CALIFORNIA by Ray Banks

CALIFORNIA by Ray Banks. Five leaves, Crime express, ISBN 9781907869075, £4.99

Review by Tim Stephen

California is the story of recently released from prison, Shug Boyle. Shug's time inside taught him how to deal with his temper, however ineffectively, and to work towards a goal. The prison therapist never intended for Shug to resort to criminal methods in order to achieve that goal, but for Shug – and the reader – it seems absolutely logical.

We meet Shug just as he has car-jacked a pensioner in the first steps of his goal “to travel a bit, see outside of the lowlands”. We follow his progress as he tries to reclaim his stash. Along the way Shug tangles with various characters from his home town California (next to Falkirk) including the guys who fingered him to the police in the first place, (read it and you can judge if he deals with his anger management there).

As we travel with Shug we learn about his quick temper and his ways of dealing with it. We see his life before he was jailed. In short, we get to see what kind of a bloke he is. As I've always found with Banks' work, it doesn't matter whether his characters are good or bad, we sympathise with them from start to finish. California is no exception. Shug is obviously a bit of a hard man with a reputation for violence but he's now trying to leave his past behind. Unfortunately for Shug, but fortunately for the reader (after all, who wants to read about a typical Hollywood happy ending?), things don’t work out as planned.

Fans of Banks will not be disappointed at his cringe-worthy rendering of violence and sharp dialogue that renders his characters all the more believable.

I'm a big fan of Ray Banks' work myself and would highly recommend any of his novels. This little novella fits in perfectly with the rest of his books. It has the sharp punch of a short story with added meat to its bones. Admittedly, at just shy of a hundred pages I read it from cover to cover in one sitting, but that's as much a reflection on the quality as the length.

Tim Stephen for crimescenescotland, 24/03/11

BEAST OF BURDEN by Ray Banks

Polygon, 2009, ISBN 9781846970986, £9.99

Please note that this review contains spoilers for previous books in the Cal Innes series. For those who have not read these novels, certain sections have been highlighted in dark grey. Please skip these sections if you have not read the previous novels in the series.

The problem with many series characters is that, after a while, they can lose their freshness. That very thing which made them unique in the beginning soon becomes trite and predictable. Twelve or thirteen novels in, suddenly the audience knows what to expect, loses any sense that their protagonist's world might suddenly shift and change.

From the beginning, Ray Banks has claimed that his Cal Innes books will have a finite arc. That Innes - one of the most flawed and intriguing of recent hardboiled protagonists - will change during the course of each book, will carry every scar earned, will be affected by everything that happens to him.

By the end of the third novel, No More Heroes, Innes had battled Codeine addiction, his own antipathy and been battered by cars, bricks, guns and fists. And then, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, Banks showed his commitment to battering his protagonist by giving Innes a stroke in the midst of one of the worst race riots Manchester has ever seen.

As endings go, No More Heroes was a shocker. But Banks knows that he cannot cheat his reader and continues to play out the effects on Innes to a blinding degree. It is interesting to read a series character who maintains his essential characteristics and yet manages to evolve with each book. Here, even if Innes won't admit it, there is a definite shift in his character that may even be for the better. He is more humble than he has been before, even if he tries to deny that side of himself. He shouts and roars as loud as ever, and yet seems to have a more of a sense of self awareness than he ever had before. But this being Banks's world, it may be too little too late.

Beast of Burden attempts to tie up some of the dangling threads in Innes's life. By starting with Innes once more doing a favour for local gangster Morris Tiernan, we get a sense of some events coming full circle. You see, Tiernan's son Mo - drug dealer, waster and pain in Innes's arse - is missing. Tiernan wants Innes to find the lad. After all, Innes is a private investigator, right? No longer a wannabe, he's got a partner and a logo. This is his kind of work.

And it would be a simple job if it wasn't for the bad blood between Innes and Mo. Or the fact that one DS "Donkey" Donkin, last seen harrassing Innes in Saturday's Child, is hanging around, looking to hang Innes out to dry.

