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.
