There is something wonderfully cinematic about this book, a story of devilish doings reminiscent of old time Hammer Horror classics. Indeed, the inhabitants of J.M. O'Neill's small Irish town would be perfectly cast for the genre. Where better for a doctor's housekeeper to turn from pillar of the church by day into sexual predator and body snatcher by night? Where else is it taken as read that Coleman, the local detective, and his schoolteacher lady-friend will remain forever brave-hearted and in love? And what finer scenery for vampires and werewolves to wander about in than the empty bog and coastline of the west of Ireland? Throw in a violent moment or two from the Troubles over the Border, add a dash of Nazi deja vu and you have a blockbuster on your hands, box office magic.
Or is it? The best of the late J.M. O'Neill's novels certainly carry some of that visual frisson. Works such as Duffy is Dead and Open Cut track the lives of Irishmen in London, focusing on the countless navvies, publicans and priests who live out a kind of film noir in forgotten pockets of Harlesden and Hackney. Yet always, from behind those grainy images, there emerges a deep well of sympathy, insights to the loneliness and stoicism of complex individuals in an underworld which the author knew so well.
The same unique perception has not been applied here. O'Neill returned to live in Ireland before his death last year, but the place he describes is the stuff of folk memory, a PC postcard which preserves old images of small town pieties, ignoring the effects of a new economy "where everything was catered for". Perhaps this myopia is the result of long years away; or a realisation that a story about a hand-to-hand struggle between good and evil would appear even more ridiculous if it bristled with mobile telephones and connections to the Internet.
Whatever the reason, explanations constantly airbrush reality from the frame, as if the reader were a visitor to some isolated sect. Thus, despite occasional references to drugs, sexual freedom and the acute shortage of priests in the country, we are told that Irish Protestants are still "the conquering people", Catholics "indigenous", and "parents like their children to be English gentlemen". It opens the gates to Trinity; reading between the lines, one might also assume that most Irishmen are confirmed bachelors, 17-year-old Irish school students are always "pure", and, in an all-male society, that the two women allowed any part in the action can only be a she devil and a saintly bore.
Peculiarities aside, Rellighan, Undertaker is an entertaining read - or a promising film script. Perhaps that is all the author wanted to achieve. Yet when the story escapes the straitjacket of its west coast location, the writing really takes off. Scenes of murder in Northern Ireland and New York carry all the gritty assurance of a George V. Higgins thriller, making one regret that this is the solo appearance of Private Eye Coleman, gone with his creator into the good night.
Aisling Foster is a writer and critic.