The Blanket

The Blanket - A Journal of Protest & Dissent

Chris Petit's Secret History: The Psalm Killer

(London: Macmillan; New York: Knopf, 1996. Paperback, 1997)

Book Review

Seaghán Ó Murchú • 30 July 2006

I rarely read thrillers or mysteries, although I do accumulate and sometimes manage to finish a great many books about Ireland, much of them fictional and factual on the North. But a good friend and fellow voracious bookworm who knows both Belfast and its paperback representations well urged me to pick up a copy. I did that, six years ago, but I've only now gotten around to reading it. The distinction of Petit's novel is that he combines real and imagined so much he blurs them convincingly in the rivalry he creates among paramilitaries, army, republicans, MI 5/6, and their shared spies. If you've left the North, Petit's descriptions will bring back to memory traces of Belfast's expectant atmosphere.

Lots of Irish republican and loyalist characters and incidents are borrowed by Petit from history-- his bibliography credits specific figures and events that the author's adapted for his novel. He's done deep research, and if you happen to be well-informed already on the 'Troubles', such background significantly enhances the topical interest inherent in Petit's intelligently prepared fictionalisations of true skulduggeries. Much of the value in reading The Psalm Killer lies in matching Petit's fictional characters with their living and dead historical counterparts. This gives you an intriguing slant on familiar scenes.

I share Petit's protagonist's hypothesis (pg. 353 ff.) about why the conflict in the North played itself out 1975-85 as it did. He suggests, and this explanation does not spoil the plot, that at least two British factions in the earlier '70s fought for control of the Northern conflict. One pro-Dublin wished for leaving the mess with the South and waving farewell to those nationalists sending them home with a 'slán abhaile'. They favoured negotiation with the Provos after weakening them through informers and double-agents. They logically backed the 1974 ceasefire.

The other faction, aiding the loyalist paras, sought destabilisation of the North. They advocated a crackdown that would increase British power and suppress republican struggle. They backed the general strike against the ceasefire. They incited the loyalist backlash in two ways. By posing as IRA, agents would execute innocent Protestants so as to spark violent revenge against the IRA. The British injected more power and shipped more weapons into an already antagonistic unionist community. Their angry responses would weaken the IRA, which also being infiltrated heavily, would then engage in operations that the Crown and the loyalists could manipulate to increase anarchy. Random killings of Catholics spread more terror. In turn, these bungled republican operations would discredit the claims made by Provos of legitimacy and erode their wider support among nationalists and their international supply networks. Dublin's government would be happy to keep its distance and forget about diplomacy. Shankill Butchers, INLA-Sticky feuds, Vincent Heatherington's sting, John McKeague and Kincora. Tommy Herron's racketeering, Dublin bombings. John Stalker, Albert Baker, Ronald Bunting, Airey Neave: all these were manipulated by the Crown in its own hidden machinations. The clandestine war between Crown forces--such as MI5 vs. MI6 mirrored the factional war between not only Provos and loyalists but INLA vs. Sticks vs. Provos. Petit admits in his notes that his suppositions in the novel of British involvement in the INLA's formation, by the way, remain fictional only. Furthermore, but based on actual events, Petit portrays collusion between Provos and UDA: I'll destroy, you rebuild, and tax dodges fatten both our coffers.

Makes intriguing reading even more when the past Northern Irish decade's diplomatic and political alignments after Petit wrote this thriller, 1995-2005, are considered according to the theory that Petit's main figure offers. Why ceasefires and Irish-British negotiations emerge makes his thriller also an counter-argument for the North's "secret history" from not only 1975-85 but closer to its present political set-ups and diplomatic tensions. The McMahon character's experiences may remind you of two prominent SF leaders' earlier resumés.

There's not all that much Ulster dialect here, far less than'd be the norm for many Irish writers who've taken on this territory. Many characters are imported from England anyway. Petit portrays the feel of the city well, although its ordinary folks seem less nuanced. There's fewer indigenous major figures in the story than I'd have expected for a novel set in Belfast. Granted, it is told from more of a British outsider's perspective, which may have suited the author's own qualifications better. Don't be expecting many Oirish stereotypes, either, to Petit's credit.

The novel takes a long time to read, and demanded a lot of my attention. Plots shift subtly, and the pieces take a long time to assemble. Petit, as other reviewers have noted, does collide into clichés of the genre--the killer's long phone conversations with the cops, the taunting and curiously capitalised letters sent, killers who talk endlessly to those they are about to execute, femme fatales, the coincidental proximity of characters just when the story demands them, the esoteric pattern of the murders that reveals the next victims, and the climactic showdown between the forces of compromised good and unrelenting evil.

The denouement let me down. Some key events for the character with whom the novel ends are left barely summarized, and the impetus for the two characters' meeting that closes the book fails to be demonstrated. There's a lot of repressed sexuality that bubbles up dramatically as the novel progresses, but I sense that Petit does not control the energies these instincts have ignited within major characters. They begin acting like crazed teenagers in their lusts, and this regression jars with how they've been earlier explained. Petit tries to make his book not only violent but erotic, and then mixes the two, fumblingly.

The spouse of the protagonist for much of the book is off-stage for reasons that you assume will be made clear and relevant to the resolution of the novel but never are. Major causes for plot complication and character development that are emphasised consistently and that create friction between key characters remain unexplained at story's end. True, this allusive quality of much of the North comes across well, in its shadowy alliances of enemies and backstabbing and informing and double-agents. But the novel's endgame, as it plays out, dashes past much that should have been explored or else left out of the already labyrinthine plot, given the elaborate construction of the intricately aligned characters that Petit sets up as his chesspieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Blanket - A Journal of Protest & Dissent

 

 

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Index: Current Articles



3 August 2006

Other Articles From This Issue:

A United Ireland or Nothing
Liam O Comain

Federal Unionism—Early Sinn Fein: Article 1
Michael Gillespie

High Noon
John Kennedy

Fest or Flop
Dr John Coulter

Irish and Republican Music
Ray McAreavey

Qana Massacre again: Foreign and Domestic Enemies of our Constitution
Mazin Qumsiyeh

Israel Murders UN Observers
Anthony McIntyre

Managing Debate
Mick Hall

4 Horsemen
John Kennedy

The Evil That Men Do
Anthony McIntyre

Chris Petit's Secret History: The Psalm Killer
Seaghán Ó Murchú

Soldier of the Legion of the Rearguard
Liam O Ruairc

Football and the Fifth Commandment
Eamon Sweeney

Don't Let Us Down
Dr John Coulter

Human Rights Forum
Meeting Announcement

Billy Mitchell
Anthony McIntyre


25 July 2006

Religious Rednecks of Doom
Dr John Coulter

Cut-Throat Politics
John Kennedy

A Poem About Our Children
Mary La Rosa

Israeli Blitzkrieg
Anthony McIntyre

When Leaders Serve Foreign Interests, Everyone Loses
Mazin Qumsiyeh

By Their Friends You Shall Know Them
Mick Hall

Mission Impossible
Anthony McIntyre

Lit Crit Well Writ
Seaghán Ó Murchú

Revisiting A Literary Genius
David Adams

'The Film That Shakes A Lot More Than the Barley'
Eamon Sweeney

The Framing of Michael McKevitt: Conclusion
Marcella Sands

The Framing of Michael McKevitt: Additional Information
Marcella Sands

The Framing of Michael McKevitt: Letter of Thanks
Michael McKevitt

Pull the Other One
John Kennedy

Ex-Noraid Boss Still Gloomy on Peace Process
Jim Dee

An Honour to Have Been Part of the Blanket Protest
Anthony McIntyre

The Letters page has been updated.

 

 

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