alysontheblog

Jane might finally be making headway with a twenty-year-old case, when an accident sends her spinning into a strange world. Three months after the accident, she is surrounded by “strangers who somehow feel familiar” – are they familiar because she knows them, or just because she has recently got used to them? Are they friends, carers, guards, or gaolers? Is she really ‘Jane’?

The things that usually give us certainty, photographs and mirrors, are treacherous to Jane, and from amongst the characters around her who can she trust? Surely not “Doctor Two-Bob Each Way, Doctor Spin the Wheel and Bet on Red, Doctor Don’t Ask Me – I’m a Neurosurgeon”. And then there are the trips to the spaceship. Disorienting and scary. For Jane, spaces keep changing, getting around is not just a physical but a mental challenge.

I don’t want to say who or what Jane is – the intrigue is in finding out alongside her, and in piecing together the various mysteries she is trying to solve, both professionally and personally. The reader is given clues and guesses some of the answers, but the mystery/thriller angle wasn’t really the focus for me, it was the pleasure of reading about the complexities of the central character, at once damaged and vulnerable and staunch and smart.

I read Resurrection not knowing the Jane Halifax TV series or having read the first book in the series, Resurrection is #2. I am glad that’s how I got to know Jane – with her story for a long time hopping around like her confused mind. It is at once sad, “Lonely. Desolate would be a better description …”, and intriguing, “But how can you tell when a liar is telling the truth?”

Once the murk begins to clear, Jane starts recognising herself, but also recognising that she is no longer the person she thinks she might  have been before the accident. The various mysteries are solved: Why was she always thinking of a 20-year-old TV show? Why did she have recurring vivid memories that made no sense? What where the files she was collecting before the accident, and why was she revisiting that old case? Jane picks up more challenges as she struggles with her lingering amnesia, trusting only her instincts to judge who she should help and who she should remain wary of.

There are real threats to Jane’s safety and some tense moments in Resurrection, and the various mysteries are resolved in an interesting, messy, not black-and-white psychological way. There are lots of good solid characters, and Jane adds humour amidst her trauma: “Well, it’s easy for her to say; she hasn’t lost touch with herself.” She gives people great nicknames in retaliation for them calling her by someone else’s name. She summarises herself: “The transgressive mind is my addiction.” Resurrection is a great and unusual read.

Frank Winter is a grumpy cynical ex-sheriff who has been working as a cleaner for the last fifteen years. He likes his drink and he “looks like Johnny Cash on a three-day drunk”. Detective Nunzio Arabito is a twenty-nine-year-old strategic analyst for the Boston Police Department, moonlighting one night a week as an Italian chef. He is responsible for the Prevention First programme and is idealistic about minimising crime and preventing recidivism.

Frank and Nunzio come into each other’s lives when, after twenty years, Barry Krupke is paroled from prison. Krupke has been serving time for the murder of one woman and the abduction of another; he was found not guilty of the murder of a third woman. Nunzio is keeping an eye on Krupke, making sure he stays out of trouble. He is also keeping an eye on Frank, because one of the likely sources of trouble for Krupke is Frank, the third woman being his daughter, Evie. When the verdict was passed, Frank was filmed on national TV, in his police uniform, waving a firearm and saying he’d gun down Krupke if he ever got out of prison.

Needless to say, that incident put Frank on the road to becoming a humble cleaner – although he says the booze was sending him that way anyway. But when he hears Krupke is out, and when he loses his cleaning job over an altercation about his suddenly non-existent pension fund, Frank has free time to consider whether to act on his historic threat or not. And Nunzio is savvy enough to guess where those considerations might lead.

Frank is racist – would never buy a Japanese car because of the war, assumes a black man would steal a camera. He is sexist, grumping that women wouldn’t do as they were told, using language such as “titty bar” and “two-bit street whore”. He is homophobic, feeling uncomfortable around gay men. But he loves his dog to bits, is relaxed with a transexual woman, and as we learn his back story, his behaviour towards his estranged wife Mary is tender and moving.

