The Guns Of Heaven - Pete Hamill

 THE GUNS OF HEAVEN - PETE HAMILL

I thrive on this stuff and I don't read enough of it. Pulp fiction. Dime store novels from the '50s, '60s and '70s. The problem is that you don't see them on sale much these days and when you do they're quite expensive because they've become so collectible. I have a theory, however: Because they're so well-designed in an eye-catching, clickbait style I think people buy them only for their covers but that they don't actually read them. Which is fine, of course, because the covers are always really good and you can't blame people for wanting to collect them but it's also just another sign of the times and of the age we live in where the world is like an iceberg that we only see the one third that's on the surface and the other two thirds under the surface are not even considered.

Hard Case Crime is an imprint that specialises in crime fiction, republishing lost pulp classics alongside publishing new work by new writers. In the world of book publishing they've obviously spotted a gap in the market and have come along to plug it. And very welcome they are too, I might say.

The Guns Of Heaven by Pete Hamill is an example of modern day pulp fiction written and presented in the classic style of old-fashioned pulp fiction. It doesn't actually demand any reflection, consideration and least of all analysis because it's written to be simply read and enjoyed. It helps, of course, if a book of this kind isn't ludicrous or badly written and in the case of The Guns Of Heaven it's not either of these things, in fact it's really well-researched and most importantly of all, it's really well-written.

'Tomorrow, the struggle will be fought on our streets', says the blurb on the back cover and that was enough to straightaway tickle my fancy. The plot - and yes, there is one - involves the IRA, the UVF, Christian apocalypse fundamentalists, a cameo by Ian Paisley, a lone reporter and the largest shipment of arms in the history of the IRA, with all the action hopping from Belfast to Switzerland to New York.

'That was the way it always seemed to go,' ponders the lone wolf reporter at one point 'You believed first in normal abstractions, in God, or country, or Karl Marx. And then you believe in guns. The guns of liberation. The guns of the dialect. The guns of heaven.'

And that's pretty much the tone and style of the writing throughout the whole book: Snappy, succinct, with a heavy dose of panache. Boys Own stuff quite possibly, but great stuff all the same.

John Serpico