Author:

 ISBN-13: 978-I-5969I-229-8

There’s no secret in the world of literature that there’s an antagonism between readers who favor genre literature and those who prefer literary fiction. The literary sophisticates, quite fairly, scoff at the intellectual emptiness of a great deal of genre fiction while the genre lot curses the literary camp for being the pretensions pricks we tend to be. It’s rare to find something that works for both groups.

Although it may be too literary for some mystery fans and too genre for literary fans, Irish expatriate Michael Collins’s new book, Death of a Writer has balanced the two in a way few authors are capable of doing today. The plot is intriguing and absorbing yet the book goes much further than a well told story. It is also a harsh yet warranted critic of writing as an academic discipline and as a profession, making Death of a Writer, ironically enough, both an indictment of the literary profession and a triumph of it.

The novel tells the story of E. Robert Pendleton, a once promising novelist whose string of professional disappoints lands him in obscurity and emotional misery. He manages to survive teaching English at a liberal arts college in Indiana, a job that serves as a constant and agonizing reminder of his failed writing career. When an eccentric former classmate and wildly successful author, Allen Horowitz is invited to speak at Pendleton’s college, Pendleton’s depression is exacerbated. He hastily composes a will and attempts suicide. He wills everything to a struggling female graduate student named Adi who demonstrated interest in his work. Pendleton survives the suicide attempt but is left an invalid. Feeling partially to blame Adi moves in with Pendleton and becomes his caretaker. While there, she happens upon an obscure work by the writer. With Horowitz’s help Adi has the book republished revealing not only the previously unrecognized brilliance of Pendleton work but, the existence of a mysterious coincidence between Pendleton’s book and the horrific murder of a young local girl. Acting on an anonymous tip, a detective is dispatched to launch an investigation, an investigation which unearths the forgotten sins this small, college town long ago buried.

Death of a Writer is Collins’s most insightful portrayal and commentary about the people waffling on the margins of society (a reoccurring theme in his work) to date. In this novel, he has created wonderfully tragic characters that are sincerely American in nature, yet suffer from a misfortune that is uniquely Irish in scope. Collins has a keen eye for the intricacies of human interaction and although the story is contrived in the way mysteries tend to be, Collins uses the extraordinary events to reveal his characters at their most vulnerable and human.

Moreover, using irony and wit Collins assaults the pretensions and idiosyncrasies of authors, editors and publishers in a way that is undeniable and laudably bare-knuckled. Some of the nuances of this critique may be lost on the casual reader but even they will, no doubt, be amused by its subtle humor.

Perhaps Collins’s only susceptibility in this book is the banal depiction of a detective whose personal ghosts create in him an unrelenting drive to solve the case. This is a bit too predictable, as is the answer to the story’s mystery. However, these limitations are easily ignored amongst the adroit way Collins combines the elements of suspense and intrigue with remarkable characterization.

With this book, Collins has refined his dramatic impulses into a bleak and wholly artistic portrait that will linger in the readers mind for some time. There is a complexity and depth to it that has, unquestionably, been crafted with great attention and deftness.

The above review was contributed by: Anthony Squiers who is a writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at Southwestern Michigan College. His writing has been featured in a number of print and online publications including Southwest Michigan Magazine and Recoil Magazine.