Falling More Slowly: Introducing Detective Inspector Liam McLusky
The first pages of this procedural are fall-about funny as Detective Inspector Liam McLusky, convinced he’s right whether he is or not, blunders into his new post at Bristol. He wrecks a squad car while settling a domestic dispute, then jiggers the report to say he was protecting the poor wife. He smokes and drinks too much, is impatient with coworkers, makes a hash of his love life. Then a bomb detonates in a park, and McLusky has a murderous loon to track. A gang of cycle-riding muggers savages pedestrians. McLusky’s mood darkens, and so does the novel. Helton’s rich, tactile prose conveys the taste of tobacco and Guinness and the look of dying sunlight, but it moves at a pace some may find ponderous. The novel’s pleasures are offbeat characters, sly gags, and polished wordplay, not the pulse and tension that drive so much crime fiction. For patient readers who like the all-enveloping languor of character-driven fiction, Helton is an author to be watched. --Don Crinklaw