Tom Jennings

VARIANT 33 | WINTER 2008 | 17 Public Service Denouncement Tom Jennings Crime fiction has enjoyed something of a the Madeleine McCann case – an association no renaissance since the 1980s – aspiring to the status doubt boosting box-office despite the two child of serious literature as well as pulp populism, and abduction scenarios bearing scant resemblance. embracing ambitions to critical social commentary The salacious jostling of news-team vultures would from pungent perspectives outside of and in be one common denominator – here descending opposition to mainstream complacency. Many on the depressed environs of Dorchester, South younger writers were inspired by neo-noir pioneers Boston, Massachussetts. Their typically hysterical like James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard and saturation coverage highlights single-mother James Ellroy, who built on the genre’s founding Helene McCready (a magnificent Amy Ryan) characteristics pitting independent ‘working stiffs’ lamenting her disappeared four-year-old Amanda, and ‘little guys’ against the corporate corruption shepherded by steely-eyed police with neighbours of the monstrous modern urban machine. and family rallying supportively even in a However, these authors’ somewhat old-fashioned, prevailing mood of ominous pessimism. First-time backward-looking sensibilities – partly, no doubt, director Ben Affleck (co-scriptwriter with Aaron due to their generational positioning – result in a Stockard) as well as the story’s creator also hail pessimistic, ultimately even conservative, outlook from these mean streets, while thirty-something concerning prospects for change. Beyond, that is, protagonist PIs Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) the temporary victories of cynically lovable rogues and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) have unmasking the amoral excesses of the rich and lived there all their lives. Passionate attachment powerful – but which promise no enduring impact, to the blue-collar ’hood is reflected in the latters’ either on the overarching societal structures preoccupations (e.g. Kenzie: “Things you can’t and conditions which foster and shelter large- choose ... make you who you are”), and in the scale wrongdoing, or on the range of strategies camera’s regular carefully naturalistic pans around employing variations of brutal and cunning self- inner-city blight, alighting on variously battered seeking machismo shared by heroes and villains and beleaguered, resigned and/or residually alike. These dispiriting trends are reinforced energetic real residents – many of whom are also in the most popular latter-day descendants of cast in supporting roles and minor caricatures private eyes in visualisations of urban chaos and complementing consistently fine acting by star- crime at the cinema, where earlier shades of grey turns. in classic film noir had mutated by the 1990s Despite high-minded pronouncements by into lurid stylisation and the glamourisation of Crimes Against Children Unit cop supremo cartoonish violence – such as in films by John Dahl Captain Jack Doyle – who years ago lost his own and Quentin Tarantino – with social and political child to kidnappers – and ace detectives Remy The relentless context or nuance obliterated by technicolour Bressant and Nick Poole being assigned to the nihilism and comic-book characterisation. case (Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris and John message from media But there is another trajectory in recent noir Ashton respectively lending grizzled gravitas to fiction which starts from the empirically obvious proceedings), official inquiries quickly falter. proposition that the suffering associated with Specialist skip-tracers hunting down debtors and and politicians is criminal violence falls disproportionately and errant spouses, the initially reluctant Kenzie routinely on the poor. Lower-class strata may and Gennaro are beseeched by Amanda’s aunt to abandon the be stigmatised and marginalised in terms of Bea (Amy Madigan) and uncle Lionel (Titus media portrayal as well as in achieving American Welliver) to join the investigation. After putting dreams, yet constitute the bulk of the population the word out on the street, local confidence in irredeemable poor, – so that a point of view properly rooted within their discretion immediately yields leads – first, their milieux and lifeworlds may more accurately a recently-paroled child-molester may be in encapsulate the contours of present social ills. the area; then, the potential involvement of demonising any Alongside authors such as Walter Mosley and notorious gangster kingpin Cheese Olamon (Edi Michael Connelly (Los Angeles), Andrew Vachss Gathegi) and missing drugs-money. Helene’s own deviation from and Richard Price (New York), and George substance-abuse, chaotic self-centred behaviour