Book review - Truth Lies Buried

Truth Lies Buried by Lesley Welsh is published on 7 June. I was fortunate to read an advance review copy.

First off, I like the clever title, juxtaposing Truth and Lies. The addition of Buried is made very clear at the outset when a local gangster is interred in a shallow grave, thanks to Sam Riley, ex-Army, who’s doing it for a very potent reason. We’re not privy to the fact that Sam  is a woman until page 25, but I don’t think this can be a spoiler as the cover features a woman: Samantha wants to spend the rest of her life with the deceased’s wife, Monica. Unfortunately, Monica also has a son, Brando – ‘Reservoir Pup’, Sam calls him: ‘just eleven years old and already a greedy, heartless little tosser.’

By now you should have a very strong flavour of the tone, the dry and dark humour of the book. To be savoured.

There are some great lines dropped in the narrative, too many to list here, but here are a few: ‘Carver’s voice always threw me, that high-pitched squeak emanating from his bulky body. Years before, a bullet in the throat had left him talking like a mouse on helium.’ Some more: ‘The Gangster, His Wife and The Lesbian.’ (p36); ‘…your knight in shining Armani,’ (p47); and ‘They say Orientals are inscrutable but they’ve got nothing on lawyers.’ (p80) Acute observation is evident, and couched in fine prose, for example: ‘Rubbish flew about like tattered birds…’ (p225)

Sure, there are clichés, but this is a first person narrative so Sam would use them, even ‘my blood ran cold’ – because that’s how most people feel and think in a threatening situation.

Throughout, Welsh captures Sam’s voice to perfection, her emotions and strength of character, notably when she undergoes a transformation as she gets to know Brando, a great wise yet vulnerable character, eleven going on thirty. A number of chapters are third-person, and these enable the reader to get into the minds and under the skin of other characters, particularly the despicable Monica. Lenka is a fine surprise, too! As Sam says, ‘She really was something else.’ (p315)

To relate the storyline in any detail would be to spoil the discoveries along the way. For there’s a dark incident in Sam’s past that has poignant bearing on her present situation. Twists and turns in the plot kept me flipping the pages, whether that’s the good suspense, the cat-and-mouse with the DI, the confrontations with the other gangland members out to carve up Monica’s inheritance. There are many instances where the tension is raised in fraught moments. Sam’s encounter with a local hood on the threshold of the house is gauged just right.

Deaths lead to more deaths, and it all starts spinning out of control among the godless… The local gangsters have to contend with Chinese triads and Russian mafia, as well. I found the action scenes to be well-choreographed, tense and believable.

Sam is a rounded character, and opinionated, too, which is good; for example, her view of the PC crowd: ‘I loathe these people, the ones who have implanted these admonitory words in our brains. What kind of screwed-up Orwellian nightmare are we living in when a simple act of human kindness comes with cautionary, defensive and even reproachful strings attached?’ (p129)

Irony, pathos, it’s all here, and Welsh is superb on relationships – the good and the bad.  ‘Maybe we are all haunted in one way or another. But some of us have more persistent ghosts.’ (p248)

I’d offer one caveat: if you’re averse to raw language, then don’t read gangster novels. Truth Lies Buried contains quite a lot of swearing; this is about raw gangster environment, after all, but it never came across as gratuitous, but character- and situation-driven. And of all the gangsters we meet, perhaps Monica the Moll is decidedly the worst!

As hinted at already, despite the grimness of gangland violence and threat, there’s plenty of humour, black and light. ‘He was straight from the Ugly Agency. Looking for an interesting character for a new film are you, Mr Spielberg? Want to frighten the living daylights out of the kiddies, do you? Then I know just the man for the part.’ (p314)

There are dark moments, since this is the underbelly of what passes for the human condition: ‘… an uneasy feeling settled on her shoulders like a dark shroud and she couldn’t shake it off.’ (p337) We sense that as we read on, wanting Sam to overcome the many obstacles in her path.

Welsh has created an intriguing and likeable heroine in Sam. ‘…Some people have clean hands but dirty soul. You have dirty hands but clean soul, I think.’ – (p382) It would be a shame if we were not to meet her again.

A brilliant novel that deserves to do well, giving the likes of Martina Cole a run for her ill-gotten gains.

[A shorter review will appear on Amazon et al...]

Saturday story - 'The man who had a date with the past'

Cold revolver - Wikipedia commons

 

THE MAN WHO HAD A DATE WITH THE PAST

 

 

Nik Morton

 

His thick-veined wrinkled hands raised the gilt-framed photograph from the old sideboard’s bottom drawer. ‘Well, another year nearly over, Detta,’ Cosmo Pontiferi whispered to his wife, Bendetta. ‘Tomorrow’s the big day.’

