Louise Welsh's latest novel, The
Bullet Trick, has drawn
much critical acclaim in the UK, primarily for the skill with which
the novelist plays with the conventions of crime fiction. As Mark
Lawson, reviewer for The Guardian, has wryly noted, Welsh's
use of crime fiction motifs, literary stylistics and gripping prose
style means that she stands as one of a select number of British
authors poised to overturn the still-entrenched divisions between ‘real'
literature and crime fiction. Could she be, he asks, the ‘crime'
writer to win the much coveted Booker prize and finally force critical
recognition of crime fiction?
The novel centres on the character of William Wilson, magician and
illusionist extraordinaire, whom the reader first encounters on his
return to a gloomy Glasgow after a period in Berlin , the location
of horrific events, as yet unrevealed. The narrative then rewinds
in time and location to London some months previously in order to
piece together the chequered history of William's flight from Berlin
and the origins of his increasingly depressed and alcoholic descent
into near homelessness. What makes this such an intriguing process
is Welsh's playful use of notions of appearance and reality, trickery
and illusion. For Wilson 's profession as an illusionist is not only
the motor for plot and action (it is his pick pocketing skills that
draw him into the crime intrigue) but it also provides the metaphorical
frame for the novel. Nothing is as it seems; friends can betray and
deceive, whilst hostile policemen can be saviours, even murder can
be faked with devastating consequences. Like a hall of mirrors, the
novel is constructed to manipulate reader expectations, exaggerating
our assumptions and prejudices, brutally climaxing in the bullet
trick of the title.
Although narrated with aplomb via a
male first-person narrator, Welsh's novel is far more interested
in the women who cross his path, all, to some extent, exploited
by dominant and controlling men. It is the female characters who ‘disappear'
both for theatrical effect and for more sinister purposes. Their
bodies are cut up, dissected, shot at, in a spectacle of abuse
that is replicated in domestic violence and murder. And this is
perhaps where Welsh's novel gains its literary and cultural substance.
For whilst the main protagonist is most certainly a victim-turned-detective,
the reader cannot but be drawn to the suggestive subtext woven
into the novel about the place of women in contemporary culture;
their expendability and victimization, particularly, as here, on
the margins of the entertainment and sex industries. Rare as it
is for a women writer to adopt the persona of a male narrator,
this ventriloquized voice never loses sight of its target: male
violence and abuse against women. Like the consummate performers
of the bullet trick, Welsh hits the reader right between the eyes.
