'TIS in Kilkenny, it is reported, the marble hearts are as black as ink - in JJ Toner's noir thriller St Patrick's Day Special, the ancient city is where a gangster tout is being hidden away from his former friends.
At the beginning of this tense story, DI Ben Jordan of the Garda Síochána is on his way to take over babysitting the tout. But when he arrives, there's nothing left to babysit: the supergrass and Jordan's colleague have been wiped out, seemingly by a murderous pizza deliveryman.
Jordan, obsessed as he is by Ireland's most vicious gang leader, Lafferty, is determined that Lafferty will go down for this: it's obviously his handiwork.
Which leads us into an intricate story involving Jordan's troubled daughter and her beaux, his unhelpful bosses in the Gardaí, his own disintegrating personality, his dicey marriage and new life in a seafront mansion in Dublin 4, and myriad twists and turns.
In a dark vision of drug-ridden post-Celtic-Tiger Ireland, Toner's Ben Jordan makes the first appearance; we're going to see more of him.
Raymond Chandler and his buddies gave us a dark model of the crime investigator: impoverished, silent outsiders whose knowledge that the world is a corrupt place allows them to speed straight to the centre of the ill doing they've been hired, ostensibly to probe, in reality to cover up and obfuscate.
Philip Marlowe (the hero Chandler (left) called after a house in Dulwich College in London, which he attended at the same time as PG Wodehouse) is a pulp fiction detective, but like Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, is a wisecracker; you'd have to assume that both honed their knives of wit under the tutelage of a master, the headmaster AH Gilkes, known for his "quality of merciless chaff". It is his savage wit that distinguishes Chandler's Marlowe from the creations of his mentors, Dashiell Hammett and the other writers of the literary detective story magazine Black Mask, in whose pages the genre came to maturity.
The detectives of this mid-century version of the genre are fucked-up folks, but they are working-class heroes, alone with their honour and taking arms against vicious upper-class criminals protected by the law that the criminals have bought and paid for.
In a series of these formal tilts, which spread from books into films, battle is joined between the cynically honest working detective and the cruel and wealthy: The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon and the ultimate iteration, Chinatown.
It's part of the understanding with the readers that the brave representative of the working classes fights the rich, but never wins. The basset-faced Humphrey Bogart played both Chandler's Marlowe and Hammett's Sam Spade with sepulchral decency; keeping to the contract, he's beaten down by the rich swines, but wins out morally, keeping the rotten contract between wealth and exploitation with all the indignant sorrow of the beaten wife who stays with her abusive husband.
Chinatown is the ultimate because not only is the rich swine about to become a multi-bulti-hulti-smulti-gazillionaire by cheating poor farmers out of their water rights to supply the new town of Los Angeles, but he is a child rapist who fathered a child on his own daughter. At the end of the book the old moneybags is preparing to repeat history as he takes control of this child, now an attractive teenager.
Is it - was it - a sign of a changed world when Donna Leon produced a very different type of detective. Commisario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police also investigates the crimes of the rich. But he is no sole trader in decency.
Brunetti is a policeman, for a start: he is within the system, and he has allies - good people, all prepared to bend the rules - within that system. Elettra, the beautifully named hacker, arrives first as PA to Brunetti's ambitious and vicious boss, Vice-Quaestore Patta, a Sicilian who is quite obviously destined for great political power. Elettra finds her way into every computer system with the innocent amorality of a visiting angel; she is a creature of glamour (in both the old sense of illusion and the new sense of being a fashionista), sitting in her office surrounded by expensive flowers and dressed in the loveliest garments the Italian couturiers can provide. Her formal amorality is a coating on absolute morality: she will come to the rescue of any oppressed creature.
His loyal constable, Vianello, is Brunetti's reflection, a decent man in an indecent world. Yet in Leon's hands, he is not a cut-out; somehow his baffled honesty deepens the picture.
Brunetti walks home for lunch and dinner, described mouthwateringly; his wife, Paola, is a university lecturer in English (Leon's own second trade), and the daughter of immensely rich aristocrats with a pedigree stretching back to ancient Rome, people Brunetti regards with deep caution. Their two children, typical teenagers, add to the deliciously uxorious vision of a happy home.
Brunetti's world, although there are corrupt wealthy people here too, and they act with the same cavalier spitting upon the rights of anyone not richer or more influential than themselves, is a world where there is an approach to equality.
I think that it's a vision that comes out of a brief blossoming of egalitarian values - values which swiftly gave way to the idea now gaining currency that only those who can express their greed and gather all the gold to themselves are worthy.
The times are changing, and the next generation of investigators will, I suspect, return to the bleak cynicism of Chandler and Hammet, as the food queues grow and the wealthy jet in to gift buildings to universities starved of municipal cash. We can look forward to a new Marlowe, and forget about Brunetti.
Daniel Depp? I know that name! Johnny’s big brother, indeed. Oooh, a babe? Mmwell, when the talents were divvied up in Clann Depp, Johnny got a fair share of the handsome gene. Daniel has more of a Bilbo Baggins look - if you like ‘em short, plump and beardy, he’s the man for you. But he has a lovely personality. Hmm. Can he write? Hilarious and dark and heroic. ‘Loser’s Town’ is Hollywood - and Depp knows La-La-Land from the inside. As one of the characters, a gangster turned producer, says: “Movies make heroin and cocaine look like child’s play.” Yeah, yeah. But is Johnny in it? Heavens, no. Just a superstar called Bobby Dye. Bobby Dye, Johnny Depp. No resemblance Actually, no. Johnny Depp is a nice guy, from all accounts. Bobby is a weak little sniveller who’ll compromise his every friend for the sake of his career. And Hollywood is run by the Mafia. So far, so noir Yeah. Bobby’s getting death threats - “You’re going to Die, Dye!” So our hero - tall, taciturn, rock-like white knight David Spandau, a heartbroken former stunt man who’s now a detective - is brought in to help. All so typically American Ah, but there’s an Irish angle. Spandau’s sidekick is wee Terry from Derry, who learned martial arts in the IRA - Eh? - and now lives on a houseboat in Ventura, listening to Bach and reading Tolkien and longing for love. And overcoming big guys with magical kung-fu grace. My kinda guy Don’t get too attached. I warned you it was noir. But the writing is gorgeous. When a criminal psycho meets the girl he loves as he’s on his way to do a murder, he “felt happiness come over him like a cool mist”. And funny too? Really funny - full of bitchy cracks and crazy scenarios, and you like the characters - even the creepos. And written like a bullet: hard and fast. Worth buying? Run, don’t walk, and be first to grab it before it goes. Publisher's site
