Polygon Press, 2007, £9.99, ISBN 978-1904598855
Cal Innes is back. And you’ll be glad to know he hasn’t cleaned up his act. If anything, the hopelessly deluded ex-con we first met in Saturday’s Child has slipped further down the tubes.
An addiction to painkillers, a selfish streak ten miles wide and an inability to let tell the truth – even to himself – all combine to make Cal one of the most intriguing characters on the crime fiction scene.
At Crime Scene Scotland we’ve already remarked on author Ray Banks’s ability to write violence so real it hurts. So it seems only natural that he would turn his attention to boxing, a sport that has always been associated with the best of noir.
What perhaps wasn’t expected was that Banks would take Cal out of his natural environment. But the best novels take risks, and Donkey Punch takes a huge one when it rips Cal out of Manchester and throws him into the centre of that most noir of American cities, LA, where dreams are dashed and pain is always as psychological as it is physical. This is the city Ellroy demystified: we all know of the dark heart that keeps the city alive. Don’t mistake this change of locale for some kind of gimmick. Transplanting Cal to a place where he is even more out of his depth than usual is as thematically important as it is dramatically.
Since Saturday’s Child, Cal’s given up on the PI pipedream. If there’s one thing he does right here, its realise that he was only ever playacting. And for a brief, wondrous moment, you wonder if he might have grown up. But Cal is a special kind of stubborn and even if he’s no longer printing up cards at motorway service stations so he looks professional, he’s still deluding himself. He denies his addiction to painkillers. He denies his responsibility for Mo Tiernan harassing his mate Paulo at the local gym. And most of all, he denies his own temper; that terrible, irrational part of himself that seems to set off the worst of the trouble around him.
But what’s a man without friends? Paulo can see his mate’s hurting and he knows that a change is as good as a rest. Cal needs to get away from the stimulus of Manchester that’s bringing out the worst in him, so Cal winds up in charge of a prodigal boxing champ. A young lad with a temper to match even Cal’s. But how much of a minder can Cal make for this young fella with fire in his belly and a temper to match?
The boxing motif weaves perfectly into the continuing themes of responsibility that echo from Saturday’s Child – and even Banks’s debut, The Big Blind. Responsibility for action is paramount to Bank’s work. Never in a preachy fashion, but you start to wonder about his characters and how much they understand the way in which they act, the way in which they so often become their own worst enemies.
As Cal sinks deeper into the world of semi-pro boxing, he finds that its every bit as corrupt as he expected. When bribes and bungs rear their ugly heads, Cal acts almost stunned:
…what happened was I had a bribe forced on me. That’s not an acceptance, there’s no culpability in that.
An extreme case of denial? Or something even more troubling?
Perhaps it all comes down to discipline. That’s part of boxing, too, even if it is something Cal lacks. He’s got his “temper flash” that keeps getting him into trouble. Something upsets him, he goes off like a bomb. He may be a shit fighter (as Saturday’s Child proved more than once), but he wades in with more than gusto. His anger gets the better of him every time, and maybe that’s why Paulo sent him off with this young lad – hoping that Cal can learn to be a responsible human being if he’s forced into the position of role model to someone who mirrors his faults.
But Cal isn’t the quickest of learners, and soon enough he’s mired in the murkier side of boxing and rapidly pissing off the inhabitants of LA. Not to mention failing miserably to keep an eye on his charge.
When it comes to taking a character out their natural environment, a real challenge is presented to the writer. And thankfully Banks rises to the challenge, producing an incredible sense of LA, not simply as a physical location but as a state of mind. It’s a far cry from the glitzy glamour the city of Angels would like to fool us with, and Banks plays the sprawling, unconventional nature of the city to its hilt through implication and action. The oddly sober, smoke-free bar life, the public veneer of the citizens versus their true nature… this is an LA a far cry from Hollywood. And seen from the perspective of an outsider, it takes on an odd, unreal quality. This is an alien landscape, a place that is slightly unreal to a working class lad like Cal. And he doesn’t treat it as awe-inspiring or mythic so much as just plain weird. His frustration offsets the mythology, bringing LA back down to earth with a bump. Check out Cal’s efforts to find a pub where he can smoke or his encounter with a supposed prostitute.
