Okay, having finished the book, I can quit being coy and tell you that what I was actually reading was Deadstick, the 1991 debut novel by Terence Faherty. And my verdict is that it's quite good, especially for a an author's first time out.
The lead character, Owen Keane, is a former seminarian who didn't make it into the priesthood. In this book he's working as a researcher for his friend's law firm. The friend, Harry, assigns him the project of investigating a fatal plane crash from forty years earlier, at the behest of one victim's very wealthy recluse of a brother.
I've read enough detective novels to know that there are cliches, tropes, call them what you will. Things that make storytelling easier and which the audience doesn't mind, might even prefer. Faherty is good enough to avoid a lot of them and to play with them when he does use them.
For example, I was expecting there to be at least one scene where someone tries to scare Keane off by shooting at him or at least beating him up. (It's established that he's not really a fighter.) The greatest physical threat, though, comes when a Pine Barrens storyteller he's looking to for answers takes him out to the middle of the woods and just...leaves him there. Their scene together just before this may be the height of the novel.
There are a bunch more books in the series, last one so far being published in 2013. It seems to have been mostly overlooked. Faherty has won the Shamus Award but for a book in his other series, about former actor Scott Elliott. The Keane books seem ripe to be discovered, though.
2 comments:
It seems a shame there are so many books that would make good screenplays that never make it to the movies. This sounds like a good one, particularly that bit about being left in the woods. I know what you mean about certain concepts that are frequently used in American detective novels - the sap being a prime example - but just being abandoned in some out of the way place works equally well. Now what am I supposed to do? He must have figured a way out of the problem though, or there wouldn't have been any further novels.
I'll definitely add his name to my list to watch out for the next time we go to the used bookstore. Unfortunately, like so many others, his books have become expensive when they're available at all.
When we went out this afternoon Jer found one of Michael Innes's (an Oxford don with an entertaining sideline) Inspector Appleby mysteries. They used to be among my favorites so it will be amusing to read The Long Farewell. He wrote Lament for a Maker, the mystery you may have read that was written as a series of first person narratives about how the murder happened - a very complex story that I enjoyed immensely.
btw: That picture of Faherty wearing a sharp suit and sporting a moustache must have appeared on a rare copy of the book. I couldn't find it.
There are some books that don't want to be made into movies, but a lot just get overlooked. (Although this also means they don't get butchered.) In terms of mysteries British books seem to have a better chance of making it to the screen, be it big or little. Might be because detectives all become period pieces after a few years, and that's a recipe that's more popular over there. What's cool about the scene in the woods is that the two guys are genuinely having a nice, interesting conversation. It's just that things take a turn there.
Old books do tend to spike in price after a few years. Some have very small editions, of course, which naturally makes them rare assets. In other cases I wonder if both the rarity and price are artificially created by speculators.
I think you sent me one of Innes's Appleby novels at one time, although I can't remember which one and have no idea where it is now. Reading about the series does give me an itch, though. Innes kept doing the series for fifty years. While I'm sure the money helped he must have enjoyed it as well. Lament for a Maker sounds like kind of a Rashomon approach, which is an interesting way to write a mystery.
Yeah, like I might have said, that picture hasn't even shown up online as far as I can tell. Faherty has since gone clean shaven and appears more casual. Give Tom Wolfe this: He made a distinctive fashion choice and stuck with it.
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