Material Witness

Bookstart funding cut: barbarians at the gates

One of the small but welcome surprises my three young children have brought to our house in the 10 years since they began arriving is the periodic parcel of brand new books and other goodies delivered by the Bookstart charity.

The idea is simple, brilliant and progressive. "Inspiring a love of books in every child," reads the charity's strapline on its website. By delivering a small parcel of brand new books as well as resources to help parents as children hit three key ages in development, the charity hopes to inspire a lifelong love of reading in children and to help parents understand how reading can be an important part of both bonding and development.

As someone who loves books and firmly believes that the world would be an infinitely better place if more people opened books and opened their minds, Bookstart seemed to me to be the perfect vehicle for promoting learning, understanding and culture into a world that rapidly seems to be turning its back on those things.

And to my mind it was a worthy use of public money, effectively seeding the scheme and turning it over to a partnership of the voluntary and private sectors. As a Guardian leader points out: "Public and private sectors combining to provide a public good: wasn't that meant to be what the big society was all about?"

Apparently not. Bookstart this week announced that its funding would be cut by 100% and the scheme is at risk. Ministers, predictably, have hidden behind the "tough choices in tough times" mantra that they have rolled out to defend every spending decision they have made. And of course they do have to make decisions, that is very well understood. 

But £13m for a scheme that gives children an introduction to a world that can stimulate their young minds and put them on a path to learning. I wonder what the Department of Education thinks its purpose is if not to support this goal?

First the school sports partnership, then the EMA and now Bookstart. It feels like a sustained and concerted assault on the young, and in particular the young who need the support of the state to begin their tentative and increasingly tough journeys in the world. Truly the barbarians are at the gates.

REVIEW: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

For eleven long years, fans of Dennis Lehane have waited for Moonlight Mile, the sixth novel in the Boston-based series featuring private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. During that decade, Lehane's profile and work has been given the Hollywood treatment as successful adaptations of Gone, Baby, Gone (the fourth Kenzie-Gennaro book), Mystic River and Shutter Island has brought his work to millions of new fans and elevated him into US crime-writing aristocracy.

For all that success, however, and the extended range he has shown in novels such as The Given Day and Mystic River, many of us simply yearned for another slice of life on the mean streets of South Boston with the wise-cracking Kenzie and the streetwise Gennaro.

Finally, we have what we wanted: and it was worth the wait. Moonlight Mile is a powerful and arresting mystery story, and one that also confronts questions about growing up and learning to deal with the consequences of the decisions we take in life.

Primarily those questions are asked of Kenzie, who 11 years on is now married (to Gennaro), is a father and is trying desperately to provide for his family by working in the world of corporate security, which is supposed to be a safe harbour from the madness of his previous life as wrong-side-of-the-tracks PI. Kenzie has traded the excitement of a job he loved for the relative security of the corporate world where he is attempting to translate freelance work into a long-term career that will support his young family. He finds the work largely dull and unpalatable and struggles to secure his tenure because of his inability to stop speaking his mind to those who prefer deference to opinion.

With the delicate balance of his life apparently on the line, the last thing Kenzie needs is a visit from the ghost of caseloads past and it is indeed the ghost of caseloads past that turns up: Amanda McCready, the little girl (see Gone, Baby, Gone) abducted from her unstable, broken home by sympathetic cops who put her into a loving and secure family only for Kenzie to find and return her.

When her aunt reports that McReady, now 16, has disappeared yet again, Kenzie in particular revisits the angst and conflict of his original decision - one that still lies heavily on the consciences of both detectives - and he cannot resist an opportunity to revisit the case and look for her again. His quest to find Amanda again leads both himself and his family into a sordid world of crime and punishment where existence on the edge of poverty can lead people into making questionable and dangerous choices. Kenzie and Gennaro, again, find themselves in the position of moral arbiters uncertain as to whether, and how, to intervene.

Those qualities that made the original books in this series so enjoyable and compelling are in evidence again: the wit and repartee of conversation between the two PIs is as sparkling as ever; their essential down-to-earth natures and willingness to take risks on behalf of others; a fast-paced plot that moves along with confidence and conviction.

Moonlight Mile is fast, furious and fun but also thoughtful and considered. Truly a welcome return.

 

REVIEW: The White Gallows by Rob Kitchin

This feels like a good time to be reading a novel set in post-boom Ireland in which hard-pressed cops are struggling along with diminished and inadequate resources to keep control of a criminal landscape spiralling out of control with violent crime and murders reaching the sort of frequency typically associated with US inner cities.

The topical context is a welcome bonus, but, of course, there's never a bad time to read a cleverly-consructed, well written, sophisticated police procedural teeming with strong, memorable characters and unpredictable, but convincing plot turns.

And that is what Rob Kitchin delivers in his second novel The White Gallows.

Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy is a man under pressure. Every time his phone rings, the investigative officer of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, is confronted with yet another major crime requiring his attention. As he nears the first anniversary of the death of his wife from cancer, McEvoy struggles to balance the demands of his family with a crippling case load that is further weighed down by two murders in one morning.

