That Stuart Neville has produced a moving, arresting, and troubling novel in The Ghosts of Belfast is notable. That this was his debut novel is amazing. Any number of writers would be happy to produce a work of this quality at the end of a long career.

Gerry Fegan is a former IRA hit man, legendary in his home city of Belfast. Since the Troubles died down, he’s been living a quiet life, drawing a salary (of which he spends little) for a government job which involves no duties. He actually spends most of his time drinking, because he needs to be drunk to sleep. His constant companions are twelve ghosts – people he murdered whose voices scream in his head. At last he realizes that they want something from him – they want him to kill the men who ordered their murders, as well as a couple of his accomplices. So he begins that business. The chapters in The Ghosts of Belfast are numbered in reverse, starting with Twelve, counting down as he carries out the ghosts’ commands and they vanish, one by one or in small groups.

At the funeral of his first victim he meets the victim’s sister, a pariah among the Irish Republicans because she married a Protestant, who has since abandoned her and her daughter. Gerry becomes their protector, gradually opening his heart as he touches, for the first time since childhood, the normal relationships of decent people. But his presence puts them in greater danger, and finally they all have to go on the run. Can Gerry protect them while finishing his mission? Should he finish it at all?

The Ghosts of Belfast is more than a thriller, it’s an examination of the complicated tissue of alliances, betrayals, and self-interests that make Northern Irish society and politics so complicated, cynical, and dangerous. It’s worth noting that a professional killer carrying out a vendetta is the most admirable male character in the book. Yet there’s sweetness here too, a sensitive appreciation of life and goodness made more vivid by contrast.

Christianity doesn’t come off very well, if I understand what I read correctly, though there’s no polemicizing against it. At one point Gerry specifically rejects the idea that he needs forgiveness, thinking rather that he needs “something else,” which the reader is left to guess.

I found The Ghosts of Belfast utterly engrossing and deeply moving. Recommended for those who can handle strong meat. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

My wife and I watched Certified Copy, a beautiful film by Abbas Kiarostami with Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, last week. It’s such a rich, moving film I wanted to write about it. All you need to know about the plot is that an English author on a book tour in Italy meets a French woman, both of them art lovers, and they spend the day in a neighboring village. All the tension I enjoyed in this story came from my knowing no more than that. What follows will be my attempt to talk about this film without spoiling any enjoyment for those who have yet to see it.

The first quarter or so of the dialogue is dominated by the ideas of originality and copies. What makes an original work of art uniquely superior to an excellently made replica? What is genuine? What is false? Is there a purpose in a composition or statue that the original fulfills but the copy does not? The two look briefly at a painting that was thought to be original, but discovered to be a recent copy of much older work. She is fascinated by it and hopes he will be too, because it fits the subject of his book, which is also called Certified Copy, but he isn’t. He tries to keep his distance from art, he says. It can be dangerous. I have to wonder if he keeps this distance because he is uncomfortable with that which is truly genuine, beautiful or hopeful.

The Englishman, James Miller, brings up another idea early on, that humanity’s purpose is pleasure. People should be free to do their own thing. The woman counters by saying people have responsibilities, such as family, that need tending, and she tends her own family with a bit of irritation. At one point, he continues talking about this need for living one’s own life while she is on the phone with her son, who can’t find something. She calls her son an idiot for not looking where she is telling him to look. He’ll find it if he’ll listen to her. Though they are not talking to each other, she and James are talking about the same thing. He is looking for self-fulfillment; she is telling him she knows where to find it.

She seems to tell him again indirectly in a scene in which she disappears into a church for a few minutes. He looks in at the door and believes he sees her praying. When he asks her about it, she shrugs it off saying she was doing something else, but the church setting must be significant. She is a figure of hope, a call for self-sacrifice, and she draws him to the church (which seems to either interest or trouble him; it’s hard to tell). In the same space, an elderly couple, probably married for 50 years or more, inches across the courtyard from the church door to an inn door. They are a picture of the love and faithfulness James wants know but believes does not exist.

Now, having thought this far, I think I’ll have to turn on the spoiler alert. Sorry. Continue reading Certified Copy →

He rattled his ice. “The death of friends, or death of every brilliant eye that made a catch in the breath.”

“Yours?”

“Yeats. I came across it in a book the other day while I was looking for something else, you know the way you do. Can’t get rid of it.”

“What’s it mean?”

“The lights are blinking out, buddy. Every night there are a few less than there were the night before.” He set down the glass sharply. “Let’s go out in the sun.”

I tend to think of Loren D. Estleman as one of the new kids in the detective novel biz, because that’s what he was when I first started reading him. But in fact he’s an old veteran now, a solid purveyor who unashamedly works Raymond Chandler’s old corner, instead of trying to put out big, thick thrillers about government conspiracies like so many others in the genre. He gives honest value for the reader’s money, and I relish his books. Among those, Every Brilliant Eye is (in my opinion) one of the strongest. It’s not a new book – it goes back to the 1980s, yet it felt fresh to me.

Amos Walker of Detroit, Estleman’s series detective, gets a call to go and collect his old friend and army buddy Barry Stackpole, who’s fallen off the wagon, out of a “blind pig” bar in a bad part of town. Barry is Detroit’s top crime reporter. The bar gets raided before Amos can extricate Barry, but he manages to sneak them both out (by punching a cop). The next time Amos sees Barry, he’s dried out again, but then Barry disappears completely. The newspaper’s lawyer hires Amos to look for him, because he has a date to testify before a grand jury.

Searching for his friend, poking into his affairs, Amos finds evidence that Barry had been writing a book about their time in Vietnam, and he comes to believe that Barry is dead, and that he’s dead because he was uncovering an old crime from the war. There’s police and civic corruption (business as usual in Detroit) involved, and Amos finds himself set up for a fatal accident, among other threats.

There’s real pleasure to be had in plain, old-school mystery writing, and I enjoyed Every Brilliant Eye immensely. Recommended. Cautions for language, violence and adult themes (including the hero committing adultery).