posted on 26 Jan 2018

Death of an Ardent Bibliophile by Bartholomew Gill

There are times when work gets so demanding that reading in the evening can be tough. It’s at times like this I usually turn to books that are the literary equivalent to slumping in from of the tv. Death of An Ardent Bibliophile  by the Irish-American author, Bartholomew Gill is most certainly one of those.

Gill was a new name to me I must admit and I picked this up purely on the strength of its title. But a modest bit of digging around reveals that this is the pen-name of Mark C. McGarrity who died in 2002 at the early age of 58 from head injuries sustained in a domestic accident:

He fell and hit his head while trying to climb into his apartment through a window, apparently because he had forgotten his keys, said Detective Mark Slockbower of the Morristown police. A neighbor called the police just after midnight on July 4 and Mr. McGarrity was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:34 a.m. (New York Times)

Gill’s identity as a detective fiction writer is based on the idea of using his historic cultural heritage as his USP and he set his mysteries in Ireland and in Dublin in particular. His sleuth is Detective Inspector McGarr and starting in 1977 he produced around fifteen books with this character as the lead.

He certainly puts literature and writers at the forefront of his plots. Possibly his most successful book, which was nominated for an Edgar Award in 1989 is described by the New York Times in this way:

In ''Death of a Joyce Scholar,'' a murder occurs on Bloomsday, June 16, and Inspector McGarr must bone up on ''Ulysses'' in order to trace the killer's steps and solve the crime. 

In The Death of An Ardent Bibliophile the focus switches to a mystery built around the work of Jonathan Swift. In many ways this is a rather run-of-the-mill who-done-it – rather unpleasant public figure and Jonathan Swift obsessive, Brian Herrick, is poisoned while hosting one of his debauched ‘Frollicks’ in which he acts out some of Swifts most coprophilous verses. And its all caught on video tape. Herrick happens to be the keeper of a library of precious antiquarian books which it seems he’s also palming into his own private collection and substituting the real things for fakes.

As with all detective mysteries there’s a gallery of people all with pretty good reasons to do away with Herrick – the question, of course, is who is murderous enough to do the poisoning?

What lifts the book into the realm of being more than adequately diverting are three quite unusual characteristics:

• ·         The writing is really very good. Gill knows how to produce a page turner and the fact that it’s literate and doesn’t condescend keeps you wanting to chug on and find out more. There are some short passages here that in other contexts would pass as very decent literary criticism.

 

• ·         McGarr makes a very engaging central character. Mercifully, he’s not a troubled man; he’s not got marriage problems or drink issues and he’s really quite happy playing second fiddle to his wife when he needs to. I found it positively refreshing to get away from the dark, brooding, existential detectives that seem so popular these days.

 

• ·         Gill manages to run a secondary, light-hearted parallel storyline alongside the murder investigation. It’s a rather silly ‘relationship’ story that features the romantic goings-on between two of his staff. This brings light relief into the book when the going threatens to get too heavily involved with putrid bodies and perverse sex.

That’s not to say the book doesn’t have its faults. Like so many detective novels you can poke holes through the plot with ease – just how come a policeman’s wife, with no legitimate law enforcement role, gets to spend so much time at the scene of the crime, for example?

Some of his characters are dreadful stereotypes – especially the comic Irishmen and the ‘lower classes’ – and there are way too many unfeasibly beautiful or handsome people involved in the story.

But I was willing to put all that to one side for a couple of evenings of pleasant and not entirely mindless entertainment and I suspect I may well try and have another encounter with McGarr and his team at some point in the future.

I’m not sure that these books are in print any longer but there are 1996 editions in paper and hardback available on internet sites for a few pounds.

 

Terry Potter

January 2018