Shadows Will Fall
Rose Doyle
Hodder & Stoughton, 2005http://www.rosedoyle.com/
Done How?
Opinions of Rose Doyle's latest novel by random scallywags on Dublin's streets:
Dylan "Daffodil" Magill (19, Unemployed)
Yih, I'm a bit of a big reader. My fingers are always itching like mad for me to put a book in them. So's the other day in Tesco's I robbed Shadows Will Fall. The security guard saw me but I stared him down, real hardman style. He didn't say so much as boo to me mates and I as we walked right past.
Shadows Will Fall opens with a shocker. I'm always one for a gawp at any old naked slapper, sure. Except when they're dead. This fit young ride found on the steps of the Dun Laoghaire morgue had popped her clogs, sure, so's that was a bit of a let down.
Anyways this tea lady what finds her faints straight away. How lame is that! Oh, tee hee, I am a helpless oul tart an' a drama queen ta feckin boot. Next thing as I know, we're into chapter two. Fecks sake! I screamed to me mate Brick Shithouse. If I wanted to read the phone book, I'd have stolen one! Four hundred and eighteen proper names to remember in the opening twenty-two pages. It was wrecking me head so I traded Shadows Will Fall to the Brick-o for a Moro bar I'd had me eye on.
Barry "Brick Shithouse" Shelton (38, Career Criminal)
I liked the cover. I've never read a book about any three-headed monster woman who floats around in the sky sinking boats. That's deadly! How would they do it, do yis think? Would they sneak up all dark and brooding and then douse the poor bastards with storm water? Or would they chase some fisher way out onto open water, then nag the hole off 'im until he jumped into the sea and drowned? Or maybe- Dylan, you girly muppet! You say one more word I'll burst you.
There's all sorts of Russians. Russians in Coney Island in America, Russians taking the jobs away from hard-done-by Irish workers like meself. The bastards. It looked like this mob was going to bash in the head of the dead girl's Russian-mafia boyfiend, but it took too long. I gave up on Shadows Will Fall before I ever got to the monster woman part.
Ovenmitt (Age Unknown, Vampire)
Of monsters and falling shadows, those gurriers know naught. The women on the cover of Shadows Will Fall represent the novel's current victim and two others brutally slain in an identical fashion, over the course of fifty years and thousands of miles! Yes, it is that contemporary monster, killerablis serialus.
Swiftly I bow to your protest! Serial killers are cliché, I agree. Though not as cliché as a can of worms. See? I have one right here? Aren't they... disgusting? Menacing? Wee creatures of darkness, squirming around in slimy horror?
Prithee, no. I am not a fisherman. I... yes, behold, I! I am Ovenmitt the Vampire! Booo!
No you cannot purchase my can of worms. Dracula had his pack of fearsome wolves, true, but not everyone can achieve such heights! The Count was the first and greatest, I implore you to grasp. The fangs of a vampire mouse turned my innocent young self of yesteryear into a creature of the night. A mouse, indeed, but nevertheless a vampire! My worms serve me equally well as great Dracula's wolfpack. They don't protest when I drain them of their sweet blood.
Get to the point you say? Fie! As you wish. There is not just one can of worms in Shadows Will Fall, but two! Plus assorted other phrases as thin and threadbare as my vampire cape. The sights and sounds of old Gotham- New York to your modern ears- are equally devoid of life. Upscale restaurants and a corner coffee shop, depictions straight from that infernal television!
Wait! Come back, I command thee! Erm, please? About the creepy Irish psychic who lives in Bray I will tell thee! Coffee shop owner Frances Shaw goes to meet this spooky witch as she investigates the terrible deaths. Oh by Jupiter's thunder it's very scary indeed, my hands shook and worms slithered from my can just reading that passage! Wait!
Help! Prithee, come back and accompany me to a more well-lit quarter of town? My emergency phone is out of credit!
Wally Mammoth (46, Actor)
As luck would have it, buddy, I know a lot about both New York and television. You recognize this mug from the tube? No, bonehead, not that subway they have in London! The tube, television! I had my own family sit-com in the US. My Kind of Mammoth. No? Ah, nuts to you! I guess it never made it over here. Big hit in the States.
Yeah, I read that Shadows Will Fall on the plane over. Stick the crap that the timid little guy was telling you straight in your ear. That Rose Doyle portrayed Coney Island like it is. Her book even takes you for a ride on the Cyclone! The Cyclone! It's a famous wood roller coaster? Listen, bub, you don't know jack about New York. The Cyclone is world famous. As a kid it was my dream to ride the Cyclone, but I never got the chance. On account of my size. Yeah, my size. What? You want to make something of it?
Another thing, too. You people make me sick. This is the land of Guinness and Jameson, right? I come over here and you chumps are reeling from Miller and Jack Daniels. It's not even dyed green. What are you, stupid?
You're goddamned right you're sorry. Gimme that! And one more thing too. Where the hell is this place Dune Longhair? All day I've been trying to get to Dune Longhaire to see if Rose Doyle painted an accurate picture of the port town. But everyone just looks at me like I've giant tusks whenever I ask. Mind you I get a lot of that anyway. Done Leary, it's pronounced? What, you Irish micks can't drink and you can't spell neither?
Nuts. I'm beginning to see how that Laird guy could write a book called Utterly Monkey that didn't even have a monkey in it. Gimme that microphone! You know what I think of your stinking reviews? You wanna see shadows fall?
CRUNNNCHHH!
Critical Mick (35, Unruly Know-It-All) concludes:
A handy enough mystery if you can warm to middle-aged tea ladies. The way the flashbacks are written in present tense reveals the perspective of a killer for whom the earlier murders are more current, more real than events taking place in 2003. It's obvious this is no copycat, then easy to spot who was in position to do both earlier killings. No surprises that the grown-up killer is a baddie introduced early on, living under an assumed name.
Five dead bodies. One sex scene after getting over the obligatory am-I-too-fat, can-he-really-like-me hurdles. Decent depiction of a part of Dublin seldom seen and difficult to pronounce. Decent crossover to New York. Shadows Will Fall would have been improved with more pages spent on nookie, less on home furnishing and fancy restaurant desserts.
Like Barry "Brick Shithouse" Shelton, Critical Mick feels the novel would have definitely been improved by a ship-eating three-headed floating monster woman, as promised on the cover.
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