With my Banks backstory out of the way, I have some thoughts about 2002’s Aftermath, the book I most recently read. Aftermath has a corker of a premise: it’s set in the titular aftermath of two police officers accidentally discovering the solution to an ongoing serial crime spree while responding to what seems like a domestic violence call. I’m a fan of the police procedural sub-genre, obviously, since that’s been the bulk of what I’ve been reading and writing about this fall, and most of the time books in the genre focus on the investigation, the hunt, the cat and mouse. Especially the sub-sub-genre of serial killer novels, which this falls into. I was surprised and excited to enter the narrative at a different point in the investigation, and I admire that Robinson clearly decided to put effort into exploring new aspects of the police procedural so far into his established series and character: by book 12 in a long series, many authors are simply coasting through formula, and the effort to do new things mid-series validates my decision to push through the challenges and stick with the series. It is also why I will keep reading, even though I had many misgivings about how Aftermath ultimately unfolded.
I’m flagging the rest of this for spoilers. I don’t recommend reading on unless you either don’t care or have already read the book.
As I mentioned, the premise of Aftermath is that two police officers discover a house where serial killings have taken place while responding to a domestic call, a discovery that quickly turns violent: one of the two officers is attacked and killed by the man of the house, while the other loses control defending herself and beats the man, Terry Payne, to unconsciousness and ultimately death. The titular aftermath is not just Alan Banks’ suspicion about the level of involvement or knowledge that the battered wife, Lucy, may have had in the murder of many young women, but also Annie Cabbot’s task of investigating charges of police brutality against Janet Taylor, the young female officer who beat Terry Payne in self-defense, ultimately causing his death.
It’s an ambitious plot, and I think ultimately the Cabbot thread of the investigation is handled better because there is ambiguity left within it, while the Lucy Payne thread is too tidily wrapped up. It’s truly uncomfortable to read about the unraveling of the promising young woman whose career is destroyed through her own use of force. Police brutality and killings are a continual problem in America, where I live, and I found it fascinating to see this explored with care to the complexities in one fictional version of this common event. (Not to say that all real life police killings are as complex as this fictional one; many are not.) Robinson does a good job letting his characters grapple with a series of equally true facts: Janet was in an unimaginably terrifying situation; the man she killed was involved in horrific crimes; and, at a certain point, she made a choice to keep hitting him. Janet’s act of violence in reaction to violence ends in further tragedy, as the book closes with the young officer dead in a car accident caused by her own drunk driving. Was Janet a “bad apple,” just prone to making reckless decisions? Maybe. But the system that created her and placed her in a position of both vulnerability and power is also scrutinized. Far from every police procedural book or series grapples with the system and deep questions of justice, but the fact that some do is certainly one of the reasons I read so much of this mystery sub-genre.
Now is as good a time as any to mention that Annie Cabbot’s backstory includes being gang raped by police colleagues, and being blacklisted in her career when the perpetrators argued that she was a willing participant. Like Connelly’s Renee Ballard, she is an outsider because of her attempts to report sexual assault or harassment. And much like Connelly’s Ballard, I have mixed feelings about male writers using workplace rape or assault as a mechanism for plot and character development. It also causes a character problem when applied to female detectives: she must have powerful reasons to stay in a job and a system after being made a victim of it. Ballard is of the true detective trope, obsessively and almost supernaturally drawn to crime. It’s less clear to me what Cabbot’s excuse is. She ends Aftermath with a renewed dedication to investigating crimes and advancing her career after doing this internal affairs type work and I was like, “Why???” Cabot was our viewpoint witness into the dirty tragedy of Janet, and that textual positioning in no way sensically translates to the sudden commitment to ambition and advancement. I can read in to the text that maybe it inspires Cabbot to be the change in the system or whatever, but that wasn’t on the page. Maybe I’ll see in the next book, but even beyond the Janet plot, I’ve always been on the fence about Robinson’s decision to make rape such a central part of Annie’s character, and the amount of times it was referred to in Aftermath isn’t helping me resolve it positively. On the plus side, I’ve also never loved the power imbalance between Cabbot and Banks as a romantic couple and I was happy that this book broke it off; here’s hoping it sticks.
This complaint about the handling of rape relates to what I feel is the most serious mishandling at the heart of Aftermath, and possibly one that would make me question whether to keep reading if I weren’t so damn committed to the series: the decision to give Lucy Payne, the battered young wife of the apparent serial killer, a horrifying backstory of child abuse that’s part satanic panic part hillbilly cannibal. And to make her the real serial killer. Because of her childhood trauma. The book actually, textually states that sometimes abuse makes people grow up to be violent abusers. I don’t like this trope and felt it wasn’t handled well here. I know that the "cycle of abuse" was at one time thought to be true, but current studies at a minimum complicate this idea, if not disprove it. Within fiction, I simply don't find it interesting, and I don't think it serves this story well at all. I don’t necessarily dislike the decision to make Lucy involved in the crime and set Banks to the task of proving it, but her abuse backstory and assigning that the reason for her participation in horrific crime is terribly flat and reductive, especially in contrast with the ambiguity and grace allowed Janet. It's altogether too tidy, and it makes for a lesser book.
In conclusion, it seems I grapple with the Peter Robinson Inspector Banks books even beyond the surface level of my problems with their audio presentation! But even though I disliked elements of Aftermath, I do like that it inspired me to think hard and grapple. Ultimately, the experience of thinking through my reactions to some of these tropes and real world issues is even more valuable to me than just straight up having a good time with a book. Though, I did absolutely follow this book up with a selection of fun and less challenging books to give my mental grappling hooks a break!
No comments:
Post a Comment