McEvoy is first called out early on a Sunday morning to the body a young man brutally killed in what officers quickly decide is likely to have been the result of a fight between rival Lithuanian immigrants. While there, however, his phone rings again and this time he is alerted to the death of wealthy industrialist, Albert Koch. Although at first Koch's death is not regarded as being suspicious, it is politically sensitive and McEvoy's superiors decide that it should take priority.

It doesn't take McEvoy long, once arrived at the scene of the crime, that he is dealing with another murder and the high profile involved demands that he run the investigation while delegating other crimes to his small and hard-pressed team.

It's not easy to go into too much detail regarding the plot of The White Gallows without straying into spoiler territory, and so suffice it to say that McEvoy finds that the death of a wealthy man - one perhaps hiding a number of dark secrets - leaves no shortage of potential suspects, from family members and senior colleagues covetous of his wealth and position to envious neighbours and impoverished servants.

McEvoy plots a path through them all that is at times abrasive and always single-minded in pursuit of the truth. They cooperate to varying degrees with each interview opening further avenues to be explored leaving the detective occasionally despairing of finding the truth. His difficulties are further compounded by having to operate under severe political pressure as well as the looming personal event he must confront.

McEvoy is a very human figure, fallible and conflicted, but also determined and committed to finding justice for various victims. A decent man, trying to do a good job in pretty difficult circumstances.

One of the most interesting elements of the story - and this I think was helped by the reduced financial circumstances the police service found itself in - was just how difficult police work is. Nothing comes easily to McEvoy and his group. They can't just whistle up resources or magical evidence tests that point them in the right direction. They face obstacles from their superiors - under political pressure - and their peers who are jealous of the NBCI for picking up the high profile cases. Suspects don't cooperate and nor do the elements and the investigation therefore requires a great deal of elbow grease and a modicum of luck to succeed.

Partly for that reason, The White Gallows is convincing as fiction and that accounts to a large degree for the success of a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

REVIEW: The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke was the writer who first stimulated my passion for crime fiction when I picked up a copy of Dixie City Jam in an airport bookstore in the mid 1990s. I was gripped from the first page, and since that day I have read more of his books than those of any other author. Every time I open any new novel I do so with a sense of anticipation and excitement, but with Burke those emotions are always heightened.

As a result I have realised that I have begun to come to these novels with far higher expectations and hold James Lee Burke to a higher standard than I do other writers. As a consequence, I have been disappointed by some novels in recent years - even if they have often been among the best and most intense reading experiences I have in any given year.

There was no such disappointment with The Glass Rainbow - the 18th book of the Dave Robicheaux series - a tour de force that delivers the crushing intensity that has marked Burke out as one of the finest American novelists of his generation.

All the themes one expects of Burke are in here: privilege and poverty; the politics and socio-economics of race; the psychology and motivations of the good and bad alike; and the shifting, difficult and emotional demands of famility and friendship.

This is an intensley personal story for Robicheaux - perhaps Burke also - as it closely involves, and threatens, the two people who have been the constants in his chaotic and shifting life: adopted daughter, Alafair, and former NOPD podjo Clete Purcel. Because of that it carries even more emotional weight than most Robicheaux novels, and becomes a dark, stormy and consuming read.

Robicheaux investigates the death of Bernadette Latiolais, an accomplished and promising young student, whose murder seems to fit with a series of others in neighbouring Jefferson County. Possessed with the desire to see justice done for Bernadette, Robicheaux with Clete Purcel in tow, wade in with fists clenched and weapons primed, immediately identifying pimp and dealer Herman Stanga as a "person of interest" in their investigation.

When Stanga turns up dead, and with Purcel unable to account for his whereabouts, the crimes are firmly on Robicheaux's doorstep. At the same time, the aging detective is dealing with the unpalatable sight of his daughter Alafair - home from college to finish her novel - consorting with Kermit Abelard, the scion of an ancient and corrupted Lousiana family, and a man that Robicheaux doesn't trust as far as Purcel can kick him. Also part of Abelard's entourage is a dangerous ex-con - and renaissance literary man - Robert Weingart.

As ever, Robicheaux is guided by his simplistic good versus evil world view and makes a series of decisions that others with a broader perspective might regard as both dangerous and self-destructive. They bring him into conflict with just about everyone he confronts - from the Louisiana aristocrats he despises to his colleagues, friends and family - and the investigation takes on what seems like an inevitable path to disaster.

The story arc is anarchic, violent and hugely compelling with a momentum building throughout that is unstoppable, based as it is on the dynamics of Robicheaux's two most enduring relationships and his struggle to maintain them. As ever the backdrop of the bayou is beautifully constructed, layung over the story like a heavy and humid blanket. For Burke veterans, The Glass Rainbow is essential reading and you will not be disappointed. It is probably not for Burke first timers, however, as it's difficult to imagine a new reader being able to understand why Robicheaux behaves the way he does. As ever, I'd recommend new readers go back to the beginning of the series (and I do so with a degree of envy).