The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

13 March.

Vaguely reminscent of the Night Angel books by Brent Weeks. Boy with no future manages by luck and persistence to rise to the top of an extremely competitive criminal profession. Locke Lamora is a thief, not an assassin, but the general outline is similar.

Mr. Lynch, however, has less respect for chronology than Mr. Brent. In fantasy of this type flashbacks are a virtual necessity. The reader must be engaged in the story before some lumps of background are inserted at strategic points. It seemed to me that rather than providing the reader with necessary background at the point at which it was needed, Lynch was using flashbacks for a rather different purpose. Remember "The Perils of Pauline"? Probably not, I don't either - but I do know how they worked. Everyone went to the picture show and "Pauline" was one of the shorts. At the point when the hapless Pauline was tied to the railroad tracks or being driven over the cliff by a run-away horse the episode would end and the main feature would begin. Everyone would have to come back the next Saturday afternoon to find out how she escaped for the previous week's peril and what kind of mess she was left in this week. The point is that the audience had that week of suspense waiting for a resolution to the current problem. Whenever Mr. Lamora was facing certain death (I lost count less than halfway through the book), the chapter would end and the next one would be about events from his childhood: some wisdom acquired from Fagin (I mean The Thiefmaker) or Father Chains - wisdom not necessarily related to the present predicament. It seems clear that this was designed to serve the function of that week of suspense. -- and how does he get out of this one -- no, no - you have to wait ---

All of that is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, I did; although, a minor complaint, the level of physical abuse which Lynch visits upon his hero is just a bit excessive.

Then there is the last issue - it is clearly intended to be the first in a series since it is subtitled The Gentlemen Bastards. That's the name of the gang headed by Father Chains and by Locke after Chains' death. That in itself is not the problem - at the end of the story, only two of the Gentlemen are still alive. That did provide him with a revenge motive for the final round, but leaves him a little short for a series. I suppose he and his remaining sidekick can go recruiting - but they are also exiled from their hometown. Minor problems for a hero. And there were certainly enough unresolved threads for him to pick up.