In the 2007 book Freakonomics, the behavioural economists Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner revealed a number of surprising aspects about the world around us. One of those, was that many street level drug dealers actually make little money, that in some cases the cash they earn is less than the minimum wage. This interesting factoid kept coming back to me when reading this novel.
Tom, the protagonist of this novel, is grieving. His girlfriend has died and her family, The Conways, a powerful crime family in the local area, have put a bounty on his head. His friend helps him go on the run and arranges for him to hide in The Bothy, a pub in the middle of nowhere and run by Frank, an aging criminal. Tom is not welcomed by his new co-workers, a handful of misfits and thugs. The only person he really becomes friends with is Cora, Frank’s much younger girlfriend, and something that fuels the others hostility towards him. Frank, however, welcomes Tom with open arms and doesn’t appear to mind his flowering friendship with Cora.
Tom is put to work at the Bothy and on its surrounding land. It’s a shabby place well past its prime. It becomes apparent that Frank himself was once a crime lord of sorts, running brothels and having his finger in other scams. To a certain extent he still does, a crime gang from Bradford occasionally turn up, but what they’re doing for Frank is never quite clear.
Throughout the novel it is apparent that Frank’s best times are far behind him and this is why it reminded me so much of that Freakonomics revelation. The parallels are far from perfect, Frank is no street dealer and it seems likely that at some point he was earning the big bucks: he seems to own The Bothy for a start and there are hints that he was heavily involved in running rackets once-upon-a-time. He has enemies, either from the old days or from whatever he’s mixed up in now, people he wants dead. But he’s clearly in poverty. The Bothy is derelict, no customers ever visit, and food is sparse; this is no lifestyle of five-star hotels he’s living. Equally, while it’s never spelt out, it seems likely that his crew ended up with him the same way as Tom: through accident and misfortune, rather than choice. Certainly, Frank is not paying them very much, if at all.
All this puts an original spin on the gangster crime novel and helps makes this book an original and compelling tale. While on some levels The Bothy is a story about gangsters, it’s not a gangster novel in the traditional sense. This is a much slower burn novel than many that feature gangsters, much more about the tension between the people living and working in The Bothy, their almost hand-to-mouth existence, the mounting suspicion and paranoia as things start to go wrong and both Frank’s enemies, and The Conways who have put a bounty on Tom’s head, start to encroach. The finale, when it comes, is suitably visceral and fitting to the tone of the novel as a whole.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Bothy and would recommend it highly. This is the author’s debut and a pleasure as a book reviewer is finding new talent. I look forward to reading what he writes next.
5 out of 5 stars
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