Hawthorn and Child

Hawthorn and Child are policemen, detectives, operating in London, on the case of a big shot criminal called Mishazzo. But that is where any similarity with a genre crime novel ends. What the author presents us with instead, is a series of snapshots of lives that touch these three characters, however tangentially.

The young man in Mishazzo's employ who gets in too deep; the editor who receives a mysterious manuscript; a young girl and her first boyfriend; Hawthorn himself and his struggles with his sexuality. Sometimes Hawthorn and Child make only brief appearances, at others they are the focus. Nothing is resolved. We are left to make our own conclusions, to wonder what happened next.

Ridgway's writing is at times hallucinatory and dreamlike, at others economical and incisive. He makes each character speak with their own voice, always the sign of a good writer.

Some of these stories stand alone, in others there is a link to other stories. A death impacts on several characters; Mishazzo himself appears a couple of times, in other places he is a looming shadow, an unreleased potential of violence and death.

So, this is very far from a conventional crime novel and some may be frustrated by its unwillingness to tie up loose ends, to provide a pat ending. But I liked it very much and it will, I'm sure, bear repeated readings.

Recommended.