Critical Mick

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Bleed A River Deep
by Brian McGilloway
Macmillan, 2009

Read A River Deep

Always seeking new ways of communicating a good book's character, tone, plot and promise, Critical Mick presents... a Bleed A River Deep reading diary.

DAY 1, Prologue and Chapter One:

It's been roughly a year since I read Borderlands by Brian McGilloway, the first Inspector Devlin novel. Time for another visit to Lifford, County Donegal to catch up with young Ben Devlin and his family, see what manner of trouble he's putting an end to.

I liked John Weston immediately. Especially as I foresee that any societal pillar this impressive is going to turn out to be cracked. The people from the National Museum will confirm it, but today's murdered corpse is appearently a bog body ala Erin Hart.... I am betting that later on in the novel, there'll be more of Weston's dirt dug up, and more skeletons or bodies.

Weston tells Inspector Devlin and Harry Patterson, the abrassive Superintendant who replaced Devlin's old pal Costello, of the forthcoming visit of controversial American Senator Cathal Hagan. "Post-9/11 he was an outspoken critic of terrorism in all its forms, apparently forgetting that... in the 1980's [Hagan's fake charity, Heal Ireland] had paid for most of the Republican movement's weaponry..." Devlin is to be responsible for the security arrangements.

Wealth and righteousness, destitutes panning in cold water, buried secrets, old crimes, the certainty that a crisis is coming and that it won't go well for poor Ben Devlin- Bleed A River Deep, has a fantastic opener. It hits the right topics and touchpoints. McGilloway is promising great stuff.

DAY 2, Chapters Two to Five:

Bank robbery! Excitement floors the pace in Chapter Two. There is also an interestng illustration of how money is physically transferred around Ireland- a method which once resulted in a shaven-headed buddy of mine staring down the barrel of an M16.

The mysterious robber isn't telling any tales. The ID in his pocket has a posh address, but the man has less than one euro in his pants. There's also a prayer card in a foreign language, possibly Russian. Devlin is introduced to the world of illegal immigrants- again, McGilloway's material is topical and very real.

Devlin is often praised for having a normal family life, unique amongst the mass of alcoholic, haunted detectives. At the end of the day Devlin goes home to wife Debbie and his two young kids, Penny and Shane. They even go to Mass on Sundays. But the chapter also introduces Devlin's new female sidekick, Helen Gorman. I wonder what happened to the Ban Garda from Borderlands? I will have to go back and read the second installment, Gallows Lane.) Perhaps Dev's not going to be such a good boy after all.

The novel unrolls, traveling north and south of the border and along several lines of investigation that were neatly laid out. Devlin meets his PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) counterpart, Jim Hendry. He gets a good lead from a scarred immigrant named Pol and Pol's boss Vinnie at a car boot sale (that's Irish for Flea Market). The expert from the National Musuem arrives in the form of an old buddy, Feargal Bradley- the same Feargal mentioned briefly in the Prologue. (We're still building toward the shooting- a nice "Don't go in there!" mix of anticipation and dread). We learn that Devlin had a wild youth and criminal record, and Devlin learns more about the peat bog body- henceforth known as Kate Moss. Here' a McGilloway's aside about the ancient days in which Kate was sacrificed:

McGilloway's tone is dark and hard as Donegal in winter, but his landscape is warmed with firelights of humanity and humor.

DAY 3, Chapters Six to Twelve:

Devlin and Helen Gorman carry out an unauthorized operation of their own north of the border, protecting an illegal Chechen named Natalia Almurzayev from gangsters who traffic in human misery. There's a baddie dubbed Pony Tail, a bit of fireworks and it all ends badly. Yes! Great stuff in Strabane.

Devlin makes security arrangements for Cathal Hagan's arrival, and I have to wonder: why are fictitious senators invariably evil? Hagan personifies the military industrial complex, with terrorism and globalization thrown in. Boo hiss! Hagan has a finger in the gold mine (Orcas, it's called) and a US defence company named Eligius that has a European headquarters outside Omagh. Word of the top secret visit has somehow leaked to a freelance journalist named Janet Moore, an intimate of the crusty alternative gold panners. Dev has to trade favors with her and there's ribs cracked in the camp. All may not be pure and shining with this gold rush....

The novel catches up with its Prologue and the shooting. I don't want to give away any enjoyable surprises, so I'll skip the plot points and state that McGilloway develops his story with skill. The evil senator thing is a cliché, and there follows an even bigger cop-story chestnut to swallow. Still: it conforms to the crime fic conventions. The writing's entertaining, current, and scarily real. Characters turn out not to be who Devlin had thought, and plot streams merge like the rivers Foyle, Finn and Mourne meeting at Lifford. Bleed A River Deep has built into a brilliant book by its middle.

DAY 4, The Rest:

Yep: it lives up to its promise. It's a good one.

Huh! The acknowledgements reveal that Bleed A River Deep gets its name from a song by Ed Harcourt. I've not heard it, but must track that BARD down.

A few nitpicks are all I can detract from McGilloway's third novel. There's a five year old kid who stands a little under three feet tall-? My son is still two and stands three foot three. The math for other characters doesn't match up with the ages that are hinted, either. The mystery is complicated by a few characters and developments that could have been trimmed without loss.

But this is minor stuff: gravel rattling in a pan as I watch McGilloway come out with real gold.

Who hoo!! A nugget!

Critical Mick says: For its intrigue, character, strong sense of place, bitter yellow gruel and welcome difference from the bog-standard procedural, Brian McGilloway's Bleed A River Deep is hereby nominated for the best book Critical Mick read in 2009.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 5 August, 2009.