MANY ways to skin a eat; Philip Davison's way is with short, economical cuts, then into the local crematorium to dispose of the evidence. Harry Fielding is a low life, MI5 "understrapper", a fixer, a tool of the establishment. His life in London is not healthy pre packed airline meals, gin and a mercurial relationship with his shadowy, masters. Harry doesn't need invitations to visit other people's flats. A bob a job man for the minders of society, his idea of luxury is to take out the bath stopper and lie there till the water's gone.
Harry witnesses Lisa, his, next door neighbour, murdering her sister's brutal husband and disposing of the body. The "justified" nature of this act, and the subsequent trial and jailing of Lisa, contrast sharply with Harry's world, where murder and disposal are commonplace and go unpunished. Lisa's crime is a "human" one, and its humanity causes a sea change in Harry.
Harry is given the job of spying on a Cabinet minister, then witnesses and photographs his target killing a woman with a carving knife. But in a society where the death of a woman is, trivial compared to the management of the common "good", the minister and the establishment must be protected. In the subsequent squalid spiral, Harry's decent spirit rebels against the system and he himself becomes the target.
We all know that dark forces twitch the puppet strings of our world; read the career resume of Colonel Oliver North to grasp how things work when the perceived good of society is placed above common decency. The Crooked Man is a darkly merry story about the individual in society. Society lacks any inherent morality; concepts such as justice are created and preserved by individuals. Society as a whole is easily (and usually) corrupt; but not all individuals are corrupted by the society they have created. Individuals endure, whereas entire societies disappear.
Davison has taken the eerily empty world of spooks and their managers and victims, and bled it even further until all that remains are the sparse mechanics of a world governed by depravity. We are familiar with such a place from the twilight environment of Le Carre and his murky creations, from the spare hinterland of Len Deighton and from the fatalistic heroes of Gerald Seymour.
THERE is nothing "nice" about this vicinity. James Bond had the best of it - and he got out when the going was still good. Davison's lean "and ultra minimalist style evokes an atmosphere that is quite surreal: Harry himself is an astute creation, whilst the other characters pop up and down like cut outs in a firing range. Which is exactly the point.
Harry Fielding's "sordid odyssey" takes him from Chinese gambling dens in London to Bosnia, to windswept beaches in Co Kerry. There is only one way to break from the clutches of a system that uses the abduction of children and casual murder to maintain its power; and Harry takes it, signing off with a twist wry enough to make you grin for the triumph of the human spirit.