Bartholomew Gill - The Life Of An Irish Writer

And so summer has reached its end for another year. All excuses for writing my first column are now gone. My first subject? The works of the newly late and always great Bartholomew Gill. For the creator of Peter McGarr et al has passed on to that great pub in the sky.

His gift to us you ask? Fifteen mysteries, brilliant to a paragraph and one of the best examples of what serial mysteries are meant to be no matter your definition.

If what defines a great series to you is character well step on up. Central character McGarr himself is fascinating. A boy from the Irish streets who’s academic prowess earned him scholarships until he wound up with a police calling and no place to go with it McGarr learned the ropes working for Interpol until he was called back to the fold and began a quick ascent at home to rise to be in charge of the “Murder Police”. There’s his younger wife Noreen who comes from a well off family and runs a gallery. Noreen enjoys her husband’s work. The whodunnit aspects of his job more than make up for the tensions experienced in a marriage where because of a devotion to the job McGarr is perhaps not always quite there. The love though, it’s there in spades. Daughter Maddie has evolved from the beloved daughter to become a character in her own right. The subordinates on whom McGarr begins to rely over time are equally well developed. Hughie, a boxer from the streets of Dublin... if he wasn’t police he’d be on the other side of the bars. Ruth’ie from the south and unwilling to be a farmer’s wife has pursued her dream to be top police while struggling to help her parents maintain their lands. McKeon the sergeant’s sergeant and a man who evolves throughout the series from stereotype to complex character.

Is sense of place what defines a series for you? Here too Gill can be proudly displayed beside Rankin and Pelecanos and Robert Crais. I see snippets without revisiting the books. A square blown bloody by a political bomb; a river where fly fishing is as close to God as we’re likely to get; a coastal town with secrets older than the thatched roofs; the running of the mountain; a bridge under which gypsies seek shelter from the rain and a needle to share; a library with a wealth of Irish words and a fresh corpse. There are the corner gyms and hostelries, the upper middle-class neighborhood where McGarr lives and the newly gentrified area that Hughie calls home. The colleges and universities loom and so too does the
burgeoning drug trade. Over the twenty years of the series we get a sense of the developing wealth of the country and the changing attitudes towards militant religion and IRA history. There’s also a wealth of Irish Culture within the pages and even, shockingly, a few Irish meals I might be tempted to try myself.

Characters? Region? That’s all well and good but what about the bones of the story? The actual mysteries themselves and the words they are written with? Once again I’ll reiterate... Bartholomew Gill’s McGarr series is an exemplary example of mystery fiction. Don’t take my word for it; the man has been reviewed by the major players with phrases including “literary grace”, “internal complexities”, and “author’s subtlety” naming but a few.

And in the end that is indeed Gill’s strength. For with his pen, a deep love for his adopted country and a vivid imagination Bartholomew Gill nee Mark McGarritty put to the page a series of police procedurals wondrously drawn and always unique. Through the players and the settings in the books and the crime/crimes investigated in the Bartholomew Gill books the stories are always well thought out, with twists provided both to the case and the series continuity. Surprising violence has stopped me cold late at night and unexpected gentleness has made me teary as the morning birds were about to call out the new day.

Here is where in an overview you give a few suggestions to those who’ve come with you this far and I can tell you that Death of a Joyce Scholar is the most acclaimed and erudite of the books but I’m not sure that it would be true. Certainly in this book he is able to freely share his knowledge of English Literature with a wink to the insider but truth told there are “literary nuances” both sublime and apparent in every work released to date. The man could not hide his love for words. Luckily for us not only was he able to appreciate others’ but to give us volumes of his own.

With at least two volumes left to share my friend I’ll not say good-bye but only until we meet again...

Ruth