Gerard Brennan (1)

Before I was five pages into The Point, James Joyce’s comment about Flann O’Brien came to mind: "This is a man with the true comic spirit".

The brothers Morgan, Brian and Paul are both Belfast born and bred. Hard-drinking womanizers, they emerge daily from the after effects of gallons of cheap cider and junk food to make a kind of living out of burglary and other ways of living off the community. Although they sometimes manage to pick up a "skank", a drunken woman in a pub, they don’t often get the anticipated enjoyment from their conquest. They are so pissed themselves at the moment of intercourse, that the exploit is only vaguely remembered, if indeed it ever happened. Had Brian managed to get it up at all last night before he woke up this morning to find himself in the woman of the house’s bath tub? That's about the limit of their philosophical inquiry. Brian’s occasional tendency to treat women like human beings--he has his humane moments, is cynically dismissed by Paul.

Paul, the elder brother, is fairly tall and thin, Brian is short and stout. Paul is a sort of superficially intelligent and charming predator, but the truth is that his gnat-brain never cops on to the fact that the hand he bites, immediately after it has helped him, or given him a gun, will boomerslap back into his face or nuts. Brian is a quick thinker, handy in times of trouble, but more risk-averse than Paul. Free of his brother's influence, he could be easily tempted into getting a good labouring job and going straight. Brian’s cross in life is his loyalty to Paul, and his willingness to go along with his harebrained, get-a-few-pounds-quick schemes, such as breaking into a student’s digs and ferreting through her underwear while seeing if she has left her dinner money behind her in the house.

When Paul makes an attempt to move into the comparative big time, he double crosses Mad Mickey, a forty-year old hippy Rastafarian crook with a mean streak. Mad Mickey lives in the back of a carpeted van, illuminated by black light and lava lamps. Paul is given a beating by Mad Mickey’s caveman sidekick. Once he has handed back the money he stole, he receives an ultimatum of one week to get out of the city. Paul convinces Brian, without telling him why, that it would be a good idea for them to leave Belfast for a small seaside town called Warrenpoint, also known as the Point, where they will be able to use their big city smarts to outwit the local yokels and make some easy pickings. To convey them to their new destination, Paul decides to literally steal Mad Mickey’s van out from under his ass.

Paul’s plans get off to a good start, but do not come to fruition in the way he’d anticipated. Brian revels in the provincial calm and falls for a beautiful young woman who was not afraid to burn the teat off a two-timing lover with a car cigarette lighter. Reassured that the younger brother Morgan is truly smitten, she introduces him to the delights of near-sober coupling. Paul, eventually gets to meet the local big man, who has a taste for torturing gamblers who welsh on their debts and, of course, tries to hoodwink him with his urban intelligence. But, as any boy from Belfast soon discovers when he wanders out of his built-up comfort zone, it never pays to under-estimate the importance of provincial know-how, know-where and know-when, or Mad Mickey's desire for revenge.

To go back to my first sentence, this is a novel that is pervaded and carried along by Gerard Brennan's congenital comic spirit. Brennan has a way of using plain language that systematically has you either laughing or chortling. "How in the the hell did he manage to do that?" you ask yourself after every laugh. You go back a couple of pages, to try to analyze what happened, and you discover that the skill is very subtle: the meanings of common phrases are thrown slightly out of skew; moments of tension are hilariously squashed under absurd stonewall replies; and characters "intelligently" deny ridiculous truths that Brennan has already let the reader into. Underlying those sleights of the writing hand is a Woody Allen-like sense of priming and timing. By now you'll have understood that my recommendation is to read The Point .… (más)

Scots, or perhaps it's just Blasted Heath authors in general, have a way of making a noir tale come to life. Pulp Fiction style, this novella follows three threads through a series of great scene after great scene until they come together in a violent climax. Brennan is a superb writer, and even in a relatively short number of pages, all the characters and their vices come to life. The elements of humor are also well done. Reading this may make you avoid the Edinburgh area on your next vacation, but perhaps that is the price we pay to be entertained. Highly recommended.… (más)

The publisher's notes on the book peaked my interest. I love urban fantasy, dark humor and stories about Belfast. I watch the BBC America series "Being Human" and loved "Of Blood and Honey (A Book of the Fey and the Fallen") by Stina Leicht. The newsletter from the publisher said they were looking for early readers so I sent them a note telling them I read a lot of urban fantasy and science fiction but not horror. Don't send me any horror.
I didn't find any humor in this book. To me, putting someone in a bathtub and hammering their arms to the walls is just gruesome. The book might be for people who enjoyed "Kill Bill" and other bloody, gory movies. I found it repulsive.… (más)

Irish author Gerard Brennan’s FIREPROOF is described as “equal parts crime fiction, dark urban fantasy and black comedy.” Not having read any of Brennan’s previous work – though his WEE ROCKETS seems to have garnered a lot of critical attention – I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I know that Brennan is mainly known as a writer of gritty crime fiction, and there’s certainly plenty of that here. But this is also a darkly comedic supernatural horror novel.

Mild plot spoilers follow.

Mike Rocks was not an altogether bad guy – he’s extremely funny and charismatic after all – but he did some bad things when he was alive. Now that he’s dead he’s found himself in Hell and being tormented by demons. Mike’s a quick-talking kind of guy and he works a deal with Satan for a chance to get out of Hell: all he has to do is create a mass movement on Earth that will make Satan popular. No problem, right? Mike’s not quite sure how he’ll manage to pull that off, but he figures he might as well give it his best shot. He does, however, also have some unfinished business to take care of. Now that he’s back on the mean streets of modern-day Belfast, he wants to get revenge on the thugs who killed him. Along the way, Mike meets a girl named Cathy who falls for him. She’s got some issues of her own, though: while she’s a sweet social worker, she also wants to become a contract killer. Mike founds the True Church of Satan on Earth, enlisting an unlikely blend of street thugs, goth kids, and various rebels and thrillseekers. He’s got to keep his infernal master happy while pursuing his own agenda, and maybe – just maybe – finding a way to not have to return to Hell.

Characterization is clearly one of Brennan’s strengths, and the demons we encounter (Lucifer, Cerebus the multi-headed hellhound of mythological fame, an especially annoying imp, etc.) are all especially entertaining. I should note that there’s plenty of violence in FIREPROOF – this certainly isn’t just a humor-filled look at the afterlife – including some scenes of fairly gruesome torture. Fans of crime fiction and horror won’t be disappointed on that score. But this isn’t an unrelentingly dark novel; there’s plenty of room for humor, and yes, redemption as well. It’s got a quick-moving, humorous plot that I could easily see filmed as a dark comedy along the lines of Little Nicky or Bedazzled.

FIREPROOF fills an odd niche: it’s got brutal violence, street criminals and low lives, overt supernatural happenings, and dark comedy. I don’t know that I can name a single other book that’s got all that. I enjoyed FIREPROOF. The plot zips right along, the characters are interesting, the dialogue fast and natural-sounding. Recommended for those who like some comedy with their horror/crime thrillers.

Review copyright 2012 J. Andrew Byers… (más)