Based nine years after the death of Patricia Curran and the case that haunted The Blue Tango, with Orchid Blue celebrated author Eoin McNamee returned with two familiar elements in this novel: the murder of a 19 year old girl and the appearance of Judge Lance Curran, the father of Blue Tango's murder victim Patricia, who decides to judge over the trial of the murder of Pearl Gamble.
Set in Newry in 1961, the novel is a fact-based fiction on the startling events that happened during the lead up to the final ever hanging in Northern Ireland. On the morning of January 29th 1961 the murdered remains were found of local shop assistant Pearl Gamble, who had been at a dance at the Orange Hall in Newry the previous night. The novel follows through with the facts of the case that a man hunt began for the murderer and, very quickly, a local man named Robert McGladdery became the prime suspect, having been seen dancing with the victim on the night of the murder and acting suspiciously during the days that followed. McGladdery was tried, found guilty and hanged based on circumstantial evidence and, ever since then, a shadow of doubt has lain over the case and the involvement of Judge Curran in the proceedings.
Although not a follow up to The Blue Tango as such, the novel returns to the case of Patricia Curran in certain ways and we find that the man found guilty but insane of wher murder was freed five years after his incarceration and Judge Curran seems, in some respects, to be looking for someone to hang for his daughter's death.
Set in Newry in 1961, the novel is a fact-based fiction on the startling events that happened during the lead up to the final ever hanging in Northern Ireland. On the morning of January 29th 1961 the murdered remains were found of local shop assistant Pearl Gamble, who had been at a dance at the Orange Hall in Newry the previous night. The novel follows through with the facts of the case that a man hunt began for the murderer and, very quickly, a local man named Robert McGladdery became the prime suspect, having been seen dancing with the victim on the night of the murder and acting suspiciously during the days that followed. McGladdery was tried, found guilty and hanged based on circumstantial evidence and, ever since then, a shadow of doubt has lain over the case and the involvement of Judge Curran in the proceedings.
Although not a follow up to The Blue Tango as such, the novel returns to the case of Patricia Curran in certain ways and we find that the man found guilty but insane of wher murder was freed five years after his incarceration and Judge Curran seems, in some respects, to be looking for someone to hang for his daughter's death.
When I asked McNamee had he intended to return to that place in time and feature a similar case with some similar characters when he originally wrote The Blue Tango he replies, "Not really. It took a long time to take on board the relationship between the two cases - in particular the fact that the father of the murdered girl in The Blue Tango, Lord Justice Curran, was to stand in judgement on McGladdery for the murder of another 19 year old girl nine years later."
Considering McNamee was born in Newry itself the same year as the murder took place, I ask was this a story he grew up knowing about. "I was born a few hundred yards from the Orange Hall featured in Orchid Blue ten months after the murder, and six weeks before McGladdery was hanged in Crumlin Road. Every provincial town has its ghosts and McGladdery and Pearl gradually became mine."
McNamee found "the cast of characters, the vivid atmospheres, the town, the sense of an innocent victim and a complex, tainted justice" compelling enough to return to 1960s Newry and the Pearl Gamble trial and Orchid Blue turns out to be a very poetic accompaniment, rather than sequel, to The Blue Tango. Seen through the eyes of one of the few fictional characters in the novel, Detective Eddie McCrink, McNamee uses the single protesting voice to what is unfolding to give a different, more questioning point of view. When I ask does McCrink stand as a literary tool for McNamee as the author to get his opinion about what happened through, his answer is in the positive. "Exactly. Eddie McCrink is a fictitious character; a returned detective given a role in the case and his is the outsider's view of it."
The Newry described in the book is a very bleak town with a lot of shady characters who almost seem to have their own law for matters such as this. I ask McNamee did he come under any criticism from inhabitants of Newry about his depiction of it. "If you had to answer to the inhabitants of any particular town for your depiction of them in a work of fiction then you might as well give up and go home. Is the Newry of Orchid Blue bleak? Perhaps it is, but it is also full of mystery and possessed of a haunting beauty - you have to depict a place the way you see it."
The novel paints the legal system surrounding this case - as well as the Curran case - in a very shady light. When I ask was this something McNamee was aware of growing up in the area he reveals his insight was broader than most. "I grew up in a legal family so I have a sense of that world and how deeply corrupt it was. It's one of the things that the book is about. If the Judge is tainted, then what recourse does man have?"
Since the novel is so closely based on actual events, I ask McNamee did he end up having to spend as much time researching the series of events and the history of what went on as he did writing. "I'm inclined to research the subject lightly before writing a book - to come away with impressions and textures. Then, when I've finished, I do in-depth research. I find, strangely, that when you get the story-telling right - the art and craft - the truth tends to follow it.”
One would think that writing a novel so closely based on fact would be a much more difficult undertaking than writing something completely created in the imagination but McNamee makes a very interesting point about the process. "Sometimes the alternative - a fiction which purports to be entirely invented - seems less honest. I started out making fictions from real events and changing the names to disguise what I was doing before I realised how coy it was."
Although now living in Sligo McNamee grew up close to the events of the novel in nearby Kilkeel and returned in more ways than just physically to write it. "I'm in the Newry/Mourne area every three or four weeks, but the town in the book is really somewhere between reality, imagination and memory. I've had a few anomalies pointed out to me but have also been told that I've got it right in terms of textures and atmospheres - which is what I set out to do in the first place."
Finally, when I ask the author does he think he will ever return to that place, time, and location with his writing in the future he simply replies "It won't let me escape".
Orchid Blue is out now published by Faber & Faber.
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