Book Review

By Derryll White

Brady, John (1991). Kaddish In Dublin

Have you ever been given boxes of books?

“Here, you read! I can see you in Hot Shots and I have seen your reviews on e-KNOW.ca. Please take these!”

So I said, “Okay, thanks!” and went home to unpack the boxes and mine for treasure.  And with books, one never knows as sometimes you just have to go ahead and read.  So I did.

I had never heard of John Brady, a Dubliner now living in Canada. And I had never come across Inspector Matt Minogue of the Dublin Murder Squad. That changed fast, as ‘Kaddish In Dublin’ was the first novel in the Inspector Minogue series.

The story grabbed me immediately. An abused wife with five children is charged with murdering her husband, in fact stabbing him 37 times. Brady just gives the facts, not the blood and gore. Good for Brady – can’t stand gore myself. Then the story builds into a dialogue between Irish women and the state. Was it murder or did she have the right, an abused woman, to rise against her abuser?

A sub-plot enters quickly, involving a young Irish Jew supposedly murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group. Brady carefully, and thoroughly, catches the sensibilities of Ireland circa 1991. He gives a very good sense of the small, tight world the island really is. Local accents are recognized and attributed, alliances between communities are analyzed. The reader gets a distinct feel for a rich, and appealing culture.

Another thing of interest here is Brady’s recognition and exploration of Opus Dei, a very select and hidden organization within the Catholic Church hierarchy. Brady holds this organization up to examination 12 years before Dan Brown made Opus Dei more popularly known with ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Brady’s plot in this novel definitely runs deep.

John Brady is an uncommonly good writer. He is thoughtful, recognizes the foibles and chicanery we are all capable of, and weaves that seamlessly into his story. He is well and broadly read, and uses that to enrich his Inspector Minogue. But perhaps more than anything, he writes out of love for a Dublin James Joyce knew, and for a world always out of balance but containing infinite possibility. I am so pleased that an unknown person chose to open my world just a little wider with a gift of books.

Excerpts from the novel:

MORALS – “Jimmy, have you ever heard of contraception?” Minogue murmured.  “Can you remember back that far?”

Kilmartin who, like Minogue, was within five years of early retirement, affected to smile.

“Ah, you’re not one of those maniacs wanting to put any girl over the age of ten on the pill and turn the churches into bingo halls, are you?  Sure, all a woman has to do is say no.”

“And if she says no but her husband has his way anyway, that’s rape there, isn’t it?”

HISTORY – “We have the union now, thanks be to God,” the waiter replied slowly from his trance.

“Thanks be to James Connolly and Jim Larkin, you mean,” Kilmartin said.

“And that Marx fella too,” Minogue added.

THE IRISH VIEW – “…I settled this Frenchman’s hash.  I wouldn’t mind but the ones that were bragging about little crime were iijits like the Swiss and the Norwegians, races without the brains and the vim to do a bit of devilment anyway.  All they do is sit at home and count their money or commit suicide.  Pack of shites….  Anyway, all the lads on the Squad have the creative approach, as well as the hard work.  Do you know what I said to this Frenchman, do you?”

“No,” Kilmartin whispered.

“I really told him to eff off….  Draconian laws to be harassing their citizens, so I do.  The French are savages in their own right.”

SELF-KNOWLEDGE – It had taken Minogue 30 and more years to know that within the vague narrative which made up his life was retained the precise anger of his own rebellion.

DUBLIN – “Neither of us really knew what it was that dragged us back to this place.  I took a drop in pay for the privilege of living here and getting taxed to hell and back again.  That’s what seemed funny to us then.  We didn’t believe in that emigrant nostalgia shit, but it happened.  Dublin.”

LANGUAGE – There was a crowd of Women’s Action heavies with her, having a hooley and dancing in the street.  Bedlam.  They took her back to the farm, bejases, and there’s a crowd of them staying to help her with the farm work and make sure nobody comes around that might blackguard her.

IRISH – Even Jimmy Kilmartin, middle age on him like a volcanic crust, was displaying that enduring paradox of cynicism and hope, that cardinal Irishism that Minogue had learned late he could not escape himself; professing to be aloof while sitting on an overwhelming desire.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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