Orchid Blue

Eoin McNamee is a fine writer, fusing style and moral purpose. This latest novel is a conflict between the evil and the impotent — the evil getting all the best lines — personified as characters in a murder and courtroom drama based on an actual trial in Northern Ireland. As that occurred when capital punishment was the fate of convicted murderers, the book’s trial has all the tension, personal agonies and animosities of the real thing. Chief among these is the accused and his nemesis, the trial judge; it is with the judge and his cronies that McNamee revisits an earlier novel, the acclaimed Blue Tango (2002).

In Orchid Blue, the author matches his style to his theme, setting the re-visioning of events in a juxtaposition of thought and tense. The here-and-now of the text is given resonance by revisionist reflections; what seems real, experienced and recounted is turned back on itself, the past melts into the future, unlikely relationships are hinted, connections are made, and all in McNamee’s staccato tone. It’s a tone with more depth than might be supposed, especially in his evocations of the streets, homes, clubs and resorts of Northern Ireland, an intimate territory he unveils with acerbic affection. Astonishing trials are common enough in both parts of this island to give this account an immediate relevance. What distinguishes the novel is the method by which McNamee writes his way into the characters and the deliberation with which he burrows into their provenance, the places from which they came, and which made them what they are.