The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney review: 'a crime novel for grown-ups'
Liam McIlvanney’s latest novel is fascinating, moving and disturbing, writes Allan Massie
This is a very fine novel, Liam McIlvanney’s best so far. It is compelling reading, exciting, the reader’s questioning and holding attention from the first page to the last. It makes for compelling reading, while also posing a problem for the reviewer, as I’ll explain later. The setting is the west coast of Scotland, nearest town Largs, and looking over to Arran. It is written in the first person, the narrator being the good father of the title.
Some may see this description as questionable, for a time his wife Sarah among them. The Rutherfords are well-to-do, Sarah a lawyer, Gordon a university lecturer, presently at work on a book about the Border Ballads, poems in which so often horror comes swiftly.
It does so here. Their only child, Rory, aged seven, disappearing from the beach below their house, the family Labrador returning with one of Rory’s sandals. There is no sign of him. It is every parent’s horror.
The police investigation turns up no evidence. There is no body, but a body may have been swept out to sea. There is no evidence of a kidnapper, no demand for a ransom. The police investigation flags.
Gordon gets in touch with a rich businessman whose son disappeared in like manner a year or two ago. He is eager to help, but has nothing to add to what Gordon knows. A policeman cousin offers help, but he has never worked in the CID. Gradually, while they still look for Rory’s return, Sarah and Gordon recognise life must go on. They have their work and then Sarah gives birth to twins, two girls. Seven years pass.
Here I come to the reviewer’s problem: how much to tell of Book 2, seven years after Rory disappears. There would be no problem if I was writing a critical study for a magazine or book, but a review is different.
Some no doubt read book reviews because they like reading book reviews, others because they wonder whether they should buy the book. In either case they don’t want the story to be spoiled by a crass reviewer telling them what happens.
I remember once emerging from a viewing of Hitchcock’s Psycho and my friend, a mischievous fellow, approaching someone in the queue for the second house and saying “Shall I tell you what happens?” He got a dusty answer, deservedly.
Obviously the question is does Rory return? Or is the hunt pursued, perhaps for his murderer? Either way there is room for a compelling story, and also the potential for a very different one.
On the one hand, it could be about how a boy, now 14 if still alive and returned to his family, can adapt to a return to family life, or if he has been corrupted by his experience; alternatively it could be about a renewed search for his abductor. All I need say for now is that the second half of the novel is engaging, moving and disturbing.
New questions of morality are raised. It’s no wonder that at one point Gordon gives us part of his lecture to his students on James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
The title The Good Father is how Gordon, the narrator, thinks of himself. Is his claim justified? A well-meaning father certainly, but a good one? That’s open to question.
Certainly this is a novel far above the common run of crime fiction; one that asks us to consider important moral questions, matters of right and wrong. I found it fascinating, moving, disturbing, and surely Liam McIlvanney’s best novel to date. It is a rarity: a crime novel for grown-ups.
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