- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Polygon; New Ed edition (1 May 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1846970113
- ISBN-13: 978-1846970115
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 752,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
British noir in all its sordid splendour by a writer who has taken more than just an excursion on the dark side. --The Guardian
Ray Banks steps up into the majors. This is already the best UK novel of the year and I'd love to read what tops it. --Ken Bruen
Ray Banks steps up into the majors. This is already the best UK novel of the year and I'd love to read what tops it. --Ken Bruen
Product Description
It s criminal up north... Cal Innes is fresh out of Strangeways, playing PI and running from a past muddied with ties to local gang lord Uncle Morris Tiernan. When Tiernan tells him to track down a rogue casino dealer who s absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan s psychotic son. Finding the thief proves potentially fatal as the case points north to Newcastle and the sordid truth threatens to put blood on his hands. With Tiernan s son on his tail, and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back on the spurs, Saturday s child definitely has to work hard to keep living.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cal Innes is fresh out of Strangeways, playing PI and running from a past muddied with ties to local gang lord 'Uncle' Morris Tiernan. When Tiernan tells him to track down a rogue casino dealer who's absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan's psychotic son. Finding the thief proves potentially fatal as the case points north to Newcastle and the sordid truth threatens to put blood on his hands. With Tiernan's son on his tail, and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back on the spurs, Saturday's child definitely has to work hard to keep living.
Writing in a style that could make the most noted of authors wince with inadequacy, Ray Banks has created characters in Saturday's Child that make Hannibal Lecter look like a favourite uncle who's just popped around stinking of Werthers Originals. In Callum Innes, Maurice Tiernan and his son, Mo, the true bedrocks of good and evil - empathy and loathing - have been lashed together, making them magnificently inseparable for the time being.
The writing at times is breathtaking in itself and should be a source of inspiration to those aspiring to become writers. As a result, if the book is started at ten in the morning, what has taken years for the author to painstakingly create could easily be finished by six the same evening because the pages won't have stopped turning once the story has begun.
This is a truly stunning read.
Writing in a style that could make the most noted of authors wince with inadequacy, Ray Banks has created characters in Saturday's Child that make Hannibal Lecter look like a favourite uncle who's just popped around stinking of Werthers Originals. In Callum Innes, Maurice Tiernan and his son, Mo, the true bedrocks of good and evil - empathy and loathing - have been lashed together, making them magnificently inseparable for the time being.
The writing at times is breathtaking in itself and should be a source of inspiration to those aspiring to become writers. As a result, if the book is started at ten in the morning, what has taken years for the author to painstakingly create could easily be finished by six the same evening because the pages won't have stopped turning once the story has begun.
This is a truly stunning read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I tend to like British crime novels, and since I had a great few days in Manchester many years ago, I figured I'd check out this first in a Manchester-set series featuring ex-con Cal Innes. After taking the fall for a botched robbery led by the psycho son of a local crimelord, Cal did about half of a five-year stretch. Since his release, he's been eking out a living as a kind of informal detective, doing odds and ends of work for all kinds of people while trying to keep his prodigious drinking somewhat under control, and himself out of jail.
When the crimelord asks him to track down a blackjack dealer who's made off with 10k of his house money, it's less a request than an order, and one Cal can't really refuse. Unfortunately for Cal, he's not the most subtle detective, and soon enough he's raised enough hackles to be in a fight or three. Meanwhile, the crimelord's son is upset that he hasn't been given the task of tracking the dealer down, and is intent on scaring Cal off the job. The story unfolds in brief chapters alternating between Cal's voice and that of the psycho son, as the story takes them up to Newcastle in pursuit of the dodgy dealer. (Both voices are laden with regional and drug slang, so those who have problems deciphering these be forewarned.)
Needless to say, not everything is as it seems, but Cal has to learn that the hard way. And the hard way was never so hard as it is in this book, as Cal gets battered, bloodied and beaten to pulp (and to be fair, doles out some of same in kind). The book is a very physical one, not only in the sense of the batterings bodies take, but also in the way that the reader is made acutely aware of everything the main characters ingest, from pills, to booze, to smokes, to greasy cafe food. There's something about it that makes one very aware of the human body.
The plot itself is pretty straight-forward, but the pacing is such that you're sucked along the simple ride pretty quickly. (There are minor subplots involving a Manchester cop hassling Cal, and a potential romantic interest in Newcastle.) The ending is rather interesting, not a typical crime story ending, but more in keeping with some of the bleak films of the early 1970s. That rescues it from feeling otherwise a little thin, and the whole thing feels like a bit of a warmup for more involved future stories about Cal (which appear in the book's sequels, Sucker Punch and No More Heroes.)
When the crimelord asks him to track down a blackjack dealer who's made off with 10k of his house money, it's less a request than an order, and one Cal can't really refuse. Unfortunately for Cal, he's not the most subtle detective, and soon enough he's raised enough hackles to be in a fight or three. Meanwhile, the crimelord's son is upset that he hasn't been given the task of tracking the dealer down, and is intent on scaring Cal off the job. The story unfolds in brief chapters alternating between Cal's voice and that of the psycho son, as the story takes them up to Newcastle in pursuit of the dodgy dealer. (Both voices are laden with regional and drug slang, so those who have problems deciphering these be forewarned.)
