Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grit and Mayhem made art, 2 Aug 2006
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is hardcore..., 14 May 2007
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 Newcastle Upon Tyne.
With a style walking a tightrope between Irvine Welsh and film noir the story carries you along on an addictive white water torrent. Told from the twin viewpoints of Cal Innes, private investigator and Mo Tiernan, drug dealing scally, Saturday's Child tells a story of a man with the world against him and incorporates all the evil vices of modern day Britain. Gripping from start to finish this book will leave you feeling dirty and battered, I can't wait to read the sequel!
There are short stories by Banks available on his website The Saturday Boy (search for it on Google) which will give you a feel for the writing style and introduce you to the characters featured in the book.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The difference between a pub and a bar is that a bar has more mirrors to show you how [messed] up you are.", 2 Jan 2008
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
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