Banks has a number of ends to tie up in this final Innes novel, and he does a remarkable job of dealing with many seemingly disparate elements to create a coherent whole. More than any other entry in the Innes series, it probably helps if you've read the other novels, but then this is a sequence and not a series, so events have been building for some time anyway. The conclusion to Innes's run ins with Mo Tiernan is surprising and perhaps even a little jarring (here's a hint, do NOT read the acknowledgements first if you're the kind of person who does that: you're in for a major spoiler) but Banks is a fiendishly smart author and this unexpected move pays off beautifully. As with the other books in the series, this is all about how Innes reacts to a given situation, and the Mo Tiernan case gives him the kind of grief that truly tests a person.

And what is wonderful is that Innes doesn't pass with flying colours. Unlike many protagonists in the current crime fiction sphere, he is no superman. He does not neccasarily overcome his own demons. While he grows and develops as a character, Banks never forgets to allow him to make mistakes. Often huge or ugly ones. And this is why Innes is one of the best developed characters going in crime fiction: he is human, often in the worst possible ways.

But while Innes makes his mistakes, they often come from something approaching good intentions. And while we've seen him change over the course of five novels, no argument would make a difference to Banks's secondary narrator in the novel, DS "Donkey" Donkin. Donkin's narrative voice is scarred through with bitterness and resentment. He is the real-life version of a an old school copper relic like Gene Hunt from Life on Mars, except he's not cuddly or cute, given to moments of unnatural compassion - he's simply damn terrifying; a true dinosaur stampeding down the path towards his own extinction. On the subject of Innes, Donkin believes that no one can ever change. That Innes is as much of a fuck up as he ever was. But for men like Donkin, the world never changes. Change is a terrifying thing, and his rage at anything that threatens his concrete world view is a terrifying thing to behold.

While Banks has done the split voice before, in Saturday's Child, here he shows us true mastery by giving Donkin a unique voice that practically roars off the page. Banks, as a writer, is a true chameleon, never allowing the author to step out from behind his characters to take a bow. He truly makes the reader believe in the absolute and concrete reality of his character's voices.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again, that Banks is one of our favourite UK-based writers here at Crime Scene Scotland. He combines a ferocious voice with an understanding of modern Britain that refuses to hide or soften its blows behind the ramped up and improbably plotting of many current crime thrillers. Like Ted Lewis or Derek Raymond, Banks writes novels set in an unremittingly real world. And in the real world, all things - good and bad - must come to an end. So this book serves as Cal Innes's swan song. And as endings go, this one is tragic, compelling, gripping: a perfect finale to an incredible noir sequence.

Russel D McLean for crimescenescotland.com 17/03/09

NO MORE HEROES by Ray Banks

Polygon, February 2007, £9.99, ISBN 978-1846970139

It seems almost like a tradition that each year we write a near love letter to the work of Ray Banks. His Cal Innes series had an incredible start with Saturday's Child, and somehow expanded and improved upon itself with Donkey Punch and with the third installment, No More Heroes, Banks continues to prove his worth not simply as a crime author, but a novellist with something to say about the dark heart of modern Britain. So let's get the punchline out of the way: No More Heroes is likely to be among the best British Crime Novels of this year. In fact, scratch the likely. This is crime writing at its most powerful, the way we wish it could be all the time.

What marks this series out from many others is the willingness of the author to not only create a fairly selfish and asborbed lead character - despite his protestations to the contrary, Cal Innes isn't any kind of traditional hero - but to allow him to grow (and not neccasarily up) as a character. This doesn't mean he learns any lessons, conciously or otherwise, but rather that you feel he is not quite the same by the end of the novel as he was at the beginning and, even more surprisingly, he carries that into the next book of the series. Cal Innes makes mistakes, changes his mind, acts unreasonably, frequently does the wrong thing when the right thing is staring him in the face... this isn't the action of your typical British lead. Its not the action of your typical crime lead. Its the action of a character who's had the strait-jacket of dramatic convention removed. Oh, this isn't your granny's crime fiction.

Cal Innes's scars are not simply physical - although he could take the prize for most abused character in crime fiction history, making even Ken Bruen's creation Jack Taylor seem like a man whose life is all happiness and sunshine - but also mentally. He reacts to bad situations by building up his psychological armour, by subscribing further to his own deluded fantasies about his own self. He rebuilds and recreates himself. He lies. And worse, believes these lies himself.

