Book Review:
I started reading R.J. Ellory's books with A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS which I absolutely loved. Then moved onto THE ANNIVERSARY MAN which made my Top Ten of 2010 and eventually, after I worked out a way to finagle the definition, into the two books that I nominated as my favourites for that year in my contribution to an article in Deadly Pleasures magazine. SAINTS OF NEW YORK is the latest I've been lucky enough to read, and with each book, I just get more and more impressed.
SAINTS OF NEW YORK is veering more towards a traditional procedural crime novel than earlier books, but with Ellory's trademarks of flawed characters, in a dark and murky world, struggling against personal and external demons and pressures.
In Frank Parrish's case, a lot of his demons come directly from the larger than life legacy of his father, one of the original "Saints of New York", the policemen who famously stood up to the Mafia in the early 1980's. Whilst everybody else regards John Parrish as a hero and legend, Frank stands alone, remembering a man who seemed to care more about the job, and the money, and status than he did about his own family. How Frank deals with his own day to day life, as a divorced, alcoholic, desperate and disaffected man, is woven brilliantly into this book as he has been forced to attend daily sessions with a Police Department counsellor. As these sessions proceed, Frank's state of mind, his background and his life are drawn out, just as he inches closer and closer to the killer of what turns out to be more than just one teenage girl.
SAINTS OF NEW YORK has a wonderfully dark, murky, tense and slightly desperate feel about it. It sets itself deep in the underbelly of New York, simultaneously taking you deep into the personal world of Frank Parrish. Violent and dark, there is also an intricate and compelling plot in which a man handles the professional with aplomb and the personal with a staggering lack thereof. I really have no idea how this author does it, but there's something amazingly compelling about Frank Parrish. Which doesn't take anything away from a fast-paced, well plotted novel that takes a few chapters to pull you in and then grabs you and holds onto you until the very end. And then for a while after that.
