Crying Wolf

For a long time, Joey’s stepdad Vinnie – the only father he’d ever known – has led him into all kinds of trouble, Joey willingly following. Suddenly, Vinnie has upset the wrong people and is gone and Dublin seems a lustreless place without him. Left without allies and purpose Joey knows it’s time for a change, especially as his girlfriend Sharon has achieved her dream of becoming a student at Trinity College and wants no unsavoury connections in her life. It’s time for him to reform.

Unfortunately, Vinnie’s hasty departure has left problems which, unpleasantly, become Joey’s responsibility and the biggest of these is the bad blood between Vinnie and Quinlan, the local Mafia-style gangster with a taste for vengeance, an addiction to violence and a very long memory. Quinlan wants to know Vinnie’s whereabouts and assumes Joey is withholding information which, in fact, he does not have. Threats are made against Joey’s family and he has no idea which way to turn.

Butler weaves narrative threads together with aplomb, setting Quinlan’s underworld against Sharon’s new life and student friends with the inevitable sidetrack into black humour when Joey models ludicrous clothes at a college fashion show. All the faux-artist stereotypes are there and their relentless self-obsession is a stark contrast to the careless regard for human life with which Quinlan runs his operation.

The novel always feels authentic, the characters sharply and accurately delineated, the Dublin world in all its forms graphically created. The resulting claustrophobia gives a real sense of what Joey has to endure. The violent climax of the story is especially well rendered, with rough justice meted out at a terrible price, tension, impotence and fear present in a powerful mix. The tragedy of wasted lives, self-destruction and the poisonous environment which breeds a lost underclass is made starkly clear.

Yet amidst the ugly chaos and squalid deaths there is redemption and survival, with the sense that what has been broken can eventually repaired. It is this hope-and the understated poignancy at the very end of the book, which gives this memorable and finely crafted story its veracity.