Adrian Mckinty listed a few of his favorite Irish crime writers in his blog, and I decided to give a few of them a try. Corridors of Death was the first, and Eoin McNamee's Resurrection Man is the second. But I almost hesitate to call it a "crime novel;" this isn't from any genre snootiness ("This book is good; it couldn't possibly be a crime novel."), but rather because it focuses less on the crimes than of the milieu of Belfast during the Troubles. (Having said that, I'm actually a little over 2/3s of the way through, so any opinions are subject to change).
The novel focuses on Victor Kelly, a Protestant terrorist, and through him and the reactions of others to him, McNamee offers a glimpse of Belfast seen through the lens of Protestant/Catholic fighting. McNamee's language is obviously carefully thought-out and well-crafted, so the number of similes and metaphors relating actions to the cinema are telling. From Victor on down, just about all of the characters see themselves as part of a gangster movie. The violence they take part in isn't real to them, and they see themselves as glamorous heroes of the silver screen rather than the terrorists they actually are.
I think that (in general) this is one of the great things about similes; the similes characters use can tell us what they think without the author having to come out and say "Victor didn't see any of this as real; he thought his life was like a movie."
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