Reviewed by Ian Hamilton
It takes confidence as a storyteller to create a novel with an unattractive main character. Matt Nable has chosen to do this in Mire. Furthermore, the other characters are, almost without exception, also unappealing, not to say morally repugnant.
Perhaps that is not a surprise if the chosen genre is gangster crime fiction. This is a coarse story, with coarse characters engaged in coarse behaviours. Not surprisingly then their language is extremely coarse.
The story is set in Australia and New York and unfolds through the decisions made by Dan Milligan. He is a greedy, self-obsessed man who makes, and then loses, a fortune on the futures market. Nable seeks to place him into some psychological context as a victim of his father’s toxic masculinity and Dan’s sense that he was a disappointment incapable of wining his father’s approval. Fortunately, not all men with rigid and demanding fathers end up so misshapen by their childhoods.
If Dan can’t be a successful athlete or some other physical manifestation of an alpha male, then he will make his name as a ruthless and cunning trader. At this, at least, he is a conspicuous success until he isn’t.
After the stock market crash of 1987, he must adapt to his reduced circumstances and this takes the form of becoming a lawn mowing man on the South Coast of New South Wales. This leads to the second significant plot event when he discovers a stash of money ($1.2 million) in a bunker dug into one of the properties he services. Despite his inkling that the money could well be the earnings of a criminal syndicate he makes the fateful decision to steal it.
As a result, he is restored to wealth and prestige. Not surprisingly the criminals are outraged to find their money stolen and when they find Dan the rest of the story proceeds. Enough to say that he is greatly compromised and unwillingly becomes part of a Mafia outfit. To survive he commits several murders.
Matt Nable introduces several complications, including an undercover FBI agent and two NYP officers, one of whom is corrupt. It is unclear to the reader whether Dan Milligan will end the story alive or dead.
Life is cheap in this book, which gives a convincing portrait of the gangster world into which Dan has been dragged by his own decisions.
It may be possible to read this novel as a moral fable about one man’s failure to take responsibility for his decisions but the brutal way in which events are revealed does seem to mitigate against such a reading. Dan does reach some form of insight in the last paragraph of the book but it hardly qualifies as catharsis.
The principal merit of the novel is that it is written in a well-controlled, fast-paced way with sufficient character and setting description to aid the reader to engage with the narrative. The style is authentic and true to genre. It will have wide reader appeal, although it is not recommended for your saintly grandmother. Having noted that, it is clear that your saintly grandmother is not the intended readership.
Mire
[2026]
by Matt Nable
Hachette Australia
ISBN: 978 0 7336 5139 7
$34.99; 316pp