Frank becomes quite protective of Nunzio: “He should be a social worker – he certainly wasn’t cut out to be a cop.” Nunzio is a delightful character. He is humble, putting up with the banter coming his way at the station, and with being treated like a dogsbody. But he is persistent and very smart. He is also self-deprecating, recognising that he was being brave at one point because “the fear of being ridiculed overcame his fear of sudden death.” Despite his bravado he knows he looks “about as intimidating as Tintin”.

Krupke studied while in prison, stopped drinking, took a course on empathy, and worked out to peak fitness. He also started an online business: “Just like Amway, but with guns”, and is making good money. He’s clean, sober, and knows he can’t be tried again for the events of twenty years ago. But then he discovers Frank is still holding a grudge – and things start going seriously awry. Krupke has one thing in common with Frank – both “always had a tendency to rush in a little heavy handed”.

The plotting of Double jeopardy is great, leading up to a thrilling denouement, that makes Frank have second thoughts about at least some of his prejudices, and about his fitness. All three main protagonists develop through the book, some courage seeping from Frank to Nunzio, and optimism flowing the other way. Krupke realising the difference between the performative radicalism of his United Militias of America, and the messy reality of the field. And there are great secondary characters, and indications that some of them will return if Frank and Nunzio ever get together again, which would be a very good thing.

Sheriff James Cohen is struggling with an aged and impaired father, a recalcitrant teenaged son, a wife who loves him but who has left him, and growing legal and financial woes. Then local crime-writer/heavy-drinker Peter Conner calls in to say his son, Lucas, is missing, and Cohen’s life starts tipping into a black hole.

In His Favourite Graves, Cleave takes us back to Acacia Pines, U.S.A., the setting for his Whatever it Takes. Acacia Pines rivals the number of murderers in Midsummer with the number of its psychopaths. And the plotting of Cleave’s latest offering is, as always, complex and blind-sides the reader over and over again.  

Also as usual is that the moral flexibility of Cleave’s characters is contortionist-level. Motivation for bad deeds is presented as pecuniary, genetic, or medical. I was thinking Cleave had gone one twist, and one element, too far, in His Favourite Graves, until I looked that one element up, and as is often the case with crime fiction, the author had just done his research.

His Favourite Graves is not for the faint-hearted, its depiction of school bullying is extremely disturbing, as is the other violence that occurs through the text with increasing frequency. The novel includes teenage suicide and sexual violence.

Cleave manages to present the tragic side of events as well, the devastation of losing loved ones, especially children, to violence and the sadness of losing parents to Alzheimer’s. There is the irony of some crimes preventing others, or of some successful interventions causing worse crimes down the track.

The amplification of crime via social media, used as a means of bullying, but also as a threat to keep quiet, is cleverly plotted, as is the anonymity provided by the Internet, and its availability to those who know their way around a smart phone. The theme of intergenerational abuse is entwined with the complicity of some in the crimes of their family and friends. There is also the awful, and justifiable, lack of faith that adults will provide any protection for kids against the dangers of the world.

Cleave creates great atmosphere, there’s a large dark root-bound forest, a dank, abandoned sawmill, a small town full of the memories of past tragedies, a building storm, and an eventual deluge. “The hospital hallways smell like science class during chemistry and look like science class during biology.” The thoughts of characters, warped though they often are, make disturbing sense: “The world balances out by having only good things happen to some people, and only bad things to others.”

His Favourite Graves is a masterclass in letting your reader know what your protagonists don’t, letting them sit back and watch as the characters get into trickier and more dangerous situations. It is a stand-alone thriller, but those familiar with Cleave’s earlier work will pick up on recurring themes, and he has sprinkled his text with gestures to the titles of some of his previous books. He also plays with how crime writers get, and use, their ideas. If you are into hard-edged thrillers, read His Favourite Graves!