Book review - Queenpin

Megan Abbott’s third novel, Queenpin (2007) surpasses her excellent previous books, The Song Is You (2005) and Die A Little (2007). She has since published another six crime novels.

The Queenpin of the title is a mob moll called Gloria Denton, who’s ice-cold, calculating and exceedingly good at her business, having been at the top of her game for a couple of decades, reliably transporting stolen diamonds, race-track winnings, fixing the odds, all for the bosses. 

Maybe because age or the business is catching up with her, Gloria takes the narrator, an unnamed young woman under her wing, rescuing her from hum-drum book-keeping in a lowly nightclub and trains her as a go-between.

As we’ve come to expect by now, Abbott gets under the skin of the narrator with ease. This is all so believable, almost like a confessional, with plenty of wisecracks and slick one-liners and period description.

Slowly, Gloria’s tuition pays off and our narrator looks, sounds and acts like a younger version of the Queenpin. But then things start to slide into noir territory as the protégé falls heavily for a loser, a guy who is never going to win the big score, no matter how often he tells himself he will. From there, the tension mounts.

Then there’s a shocking murder, a disinterment, and more than one betrayal along the way, told with grim precision and word-economy.

Riveting, page-turning stuff.

Mystery Weekly Magazine - June 2018

Six crime stories, all varied in setting, characterisation and period, from a Canadian publisher, available on Amazon for under a fiver.   

The cover story ‘Lady Dick’ by Tony Parker is set in the 1950s, when two post-war OSS female operatives are working as private eyes. Present tense relating to the past – ‘We ranged through occupied Europe like angels of death. We owned the night.’ Some great lines, quite slick. 

Next up is a switch, ‘A Ship called Pandora’ by Melodie Campbell, a science fiction outing, a Witness Protection system run by two hard cases, transporting their human cargo to the outer reaches of space for their protection. A nice twist ending. 

‘Mop Jockey’ by Michael Ayoob is a raw tale told in first and third person about a cleaner with a deadly difference.   

John H. Dromey’s ‘A Detour down Memory Lane’ is a lighthearted investigation into a John Doe’s death. I liked the line ‘a snot rag of prevarications’ meaning ‘a tissue of lies’. [The editor in me will forgive the use of ‘pouring’ instead of ‘poring’ – ‘pouring over a dusty ledger’ (p50)]. A likeable team, lawyer Stephanie and investigator Molly. 

The story ‘Stars’ by Peter W.J. Hayes is a hard-nosed gangster tale where the anti-hero Tank learns that good or bad, lives are transient. 

I found the last story highly enjoyable: ‘The Motor Court’ by Jennifer Collins Moore, where a body is found in a dumpster and two women, usually at loggerheads, reluctantly combine forces to discover the perpetrator. Good dynamic between octogenarian Betty and the owner of the motor court, Eleanor.

If you like crime shorts, try this magazine. Contrary to its title, it's monthly...

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...]