Pelecanos (Washington DC), a prime exponent of and neglectful parenting compound suspicious this new wave is Dennis Lehane, whose Boston- unreliability, and her elusive boyfriend Skinny-Ray passively respectable based stories deal with urban impoverishment, Likanski’s (Sean Malone) sudden violent execution gentrification, racism, organised crime and clinches the link. No longer patronised by the defeatism. political and institutional corruption in such police for naïve amateurism, the investigators a way as to meditate on how ordinary people uncover the cash and Doyle brokers a highly Maher). Not waiting for backup, Kenzie, Bressant collectively understand and negotiate extremes of unorthodox exchange for Amanda at a remote and Poole’s shootout with the Tretts leaves the adversity – preferring vernacular verisimilitude flooded quarry. Unfortunately the botched switch latter three dead, whereupon Kenzie finds the in geographical and temporal specificity to leaves Cheese shot dead, and she’s believed missing boy already murdered and kills Earle in the quirkily baroque, drifting grifting misfits drowned when a favourite doll is found floating cold blood. Soon afterwards, uniformed cop Devin elsewhere. Since this writer attracted widespread in the treacherous waters. Doyle is sacked for (Michael Kenneth Williams) – another mate from attention with Clint Eastwood’s multiple Oscar- culpable incompetence and retires in disgrace to back in the day – provides vital corroboration winning 2003 version of Mystic River (first the sticks; the little girl’s funeral is held; crime- of the suspicions Kenzie has developed about published in 2001), several more of his books are and-punishment pundits seek new shock-horrors; Bressant who, disguised as a stick-up artist, now the source material for big-budget films whose and everyone sees tragic closure achieved. desperately threatens to assassinate Kenzie and producers expect equally impressive worldwide Except for Kenzie, who still smells a rat – but Titus to seal their silence. But a trigger-happy audiences. The next adaptation to reach the a subsequent spiralling descent into the violent bartender gets him first and Titus confesses their screen and fulfil the projection was Gone, Baby, degradations of child abuse and addiction collaboration in Amanda’s disappearance. Putting Gone (directed by Ben Affleck, 2007; originally eventually reveals depths of duplicity at all levels it all together, Kenzie and Gennaro travel upstate published in 1998), providing a convenient even he’d never dreamed (surely also wrongfooting and discover Amanda playing happily with Doyle’s opportunity to evaluate any advances made by this most viewers – so anyone not wanting the suspense wife. However, refusing Gennaro’s ultimatum to revisionist hardboiled realism. ruined should not read on). When another local leave the child where she’ll (assumedly) have a child disappears, Kenzie’s old schoolfriend, now chance of a decent life, Kenzie reports the crime drug dealer, Bubba Rogowski (Boston rapper and Doyle is arrested. When the dust has settled, In Loco Parentis Slaine) confirms that cocaine addicts Leon and Kenzie visits the reunited mother and daughter. Based on the fourth book in Lehane’s acclaimed Roberta Trett (Mark Margolis and Trudi Goodman) He finds Helene apparently cleaned-up, but Kenzie & Gennaro series, Gone, Baby, Gone’s UK are sheltering paedophile Corwin Earle (Matthew preparing for a new date (courtesy of the local theatrical release was delayed in sensitivity to 18 | VARIANT 33 | WINTER 2008 celebrity status afforded her by the media) and plot may not seem outrageous at all, resonating obligingly babysits, considering the situation far beyond its particular setting to the War on The innocent purity thoughtfully as Amanda gazes mutely at the Welfare everywhere. But in a South Boston rapidly television ... decaying beyond reasonable hopes of salvation, Kenzie and Gennaro are cast as representative of to be protected here a grass-roots, working-class sensibility, yet without Rule of Law the luxury of cynical fatalism if they are to nail These plot twists in the last part of the film the truth and do their job. And although the film is the lingering quasi- certainly serve to undermine our assumptions as loses the bulk of Lehane’s meticulous dialogue cultivated so far – and Kenzie and Gennaro’s too, conveying the full convincing texture of conflicting religious illusion that leaving them disagreeing over a final dilemma so attitudes in action, viewers are given several hints fundamental as to terminate their professional among the blood-red herrings that the protection and romantic relationship. Nevertheless, ultimate of childhood innocence is a (perhaps the) primal things might turn judgements and justifications concerning pretext for

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