The Smoke King by Maurice Leitch, Secker & Warburg, 359pp, £9.99 in UK
Cavan man Denis Lawlor is approaching retirement age from his job as RUC sergeant in a mid-Antrim market town. Years of resentment towards the blinkered Protestants he has moved among for twenty years, who are suspicious of his background, and bitterness towards his fellow local Catholics, who are disdainful of Lawlor's serving the Crown, build up to provide this story with its surprising denouement.
Ostensibly, the plot focuses on negro GI Willie Washington, stationed with his comrades in the North during preparations for D-Day. A night out ends tragically when rivalry between the white and coloured GIs ends in a shoot-out and the local barmaid is killed. Washington is an innocent bystander, but he knows full well the sinister reality of racial prejudice and goes AWOL, hiding out in the countryside. Sergeant Lawlor wants to tie up loose ends before retiring and isn't about to let the American Army's half-hearted investigation pass without involving himself further in the case.
Willie Washington's fiercely independent lover, Pearly Taggart, and her illegitimate son, Raymond, are also deeply affected by the incident. Maurice Leitch presents his narrative through the viewpoints of several of these characters, thereby enhancing insights into life in a Northern town fifty-five years ago with superlative flair. The descriptive details of domestic scenes and natural beauty of the Lough Neagh area are particularly finely drawn. Notably, the twist in the tail of the plot grips the reader like the fist-tightening climax of a Greek tragedy.
This is the first book from Maurice Leitch since Gilchrist was published over three years ago. As the celebrated Northern novelist Robert McLiam Wilson has commented, Leitch does in The Smoke King what he has been doing in his writing for over three decades, raising "his glorious, inconvenient voice". For Leitch doesn't let anyone off the hook when it comes to portraying their foibles.
Leitch documents the clash of cultures between Ulster folk and the American soldiers magnificently. But it is the largely unacknowledged silences and begrudgery which are most skilfully depicted. Leitch's grittily honest and astute addressing of these weighty matters does not, however, detract from the flow of the story, which swirls along at a fascinating pace. Although the story is set in the early 1940s and shows just how far we have come in understanding one another, nonetheless there is a contemporary resonance in many of the attitudes and misconstruings laid bare in the book, which shows us how far we still have to travel if we are to live in true peace with one another.
The publicity blurb for this novel justly claims that with The Smoke King Maurice Leitch "adds an entirely new dimension to the Irish novel". The Guardian Fiction Prize winner and Whitbread Award-winning author has certainly excelled himself here. While fans of Leitch's writing will no doubt have their own favourites from his already impressive oeuvre, The Smoke King may well become his "greatest hit".
Niall McGrath is a writer and critic