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A review by wyrmdog
Birdman by Mo Hayder
4.0
Brutal and disturbing like all the best crime stories, Birdman digs into the brain. From Veronica's understandable though never laudable behavior to the origins of our too-much-a-cipher protagonist's pathos, Hayder never blinks.
Comparatively, the American crime thrillers and procedurals I've read are sanitary even when they're being ugly. I keep trying to quantify what I mean, but nothing feels right, so I keep taking it back out. Maybe someday I will put my finger on it and share.
Hayder handles the scenes of violence and violation matter-of-factly, never squeamishly and never pruriently. The horrors she depicts are recounted with skill, knowing that fading to black would sanitize the story too much just as focusing too finely would betray the casual reader's trust in the author. It's a fine line a novel like this must straddle, and Hayder does it well.
We also get a clear-eyed look at how mundane office politics can taint the success of a case, leading to lethal consequences, and how the same can serve to hide awful truths lurking in the murky blur of our peripheral vision.
The crime pokes (or do the crimes poke?) at the tender underbelly of modern sensibility, tapping both shame and horror in equal measure, then graft it onto mundane delivery to amplify the sense of filth and fear. Dread comes strongest late in the book when it's made clear that even those living virtuously are not immune to the predation of a monster willing to indulge itself.
Despite the big cast, there is only one protagonist here, and it's Caffery. That unfortunately makes the protagonist the weakest part of the story, coming to life only when he's sparring with his girlfriend, both of them calculating angles of attack as proactive defense. There's a verisimilitude here that's not always easy to achieve. The rest of the time he observes, argues, and lusts without ever really bringing it to a place where I feel anything for or about him. He is competent, intelligent, and lucky after a fashion, but he's really not very interesting. He just is.
The biggest complaint I read before picking this up - and indeed it was one of the reasons I did and I make no apologies for that - was that it was gory and violent. Most of it's not. Most of it is just the story of a detective trying to catch a killer, his numb life, and the machinations that enable the crimes. But when Hayder engages the violence, she does so without hesitation or remorse and she pulls only one punch.
I've already started The Treatment.
Comparatively, the American crime thrillers and procedurals I've read are sanitary even when they're being ugly. I keep trying to quantify what I mean, but nothing feels right, so I keep taking it back out. Maybe someday I will put my finger on it and share.
Hayder handles the scenes of violence and violation matter-of-factly, never squeamishly and never pruriently. The horrors she depicts are recounted with skill, knowing that fading to black would sanitize the story too much just as focusing too finely would betray the casual reader's trust in the author. It's a fine line a novel like this must straddle, and Hayder does it well.
We also get a clear-eyed look at how mundane office politics can taint the success of a case, leading to lethal consequences, and how the same can serve to hide awful truths lurking in the murky blur of our peripheral vision.
The crime pokes (or do the crimes poke?) at the tender underbelly of modern sensibility, tapping both shame and horror in equal measure, then graft it onto mundane delivery to amplify the sense of filth and fear. Dread comes strongest late in the book when it's made clear that even those living virtuously are not immune to the predation of a monster willing to indulge itself.
Despite the big cast, there is only one protagonist here, and it's Caffery. That unfortunately makes the protagonist the weakest part of the story, coming to life only when he's sparring with his girlfriend, both of them calculating angles of attack as proactive defense. There's a verisimilitude here that's not always easy to achieve. The rest of the time he observes, argues, and lusts without ever really bringing it to a place where I feel anything for or about him. He is competent, intelligent, and lucky after a fashion, but he's really not very interesting. He just is.
The biggest complaint I read before picking this up - and indeed it was one of the reasons I did and I make no apologies for that - was that it was gory and violent. Most of it's not. Most of it is just the story of a detective trying to catch a killer, his numb life, and the machinations that enable the crimes. But when Hayder engages the violence, she does so without hesitation or remorse and she pulls only one punch.
I've already started The Treatment.