Tasha Haines Traces of Red, by Paddy Richardson (Penguin, 2011), 324 pp., $30.
I discovered the wonderful term extruded book product while flicking around in Google, apropos some background material for this review. It sounds like some sort of literary sausage meat — but I was getting slightly off-track and beguiled by the slurry of pulp fiction tropes that lead me eventually to deciding that Traces of Red by Paddy Richardson is a Roman de Gare – which is the much nicer-sounding French equivalent to that less-than-salubrious moniker, ‘Airport Novel’.
Traces of Red aspires to the likes of such Airport Fictionistas as Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult, John Grisham: lucrative writing machines all, and very clever at what they do, if you like that sort of thing. And Paddy Richardson herself is a well-regarded Dunedin-based writer and teacher of writing who has earned recognition for collections of short stories and various novels. But as to the appeal of Traces of Red… well chacun à son goût, as they who read romans de gare might say.
Paddy Richardson’s latest book is touted in Penguin’s media release as being ‘psychological crime fiction at its best’, but there was absolutely no psychological complexity or useful tension between the protagonist Rebecca Thorne and the antagonist Connor Bligh (an oddly piratey name). It was as if all the good raw material that the author had acquired only got as far as flopping proverbially around in one of those glass-fronted Laundromat dryers; while I (the reader) came and went, read a newspaper, went to get a coffee, needing only to give the story half a mind’s worth of attention while it kept going full of indistinct colour and texture with as much sense and interest as, well, clothes in a drier.
There is obviously a demand for this sort of novel, as testified to by the immense wealth of some of the Airport Authors of the world, pumping out their tales of Las Vegas swimming pools, espionage, and illicit affairs. But for me this book has no traction, nothing to hook into, nothing to care about – which is majorly disappointing in a book dubbed a psychological thriller.
At the end of the story I still don’t care about or know Rebecca the jaded (though still young) journalist, who finds her stride scouting around in the archives and life of Connor Bligh, a convicted triple murderer with looks and mannerisms vaguely reminiscent of David Bain (apart from the bit about Connor being good looking). Rebecca stays flat, remote, and dull throughout, despite undergoing some life-changing events, such as the end of an affair, the termination of her job, family conflict, starting a new job, meeting and struggling with an imprisoned criminal; then hunting for supporters of said criminal and being abused by detractors, etcetera. It would change most people, and if it didn’t then the lack of change in response to obvious catalysts would augur an important narrative strand in itself.
Connor Bligh, convicted murderer and brilliant manipulator, is the most potentially interesting character in the book. I found myself beginning to care about whether he would be freed, and whether he had committed the murders, and whether he and Rebecca would fall in love… I began looking forward to getting to that necessary climax. But complications came and went, and resolutions were glossed over during Rebecca’s walks on the windy beach below her cliff top house and her ubiquitous wine and DVD sessions, and I felt fobbed off and led on by the promise of something juicy which was never delivered.
The characters Rebecca, Connor, Katy, and Angela would each have had great turmoil, torment, and fear in their lives, but the conflict of their circumstances isn’t paid-out by the author. For example: Katy, who sees her mother, father, and brother’s slain bodies strewn around the family home in the first scene, manages to go off to law school and to run her own house and supervise her flatmates (as we find out near the end), which seems rather implausible unless tempered by a drug problem or penchant for torturing small furry animals—but no, there’s nothing like that. And Angela who had virtually no mother, a crappy father, and her weird little brother Connor to look after, is portrayed for the most part as being only mildly maladjusted (seeking refuge in the arms and bed of the town’s most popular boy).
But then suddenly there is that other thing… I’ll have to come out and say it (spoiler alert): Angela and Connor didn’t just cuddle-up with their clothes on if you know what I mean. But this is sprung on us at the end of the book, and has no precedent in the novel, other than that one time where there was a small hint of something recounted in one of Connor’s letters to Rebecca…. I will try to avoid further spoilers.
The first chapter is Katy’s; it is the only chapter not written from Rebecca’s point of view or featuring Connor’s letters to Rebecca. And it sets up an expectation that Katy (and the effect on Katy of seeing the murdered bodies of her family) will drive the story forward. So her situation remains a nagging question in the back of my mind after she disappears from the story, and I hoped in vain that the loose ends involving Katy’s trauma would eventually be nicely tied-up.
