( 7 reviews )
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Posted: Mar 18 2009
The secular and the divine meet at a murder scene, that of the Black Dahlia appropriately recast as a desecrated Virgin Mary (the Virgin Tramp). Where else but in the city of the Fallen Angels? A bit hard to get into at first reading, one goes back to "True Confessions" like a devout his rosary, its evocative power undiminished.
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 6 2008
Several previous reviewers have mentioned that they regularly go back and reread this book, and I count myself among them. "True Confessions" is in fact a triumph and John Gregory Dunne's best work. When it is said that a good novel by a "genre" writer "transcends the genre," it usually means that the author has written a novel good enough to be judged apart from that genre. In "True Confessions," John Gregory Dunne writes a book that achieves the status of literature while deliberately staying within the conventions of the detective novel, a much more difficult task indeed. The plot of "True Confessions," as one previous reviewer noted, is really a MacGuffin for an exploration of the author's more serious concerns. The story revolves around a fictional version of the real-life murder of a woman in the 1940s in Los Angeles, the "Black Dahlia" case. Detective Tom Spellacy catches the case, which through sensational newspaper stories catches the popular imagination, and with it the pressure to solve the case. Tom sees himself as a failure, a one-time boxer with a glass jaw, now an LAPD detective trapped in a loveless marriage with a wife slowly losing her mind, a kid who never met a candy bar she didn't like, and a guilty conscience not entirely undeserved. His brother Monsignor Desmond "Des" Spellacy, by contrast, is bright, likeable, and ambitious, pious and practical at the same time. He is the handsome war veteran, the "Parachuting Padre," who has set his sights on a Bishop's miter and perhaps a Cardinal's hat. He is charismatic and careful, as he makes his way through the duties of life as a professional Catholic. He woos the faithful on his weekly radio show, and works the owners of auto dealerships and mortuaries on the golf course to increase the building fund of the Archdiocese. He knows that all men sin, and though his conscience is sometimes troubled, he is not above selling indulgences to achieve the greater good. These very different brothers, who spend their occasional time together shadow-boxing about sin and absolution, corruption and salvation, come into collision with one another as Tom's investigation of the underlying murder increasingly involves Des. Before the story is over, both will make choices of immense consequence for themselves and each other. Tom's partner is a hard-boiled, wisecracking cop who eats off the cuff at his favorite "cheap Chinese" restaurant, and gets his suits from movie studios after every Sydney Greenstreet movie finishes shooting. He is Tom's, and the reader's, Falstaff, confronting us with his queasy morals, inconvenient truths, and asides about life and the job that make the reader laugh in spite of himself. Dunne also takes a hard, and sometimes hilarious look at the Catholic Church after the war. It is run as a modern American corporation, selling rosaries and salvation as if they were Chevrolets. The great achievement of "True Confessions" is that Dunne deliberately chooses such a seemingly confining "ring," the pulp genre of detective fiction, within which to present the spiritual and temporal fights which engage the two main characters. He uses every convention of hard-boiled Chandler-esque postwar L.A. detective novels, every stereotype of Irish-American cops, priests, and politicians, and turns them all on their heads to present a tough, unsentimental view about what the country looked like as "The American Century" entered its second half. In "True Confessions," Dunne manages to sort out facts from fiction, the real from the romanticized, true human conflicts for which there may be no resolution from the satisfying but empty trickery of the last chapter of a whodunit. With a seemingly dead-on and often wickedly funny portrayal of the voices, thoughts, prejudices, shortcuts taken and deals made, by real people in real life, he tells a story of power, ambition, mendacity, failure, occasional tenderness, and maybe even redemption. He turns the stew of pulp fiction into a true cassoulet for his readers. Strong language, strong everything. This is an adult novel in the best and most serious sense of the word. A "Father Brown" mystery it ain't.
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Posted: May 31 2007
I have never seen "True Confessions" the movie, and I never had really thought about Mr. Dunne until reading Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" about his decline and death. He seemed like perhaps the more interesting of the two, and worth a trial. At first I thought, uh-oh, another book with an Irish-Catholic family with a cop and a priest as brothers. And, my, the language is certainly not for someone easily offended by vulgarity. As an example, the n-word and many other ethnic and racial terms appear frequently. You can get away with that in a book set in the post-war 1940s, I guess. After putting those aside, I really warmed to the story. Mr. Dunne wrote so clearly and with deceptive descriptive power. The murder mystery part of the plot hardly matters to the novel's drive, as the focus is more on the brothers and their relationship to their respective worlds, and secondarily to each other. Tom is more of a regular cop, sometimes effective and sometimes not, hampered by a frankness, cynicism, and unwillingness to play the games, such that his career and personal life are nothing much. Des is a rising star or near-star in the church, using some of those same skills that his brother as, only with much more effectiveness and attention to his superiors. His true talent is as a "getting things done" guy, on path to be a bishop, and not for his holiness. One can't help but wonder what he's really doing as a priest. Mr. Dunne does not paint a respectful picture of the LAPD, but that's nothing new for crime or detective stories set in LA. Many authors are doing the same theme today, 30 years later, and not necessarily with any better writing. What is more disturbing for potential readers is the image of the Catholic Church, concentrating more on fund raising, building projects, and its own prideful objectives than in the holiness of its leaders and members. Des's "getting things done" skills are often applied to making deals and dispensing favors in return for "donations" or other benefits. And don't forget to look the other way when it's inconvenient not to. Ultimately, the deal making leads to the downfall of Des through guilt by association, if not worse. The story is not one of redemption, because it's not clear that the main characters ever really regret what happens or some of their major decisions. This seems to be just the way it is and you may get it in the end or you may not. I'm not sure there is a truly appealing character in the entire cast. Is that Mr. Dunne's view of human nature or merely a particular theme in this novel?
