I will never understand the critical dismissal of genre fiction. Look in most book review sections, and while the latest historical biography might get a review that stretches to 2 pages (and how is that not a genre?), on the next page you’ll find half a dozen crime books crammed into one paragraph – and you’ll be lucky if science fiction features at all. But how is it less creative to write a one-off work than to create and then coherently sustain a whole universe over a series – whether this is the mean streets of Edinburgh, the murky underworld of Chicago or the cobbles and alleys of Ankh-Morpork – or, in Dennis Lehane’s case, the dark corners of contemporary Boston.
Yes, there are badly written and by-the-numbers genre books – but then some ‘literary’ fiction is so appallingly written and derivative you want to smack the author round the head with it. And, of course, the best of the genre writers have the consolation that they sell books in numbers that most writers can only dream of: as Martina Cole once magnificently said, when asked if she was bothered about the lack of critical recognition for her books, “The Booker prize money wouldn’t keep me in cigarettes.” Because at the root of a lot of this dismissal is simply an ugly snobbery: popular = bad. If the plebs who buy books in Tesco and WH Smith like it, then clearly it can’t be any good.
Never is this more obvious than with writers who flit between ‘genre’ and 'proper' fiction, like Lehane. Lehane is one of the great American thriller writers; even if you’ve never read him, you’ve probably seen – or at least heard of – Mystic River and Shutter Island, the films based on two of his books. If you’re a fan of the Wire, you already know his work, even if you can’t recall seeing his name as it flashed back on the opening credits of one of his episodes. His previous book, The Given Day, was a sweeping novel of post-First World War Boston that many regard as his masterpiece – so there was almost audible disappointment from some critics that for his latest, Moonlight Mile, he has chosen to return to the detective series that launched him, the Kenzie and Gennaro books. (It’s illustrative of this dismissal that two of the reviews I read couldn’t even get their facts straight, referring to the detectives as ‘the couple we saw last in Gone Baby Gone' – when the most recent book was actually the one after that, Prayers for Rain).
Well, sod the critics; I couldn’t be more delighted to see the return of one of my favourite couples. Because the Kenzie and Gennaro books are some of the best detective fiction you’ll ever read: gritty, unflinching and unputdownable. Patrick Kenzie is one of fiction’s most appealing narrators; dry as a good scotch, funny and unflinching, whether examining the shortfalls of others or himself – he is a direct descendent of Chandler, expressing himself in an economy of prose most writers would kill for. His relationship with Gennaro and how it develops through the books is one of my favourite love stories: spiky, complicated, ground down by the realities of life and work and paying the bills, but still, to borrow a title from the series, Sacred at its core. My main disappointment in the otherwise admirable film adaptation of Gone Baby Gone was that they took the multi-faceted, complex character of Gennaro and stripped it down to just another girlfriend role. And that’s before you even get to the joy that is Bubba Rogowski, Angie and Patrick’s childhood friend, all grown up into a psychopathic arms dealer, and provider of some of the series most explosive moments and much of its black humour.
Like so many of the series I get into, I read this one out of order, having been given a copy of one of the books by a friend: and while I still loved them, they do have an arc worth following, so I’d suggest you start at the first, A Drink Before the War. Oh, I could go on a bit more about how the framework of a series allows writers to efficiently explore modern issues – a couple of paragraphs in Moonlight expresses more eloquently the common man’s fury at the economic crisis than major newspaper articles – but really, all you need to know is: great characters, great stories, great books. Go buy.
Yes, there are badly written and by-the-numbers genre books – but then some ‘literary’ fiction is so appallingly written and derivative you want to smack the author round the head with it. And, of course, the best of the genre writers have the consolation that they sell books in numbers that most writers can only dream of: as Martina Cole once magnificently said, when asked if she was bothered about the lack of critical recognition for her books, “The Booker prize money wouldn’t keep me in cigarettes.” Because at the root of a lot of this dismissal is simply an ugly snobbery: popular = bad. If the plebs who buy books in Tesco and WH Smith like it, then clearly it can’t be any good.
Never is this more obvious than with writers who flit between ‘genre’ and 'proper' fiction, like Lehane. Lehane is one of the great American thriller writers; even if you’ve never read him, you’ve probably seen – or at least heard of – Mystic River and Shutter Island, the films based on two of his books. If you’re a fan of the Wire, you already know his work, even if you can’t recall seeing his name as it flashed back on the opening credits of one of his episodes. His previous book, The Given Day, was a sweeping novel of post-First World War Boston that many regard as his masterpiece – so there was almost audible disappointment from some critics that for his latest, Moonlight Mile, he has chosen to return to the detective series that launched him, the Kenzie and Gennaro books. (It’s illustrative of this dismissal that two of the reviews I read couldn’t even get their facts straight, referring to the detectives as ‘the couple we saw last in Gone Baby Gone' – when the most recent book was actually the one after that, Prayers for Rain).
Well, sod the critics; I couldn’t be more delighted to see the return of one of my favourite couples. Because the Kenzie and Gennaro books are some of the best detective fiction you’ll ever read: gritty, unflinching and unputdownable. Patrick Kenzie is one of fiction’s most appealing narrators; dry as a good scotch, funny and unflinching, whether examining the shortfalls of others or himself – he is a direct descendent of Chandler, expressing himself in an economy of prose most writers would kill for. His relationship with Gennaro and how it develops through the books is one of my favourite love stories: spiky, complicated, ground down by the realities of life and work and paying the bills, but still, to borrow a title from the series, Sacred at its core. My main disappointment in the otherwise admirable film adaptation of Gone Baby Gone was that they took the multi-faceted, complex character of Gennaro and stripped it down to just another girlfriend role. And that’s before you even get to the joy that is Bubba Rogowski, Angie and Patrick’s childhood friend, all grown up into a psychopathic arms dealer, and provider of some of the series most explosive moments and much of its black humour.
Like so many of the series I get into, I read this one out of order, having been given a copy of one of the books by a friend: and while I still loved them, they do have an arc worth following, so I’d suggest you start at the first, A Drink Before the War. Oh, I could go on a bit more about how the framework of a series allows writers to efficiently explore modern issues – a couple of paragraphs in Moonlight expresses more eloquently the common man’s fury at the economic crisis than major newspaper articles – but really, all you need to know is: great characters, great stories, great books. Go buy.
You hit it spot on! I couldn't have written this better myself. Honestly. Go buy A Drink Before the War right now. You'll thank us for it!
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I am glad to see since I posted this at least one of my friends downloaded him for their Kindle. He so rocks.
ReplyDelete