Chief Inspector “Mac” MacNeice of the Dundurn Police has a lot in common with Commissioner Guido Brunetti of the Venice Quaestorship. They are two honest men, as they said at a certain time; cultured, calm and intelligent… even if MacNeice uses his service weapon a little more often than Brunetti. We can even think that the heroes of Scott Thornley and Donna Leon could become the best friends in the world.
Because what makes MacNeice’s investigations so charming, despite the violence and twisted characters that we sometimes encounter there, is him. Thornley indeed has, like Donna Leon, this gift of immediately bringing us into sordid stories through the unique gaze of his investigator. A bit like Brunetti, yes, MacNeice seeks to see things in their entirety, to understand the why; even if he sometimes gets there by talking to birds or even to his wife who died many moons ago. Here, he will really need them… and her.
A macabre enigma
This is because, having barely recovered from a difficult investigation (see To the marrow), MacNeice and his team find themselves faced with two stories as complicated as they are improbable. Firstly that of an overly flighty police colleague brutally transformed into padding material (sic). This planned revenge crime will lead to a shooting leading to the temporary sidelining of MacNeice’s closest collaborator, Aziz, injured during the intervention. But, stranger still, MacNeice and his men find themselves confronted with a real enigma at the same time; a series of three murders which the inspector will finally discover that they reproduce works of art inspired by Daumier, Gauguin and modern visual artists, the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, specialists, among others, in “reactualization” by Goya. The assassin even signs his “works” with a brass letter V placed at the precise location from where one should look at his “painting”.
The investigation will be difficult and will allow the reader to meet the killer before MacNeice gets there. We will then understand the devastation caused by all wars and the profound damage they also cause among the soldiers who lead them, whether they take place anywhere on the planet. Coming out of a mass grave alive unfortunately does not come with any guarantee of survival… The inner speech of this former sniper sent to Afghanistan is likely to make many think, without of course excusing anything.
All this flows naturally in a fluid writing, well rendered by the translation, which takes us from one universe to another, from art to war and from horror to “beauty”, making us grasp at any time how everything is connected. Ad absurdum. This simple statement will take on its full meaning in the final scene when MacNeice has located the killer and a tactical intervention unit will be deployed, despite the police officer’s advice, to catch him. A grand puppet…
Like everything else.