Connor’s point of view delivered in his many letters to Rebecca is enervatingly prosaic for someone who is supposed to be an outsider science genius who is also very good at volleyball, guitar, and house renovations! His voice should vary markedly from Rebecca’s, but he doesn’t differ enough to create the necessary poignant distinction between types. Rebecca’s voice is believable enough as the go-getter journo; but when she should be expressing fear or vulnerability she is simply ‘put to bed’ by the author with a bottle of wine and a DVD until her ruthless journo self is ready for more action. And so a great deal of psychological depth is thus avoided.
Joe Fahey, Rebecca’s married lover and also Connor’s lawyer, has the most plausible dimension of any character in the book: it is easy to empathise with his difficult situation (sick wife, high profile lover who is now interfering in his professional world), but we don’t get to know him well because he’s only a ‘prop’ character. And even though coincidences are a mainstay of fiction, for Rebecca to have the Connor Bligh case suggested to her as a potential documentary topic by her brother, only to find out that her boyfriend is Connor’s lawyer, is groaningly convenient. And then, on top of that, Joe’s sick wife turns out to be a colleague of Rebecca’s mother (lawyers a-plenty here). Crikey. And by the time I got to the incest bit, I wanted to donate the book immediately to my two-year-old to work on it with her safety-scissors, crayons, paint, and stickers (she can’t read).
All the way along, Connor is portrayed as the genius: he is crafty and seems far too clever for anyone else to figure out, and I naturally read that as having something important to do with how it would all pan out: there would be an ingenious twist, a previously unseen angle, a shocking revelation hinted at through the many clues that seem to pepper the story—but there was nothing like that, not even the incest bit amounts to anything other than a sad and obvious end. And even Connor’s intelligence turns out to have a dubious quality as he comes to a dreary ‘dead end’, pardon the inevitable pun. How bright was he to try and kill his rescuer the very night he gets out of prison?! How bright was he to fail at that? Is the book suddenly making a point about ‘brilliance’? I doubt it. Perhaps it’s turning the previously established idea that ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ on its head? Nah. At the end (partial spoiler coming up), after spending the whole book feeling hopeful for the redemption of Connor the misfit, I was suddenly and abruptly informed that I shouldn’t do that because he’s nothing more or less than a psychotic murderer who got too close to his sister. It is a letdown — boring, and more than a little annoying.
And the ‘clue’ that Katy hadn’t been killed along with her family, and that the murderer walked around the house looking for her (there were bloody footprints) clung on until the end: would he get her too? Katy’s is the first P.O.V in the novel; she is the only ‘survivor’ of the original tragedy, so she would surely be pivotal to the outcome. After all, an ending is most gratifying and natural when it has been encoded at the beginning.
Katy gathered good impetus in her absence from the story as it unfolded — up to a point — and I wondered with actual interest about the timing and manner of her grand return maybe she could murder Connor to get even and then we could find out that he was a saint who had been so awfully wronged … or something. But there was nothing grand or overly revealing about what happened, so that Katy’s inconsequential characterisation felt like yet another missed opportunity.
Katy gathered good impetus in her absence from the story as it unfolded — up to a point — and I wondered with actual interest about the timing and manner of her grand return maybe she could murder Connor to get even and then we could find out that he was a saint who had been so awfully wronged … or something. But there was nothing grand or overly revealing about what happened, so that Katy’s inconsequential characterisation felt like yet another missed opportunity.
And finally, Rebecca’s rapidly unfolded though calmly played endgame was just too level-headed and cool considering that she had only very recently discovered how wrong she had been about Connor. It would have been more consistent for her to have taken the problem to bed with more wine and a DVD, rather than tackling Connor Bligh as if she had been suddenly possessed by the spirit of James Bond. In the end, I couldn’t help thinking that this novel might have been more interesting as Katy’s story and not Rebecca’s. Katy had more at stake than anyone else, as hers was the only life and sanity ever truly hanging in the balance.
TASHA HAINES has a Master of Fine Arts in Fine Arts from Elam at the University of Auckland. Formerly a lecturer in fine arts and design in Melbourne, she is now a writer, reviewer and tutor living in Wellington.
Great review Tasha! The best reviews are the ones where you can make yourself sound funny by insulting the author, and mocking what was perhaps a years worth of work for them. As a reviewer myself, we were always given guidelines that told us not to write a review in that way, so good for you. The way you early on make the review about you is very clever. The line about wanting to give the book to your daughter to play with is pure gold. I hope you include lines like that in your own fiction writing, just how is your writing coming along? I would love to read something of yours and review it on my own blog. I quickly checked Amazon but couldn’t find anything. Can you please point me in the right direction? My daughter is five, so hopefully it has a colorful cover. Thank you!