After another day of the monotonous nine to
five, I come home expecting to converse with my lovely wife. Instead, her nose
is ensconced in yet another Tania Carver novel. Must be good, I think to
myself. Good Christmas present that. Brownie points for me, despite the
fact my wife is barely talking to me.
It‘s been three years since I acquainted
myself with Martyn Waites’ Joe Donovan series. Since 2012, I’ve scoured the
backwaters of various bookstores and websites to procure the Stephen Larkin quartet.
Last year, I completed the feat with the fourth in the series, Born Under Punches. So, with my better
half engrossed in the Tania Carver series (for those unaware, Tania Carver is Waites'
alter-ego; for clarity, visit his website here), I thought it was time to backtrack and
explore the world of one Stephen Larkin.
Surmising, it only took three weeks to get through
the four novels in which Larkin features. This series is good. Actually, it’s really fucking good. How Waites isn’t
mentioned in the same breath as your Rankins of the world is quite simply
beggars belief.
Without trying to be that arsehole who gives it away, Stephen Larkin is one hell of a protagonist.
An idealistic journalist who’s experienced tumultuous times, now
fighting against Britain’s underworld; home of the country’s most notorious sociopaths
and degenerates, cut from the fabric of the sadistic rich and knuckle dragging underclass.
Geography doesn’t discriminate, either; meanderings throughout this series
occur both north and south of Britain.
Take the sharp witticism of Philip Marlowe
and the snarky humour of Bernhard Gunther and in a roundabout sort of way, you
have Stephen Larkin. In Game of Thrones-speak, modern crime fiction's very own
King of the North.
The same way Chandler and Ellroy give us
the gritty snapshot of Los Angeles. The same way Kerr squeezes the essence of Berlin
through the lenses of Bernie Gunther. You can feel the landscape of northern
Britain through the perspective of Stephen Larkin. The bleak urban decay which
has been lived, and while you can sense many writers becoming too close to their
own culture, Waites has written perfectly at arm’s length throughout the Larkin
quartet. His hard-boiled panache drips off the pages throughout the first
instalment in Mary’s Prayer; some of
the darkest and cruellest moments in modern day crime fiction, for mine. Little Triggers follows with extremely confrontational themes; sheer
callowness with no regard for humanity. Waites isn’t afraid to make his reader
squirm in discomfort, though. His uncompromising verve is unparalleled.
Candleland is arguably the finest moment throughout the
series and probably my favourite work from Waites. Here, he writes with a
tender poeticism rarely seen in crime fiction. Candleland’s themes are
emotionally close to the bone for many reasons. Each character is at a cross
roads here. Each has something to lose.
The final instalment, Born Under Punches, sees
Waites at his creative best. Its themes, its style, Born... is the most contrasting to the preceding three novels.
Novels like this aren’t written overnight. Meticulous plotting and prolonged
research is required and you can tell Waites has gone above and beyond with his
trusty fine tooth comb, intertwining fictional characters into past historic
events. Kerr did it. So did Ellroy. Now, Waites joins the pantheon of great
crime fiction writers with Born Under
Punches. This is far beyond a cheap two finger salute to Thatcherism. It’s
a well-thought out polemic tour-de-force and a stunning indictment to authority
and its bulldozer savagery in the demonization of the working class.
So it took three weeks. Three of the
better weeks of my 2015, I must say. The only bad news is that my bookshelf is slightly short of Martyn Waites books. The good news? There’s a bunch
of Tania Carver novels at the ready. “They’re
brilliant,” says my wife. It’s the first words I’ve heard her speak in three
weeks, so I’ll take her word for it.
By Simon K.
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