a trip back to prison and this is a guy who can't get a break- at least at his level of society. Low and mean, Cal's world requires grit and courage, all of which this young protagonist has in abundance. A wild read, Banks holds nothing back, the street as ugly as the denizens who prey on one another. Innes will count himself lucky to escape this convoluted dilemma, to live to outwit another day. Luan Gaines/ 2007.