Requiem by Eoin McNamee Review

Robert McGladdery is 26 years old, is ended when his life on December 20, 1961 “by hanging”. His death sentence is the last, which is celebrated in Northern Ireland. he was arrested exactly ten months ago, and from that first until his last day McGladdery has maintained his innocence – during the trial before the jury, at the final judgment, in his subsequent appeal in a petition for pardon from prison, in his last words , written on death row. But shortly before his Exitus he trusts Pastor Vance, his prison chaplain, and expressed the hope that he would “bring public knowledge” his confession ( “full responsibility for the death of Miss Pearl Gamble”) to.

What to make of it?

This still unexplained case, the Irish author Eoin McNamee, in his book ” Orchid Blue < "Eoin McNamee: "Orchid Blue" at"

the course of events is simple: on 28/01/1961, the nineteen-year-old Pearl Gamble visited with her friend Ronnie a dance in Newry. Robert and his friend Will Copeland are there.

the other one does not know, but Pearl will vibrate three times with Robert on the dance floor. Pearl is considered somewhat aloof and snooty; with their slightly Asian-exotic facial features makes guys like to, but can not they get too close. On their way home, around 2:00 am, she is attacked, beaten, injured, with seven stab wounds and then strangled. The naked body was dragged half a mile from the crime scene and hid in a place called Weir’s Rock

The suspect is quickly identified. Robert McGladdery to have waylaid her.

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Although he has no motive, no eyewitnesses and no forensic evidence. But a few indications suffice as a sharp blade to Robert to cut the thread of life later.

Why is calculated Robert as guilty parties and so safe, the police not to even bother making, friends welcome closer to screen (the submerged after the murder happening for two days), can only be with the swampy thoroughly conditions of the legal apparatus in the northern Ireland Newry explain

the province is in permanent political and social tensions. this is unemployment, which is particularly high in Newry. Situated on the coast, this “City of Thieves” on marsh is built. At low tide, a general stench pulls waste and sewage sludge from the high and blows consistently over the mostly fog-shrouded city. In the docks cargo ships are loaded with coal; therefore undulates dirty-black dust over the water and falls down on streets and squares. The sealed people have skin diseases of all kinds; the poorest stretches down tuberculosis.

So Robert was born on October 18, 1935 illegitimate. His mother Agnes does not care particularly about him. He truant, whiling away his time with slum and gypsy children at the nearby railway depot, later makes a cobbler teaching, went to London, will be trained there in bodybuilding, talking with odd jobs. What little income sufficient to loiter in dive bars to mark “the Dandy” and “Women, for decency a foreign word was” to enjoy. After a year with petty criminals and evil figures Robert returns to Mother Agnes to Newry home, where he poses as a toff, “far too pretentious for this town clothes”.

The average time between the murder and McGladderys arrest less than three weeks. Testimonies as “McGladdery it has never been in life … because he is not capable … not the Dude” do not keep the police from getting to pursue the alleged perpetrators around the clock to search the house from the roof down to the foundation, the dig garden to empty the tank. Neither they find the murder weapon, a “hexagonal Schuster file” (such is to McGladdery “bought the day before the murder at Woolworth” according to eyewitnesses) nor the suit he is said to have worn – although some say he is bright, other that he was dark …

The rest of the procedure seems inevitable. The police want to clear conditions and the thing depends a guy from the area to which the criminal profile to have is (difficult youth, petty criminal, autocratic appearance as a bodybuilder) and a danger. Robert has danced with Pearl, he has scratches on his face, and he is said to have bought the alleged murder weapon. And Judge Lance Curran sees his task as “right to justice equate An error A fair law is a by-product of our judiciary, not their meaning and purpose..” The executioner is ordered, the noose around McGladderys neck draws to itself.

At the end of the novel the reader is outraged by the type of procedure, on the manipulated evidence about jurors who took barely time for consultation have a career-minded judge who could hear the case, although he was biased. As a result, you will be inclined to believe in Robert McGladderys innocence. But nowhere can the author an opinion elicit a vote. Guilty or innocent? The question remains open actually. “In benefit of the doubt”?

A parallel story addition to the actual plot suggests the reader almost more captivated as the inevitable fate of death row inmates. To clarify the question of guilt he carries While nothing in, but casts a dark light on Judge Lance Curran, with the involvement also remain a mystery. Nine years ago, a murder was in fact done so, has the striking resemblance to the crimes against Pearl Gamble. Then, too, a perpetrator was arrested and sentenced to death but later pardoned as mentally disturbed. The victim was the nineteen year-old daughter of Judge Lance Curran. That old case now traces a London investigators. He travels to Ireland to watch the Pearl Gamble-murder case, and met with a wall of resistance. Against the felt, the machinations and understandings of the executive organs it does not matter.

“Requiem” is not just a novel about a very questionable, deadly outgoing justice process, but it also puts us in an atmospherically tremendously tight designed social environment, dark and morbid, the escape hardly anyone has a chance; the easier it will be stamped there for the loser or the bogeyman.