Dan Matlock is out of jail. He’s got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or just get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else. But it’s not as simple as that.
There’s the matter of the man he killed. It wasn’t murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half of what’s profitable and two-thirds of what’s crooked between the Wolds and the coast. Who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven’t touched him. Not yet.
Like Matlock found out in prison, there’s no getting away from yourself. So what’s the point in not facing up to other people?
It’s time to go home.
My Review....
Matlock has served his sentence for manslaughter. The man he killed was a member of the gangland family that runs "The East of England." Does he run or go back to face the Minton family head on. He decides there is no point in running because you just cant run from yourself. Besides he still has family there. Each land blows on the other before heading for the final climatic confrontation.
East of England is set in Lincolnshire, somewhere with which I am not familiar at all, so its was interesting to discover somewhere new in a literal sense.
The author gives us a down and dirty, gritty violent British gangster novel. Think Get Carter in Skegness or The Long Good Friday in Mablethorpe and you get the picture. And what a vivid picture he paints. Low level violent crime in the bottom rungs of society. This is a strength of the book, you really feel the everyday routine, slow seaside economic decline and banality of life.
Before prison Matlock was a hard as nails enforcer for loan shark Big Chris. Big Chris is an agrophobic, overweight, asthmatic middle aged mother who just happens to carry a shotgun but even his former boss doesn't want him to come home.
The narrative doesn't have two things. One was police involvement. Despite the violence, robbery and death, there is no police involvement at all. This is explained away as wrong un's sorting it out in house. The other is touchy, feely emotions. The only female of note is Big Chris and, great character that she is, she is not one for deep meaningful conversations, long walks in the snow and everlasting emotional commitment. That said, it is not a criticism. This book knows it's genre and does it bloody well.
Selected Quotes....
"The cupboards told the same tale; someone with perhaps limited cash flow but with what they considered to be good taste. Living the echo of a finer life. Baked beans and saffron."
"There’s a point when time stops. Your clothes don’t get renewed. The house stays the same. Meals become a weekly rotating ritual. Your life runs on tracks"
"‘I’ll tell you over breakfast,’ Matlock said. He tried to hang up fast, but still caught Chris murmur ‘Twat’ down the line."
"There she was now, a placid smile on her face, straw-laid wicker basket laden with farm bounty in hand. In the background, fat hens pecked at handfuls of grain. A cartoon wolf’s wet dream."
"He left the book open, face down on the countertop. Edged Weapons of the Third Reich. Cropped hair, steel- rimmed aviator glasses. Maybe five foot five and ten stone when fully clothed and wet through. A fascistic jockey."
About the Author....
He's worked as a stonemason, a strawberry picker, in plastics factories (everything from packing those little bags for loose change you get from banks to production planning via transport manager via fork-lift driving), in agricultural and industrial laboratories, in a computer games shop, and latterly in further and higher education.
He doesn’t do any of that any more. Instead, he writes fulltime, either as a freelancer, or else on fiction.
Eamonn has collected a PhD, an MA, an assortment of teaching qualifications, and a BSc along the way. He really likes biltong, and has recently returned to learning to play piano, something he abandoned when he was about seven and has regretted since.
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