Irish FictionHarry Messenger is an island-owning, pheasant-shooting, high-living, money-grabbing politician whose only motivation, it seems, is to screw every last penny out of whomever he can. He is single-minded in this pursuit and friendships and lifelong loyalties are ruthlessly cast aside without any apparent pang of guilt when needs be.
None of this will be startling to an Irish readership. There is mention made of offshore bank accounts, of arms deals and the kidnapping of a prominent businessman. As conspiracy theories go, this is an all-embracing one: everybody and everything and every deal are connected and filthy lucre is the binding factor in all transactions. And, not surprisingly, true to form, Henry Messenger is central to each and every action.
The hero of the novel is Bunny Gardener, a financial wizard who acts as bagman for Messenger and, in general, appears to have his finger in all the pies that are baked. Like Messenger, he is of the new upstart Ireland but, importantly for the narrative, increasingly struggles with his conscience concerning the shady deals he instigates.
It is a novel, then, that possesses plenty of scope, one would imagine, for a Lear-esque thriller concerning power and its perils. The difficulty is that Peter Cunningham doesn't build enough on his raw material and it's a pity; there are too few imaginative manoeuvrings on his part. At one level, all we are offered are one-dimensional portraits of various characters. They disport themselves as cartoon villains in this fictional world, devoid of idealism, where the base motivation of greed and personal advancement hold sway.
Maybe that is the depressing reality of recent Irish political history, but the job of all fiction - even popular fiction with a capital P - is to aspire to transforming events so that we can, maybe, see the all-too-real world from a different angle. It is safe to assume, though, that this novel's intended audience is an international one; the helpful translation of the word "Taoiseach" at the outset signals as much.
These readers will get the essentials of a world mirrored at the numerous tribunals that the country has grown used to. Again, a helpful 'Author's Note' at the end of the novel explaining the establishment of these tribunals indicates the connections being made in the narrative.
The story is there. What, though, does it signify? What might it all mean? We await the novel that tells us.
Derek Hand is a lecturer in English in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. His book, John Banville: Exploring Fictions, was published by Liffey Press last year
The Taoiseach By Peter Cunningham Hodder/Lir, 357pp. £15.99