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The woman was sprawled face-up on the stairs, her head on the bottom stair. Flat, moon-shaped faced - Polish, Lynch bet. She looked surprised. Not the first time Lynch had seen that. Lynch had heard a lot about stiffs looking peaceful, but most of them he'd seen looked like they were in pain. The lucky ones looked surprised.
There are two kinds of writers active in today's publishing industry. Underdogs and people who love writing. Dan O'Shea is the latter kind of writer. He just loves the activity of putting words in a coherent order on a page. That's why I was glad he got a big time publishing deal with Exhibit A Books. Reading his debut short story collection OLD SCHOOL, I saw the obvious. The man is extremely talented, but his quiet, unassuming nature would play against him in today's publishing industry unless a publisher would get his novels in people's hands. That's exactly what's happening now. Plus, if OLD SCHOOL taught me anything else about the man, it's the man could perform better at novels than short stories. Something about his narrative pacing invites an intimate, long-winded relationship to characters. Once again, I was right. Or O'Shea proved me right, I should say. OLD SCHOOL was great, but his debut novel PENANCE is excellent.
An elderly, dying woman gets savegely gunned down by a sniper, on the stairs of her church, after going to confession. Detective John Lynch, the son of a legendary Chicago cop, is in charge of the investigation. The old woman turns out to be the mother of Chicago's richest man Eddie Marslovak. Lynch starts investigating, pulling on the strings, see where it leads him and the case soon leads him back forty years to the events where his father got killed. What is happening in the streets of Chicago isn't a new occurrence, it's the backlash of something that was once buried. Lynch dives head-first into the case while trying to keep his own life in order. The grim loner Lynch has let someone into his life, a journalist named Liz Johnson, who seems to know what buttons to press with him. He also has to deal with his dying mother and the fact he might just learn the truth about his father's death after all.
I like conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but it's a discussion subject that tends to stew on the same themes: JFK, Aliens, Oil being a secret motivation for everything. Dan O'Shea came up with a completely fresh conspiracy novel. Nothing about PENANCE is true, but that's what great about it. It's a multi-generational novel and yet it's not historical. Think James Ellroy, but with an additional degree of separation. Like the demon dog of crime ficiton, Dan O'Shea wrote a highly complex, intricate novel that addresses the reader's intellect. PENANCE is difficult and required me to take notes sometimes, but I'm a sucker for novels who speak to me as an intelligent being. I feel like I know Chicago a little better after reading PENANCE, despite that I have never been there.
As Lynch headed to the door, Marslovak sat in his chair, staring down into his nearly empty glass. "All your life you've got a mother, then you don't," Marslovak said, his voice flat. "It's like God dying. Like there's nobody left to please."
Lynch turned to see Marslovak finish what was in his glass, then set it down on the table. "Get the fuck out, would you please, detective? And close the door behind you."
PENANCE wouldn't have worked so well if it had been a monolithic beast that banked everything into intricate plotting. The form is as pleasant as the content. Dan O'Shea has a talent to write intimacy and get behind his characters' facade. The background love story between Lynch and Johnson was as engrossing to read about as the main plot. Liz Johnson comes off as a lovely, mysterious and seducing woman, that will leave you with a pinch of jealousy towards John Lynch's luck when reading the chapters they are together. Form-wise, it's somewhat of a solution to mushy-middles for novels too. Ease up on the main tale and give your characters something to lose, if they didn't already have some. Make them deeper, more flawed, more like everyone. That makes their heroics count even more. I've learned something about good literature while reading PENANCE. Doesn't usually happen reading a first-time novelist.
Truth to be told, I had a wicked good time reading PENANCE. It's epic, ambitious, complex and yet the prose is humble and understated, just the way I like it. The characters' nature filters through dialog, rather than exposition, which is I think one of the greatest thing literature can achieve. It's the most seamless form of mimesis, I find. The most exhilarating too, because it doesn't feed the reader everything. In PENANCE, Dan O'Shea works WITH the reader to create great characters and a paranoid atmosphere. I believe in this novel and it makes me all giddy to talk about it. Dan O'Shea reveals himself to be one of the most talented dudes who flew under everybody's radar so far. Expect PENANCE to shake things up and conquer conspiracy enthusiasts as well as hardboiled literature fans. It's a tremendous novel. The kind you experience, rather than read.
FIVE STARS