The Truth, It Lies - A Review

Author: Eoin Hennigan
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 978-1-8472-8540-9
Pages: 252

The Truth, It Lies is a curious thing: it is a PI novel with no PI, and therein lies the first problem. It has the tone of a PI novel, as well as the basic structure and overall intentions of one, but the ultimate lack of an actual PI (we instead get a desperate lawyer who stumbles around completely out of his element) is immediately disappointing. This is one of those experimental books that acts as a case in point for one or two editorials I’ve written of late. While experimentation is good, bucking an established system isn’t always good.

For one thing, the author inexpertly utilizes more than one grammatical person (third and first) to tell his story, and this makes a reader feel like he or she is reading two separate works. If your narrative voice starts out omniscient and ends up inside the mind of a single character, the author, more often than not, will come across as an inexperienced writer, wielding the reins of a book that wasn’t well thought out to begin with. After all, who is actually telling the story here?

Also, both the third- and first-person narratives are plagued with too much “tell” and not enough “show”—further evidence of the author’s inexperience. I actually found myself growing tired of the narration at certain points, as the lack of action at these points didn’t quite compel me to keep up with the story itself. It rather bogs things down. Your story should feel like it’s happening NOW, so that a reader feels like they’re getting fresh news; better yet, they should feel like they’re a part of that news. Things should be happening to and around your main character, and that character shouldn’t be wasted recounting past conversations and events.

Examples of “telling” rather than “showing” follow below (taken from pages 82 and 83):

Monk was about to leave the studio when Bloom came to him with yet another ‘request’. He wanted Monk to take the film reels home for safe keeping. Bloom told him that he suspected someone might take them, and that he’d feel better if they were off the premises over the weekend. Monk disagreed and expressed unease at the notion. He reminded Bloom that it was against studio protocol. He asked the director why he didn’t take them with him to his own house, but Bloom brushed this off, saying he didn’t have his car that day. It worried Monk that Bloom was adamant that the reels had to be taken off site immediately.

The two men argued about it for some time before Monk relented. His decision to give in to the director’s whim was primarily to get some peace. Monk said he’d take them on condition that he’d be returning them in 48 hours. Monk told Bloom he could take that time to sort out whatever was on his mind. But then Bloom’s next request worried Monk even more: he was asked not to tell anyone that he had the reels of film or where they were.

Now here Monk was, standing on the pier, running these events through his mind, trying to make sense of this irrational man’s actions. He had no idea what Michael Bloom was up to and he didn’t want to know either. With his closest friend at the studio, Morgan, dead he didn’t think there was anyone else he trusted enough to confide in about Bloom’s behavior.

What’s more, I didn’t really get a ’50s vibe when reading this book; the language fails to evoke the time period the author has decided to set his story in.

And aside from the usual spelling errors and inverted words, there is also poor phrasing in this book:

He felt the trip to the cinema had achieved nothing except pile on more unnecessary paperwork.

My advice to authors having trouble with sentence construction is to take the bare bones of your thought and break it down to its smallest component. In this case, considering the above passage, breaking this down to its bare bones would allow even the most inexperienced writer to note awkward phrasing here. Reword the sentence to drive home your point in the simplest form possible: “All that the trip to the cinema achieved was pile on more unnecessary paperwork”? Does this sound right? Of course not, and the simplest fix to the problem would be to eliminate and replace the problem word or words. In this case, the problem is caused by the phrasal verb “pile on.” One could also question the presence of the adjective “achieved.”

Now I don’t like to spoon-feed writers with suggestions when it comes to rewording sentences, because that would result in a change in voice, and my job as an editor is to leave an author’s work without as many kinks as it started out with (no editor can remove every single kink), while retaining the author’s voice and vision.

With more books under his belt, I’m sure Eoin Hennigan will begin to show vast improvements in the areas touched on in this review. (And there will be more books, as this is the first in a planned trilogy.)