Skintown by Ciaran McMenamin

Vinny Duffy and his best friend Jonty are two Catholic lads in a dead end town in Northern Ireland. It’s the early 90’s and they’re drop outs, earning their money washing up for the local Chinese takeaway, just looking for their next joint and pint. Being Northern Ireland however, Sectarianism is never far away, and alongside the usual trials and tribulations faced by feckless youth everywhere, Vinny and Jonty also have to avoid a beating or worse from Loyalist gangs, especially during the marching season. When Vinny gets in a car with two Loyalist thugs, he fears the worst, until that is they crash into a field. Miraculously, they escape unscathed, and a bond of sorts is built between them. When the two Loyalists steal a batch of Ecstasy from Loyalist paramilitaries - another unique feature of the province we learn, while the drug trade everywhere is controlled by gangsters, in Northern Ireland it’s controlled by the terrorist gunmen - who better than Vinny and Jonty to sell it for them?

Skintown is basically a coming of age novel. We follow Vinny as he travels from Indy kid supping pints and sneering at Acid House, to fully fledged raver. Along the way he finds true love, takes copious amounts of drugs, makes new friends across the sectarian divide and deals with the local bully who has it in for him. As someone who grew up in the 90’s and who experienced the rave scene, in many ways this was a nostalgic read for me. There were many situations that Vinny found himself in to which I could relate. But you don’t have to have been submerged in Acid House to enjoy this book, the themes it touches upon are much wider than that.

One of the great aspects of this novel is how the author brings to life what it was like to grow up in Northern Ireland in the 90’s. To those who grew up in the mainland, the depiction of the province is both familiar and alien: They listen to the same music, drink the same beer, have the same hobbies; but sectarian prejudice is around every corner, riots occur regularly and the British Army back up the police when things get out of hand. Horrific and life changing violence can occur at a moments notice, most frighteningly on the occasions when one group or another sets off a massive bomb. While IRA bombings occurred on the mainland, they were oh so much more common in Northern Ireland.

This novel is set just before the IRA ceasefire of 1994 and once again, while this news was greeted with relief throughout the UK, in Northern Ireland it meant so much more. The author depicts this well; Vinny, Jonty and the other characters are warily pleased by the news but distrustful that the long conflict that has blighted their lives can really be at an end.  Vinny in particular dreams of escaping the rural backwater he’s in, has set his sights on the bright lights of Belfast, where perhaps he can find his future. The characters in Skintown are all well drawn, but none more so than Vinny, an intelligent but rootless young man who dropped out of school and has no qualifications, but who wants more from life than just claiming the dole.

This is a laugh out loud read, there are parts which are sidesplittingly funny.  For those who grew up at the time and were involved in the rave scene it will certainly bring back emotional memories. But it’s also poignant and touching. This is a bitter sweet book that also has moments of real melancholy. Ciaran McMenamin is a writer of real talent and if Skintown is anything to go by he has a bright future as a novelist.

5 out of 5 stars

Bad Moon Rising by Arthur M. Eckstein

With Trump in the White House, growing tensions in the Middle East and with North Korea, and suggestions that Russia has undermined democracy in the West, it’s tempting to believe that we’re living through unprecedented times. Reading about the discord of the 1970’s is a good antidote to this. To be clear, I borrowed Bad Moon Rising from NetGalley for other reasons. I’ve long been interested in the militant political movements of the time, most famously the Black Panthers, but also the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) who kidnapped the heiress Patty Hearst, and the Weather Underground, the focus of this tome. This last movement were perhaps the most successful. The Black Panthers were destroyed by the FBI COINTELPRO programme, while the SLA were finally smashed in the mid-seventies, and though many of its members went on the run and weren’t caught for decades, when they finally were found many were jailed. The Weather Underground however fared better. In part this is due to the fact that after a disastrous explosion in a bomb factory which killed a number of its members, the group eschewed bombings that might kill, and instead pursued a policy of destruction of  property, in part they were just better at rooting out informants.

Bad Moon Rising is a fascinating account of this movement, the members of which now live openly in the United States having avoided prosecution. It is a fascinating account of the FBI’s failure to catch, build cases against, and convict its members. But to me the real importance of this book is a reminder of just how precarious the period was compared with the world of today. For anyone who didn’t live through the seventies (myself included) it is difficult to understand just how fragile the political situation was and the author does a great job of teasing this out. For all Trump’s faults, as yet he has not led his country into a disastrous war (though some might suggest that it is only a matter of time). Nixon on the other hand, escalated the war in Vietnam (already a quagmire when he came to power) by authorising the carpet bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia, and ground invasions of Cambodia and Laos, all of which were deeply controversial and sparked massive unrest amongst the antiwar movement. 

