The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel

Elizabeth Mannion

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137539397
• eBook ISBN: 9781137539403
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Irish detective fiction has enjoyed an international readership for over a decade, appearing on best-seller lists across the globe. But its breadth of hard-boiled and amateur detectives, historical fiction, and police procedurals has remained somewhat marginalized in academic scholarship. Exploring the work of some of its leading writers—including Peter Tremayne, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Tana French, Jane Casey, and Benjamin Black—The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel opens new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies. It considers the detective genre's position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition.

Contributors: Carol Baraniuk, Nancy Marck Cantwell, Brian Cliff, Fiona Coffey, Charlotte J. Headrick, Andrew Kincaid, Audrey McNamara, and Shirley Peterson.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Elizabeth Mannion (ed.)The Contemporary Irish Detective NovelCrime Files10.1057/978-1-137-53940-3_2

Begin Abstract

1. Hello Dálaigh: Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma

Nancy Marck Cantwell¹

(1)

Maria, USA

End Abstract

Peter Tremayne’s seventh-century Irish detective, Sister Fidelma, is a dálaigh, or advocate of the law courts. Sister Fidelma has been illuminating the prominence of Irish women prior to the constricting influences of Rome and colonization since first appearing in the short story ‘Hemlock at Vespers’ (1993). The series holds a foundational position in the growth of the Irish detective novel. As John Scaggs observes, ‘far from being part of the boom, the Sister Fidelma novels were one of the contributing factors that set it in motion.’¹ Tremayne’s accomplishment lies in his richly detailed portrayal of Irish history, and in his self-assured female detective, whose investigations invariably bring her into conflict with male representatives of both Church and state. In his historical background to Absolution by Murder (1994), Tremayne asserts that ‘the Irish laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other western law code at that time or since’.² Accordingly, the Fidelma series offers an implicit critique of contemporary Irish women’s issues by juxtaposing past and present, offering a professional female detective whose modern sensibilities have been cultivated by a tolerant and progressive Ireland that has since ‘become obfuscated by centuries of colonial destruction’.³

The Sister Fidelma mysteries approach crime as a socio-political threat to an advanced Celtic culture characterized by tolerance and support for women’s rights. Sister Fidelma applies her skill as an authority on Ireland’s Brehon laws, an ‘indigenous system of law dating from Celtic times, which survived until the seventeenth century when it was finally supplanted by the English common law’.⁴ Despite her youth and gender, Sister Fidelma’s professional qualifications place her in a unique position with respect to authority, as a dálaigh ‘may argue law with the highest king in the land’.⁵ The power invested in Fidelma as an anruth (one degree below ollamh, the highest level attainable at Ireland’s bardic universities), however, calls attention to the status of women in medieval Ireland, which compares favorably to the supposedly advanced cultures of seventh-century Britain and Rome. Confronted by the restrictions placed on Roman ladies in Shroud for the Archbishop (1998), Fidelma observes that it is ‘a sad city for women’.⁶ Further opportunities for cultural comparison demonstrate the progressive state of Celtic law, which protected women from sexual harassment, discrimination, and rape while providing access to higher education and both professional and political distinction.⁷ Cultural comparisons form a subtle critique of the contested status of feminism in the modern Ireland of Tremayne’s readers, who find in Fidelma a kindred spirit, a professional woman whose authority must take shape within a largely patriarchal social context. Although Celtic women may be educated and hold any office or rank in society, that Fidelma must repeatedly present her credentials to gain authority makes clear that even her progressive society retains sexist biases.

Fidelma’s interpretive process combines logic, traditionally identified with the male detective, with a form of feminine intuition that entertains a variety of conflicting possibilities simultaneously. This play of ideas allows Fidelma to unravel crimes, but she must control the time of this internal creative process. Julia Kristeva’s examination of the role of desire in interpretation resonates with Fidelma’s detective praxis, with a clue and its meaning for the solution of the crime paralleling the sign and signifier. Kristeva argues that ‘the person who does the interpretation [here the detective], the subject who makes the connection between the sign and the signified [displays] the extraordinary architectonics of his will and … his [or her] mastery of time’.⁸ As Fidelma investigates a crime, she asserts her will to direct the course (or to construct the architecture) of the proceedings, often resisting the ranking male authority. In Shroud for the Archbishop, for instance, Fidelma confronts Roman Bishop Gelasius with the conditions necessary to her accepting the case, stipulating ‘full authority in the conduct of this inquiry. We will be able to question everyone who we need to question and go where we need to go. Even if we need ask a question of the Holy Father himself. There can be no limitation on either of us.’⁹ In Absolution by Murder, she secures the same permission of King Oswy of Northumbria, insisting that he must accept her own determination of the time needed to solve the crime. In each social register, the male authority must cede to Sister Fidelma control over both the structure and time of the investigation to advance an interpretation of mysterious events.

