Marked Off
Don Cameron
[New Island]
Few cultural clichés are more entrenched than that of the troubled but brilliant cop, whose demons spring from the same well as his deductive genius. This can be put to genuinely inventive use – as in The Wire – but inventiveness is what detective thriller Marked Off is sorely lacking. The novel’s protagonist is Dan O’Neill, a Garda detective with a boozing streak and an unsolved case rattling away in his pysche, but what his colleagues might call ‘natural police’ instincts.
Marked Off begins with the murder of an attractive, blonde professional lady of the south Dublin variety in her Booterstown home. Curiously, the victim is found with a pencil jabbed in her carotid artery, which becomes all the more curious when an identical murder occurs soon after. O’Neill and his Garda chums quickly get to work, following leads while dodging press hacks in search of carrion. Unfortunately for the novel, which attempts to derive some scandal from its leafy suburban setting, it has been published immediately after the most disturbing and sensational murder trial in recent Irish memory. Compared to the narrative surrounding Graham Dwyer’s conviction Marked Off is rather toothless affair. Its characters are tired, and it cannot pull off an exciting enough finale to redeem itself. Never as shocking or compelling as it would like to be, Marked Off is a rather perfunctory read, ticking all the boxes that have been ticked many times before.
Words: Ruairi Casey
