Tom Benn’s third novel is fast-paced and gritty, but pushes the boundaries of the plausible.
Just a few pages in and Benn’s protagonist is already throwing punches and rescuing helpless young women. If Trouble Man is lacking in anything, it’s definitely not pace, or punches for that matter. In fact, Benn’s adrenaline-fuelled tour of Manchester’s criminal underworld teeters precariously on the verge of the unbelievable.
It’s December 1999 and in the build up to the new millennium, criminal and nightclub manager Henry Bane finds himself embroiled in a gangster family feud whilst his own illicit love-affair threatens to turn his friends against him. Oh and he’s also trying to track down a serial-killer who has a penchant for leeches. When Bane finds out that his son’s teenage girlfriend is actually at the heart of the gangsters’ feuding, I couldn’t help feeling that the plot fits together a little bit too well. This carefully crafted crime novel does have a neat satisfaction to it though, and if you’re willing to stick with all the complicated double-dealing, it’s well worth it.
Trouble Man is the third in a series of books about Henry Bane, but the novel stands alone in its own right. I have to admit, with passages that can read a bit like GTA fight scenes, Trouble Man isn’t usually my kind of book. But as the plots start to weave more and more tightly around the main character, Benn’s razor-sharp style and impressive fast pace kept me turning the pages until the very end.
With all the blood, sex and dramatic plot twists, it feels like Benn doesn’t have enough time to give his characters the emotional complexity that they really need. The women are either pregnant, ridiculously drop-dead gorgeous, or the victims of sadistic sex crimes: Bane’s world is most definitely a man’s world. But as the men are constantly fighting – for money, for women or just for the sake of it – Trouble Man seems to comment more on the harsh rigidity of masculinity than it does about the weak female characters.
This unflinching look at the darker side of society feels fresh and compelling. For all the outrageousness of its plot and seemingly gratuitous violence, Trouble Man depicts a gritty and convincing portrait of late nineties Manchester. Benn’s writing style is sharp and incisive, brilliantly capturing the Mancunian dialect and bringing a refreshingly raw voice to the crime genre that carries the novel through to its climactic conclusion.
It may have its flaws, but if you’re after a crime novel thriller that is packed with action and plot twists, and if you’re not too squeamish, Trouble Man won’t disappoint.