Michael Collins' Lost Souls

reviewed by James M McGowan

With this third crime novel set in the hinterland of small town America, Booker Prize nominee, Michael Collins has produced another lyrical and disturbing story set in this milieu. It is evident from The Keepers Of Truth and The Resurrectionists that Collins is affected greatly by the decaying structure and community of mill and factory towns. The fact that his novels reflect the unspoken despair of the communities of hollowed out America is in homage rather than in horror even though the horror is there aplenty.

The core element of the story in Lost Souls is precipitated early (page 7) by the discovery of the dead body of a missing three year old girl on Halloween night. Lawrence, the local sheriff and antihero of the story finds her under fallen leaves with her Halloween costume of feathered wire hanger angel wings broken and distorted. The image of the crushed ephemeral angel wings is striking and disturbing and the scene very moving. The trajectory of tyre tracks on the wet fallen leaves indicates she was run over.

A tip-off to the sheriff’s office reveals that the truck of local high school football hero Kyle Johnson was seen in the area. The Chief of Police and the Mayor want to deflect attention from Johnson and Lawrence is drawn into the cover up. The banality of the small town setting hides a complexity of motives, characters and disturbing undercurrents and shows how Lawrence is drawn into the cover up. It has echoes of keeping the beaches open in Amity so that the tourist season is not affected. In Collins’ book the fall out from the cover up is even more damaging.

Lawrence’s despair at his failed marriage, his separation from his son, his relationship with Lois, his financial difficulties and drinking distort his grasp on reality which means we have an unstable and extra-charged vehicle for viewing the drama. We cannot accurately gauge Lawrence’s coping mechanisms to the elements of this story; separation, shooting, suicide, strangulation, arson, abortion and divorce. It could reflect our own reaction to multiple traumas over a short time frame but we don’t feel safe with Lawrence. He could do anything. And perhaps who could blame him. We could be Lawrence.

Michael Collin’s story is a crime story, a noir story, a bleak and visceral unfolding of what can lie beneath the surface of a small town where the biggest focus of hope is something as transient as the local high school football hero. Such a tenuous focal point reflects a fragile community life which can fall apart disastrously. Collins’ pace, characterization, events, deaths and descriptions make this a powerful addition to the range of crime fiction. His writing is powerful and meditative and moving. Like all good literature it spans other genres also but Lost Souls is a crime novel par excellence.

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Copyright © 2004 James M McGowan

Read an extract from James McGowan's Shots Fired

JAMES M MCGOWAN's influences are Ed McBain, Ross Macdonald, James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, Ed Bunker, Ice-T and Michael Collins.

He was exposed early to street fighting, hand guns, death from shotguns, suicide and the incipient violence in a working class estate. It affected him greatly. He writes about social, adolescent, family and paramilitary violence (with an Irish setting but transplanted also to Irish cities in the US) and how it influences a child's development. He uses black humour in the writing to ameliorate the intensity of some of the violence and darkness.
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