Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2014 November 05 • Wednesday

Here's another great book I found on a Park Slope street: The Rage by Gene Kerrigan.

I'd never heard of Kerrigan but The Rage won the Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel in 2012. It also combines two sub-genres I enjoy: the police procedural and the heist story. In addition there are a complex web of relationships and circumstances, a violent psycho, an unsolved case that powerful people want left alone, skeletons in closets and bloody vengeance.

And I'm partial to these Europa editions. They're well made and pleasant to handle and read.

Some bits of The Rage read like an echo of Ted Lewis's Jack's Return Home (better known as Get Carter). The action takes place in a Dublin reeling from being massively screwed by unpunishable finance manipulators. It's not a story about justice but about trying to balance things, doing your best and living with the consequences—if you live.

After a pointless, unnecessary and overused Raymond Chandler quote, The Rage begins, "His fingers gripped the thick wooden rail, both hands clenching so hard that it felt like he might crush the wood to splinters".