Viva Brighton Issue #71 January 2019

BITS AND BOOKS
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BOOK REVIEW: THE MURDER PIT
Mick Finlay’s Arrowood
novels are based on a simple
premise: ‘London society take
their problems to Sherlock
Holmes. Everyone else goes
to Arrowood.’ Simple, but
very clever. For Arrowood
is the complete antithesis of
Holmes in nearly every way.
Fat to Holmes’ thin, truculent
rather than mercurial,
flatulent instead of repressed.
Arrowood, in short, is something
of a monster.
But then perhaps Holmes is
equally monstrous. Personally,
I’ve always thought there
was something inhuman
about him. But Finlay’s Arrowood is all too human,
as this second novel featuring his ‘investigating
agents’ demonstrates. The stories are told
by Barnett, Arrowood’s muscle and chronicler.
They both live in the Borough, a slum Finlay
brings to vivid life, in the late 1890s. Where
Watson is the bumbling accomplice to the genius
Holmes, Barnett is in many ways a much abler
man than his master. And readers of Book 1 will
know that Finlay has gone out of his way to give
Arrowood’s man depths Watson singularly lacks.
The Murder Pit, Book 2 in what looks like being a
long running series – Finlay’s two book deal was
recently renewed – starts with an invitation to
visit the Barclays, a couple whose daughter, Birdie,
they’ve not heard from ever since she married
into the Ockwell family, farmers down in rural
Catford. What perhaps makes the case unusual
is that Birdie has Down’s Syndrome, and as Arrowood
and Barnett try to find out why Birdie is
so reluctant to have any contact with her parents,
they uncover a murky world of
asylums, Poor Law committee
members, and the well to do
who have a vested interest in
concealing their crimes, if not
their prejudices.
For The Murder Pit explores
themes that are still with us,
not least the stigma experienced
by the mentally ill and
those who have learning disabilities.
In Victorian England
both were ‘treated’ in asylums,
there being no distinction
between conditions. It’s here
that Finlay’s writing rises to
something greater than the
simple pleasures of Holmes
and his little puzzles.
Towards the end of the novel a magistrates’
enquiry is held, and this whole sequence contains
scenes of great power that speak to some of our
present malaises. I’m obviously skirting around
just what these malaises are as I don’t want to
give the game away, but as I read these passages
I couldn’t help thinking of today, not 1896, when
the novel is set.
The Murder Pit, then, is historical crime fiction,
but Finlay uses this genre as a way of commenting
obliquely on our own times as much as on
the glorious past. Now that the rights have gone
to TV – Kathy Burke’s production company
is busy at work preparing scripts for the small
screen – I hope these nuances won’t be lost. Why
not curl up by a crackling fire with The Murder
Pit and see for yourself? And if you’ve not read it,
start with Arrowood. You’re in for a treat.
John O’Donoghue
The Murder Pit, Mick Finlay, HQ, £8.99
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