Lifting pale brown eyes from her crochet-work, she smiled softly. ‘Yes, our thirtieth…’

Cosmo scrutinised the picture of the fourteen-year-old dark-haired boy. ‘Do you think he will come?’ He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘It’s been so long…’

Absently, he fingered the folded letter in his shirt’s breast-pocket. Their son, Emilio, who had left home shortly after the photo was taken, had just written, saying he was returning for their anniversary. ‘I keep a promise, Papa,’ he had written simply.

Carefully placing the picture on the sideboard, he tried controlling his trembling hands.

Thank God Detta didn’t listen to gossip, he thought, eyeing her hunched in her creaking rocking-chair.

Recently, the rumours had had more substance. Thinking about it, he felt his weak heart flutter. Nothing too definite yet, but it seemed that since the Syndicate retired him they had learned that he hadn’t been as devoted to their ‘business’ as he would have had them believe.

It was true, he’d always managed to hold back quite a substantial sum of all his transactions for the Syndicate – unbeknown to them.

The fear of discovery and reprisals had always hovered in the back of his mind. He had thought the risk worth it when younger – and the excitement had thrilled him.

The Syndicate had a very good retirement pay organised for the faithful. He had genuinely wanted to level with them – but couldn’t.

He had been grateful when they retired him and had hoped his past would retire with him.

Thankfully, he had kept Detta in ignorance. No matter what he’d done, provided they believed she wasn’t implicated she would be looked after as his widow…

Before this week, he would have quietly resigned himself to his ‘just deserts’ at the hands of their executioner. But since receiving Emilio’s letter, he found he didn’t want to die – at least, not until his son kept his promise.

 
The phone blared, derailing his train of thought. ‘I’ll get it,’ he whispered gently.
 
‘Hi, Marco, old buddy – long time no see?’ he greeted his old friend. Then his blood drained from his grizzled face. He almost froze solid as he held the receiver closer to his ear.
 
Marco hissed in an urgent voice, ‘It’s about those rumours, Cosmo… We’ve been good friends a long time – I wanted to warn you… My contacts reckon there’s a known Syndicate killer in town and it’s said you’re the Mark…’
 
Cold fear seeped into his aged frame. So it had come to this after all. He self-consciously eyed Detta, but she didn’t appear interested in his phone conversation.

Clammy hand gripping the phone tighter, he said, guardedly, ‘No, I can’t believe that, Marco. Why me?’

 
‘The rumours, friend…’
 
‘Not true.’ He forced an unconcerned chuckle. ‘Anyway, thanks for calling, Marco. I shan’t forget…’  Hanging up, he shuffled across to the apartment window. Dusk was already slithering across the city.
 
The vigil now begins, he thought. ‘It’s getting late,’ he observed absently. ‘I’ll follow you to bed in a short while, Detta.’
 
Wordlessly, she rose from her chair. On her way to the bedroom, she patted his weathered cheek. ‘Don’t stop up reading too late, now…’
 
And then he was alone, more alone than he had ever been in his life. Bristled chin determinedly set, he unlocked his desk drawer and removed an old .38 Colt. Slipping it into his tight waistband, he shoved the nearest armchair round to face the door.
 
He switched off the lights and sat waiting in the dark for his appointed executioner.

Dimly he recalled the other times he’d stayed up all night like this, on heists, etc… but then he’d been younger. He could hardly keep his eyes open and felt sure he dosed for odd minutes, only to be brought up with a jerk as the apartment block made its eerie night sounds.

 
His old heirloom fob watch said he’d been waiting two hours. He smiled. Detta hadn’t bothered calling for him to come to bed. Probably fallen straight to sleep, he thought, imagining her lying serenely in the next room.
 
Then he remembered he hadn’t locked the door after putting the cat out. Tiredly, he heaved his stooped body from the chair.
 
Harshly shattering the stillness, next-door’s tomcat screeched in sudden pain, as though it had been kicked down the stairs. Cosmo’s pulse raced maddeningly. The killer!

Standing as if transfixed with one hand on the gun and the other steadying himself against the armchair, he watched speechless as the brass door-handle slowly turned.

The door swung open on soundless hinges. His finger trembled on the trigger.

Tall, immaculately dressed, with lean tanned features shaded by a fedora hat, the stranger stood half-highlighted by the landing’s dull bulb. The grim stubborn mouth twisted into a kind of ironic grin as the hidden eyes scoured the blackened room. Large nimble fingers flashed to his breast-pocket.

Old and out of practice as he was, Cosmo moved with surprising speed. He raised his revolver and fired instinctively.

