A murder mystery set in a small village in Ireland, a place full of lonely people with unfulfilled destinies. Whose are the bones that are discovered when a new housing estate is being built? How do they relate to a love triangle from thirty years ago? Is the local policeman capable of investigating?
Despite the overwhelming sadness surrounding most of the characters, I felt that this was an attempt at a comedy murder mystery. The characters were stereotypical : the fat policeman, the alcoholic housewife, the cheating husband, a whole chorus-line of unfulfilled spinsters etc and although there were attempts to give them more dimensions, the fact that these too were from the stock of the genre failed to make any of them come alive for me.
The story was told in the past tense from the multiple perspective of several of the main characters.
TV adaptation
I have been watching the ITV adaptation of Holding. Whereas the theme of the book seems to be chastity and regret, in the adaptation sex is rampant. The three Ross sisters at the centre of the novel are spinsters who regret their never-been-touched status. In the adaptation they are all having sex and the middle sister is having a lesbian affair with the mother of the young lad who is shagging the younger sister (who looks too young to have been in love with a man who died twenty years ago). One of the investigating policemen is also gay, in a reversal of his sexuality in the book. The purpose of this policeman and the completely new character of the young lad seems to be to add some male eye candy to the programme. The back story of the housekeeper in the Garda barracks has been gratuitously changed and the tenure of the main character dramatically shortened from fifteen years to just over three. There are performances in a village fete (actors love showing off; I suspect this was added as padding for their enjoyment; it certainly didn't enhance mine) which also isn't in the book. The dramatic final was similar to but not the same as the book's ending; I suppose I was grateful that at least the murderer was not changed. This has to be one of the loosest adaptations ever made, reminding me of the film version of Live and Let Die which shares its title and the character of James Bond but almost nothing else with the Ian Fleming book of the same name.
Selected quotes:
- "It was widely accepted by the residents of Duneen that, should a crime be committed and Sergeant Collins managed to apprehend the culprit, it would be very unlikely that the arrest had involved a pursuit on foot. People liked him well enough, and there was no name-calling as such, but it was still quite unsettling for the village that their safety depended on a man who broke into a sweat walking up for communion." (1.1; opening lines)
- "Time didn’t pass in Duneen; it seeped away." (1.1)
- "Some marriages combust, others die, and some just lie down like a wounded animal, defeated." (1.2)
- "like an animal spraying its scent she had covered every available surface with much-dusted china figurines and small glass ornaments." (1.3)
- "Was it really possible that she could have wasted so much of her own life out of a demented sort of politeness?" (1.8)
- "Life had taught them well. Feelings were to be feared, pain was to be avoided at all cost, and if that meant not experiencing joy, then so be it." (1.11)
- "He had managed to get through decades of adulthood without emotional attachment," (1.13)
- "such a powerful performance of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ that it sounded like more of a threat than a promise." (1.13)
- "it gave the smokers an air of respectability rather than standing huddled against the wall like some very unappetising prostitutes." (2.1)
- "The brief flurry and excitement of his love triangle had soon flatlined." (2.1)
- "A funeral was always going to be more important than the person who was being buried." (2.14)
A competently written example of the genre. For murder mystery with a light touch I would recommend:
- Headline Murder, Stop Press Murder, and Front Page Murder by Peter Bartram
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
- The Cinderella Killer and A Decent Interval by Simon Brett and others of the Charles Paris series
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