His addiction to prescription medication should take the blame for much of this, but that's only one facet of Cal's self-harming policy. He seems to throw himself deeper and deeper into bad situations, mixing with bad people because he then has an excuse for thinking, I'm better than this. Working for a slum landlord is a step down from his ofty ambitions to be a PI at the beginning of Saturday's Child, but its easier for Cal to cope with, making someone else's fuck-ups rather than his own. The fact that he doesn't even like his employer - sleazy dodgy-dealer, Mr Plummer - is only one more symptom of Cal's search for a hard-luck story. He deliberately seeks out the bad work, the dodgy work, the down-at-heel life because then he doesn't have to blame himself. He can maintain his personal fantasies about being a good guy in a bad situation.

But Banks throws Cal a real curveball here, turning him into an accidental hero when he saves a bunch of students - and Cal can't even stand the bastards - from a house fire. He briefly becomes something of a local celebrity, even starts up his PI business again, albeit due to his running off at the mouth when interviewed by the local paper rather than through any real sense of ambition. But he doesn't become a hero. Oh no, that would be pat and simple. And Banks doesn't like to offer such neat turn arounds or developments. To do so would be a betrayal of everything that has made this series - even in such a short time - one of the most complex and intriguing sequences of novels that modern British crime writing has had to offer.

Instead he offers hard questions about choice and responsibility, a running theme through his work. Cal's new status brings with it a responsibility that he simply can't face up to. Its a responsibility other characters - very specifically Paulo, who runs the local lad's club - seem to recognise and encourage Cal to embrace, but its clear he doesn't fully understand the opportunity that's been thrown his way. He's still - as in Saturday's Child - confusing a kind of play-acting (as a PI, as a local hero) with real responsibility and accountability. He can say all the right words when he wants, but its rare that he has the follow through and you soon realise this is because he doesn't want to face the truth of his situation.

Banks's work - like the best kind of crime novels - is focussed very strongly on character. But more than most, these characters feel very real and conflicted. Many writers use weaknesses in their characters to highlight strengths, or to simply provide a degree of dramatic tension where Banks uses character as far more than plot device, allowing his cast to create an absolute illusion of reality and the sense that - quite literally - anything could happen to them.

And it helps that he uses them to disguise his themes rather than bring them directly to the surface. Part of the novel deals explicitly with right wing movements, but does so without ever once feeling like an "issue led" plot line. While Cal feels disgust at the attitude of certain characters - particularly the appallingly middle class woman who asks him to sign her petition in the supermarket - it is more an extension of the character than a substitute for the author. Banks is an expert at subtext, allowing his concerns to bubble gently beneath the surface so that when you start discussing character and action in the novel you suddenly realise that - without ever intending to - you're talking about far larger issues.

Indeed, there are few writers who truly capture modern, urban Britain with the authenticity and sobriety of Ray Banks. Nothing about the setting feels hysterical or reactionary. More, it feels solid and recognisable; a portrait of the UK as seen from the street level. The move away from this setting in Donkey Punch only highlights the grim nature of urban life in Britain as seen here, and the contrast between the near dreamlike City of Angels seen during Cal's excursion and the gritty, shitty concrete world in which he finds himself working for a slum landlord is startling and affecting.

This is a crime novel grounded in the real world. We've praised Banks before for shying away from serial killers and grand schemes and No More Heroes continues this tradition of showing us a world that feels concretely real. The far right "villains" aren't scheming, manipulative geniuses so much as they are fools who try to justify their anger against others. The coppers aren't out trying to solve that one big crime so much as they are part of the background, probably taken up more with paperwork than law and order. Drug dealers aren't neccasarily evil so much as businessmen, and thugs aren't always evil as much as daft - perhaps even coming close to "lovable" (or as close as one can in a Banks novel) with the brilliant supporting character of Daft Frank, who complements Innes perfectly in their work together for Plummer. The fact is that Banks, rather than writing a crime novel, is actually chronicling the street level society of modern Britain with a brutal honesty that sets up questions about the world without ever offering pat answers.

There are no moral absolutes. There are merely people, their hopes, fears and delusions.

This is noir.

This is No More More Heroes.

Russel D McLean for crimescenescotland, 6/03/08