The man wheezed incredulously and doubled up. He stumbled backwards onto the landing and tumbled downstairs, arms and legs flailing. The clattering noise seemed sufficient to awaken the dead.

Tremulously, Cosmo flicked on the light and stepped to the doorway. The body crumpled to a halt at the next half-landing as Detta’s voice shrieked, ‘Cosmo! What’s going on out there?’

The pungent cordite choked his nostrils. He felt sick inside now. He could never hide this deed from her. Slowly, he descended the stairs, gun at the ready, just in case the corpse wasn’t quite a corpse.

His heart wavered as he laboured down to the unnaturally twisted figure. He was too old for this sort of thing, he thought, and smiled grimly to himself. But still a match for their much younger executioners, by the saints!

 
It seemed a century had passed since he’d done this, he mused, and turned the body over.

His head spun giddily. He stared unbelievingly into the vacant eyes of his son, Emilio, whose limp hand held a box of his father’s favourite Corona cigars.

* * *

Previously published in Parade, September 1972, under an old penname Platen Syder.

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

Again, another short story where every word of the allocated thousand must count. Yes, I’d reduce the frequency of ‘had’ now, and I should have shown the cat, since it was mentioned being put out. This was the only short story of mine where the editor/sub-editor decided to change the title; mine, 'The Reckoning' was not considered appropriate.

 

While I think I managed the characterisation in the limited word count reasonably well, and built up the suspense, I suspect that the ending is probably obvious. In 2011, I reworked this theme in a different setting and created a double twist ending for a longer story, to wrong-foot expectations.

If you enjoyed this tale, then you might like my collection Spanish Eye, published by Crooked Cat Publishing, featuring Leon Cazador, private eye in 22 cases.

http://www.crookedcatbooks.com/

US: http://amazon.com/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Canada: http://amazon.ca/dp/B00GXK5C6S
UK: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GXK5C6S
France: http://amazon.fr/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Germany: http://amazon.de/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Austria: http://amazon.at/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Italy: http://amazon.it/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Spain: http://amazon.es/dp/B00GXK5C6S
Japan: http://amazon.jp/dp/B00GXK5C6S

Blog guest – Charles Ameringer – ‘more than a grain of truth’

Today, my blog guest is Charles Ameringer. Charles is professor emeritus of Latin American history at Penn State University and a former captain in the USAF Reserve. Before beginning his teaching career, he served as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Department of Defense.

 

His book The Old Spook is a spy/detective novel about a burned out CIA operative Tom Miller that morphs Richard Burton (Alec Leamus) into Humphrey Bogart (Sam Spade)—and back again! A tale of espionage and sleuthing that engages the reader in the culture and tradecraft of the CIA and the dilemma of government secrecy in a democratic society.  The novel begins with a flashback of the old spook’s career that reveals the stress of shady dealings with sinister characters and transports the reader to such places as Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Chile. Miller has hair-raising encounters with the Russian agent who recruited Lee Harvey Oswald and meetings with Miami Mafia figures. He’s involved in several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In the wake of the Watergate scandals and Jimmy Carter’s purging of the clandestine services, Miller takes forced retirement.

Not ready to call it quits, however, he goes home to Milwaukee where he opens a detective agency and takes on a missing-person case that unwittingly puts him on the trail of a Mafia hit-man. This case gains the attention of Detroit crime bosses and the CIA itself and then there’s an attempt on his life…

The novel covers the 1950s to the 1990s and plenty of names are dropped – Dulles and Helms of the CIA, the Kennedys, Guevara, the missing union boss Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia chieftains Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, Oliver North et al. In the style of Upton Sinclair and Herman Wouk, the fictional Tom Miller interacts with actual events and personalities to provide an entertaining and intriguing read.

All author royalties will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Review

The fictional Tom Miller interacts with actual events and personalities through recent history played out on the global stage. Often, it reads as though Miller was there, liaising with shady wheelers and dealers in South and Central America.

If you have any recollection of some of these events, you’ll soon begin to wonder if this fictional account contains much more than a grain of truth. Fans of John Le Carré, Len Deighton and Charles McCarry will enjoy this revelatory novel. - Pastimes Costa Blanca magazine, May 2012.

 

Charles Ameringer

 

Q & A

This is your debut fiction book. When you were writing your non-fiction works, did you ever hanker after writing fiction at the time?

No, not really.  I was thoroughly committed to the methodology of the History discipline, that is, seeking empirical evidence and striving to relate events as accurately as possible.  At the same time, I always tried to write well, in order to be stylistic and literary.  After I retired, I had the urge to combine that creative instinct with imagination.  Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series and Woody Allen’s “Zelig,” I did so by placing a fictional character at the scene of historical events as they were happening.  Drawing on my experiences as a professor travelling abroad to interview persons of interest and conduct archival research, I created a CIA operative to go where I had gone and meet with whom I had met, only at another time and under different circumstances.     

