Stephanie Jones: Book Review - The Final Silence by Stuart Neville

As police antiheroes go, DI Jack Lennon, by turns the victim, villain and renegade investigator in Stuart Neville’s new thriller The Final Silence, has even fewer allies than most. Though he lacks the mesmeric quality possessed by, say, Ian Rankin’s John Rebus, he is as complicated, tortured and self-defeating as they come, and shares Rankin’s fondness for chemical escape.

He’s also drawn to other people, despite their conspicuous lack of faith in him, and by the time it becomes clear that his is the novel’s central story, he’s already won you over – even if you fear you may yet rue extending your trust.

The spectre of Belfast’s bloody past casts a long shadow across this tale of family secrets and professional lies, the exposure of which begins with a death. As Raymond Drew succumbs to natural causes, he reflects on the materials in his home that might best have been disposed of, but it’s too late. When his niece Rea Carlisle and sister Ida, who along with father and husband Graham are his only surviving relatives, clear out his sparsely furnished home, Rea discovers a scrapbook that appears to record the career of a serial killer.

The assorted gruesome mementoes include a photo of Drew posing with a young Graham Carlisle in front of paramilitary paraphernalia and AK-47s – not an ideal brand association for Carlisle, an up-and-coming politician being groomed for Westminster after rising from a hardscrabble Belfast background. Rea wants to do the right thing and go to the police, but is stymied by her ambitious father. In lieu of an official report, she briefs her old boyfriend, one Jack Lennon, on what she has found.

The plot thickens with a violent death and the entry of a compelling female character to shake up the male-dominated and somewhat crooked local police force. DCI Serena Flanagan takes charge of the case and, after bruising exposition that gives the picture of an intimidating hard-woman (an image reinforced when she has to deal with finality to one corrupt cop), she and Lennon have the first of several pugilistic encounters. There is far more to Flanagan, however, and Neville deftly expands her dimensions through an excruciating discovery that reveals Flanagan’s true priorities and quality of character.

Flanagan and Lennon may be more alike than they realize, both possessing an instinct for behaviour and motive that drives them, terrier-like, after their prey. Flanagan’s almost psychic intuition has her correctly perceiving the chasm between the older Carlisles, his iron control, her grief and oppression.

In parts of The Final Silence, Neville keeps the reader ahead of the game, watching characters play catch-up to discover what we already know – but in this whodunit, there are few victors and no escapees. Everyone is trafficking in concealment and shame, and the silence of death will not come soon enough for some. With workmanlike yet effective prose and an eye to Belfast’s still-recent violent past, Neville has forged a work of fiction with the ring of truth.