Similarly, while resistance to Trump is spirited, it does not compare to the depth of feeling and antipathy that the antiwar and leftwing activist movements held for Nixon and it is in this contest that armed movements materialised. The Weather Underground can only be understood in this context. The paranoia of the Nixon Administration, an instability at the heart of his government which led directly to the events of Watergate, is also apparent here. Nixon and his team really did see the Weather Underground as an existential threat. While in some ways this is surprising, for in reality the movement achieved little and their actions were certainly far less destructive than many contemporaries - the IRA, PLO, the Baader Meinhoff Gang in Germany - all killed many more people and destroyed much more property, but again, perhaps the administration can be forgiven for exaggerating the danger the group posed when one considers the febrile atmosphere of the time.

Of course, this comparison between Trump’s nascent administration (let’s remember he has only been President for just over a year) and Nixon’s might prove premature. Trump might well lead the United States into a disastrous foreign intervention and the resistance towards his administration might well become more militant. There are already worrying signs. Putting aside his baiting of North Korea and his deepening of US involvement in Afghanistan (lest we forget, he recently authorised Mattis to increase the number of US troops in the country), the far right is increasingly flexing its muscles as evidenced most vividly in Charlotsville, while militancy on the left is also on the rise: for example, one leftwing group, Redneck Revolt,  was reported by The Independent to be arming working class people who want to defend minorities from attack. In such circumstances, one could well imagine the tide turning and Trump’s America mirroring the turmoil of Nixon’s. But until then, Bad Moon Rising is both a fascinating read in and of itself and a helpful anchor. As yet Trump has been more blowhard than real threat. For all his rhetoric he’s arguably achieved very little and America is still a relatively tranquil place compared to times gone past. Lets hope it stays that way.

4 out of 5 stars

The Hanged Man by Simon Kernick

This is the second in the latest series of novels by the acclaimed British thriller writer, Simon Kernick. While you can read this easily enough as a standalone, I quickly bought the first in the series, The Bone Field, and read that which undoubtedly added to my enjoyment. While this is a new series of novels, it does feature recurring characters from previous books, namely Ray Mason, a former Met detective now with the National Crime Agency, and Tina Boyd, also a former Met detective but now a private detective.

In The Bone Field our two protagonists had uncovered a crime ring abducting young women and sacrificing them in a devil worshipping ceremony. The plot of The Hanged Man follows the events of the previous book with Mason and Boyd trying to bring the criminals to justice. The gang includes a major organised crime figure and his chief enforcer and a sinister brother and sister linked to the establishment, so this proves incredibly difficult. There are also hints that a wider network of connected, establishment figures is involved and that they are being shielded by powerful people.

While primarily a crime thriller, there are hints of a supernatural element to this latest series of novels. This is an interesting development because until recently this genre blend was not popular amongst mainstream publishers. In fact, one of my favourite authors, James Oswald, initially self published his Inspector McClean series because no publisher would touch a supernatural/crime thriller mash up (Oswald has since been snatched up by Penguin). Kernick’s latest series isn’t as much of a genre blend as Oswald’s work, the devil-worshipping element is very light indeed, and there are other influences, namely the recent spate of allegations concerning organised child abuse amongst the establishment. That said, this is somewhat of a departure from his usual work which tends to focus on either ordinary people who stumble upon gangsters or cops investigating organised crime.

Some of the characters in The Bone Field and The Hanged Man are very well drawn indeed. The villains in particular. Mr Bone, the chief henchman of the organised crime boss is as sinister as they come and a great villain, while the sister, Anthea Delbarto, is malevolent and menacing in the extreme. The heroes, Ray Mason and Tina Boyd, are also well drawn, but the problem with using recurring characters in such high-octane thrillers as Simon Kernick writes is that it starts to stretch credulity that so much could occur to them. There are points in both novels where the author has to quickly recap what has happened to them in their lives - for example Tina Boyd has been shot twice, kidnapped once, been held hostage and been involved in at least three killings. I doubt any Met police officer has ever had all that happen to them in their careers and when typed out on the page it’s obviously ludicrous. That said, Kernick isn’t the only author to use recurring characters in action packed series and the same criticism could be levelled at numerous others, Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher for example, so this isn’t a major concern. Perhaps the secret is not to spell it out and draw too much attention to the fact that so much has happened to one person.

All in all The Hanged Man (and it’s forerunner, The Bone Field) is a pretty good novel and is well worth a read. It ends on a cliffhanger, a third instalment is on the way, and I will definitely be reading it.

4 out of 5 stars