Charles, I suspect that the character of Tom Miller has been bouncing around in your head for a number of years. Can you tell me when you first decided to write about Tom?

It’s true that he had probably been there for some time, and popped into my consciousness after I finished my last scholarly work in 2009.  Although an octogenarian and retired, I still had the urge to write, but I wanted to free myself of methodological restraints and have some fun (although there is absolutely no distortion of factual material in The Old Spook).  Tom Miller is essentially my alter ego.  As noted, he retraces my steps, but only to provide authenticity to the places he goes and people he meets.  Many novels are autobiographical in nature.  For example, Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War, providing the template for Frederic Henry in A Farewell To Arms.  As a result, such novels are unique; there is none other like each and there never can be.     

Your book reminds me of Richard Pape’s Arm me Audacity, because when I finished that I really wondered if the narrative was true. Obviously, you feature real people and the big events you relate were true – but are you able to enlighten us as to how much of the double-dealing and political chicanery actually occurred?

As you say, the big picture is a factual account, being based on the extensive research I completed for my non-fiction study, U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History, which David Kahn (The Codebreakers) describes as “one of the first and one of the best surveys of American foreign intelligence.”  Tom Miller’s presence at these events is the product of my imagination, but his specific actions in no way alter the truth of what was occurring around him.  As Dean Andrade, the host of the “Milwaukee Authors” website, writes in his review of The Old Spook: “I really enjoyed the blend of real history with fiction, with a story that weaves together famous names and events—the Bay of Pigs, Che Guevara, the Kennedy assassination, Jimmy Hoffa, Oliver North, Aldrich Ames, and much more—all told with sharp historical accuracy and keen insight.”  However, there is a story within the story; the novel is divided into three parts and Part Two, “Where’s Aldo?” is pure fiction.  None of what occurs there is true, which may explain why it’s the most exciting portion of the book, given that Tom’s character enjoys a free rein.  Still, it wouldn’t make sense without the context of the truthful double-dealing detailed in the other parts.  Nor, is this to suggest that the other parts of the novel are lacking in thrills and suspense; as the popular author Debra Hartmann states in her review, “A great read, entertaining and powerful, a story that leaves you constantly on the edge.”          

You definitely gave The Old Spook a sense of place. Do you think this is important in fiction, and why?

Combining the places where I lived and worked with my travels as a professor engaged in research, I sought to give Tom and the reader a “real feel” of the venues in the novel   Perhaps it’s the teacher in me, but I think a work ought to be informative; if you’re going to take the reader to the campus of the National University of Mexico, for a drink in La Floridita in Havana, a stay in a pensión in San José, Costa Rica, or a trek to the copper mine in Chuquicamata, Chile, you are obliged to make it as realistic as possible.  To have been there helps, although some place descriptions may be unavoidably second-hand.. 

I believe your wife is a strong support in your writing. How do your family/friends feel about your switch to fiction?

Initially, my wife and sons were sceptical when I put on my novelist’s hat, but subsequently were quite sincere in saying that they really liked the novel and wondered “if we have a grandma Moses phenomenon here.”   However, my sons were a bit taken aback by my use of obscenities in the text, but I explained that it wouldn’t do to clean up the language of the fictional Mafia hit man Jack Aldo, a central figure in the story.  .      

You’ve just celebrated your 87^th birthday and I know that time marches on. Do you have plans for another fiction book, or do you feel you’ve said all you needed to say in The Old Spook?

I don’t intend ever to stop writing and I have a number of ideas in mind.  Right now, I’m toying with a story about a freshly-minted assistant professor coping with a Berkley-inspired campus movement during the 1960s. 

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

It is a tall order, but I think it’s Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana.  In my opinion, there’s no place as fascinating as Old Havana (pre-Fidel, that is), which Greene portrays beautifully, and it’s a whimsical and tragic tale of an unwitting screw-up that somehow fate permits to end well.    

Where can readers find you?

You can find me on Facebook, Goodreads, and Amazon.com

and The Old Spook on the following links:

Amazon.com = http://goo.gl/J8S403

Amazon.co.uk = http://goo.gl/IO3tKt

 

Thank you, Charles.

Books by Charles Ameringer:

The Democratic Left in Exile: The Antidictatorial Struggle in the Caribbean, 1945-1959  

Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica 

Democracy in Costa Rica 

U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History

The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946-1950

The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico Years, 1944-1952 

The Socialist Impulse: Latin America in the Twentieth Century