TD 1
PRINT As Macarthur is both defined and eclipsed b
y his strange crimes, O’Connell implores the reader to resist easy conclusions. Penance Eliza Clark [Faber] A Thread of Violence Mark O’Connell [Granta] True crime is divisive. Advocates claim it offers an insight into humanity, that it can teach selfpreservation skills, that it offers respect to victims who might otherwise fade into obscurity. Critics see a capitalist glamorising of violence that perpetuates paranoia and encourages an idolisation of serial killers. Penance, Eliza Clark’s second novel, is presented as a true crime book whose journalist author was ‘cancelled’ shortly after its publication, accused of illegally acquiring material and misrepresenting interviews. He is constantly present, using the suicide of his daughter to gain sympathy with his interviewees and trying to hide his disdain for ‘Crow-on-sea’, the place in which he has found himself. This is the faded Northern British seaside town haunted by scandals, closures and accidents where a schoolgirl, Joni, was murdered by three of her contemporaries on the evening of the Brexit vote. As we learn about Joni and her murderers – the rich, lonely daughter of a local UKIP celebrity, an unhappy true crime aficionado, and an occult-inclined murderer fangirl – it becomes clear that what Clark is really interested in is not murder but the specific violence of teenage girl-hood. She is willing to see it in all its unflinching, vulnerable cruelties – ‘oh my God, you are so sensitive’ – and refuses easy answers. The bullied becomes a bully; everyone is ‘cringe,’ and everyone is lying. Is it art or are we just voyeurs? AW Mark O’Connell’s portrait of the notorious murderer Malcolm Macarthur takes its title from the mouth of its subject. After questioning Macarthur about his childhood, reportedly tainted by neglect and violence, the journalist returns to Macarthur’s Dublin apartment to find his interviewee has prepared a statement. The killer then pridefully exculpates his parents: ‘People try to find explanations in the past by distorting the past. But there was never what you would call a thread of violence leading up to 1982. That was simply not the case.’ There are some undisputed facts about 1982. Malcolm Macarthur, the dandyish progeny of wealthy landed gentry, finds his inheritance is about to run out. Rather than beg or borrow, Macarthur decides to steal: to rob a bank. But in order to do this he needs a gun and a car. In a sequence of events as ridiculous as they are horrifying, he brutally murders two innocents, Bridie Gargan and Donal Dunne. Woefully careless in covering his tracks, Macarthur then hides out in the apartment of an unsuspecting friend, taking periodic deliveries of sparkling water and Town & Country magazine. Inevitably, the Gardaí close in, and both Macarthur and the identity of his friend are discovered. In the most absurd twist of all, the apartment belongs to Patrick Connolly, Ireland’s Attorney General. The sartorial metaphor (‘thread of violence’) that Macarthur employs is apt. In the media storm that ensued, the Irish press made much of Macarthur’s style of dress – the cravat he wore as a child, the bow tie that distinguished him to witnesses as an adult. Released from prison in 2012, Macarthur is still concerned about appearances. He fancies himself a gentleman and a scholar. The brutal acts in what he quaintly calls his ‘criminal episode,’ though undenied and undeniable, are something distinct from him – a thread to be unravelled, an outfit he once wore, rather than part of his character. O’Connell is, in many ways, the perfect person to attempt this unravelling. A renowned journalist, he seduces Macarthur into an interview by giving him a copy of The New York Review of Books featuring a piece he has written. His investigation is acutely self-conscious: he questions his own motivations, the conventions and mores of the true crime genre, and what it means to write about someone so compromised, so utterly unreliable, while also desiring ‘narrative coherence’. This makes for fascinating, unsettling reading, partly because it seems to award Macarthur the prestige he craves. Macarthur does not seem, to be sure, particularly Machiavellian. O’Connell often portrays him as a lonely old man, desperate for companionship. But Macarthur’s explanations for his acts – that he was suffering from a form of ‘temporary insanity’, while also citing a definite financial motive – never stack up. The idea that killing was the only way to avoid working for a living, to protect his well-heeled aristocratic image, to not be ordinary, is unpersuasive. As Macarthur is both defined and eclipsed by his strange crimes, O’Connell implores the reader to resist easy conclusions.’ EH 54