O Cursed Spite...

Alan Glynn has won the Crime Award for "Bloodland" in the 2011 "Irish Book Awards".
His field of action continues to chart the ability of contemporary protagonists to go AWOL at what seems to
be the slightest provocation.   Underlying their apparently bizarre behaviour patterns is a society at war.
Everybody these days is being told "You know you're over reacting".   Fortunately writers like Alan Glynn
come along to explore why.
I'll get round to writing more about "Bloodland" when the moment is more opportune.
Here, just to pass the time is a re-write of a piece written two years ago.
"Winterland" is the first of a series that looks set to continue for quite some time.

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Gina Rafferty simply cannot leave well enough alone.
She asks questions... too many for her own good,
or so it seems to those who have most to lose
through her revelations.
Dublin, in "Winterland" is  a veritable Tower of Babel,
with 'phones ringing... not being answered...
being answered by the wrong people... where  email messages float by unnoticed
by those whose lives are being manipulated by their contents.
Viewing the story as a contemporary myth,
the transformation of a gentle businesswoman whose company is on the verge of collapse into an avenging principle of vengeance
is today's daily news and gender is not particularly relevant.
For those in the corridors of power,  battling to put the fiscal disasters of recent years to right, the temptation to see such stories
in terms of a classic Greek tragedy must be tempting.
Alan Glynn's sense of humour, is often, in my reading linked to melodrama and vaudeville.
Boucicault, the fine interpretor of why people are so happy to tell white lies to get through life,
would enjoy a story where the straight talking heroine is pursued by a bewitched, bothered and bewildered villain (the usual concoction of
booze and drugs) and whose only hope is a hero who ends up in hospital, suffering from communication problems
that only a person who has tried to use a mobile 'phone in Ireland would appreciate. 
However Noir buffs may opt for a more cynical view of human nature.
How and ever, the award is very well deserved.
Monsieur Glynn.... Chapeau!  
(Or as Schumann said when he first discovered Chopin.... "Hats off, gentlemen...."
But that's another story...)