Needless to say, not everything is as it seems, but Cal has to learn that the hard way. And the hard way was never so hard as it is in this book, as Cal gets battered, bloodied and beaten to pulp (and to be fair, doles out some of same in kind). The book is a very physical one, not only in the sense of the batterings bodies take, but also in the way that the reader is made acutely aware of everything the main characters ingest, from pills, to booze, to smokes, to greasy cafe food. There's something about it that makes one very aware of the human body.
The plot itself is pretty straight-forward, but the pacing is such that you're sucked along the simple ride pretty quickly. (There are minor subplots involving a Manchester cop hassling Cal, and a potential romantic interest in Newcastle.) The ending is rather interesting, not a typical crime story ending, but more in keeping with some of the bleak films of the early 1970s. That rescues it from feeling otherwise a little thin, and the whole thing feels like a bit of a warmup for more involved future stories about Cal (which appear in the book's sequels, Sucker Punch and No More Heroes.)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dark, violent, and filled with non-stop action, this British PI novel, set on the meanest streets of Manchester and Newcastle, features Cal Innes, a PI who claims that he became a detective because "I got good at tracking down ex-offenders, maybe because I was one." Newly released from prison, Cal has been talked into doing a "favor" for Morris Tiernan, a Manchester crime lord responsible for more than thirty murders. Afraid that his psychopathic son Mo will mess up the job, Tiernan has "persuaded" Cal to find Rob Stokes, a dealer in Tiernan's private gambling club who stole ten thousand dollars and disappeared. Once Cal finds Stokes, he is to contact the sadistic Mo, who will then take over.
Cal and Mo have a "history." Cal considers Mo responsible for the more than two years he had to spend in jail. Mo, in turn, is jealous that his father has assigned Cal to find Stokes, and he wants to find Stokes first. The narrative, alternating between the point of view of Cal Innes and that of Mo Tiernan, is easy to follow, since Mo is terminally dense, and his narrative, peppered with local street slang and obscenities, becomes mordantly humorous. Cal, who often finds his fists more useful than his brain, is not much more literate than Mo, but he is looking for a direction in life--if only to stay out of jail--and he does understand how the world works.
As the search for Stokes moves from Manchester to Newcastle, where Stokes appears to have fled with a sixteen-year-old girl, the action--and gore--ratchet up. Cal is not only dodging vicious Mo Tiernan, he is also trying to avoid a brutal Manchester policeman who has accused him of assault. As Cal comes closer to finding Stokes and the girl, he also becomes a real detective, discovering aspects of Mo Tiernan's life which make the search for Stokes and the girl even more pressing--and make Mo's determination to find and stop Cal more urgent.
Bleak and full of violence, the novel features fights, an attempted drowning by toilet bowl, beatings, and legs broken by cricket bat--and that's by the "good guys." Cal, of course, is on both the giving and receiving ends of this brutality. The characters throughout the novel are universally unlikable, the twists and turns of the action reveal even more depravity than previously imagined, and the "surprise" ending brings no catharsis with it. Banks creates vivid scenes filled with specific details--everything from brands of cars, complete with dents, to close-up depictions of torture and maiming. Focused on man's inhumanity to man and the unavoidability of misery, this is noir fiction at its "noir-est." Mary Whipple
Cal and Mo have a "history." Cal considers Mo responsible for the more than two years he had to spend in jail. Mo, in turn, is jealous that his father has assigned Cal to find Stokes, and he wants to find Stokes first. The narrative, alternating between the point of view of Cal Innes and that of Mo Tiernan, is easy to follow, since Mo is terminally dense, and his narrative, peppered with local street slang and obscenities, becomes mordantly humorous. Cal, who often finds his fists more useful than his brain, is not much more literate than Mo, but he is looking for a direction in life--if only to stay out of jail--and he does understand how the world works.
As the search for Stokes moves from Manchester to Newcastle, where Stokes appears to have fled with a sixteen-year-old girl, the action--and gore--ratchet up. Cal is not only dodging vicious Mo Tiernan, he is also trying to avoid a brutal Manchester policeman who has accused him of assault. As Cal comes closer to finding Stokes and the girl, he also becomes a real detective, discovering aspects of Mo Tiernan's life which make the search for Stokes and the girl even more pressing--and make Mo's determination to find and stop Cal more urgent.
Bleak and full of violence, the novel features fights, an attempted drowning by toilet bowl, beatings, and legs broken by cricket bat--and that's by the "good guys." Cal, of course, is on both the giving and receiving ends of this brutality. The characters throughout the novel are universally unlikable, the twists and turns of the action reveal even more depravity than previously imagined, and the "surprise" ending brings no catharsis with it. Banks creates vivid scenes filled with specific details--everything from brands of cars, complete with dents, to close-up depictions of torture and maiming. Focused on man's inhumanity to man and the unavoidability of misery, this is noir fiction at its "noir-est." Mary Whipple
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
As sharp as a Stanley blade
This is a very British crime novel - gritty rather than glamorous, set in a world of council flats, rough pubs and grubby casinos where the weapons of choice are fists and Stanley... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Gary Marshall
This is hardcore...
Ray Banks puts his local knowledge to expert use in this page-turner which will take you on a journey from the criminal underworld of darkest Manchester to the grim streets of... Read more
Published on 14 May 2007 by Mr. T. Hynes
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