beware the solitary drinker by cornelius lehane

Reviewed by Allan Guthrie

Beware The Solitary Drinker. Great title, isn’t it? Cornelius Lehane’s author blurb describes his previous roles in life as "a college professor, a union organizer and, yes, for more than a decade, a bartender." Well, it’s good to know that those ten years weren’t wasted! In this, his first novel, Lehane introduces the reader to Brian McNulty, bartender at Oscar’s on Broadway.

The novel centres on the murder of Angelina. As her name suggests, she is a barroom angel. This is McNulty’s first description of her:

She came through the smoke, up to the bar, like one of those sleek and beautiful mahogany sailboats that slip soundlessly out of the fog and the early morning mist to dock at the Dockside Hotel down on the Jersey Shore – where I once tended bar in an earlier life. The four a.m. drunks were piled against the bar now that last call had sounded; no matter how many hours before that they’d spent staring silently into their glasses, now they talked, urgently, clinging to the night, fighting off tomorrow. When I leaned toward her for her order, Angelina put her hand on mine to make sure she had my attention. Tired, half-drunk myself, I wanted to brush her prettiness away, like I brushed away the other pretty brats: the waitresses-as-actresses, the business-suited innocents from Cincinnati or Iowa. I was sick of innocence and expectation.

We quickly discover Angelina isn’t innocent. She has a propensity for vulgarity and crude jokes. Before long McNulty is having to "pretend that this girl didn’t bloom in front of me like the last rose of summer and that I wasn’t captivated by her blue eyes." She also has an expansive sexual appetite. McNulty befriends her, but he doesn't have sex with her, unlike most of the clientele of Oscar’s, who, it transpires, have, at one time or another, partaken of the various physical pleasures Angelina has to offer. Bear in mind that "Oscar’s really became a bar late at night after the dinner crowd thinned out. Around ten-thirty, the rock and roll band set up, and the respectable people went home."

This novel is, as you might guess, a murder mystery. And Angela is the victim. McNulty acts as a surrogate PI, forced into investigating the private lives of his customers, many of whom are friends and drinking buddies. It’s a tense and unpleasant business, because you know what? They’re all pretty dirty. They all have secrets. Nobody is who he seems to be. Naturally.

As a mystery novel, Beware works very well. But, not being a huge fan of detective fiction per se, what interests me is whether the novel succeeds beyond the confines of the detective genre? The answer is yes. Very much so. The framework is very much secondary to the characters and there is sufficient personal involvement in the detective-protagonist to maintain the interest of a sceptic like me.

There are a number of well drawn relationships, but I loved that of McNulty and his father. In pondering this subtle relationship (McNulty’s father has had an enormous impact on the barman), Lehane creates something very poignant. Not only has his father shaped McNulty’s left wing politics, but he still remains a resource, and a figure of awe, for the adult McNulty. And dispensing wisdom like this, you can see why:

Instead of doing what it takes to prevent murder, our society’s response in these barbaric times is to track down and capture the culprit. We think this makes up for not doing what we might have done to keep the murder from happening in the first place.

Another factor that catapults this novel ahead of its rivals is Lehane’s sense of place. Throughout the novel, the city is described as a source of energy, and it is done so, at times, with some ingenious imagery.

I sucked in the hum of the street and the glaring lights, the unending rush of people picking us up like a conveyor belt, rushing us forward until we got off at our next stop. The energy electrified me. I took strength from the city on nights like this.

Read that passage again. For McNulty, Lehane is saying, the city is a drug. He’s describing a hit ("rushing us forward"). He "sucked" in the "hum". The sound is so real you can breathe it, taste it. Some pedants might complain about the mixed metaphor. Well, maybe so, but it’s deliberate. The sentence goes on: "and the glaring lights", thus giving us taste and sound and, finally, sight. The city as drug, affecting the senses, mixing your metaphors, baby.

I’m getting carried away, but that’s what passages of this book did to me. Impressive debut, Mr Lehane. Waiting impatiently for the next McNulty novel.

Copyright© 2003 Allan Guthrie

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ALLAN GUTHRIE was born two years before David Goodis died. Allan lives in Edinburgh with his inspirational and extremely supportive wife, Donna. His as yet unpublished noir crime novel Kiss Her Goodbye was short-listed for the CWA Debut Dagger award. His second novel Joe Hope is now complete and is coming to a publisher near you soon. A number of Allan's short stories have been (or will be) published this year in e-zines (Hardluck Stories, The Murder Hole, Plots With Guns, Shred of Evidence), Cyber-Pulp (electronic and, latterly, print) anthologies (Down These Dark Streets, Grave Possessions, Historical Hardboiled, Dark Streets After Hours and Be Mine), and UK print magazine Bullet. Allan is the editor/webmaster of Noir Originals. 
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Read an extract from Cornelius Lehane's Beware The Solitary Drinker