While the dual narrative of Saturday’s Child (alternating between Cal and the psychotic Mo Tiernan) is gone, Banks still takes risks with this novel. There is a deliberate move away from traditional crime fiction tropes. There is no mystery to be solved. No real bad guys (check out the excellent discussion between Cal and Nelson about the movie Shane and how there’s no good guys or bad guys anymore, foreshadowing the novel’s own twisting of moral and ethical lines concerning character’s motivations). Even Cal’s shrugging off his PI dreams are indicative that this is something else, a different kind of story. This is the kind of crime novel you can show to your literary friends and say, “this is what crime fiction can do.” More importantly it shows that series characters can evolve, that a series doesn’t have to rehash the same situations and ideas.
Donkey Punch is more than a contender. It’s a complex character study that has a fearsome energy and a dark heart. There’s a wit and intelligence running through the narrative that never obliquely reveals itself, but rather hides in the words and actions of Banks’s characters.
If there is a problem, it’s the topping and tailing of the story in Manchester which reintroduces us to Mo Tiernan and Paulo at the lad’s club. If you haven’t read Saturday’s Child, then the threat Mo poses might seem a little indistinct (and his appearance might seem to have little relevance to the main plot) and may appear merely to be bookends to the main event. In the grand scheme, of course, they are absolutely necessary not just to reintroduce Cal but to show us how things have moved on since the last book. There is also a feeling by the end of the novel, that the threat posed by Mo is going to become more serious as this sequence of novels progress.
If you’ve never read Banks before, you need to start now. Donkey Punch – even on its own – is a knock-out novel. Read in conjunction with its predecessor, Saturday’s Child, it becomes the perfect follow-through, highlighting themes and motifs from the earlier novel, while advancing character and action. This is how a series should work: not merely reiterating earlier success, but moving forward with characters, plucking them out of their comfort zones, moving their lives forward in a way that feels absolutely real.
For those bored with the traditional approach of crime and mystery series – who know that there is more to be found in the big, bad world of crime fiction – Banks is the man. His books are smart, unpredictable and, above all, dangerous. And Donkey Punch – even without the benefit of reading Saturday’s Child – confirms his status as one of the best crime writers working in the UK today.
Cal Innes is back. And you’ll be glad to know he hasn’t cleaned up his act. If anything, the hopelessly deluded ex-con we first met in Saturday’s Child has slipped further down the tubes.
An addiction to painkillers, a selfish streak ten miles wide and an inability to let tell the truth – even to himself – all combine to make Cal one of the most intriguing characters on the crime fiction scene.
At Crime Scene Scotland we’ve already remarked on author Ray Banks’s ability to write violence so real it hurts. So it seems only natural that he would turn his attention to boxing, a sport that has always been associated with the best of noir.
What perhaps wasn’t expected was that Banks would take Cal out of his natural environment. But the best novels take risks, and Donkey Punch takes a huge one when it rips Cal out of Manchester and throws him into the centre of that most noir of American cities, LA, where dreams are dashed and pain is always as psychological as it is physical. This is the city Ellroy demystified: we all know of the dark heart that keeps the city alive. Don’t mistake this change of locale for some kind of gimmick. Transplanting Cal to a place where he is even more out of his depth than usual is as thematically important as it is dramatically.
Since Saturday’s Child, Cal’s given up on the PI pipedream. If there’s one thing he does right here, its realise that he was only ever playacting. And for a brief, wondrous moment, you wonder if he might have grown up. But Cal is a special kind of stubborn and even if he’s no longer printing up cards at motorway service stations so he looks professional, he’s still deluding himself. He denies his addiction to painkillers. He denies his responsibility for Mo Tiernan harassing his mate Paulo at the local gym. And most of all, he denies his own temper; that terrible, irrational part of himself that seems to set off the worst of the trouble around him.
But what’s a man without friends? Paulo can see his mate’s hurting and he knows that a change is as good as a rest. Cal needs to get away from the stimulus of Manchester that’s bringing out the worst in him, so Cal winds up in charge of a prodigal boxing champ. A young lad with a temper to match even Cal’s. But how much of a minder can Cal make for this young fella with fire in his belly and a temper to match?
