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Second Thoughts on Night Train THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS, #4 May 1998: 25-29 Do we need yet another review of Martin Amis's novel Night Train? No, but then this is not a review. It's an overview. Favorable notices of Amis's book appeared here and there, but most critics were strongly negative, some downright brutal. John Updike was forced to confess--with heartache, he says--that he hated Night Train. Sean O'Brien in the TLS let it be known that he found its heroine "hard as peanut brittle and nearly as interesting." Geoffrey O'Brien complained in the New Republic of "a book singularly free of genre pleasure as we know it." The second O'Brien and others found it singularly offensive that an Englishman should have dared to write an American-style murder mystery. Several reviewers combed Amis's dialogue for Britishisms out of the mouths of his "faux-American" characters. The British disliked Amis's American connections, while the Americans treated him as an intruding Brit. On both sides of the Atlantic he got it in the neck. The literary opinion-makers breezed through the book without noticing how subtly organized and humanly complex Night Train is. Michiko Kakutani wrote that it "may not stack up against Amis's best fiction, but as one of his entertainments, it is a superior piece of work." It has occurred to no one, not even the book's admirers, that this little thriller cuts far deeper than Amis's earlier work, and that it needs to be read and re-read. From The Rachel Papers through The Information, the baddest boy of English letters has teased, delighted and shocked his readers. But with each new novel I have asked the same question under by breath: will the heart be allowed to show itself openly this time? Not that heart has been entirely absent from Amis's work, but the primary satisfaction has always been aesthetic. In Night Train a radical transformation occurs. In this noir novel--this disturbingly illuminating book--stylistic brilliance takes a back seat. Finally virtuosity and felicity of language yield to the emotions. The unattractive, hard-bitten policewoman Mike holds the book together with her strong feelings and an unexpected capacity for love. Most have seen Detective Mike Hoolihan as just one more thug in a long line of repulsive Amis characters. My aim is to rescue the much maligned Mike from the enraged (inattentive) reviewers. But first some of the book's seemingly irrelevancies and oddities need to be puzzled out. So bear with me while I unfold the real story. Detective Mike Hoolihan is brought in to investigate the suicide of the young, gifted, and much loved Jennifer Rockwell. Jennifer, the daughter of Colonel Tom Rockwell is, or was, extremely accomplished and beautiful. Suicide, in a case like hers, is impossible to fathom. Colonel Rockwell, who happens also to be Detective Hoolihan's superior, insists that his daughter's death be dealt with as a homicide. Anything would be better than a suicide. Even evidence pointing to the most gruesome murder would be preferable. Mike Hoolihan tells us flatly that when it's a homicide you don't have to ask why, but "we all want a why for suicide." Detective Mike, who always gives "one hundred percent" to every assignment, begins in her efficient way to look for the murderer. Mike knew the girl well. Over the years they had met many times at dinners and parties, and during an extensive period while Mike was drying out in a back room of Colonel Rockwell's house under the affectionate care of the sympathetic Colonel, she had had occasion to observe and admire his daughter Jennifer. Jennifer was everything that Mike is not. Mike, an unflinching self-portraitist, sees herself and her live-in lover as "half a ton of slob and slut"--in her vigorous youth, "shouty, rowdy, sloppy, sleazy, nasty, weepy, and horny." And now that she is approaching retirement she describes herself as large, mannish, elaborately dyed, overly made-up, and inhabiting a broken body plagued by a "faint but persistent nausea." Once a hard-drinker, she makes do they days with nicotine--lots of it. Her most arresting feature is a pair of "pale blue eyes" that have "seen everything." But never has she seen anything like this death. After a lifetime of police work Mike finds herself up against what is undeniably her "worst case." What we know is that there were three gunshots, and that the naked girl whose splashed brains and blood form a hideous flower on the wall behind her is Jennifer Rockwell, who had every reason to live. A promising young astrophysicist, Jennifer had led a life beyond the reach of most women. A most extraordinary physical specimen, she was the sort whose gifts might prompt an old grandmother to exclaim--"we should all be so lucky!" Jennifer seems to have been, like her maternal grandmother Rebka, an "angel of light." Trader Faulkner, the boyfriend, says that when Jennifer died she "fell out of a clear blue sky." Everyone testifies that her skies were always clear and blue. Her superior at the university recalls her as a young woman of a singular radiance. Mike finds that Jennifer's apartment itself contains her "shine." Sifting through the dead girl's drawers for clues she observes that even her underthings are "a galaxy--starbright." Radiant Jennifer was the kind of person who, according to Mike, always put you at your ease: "She'd always be particular with you. She'd always leave you with something." This indeed proves to be the case. Jennifer did not intend to die without leaving something for everyone--and what those who survive her need most is solace. Solace materializes in the form of clues, thoughtfully prepared clues. Eventually a piece of comfort turns up for everyone. Mike is quick to detect the pattern. This is no homicide, but a most puzzling suicide. So the who-dunnit part of the book is very brief. Jennifer dunnit, and all the interest of the case lies in discovering why. The victim has left an elaborately planned trail. As the daughter of "a police" (in the lingo of the book), Jennifer knew all there was to know about clues.
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