Fidelma’s authority over the time of the investigation, conferred by her professional status as anruth, addresses the female detective’s classic problem, which Lisa M. Dresner describes as the ‘incompatibility of the cultural categories of “woman” and “investigator”’.¹⁰ While the history of detective fiction attests to a masculinist perspective that relegates women to a secondary role. Tremayne’s series repositions the female detective as negotiating both male and female conceptions of time, using each one to further her interpretation of events.¹¹ While linear time in the detective plot finds expression in the narrative trajectory of solving a mystery, monumental time resides in female subjectivity—for instance, the inaccessibility of Fidelma’s intuition alarms the male representatives of Church and state and instigates their efforts to impose linear time limits. Although Kathleen Klein notes that by ‘breaking social taboos by attempting to take over male position and prerogatives, women detectives emphasize their deviancy, their distance from the proper role of Woman’,¹² Fidelma employs subjectivity to complement logical reasoning. Her unique reputation for solving difficult mysteries depends on her ability to think differently and to insist on her own interpretive time.

Fidelma’s interpretive faculties supersede those of her male associate, Brother Eadulf. Like Holmes’s Watson, Eadulf offsets the detective’s special interpretive insight by his attention to red herrings, confirming Kristeva’s observation that the interpretive object, or clue, either ‘may succumb to the interpretive intentions of the interpreter’, or it ‘may reveal to the interpreter the unknown of his [or her] theory’.¹³ Eadulf tends to attach a fixed meaning to a clue, which often misleads him to overvalue its importance. In contrast, Fidelma’s openness to ‘the unknown of her theory’ enables her to unravel complex motives, solve crimes with both social and political aspects, and advance her authority as an investigator. In Shroud for the Archbishop, Fidelma can imagine that the theft of treasure might not, in fact, have motivated the murder, and she can also speculate that a scarf worn around the neck of a princess could conceal a mark identifying her as a former slave. Kristeva calls these ‘new, unpredictable signifying effects’ of an object ‘an imaginary’¹⁴ to call attention to their importance for the desiring subject, whose search for truth is often complicated by the prestige a successful endeavor confers. In other words, Fidelma investigates crimes because she is a dálaigh, an advocate of the law dedicated to restoring social balance through her logical explanation of a crime, but the authority of her exclusive position as interpreter also has the potential to complicate detection with her desire for prominence. Fidelma’s reputation is reinforced in nearly every mystery, where an awe-struck bystander reflects on her exceptional skill; for instance, in Atonement of Blood, Brother Cú-Mara blurts out, ‘I thought everyone knew Sister Fidelma and her husband Brother Eadulf … their reputation is spread throughout the Five Kingdoms.’¹⁵ Personal investment in an explanation can obscure the investigator’s notion of truth ‘because he is a desiring subject, and the paths of desire ensnarl the paths of knowledge’.¹⁶ Fidelma explains this complexity to Brother Eadulf, who has questioned her attention to an apparently meaningless clue:

‘The wise judge gathers the evidence piece by piece,’ Fidelma smiled. ‘And when all the pieces are gathered, the wise judge will consider them and, like a craftsman making a mosaic, the judge will try to form patterns before the eyes, so that by inserting a piece here and there until it fits, it will gradually form an entire picture. It is the bad judge who seizes one piece of evidence and tries to conjure a picture from it. Who knows? That piece may not even be part of the picture the judge seeks.’¹⁷

Fidelma’s ability to enter into Kristeva’s ‘imaginary’ invariably leads to a solution. She entertains a flexible interpretive position relative to the evidence, an elasticity of mind associated with both her education and her gender.

In her study of the female poetics of crime, Anita McChesney notes that the typical female role involves erasure: a female character often appears as victim, and when ‘the tragic female death plunges the world into chaos, an entirely male network restores order’.¹⁸ Tremayne’s detective redefines this tradition by defending female victims as well as prosecuting female criminals—both situations implicate Fidelma’s identity as Other, exerting transgressive power like the criminal and represent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• A Path to Emerald Noir: The Rise of the Irish Detective Novel
• 1. Hello Dálaigh: Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma
• 2. A ‘honeycomb world’: John Connolly’s Charlie Parker Series
• 3. ‘Where no kindness goes unpunished’: Declan Hughes’s Dublin
• 4. Detecting Hope: Ken Bruen’s Disenchanted P.I.
• 5. Negotiating Borders: Inspector Devlin and Shadows of the Past
• 6. ‘The place you don’t belong’: Stuart Neville’s Belfast
• 7. Voicing the Unspeakable: Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad
• 8. ‘Irish by blood and English by accident’: Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan
• 9. Quirke, the 1950s, and Leopold Bloom
• Backmatter