The boxing motif weaves perfectly into the continuing themes of responsibility that echo from Saturday’s Child – and even Banks’s debut, The Big Blind. Responsibility for action is paramount to Bank’s work. Never in a preachy fashion, but you start to wonder about his characters and how much they understand the way in which they act, the way in which they so often become their own worst enemies.
As Cal sinks deeper into the world of semi-pro boxing, he finds that its every bit as corrupt as he expected. When bribes and bungs rear their ugly heads, Cal acts almost stunned:
…what happened was I had a bribe forced on me. That’s not an acceptance, there’s no culpability in that.
An extreme case of denial? Or something even more troubling?
Perhaps it all comes down to discipline. That’s part of boxing, too, even if it is something Cal lacks. He’s got his “temper flash” that keeps getting him into trouble. Something upsets him, he goes off like a bomb. He may be a shit fighter (as Saturday’s Child proved more than once), but he wades in with more than gusto. His anger gets the better of him every time, and maybe that’s why Paulo sent him off with this young lad – hoping that Cal can learn to be a responsible human being if he’s forced into the position of role model to someone who mirrors his faults.
But Cal isn’t the quickest of learners, and soon enough he’s mired in the murkier side of boxing and rapidly pissing off the inhabitants of LA. Not to mention failing miserably to keep an eye on his charge.
When it comes to taking a character out their natural environment, a real challenge is presented to the writer. And thankfully Banks rises to the challenge, producing an incredible sense of LA, not simply as a physical location but as a state of mind. It’s a far cry from the glitzy glamour the city of Angels would like to fool us with, and Banks plays the sprawling, unconventional nature of the city to its hilt through implication and action. The oddly sober, smoke-free bar life, the public veneer of the citizens versus their true nature… this is an LA a far cry from Hollywood. And seen from the perspective of an outsider, it takes on an odd, unreal quality. This is an alien landscape, a place that is slightly unreal to a working class lad like Cal. And he doesn’t treat it as awe-inspiring or mythic so much as just plain weird. His frustration offsets the mythology, bringing LA back down to earth with a bump. Check out Cal’s efforts to find a pub where he can smoke or his encounter with a supposed prostitute.
While the dual narrative of Saturday’s Child (alternating between Cal and the psychotic Mo Tiernan) is gone, Banks still takes risks with this novel. There is a deliberate move away from traditional crime fiction tropes. There is no mystery to be solved. No real bad guys (check out the excellent discussion between Cal and Nelson about the movie Shane and how there’s no good guys or bad guys anymore, foreshadowing the novel’s own twisting of moral and ethical lines concerning character’s motivations). Even Cal’s shrugging off his PI dreams are indicative that this is something else, a different kind of story. This is the kind of crime novel you can show to your literary friends and say, “this is what crime fiction can do.” More importantly it shows that series characters can evolve, that a series doesn’t have to rehash the same situations and ideas.
Donkey Punch is more than a contender. It’s a complex character study that has a fearsome energy and a dark heart. There’s a wit and intelligence running through the narrative that never obliquely reveals itself, but rather hides in the words and actions of Banks’s characters.
If there is a problem, it’s the topping and tailing of the story in Manchester which reintroduces us to Mo Tiernan and Paulo at the lad’s club. If you haven’t read Saturday’s Child, then the threat Mo poses might seem a little indistinct (and his appearance might seem to have little relevance to the main plot) and may appear merely to be bookends to the main event. In the grand scheme, of course, they are absolutely necessary not just to reintroduce Cal but to show us how things have moved on since the last book. There is also a feeling by the end of the novel, that the threat posed by Mo is going to become more serious as this sequence of novels progress.
If you’ve never read Banks before, you need to start now. Donkey Punch – even on its own – is a knock-out novel. Read in conjunction with its predecessor, Saturday’s Child, it becomes the perfect follow-through, highlighting themes and motifs from the earlier novel, while advancing character and action. This is how a series should work: not merely reiterating earlier success, but moving forward with characters, plucking them out of their comfort zones, moving their lives forward in a way that feels absolutely real.
For those bored with the traditional approach of crime and mystery series – who know that there is more to be found in the big, bad world of crime fiction – Banks is the man. His books are smart, unpredictable and, above all, dangerous. And Donkey Punch – even without the benefit of reading Saturday’s Child – confirms his status as one of the best crime writers working in the UK today.
Russel McLean for crimescenescotland.com, 11/04/07
