Ruby Barnes

At first when I read other reviews comparing the author’s style to Tom Clancy I was skeptical. Its like those American Idols hopefuls claiming they sound like Beyonce, when they come out truly sounding like a dying cat. But, this is a really good book! It had me hooked from the first page to the last. I’m not a political buff, usually when someone starts in on politics my eyes cross and glaze over, but this was so much more. From seeing the heart-wrenching “solutions” of third world show more countries, to the international intrigue, the identity “theft”, the sex…every part of this book kept me reading more and more. I just didn’t want to put it down.I can’t wait to read the next part! show less

Raise a glass to Ger! He's at it again!
Author Ruby Barnes has provided a great deal of fun, lots of laughs and not just a few near spills in his latest -- Getting Out of Dodge: Peril 2. His main character, Ger Mayes, brings us up to date, after an early release nine years into his prison sentence. He's older, but only a tiny bit wiser.

His little lad still makes most of the major decisions along the way and despite the jams he fell into into before, he settles into a new life in Kilkenny with show more almost exactly the same degree of denial. It seems that many of his life decisions are being made for him and not always to his own best interest. His choices of friends and business associates, lined up against a wall, would spell doom for anyone else, but not for Ger.

Ger remains one of my favorite characters in recent fiction, and at read's end, there is just enough carrot left dangling on the end of the stick (even a tiny bit of redemption), to keep me anxious for the next book. I can easily recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a tight-paced caper and has a sense of humor. show less

I've never read others' reviews of a book I'd just finished - until now. I wanted to see if any reviews had been left by psychologists or psychiatrists. They haven't, so here goes.

This is my second Ruby Barnes novel; I'd read "Peril" about a month ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. After reading my review, Barnes offered to send me "The Baptist," and I enthusiastically agreed. Here's the bottom line: Barnes can flat-out write.

While the books both deal with psychological pathology (Peril's show more protagonist is afflicted with narcissism and a lazy sort of greed and misogyny) "The Baptist"'s protagonist is full-on bonkers - and that's not simply a judgement call. John Baptist has been institutionalized after drowning his brother when both were children, believing he can see his brother's inherent evil, determined not to allow him to grow up in the mold of their father. But it's not the brother or the father who's evil, it's John, and it's evil wrapped in the robes of deep-seated religious mania. Upon release from a mental institution, John marries, fathers two children, and goes to work at his father-in-law's garage. He also stops taking his medications. At this point I wondered if we were on our way to an Irish "Shutter Island," and that everything taking place did so within John's mind, and he was still hospitalized. No, that would be too easy.

John, lonely within his marriage, stalks and adopts a friend, Feargal, who is nothing more than a figment of his imagination. But his "friendship" with Feargal leads him to Alice/Mary, a fellow former mental patient with a split personality. Alice/Mary is all too real. Mary is tough, but needy; Alice is unfettered sexuality, alluring, dangerous, and the crazier of the two personalities. John essentially leaves his family in an attempt to permanently cleave Alice's personality from Mary's and sustain Alice as the dominant persona, with tragic societal costs. During an intense relationship based on sex, drugs, alcohol and their co-dependent mental illness, John and Alice murder their way toward John's unspoken mission - preparing the world for Jesus' return. He's not just John Baptist; he's John the Baptist, baptizing those who might stand in this way through water and blood.

This is a fascinating and frightening book that just begs to be read. It is not for those with delicate sensibilities who might be offended by intense sexuality, a gripping description of rampant mental illness, and casual violence, all wrapped in a shroud of religion. But, it is a great read, masterfully written. show less

In line with my reviewing policy of only giving a write-up to books I have enjoyed, I now have great pleasure in making a few comments on Ruby Barnes's Peril, a novel which could also have been titled, "The Power of Positive Thinking for Feckless Scots Bent on Raising Levels of Dissatisfaction Among Irish Wives, Mistresses, Relatives, Beggars and Rail Customers Who Have the Temerity to Make Complaints".

Ger Mayes is a loveable ne'er do well from North of that Border uniting Scotland and show more England. Married to an upright modern Irish woman who, needless to say, indulges in quickies with her personal trainer, Ger is paid what seems to be a reasonable salary by the complaints office of Irish Railways. His minimal investment of time, and low respect for his customers, makes Ger a poster boy for the most negative, biased sorts of comments made by Dubliners about immigrant labor. Ger's only self-questioning comes from the wonder and anger generated when he does not get promoted over the heads of some, admittedly obnoxious, colleagues who do, however, respect reasonable standards of productivity, putting in an hour of work and a full five hours of gossip and back-biting on the days when they're in the office--and not taking their statutory sick days off.

Although Ger is more than a bit of a wine and food snob--and should know that after two or three glasses his taste-buds will have had as much as they can reasonably enjoy--when out with the lads he has a habit of drinking himself into that state of mindlessness where his head stops working but his feet keep walking. One night, in a city of Dublin that could pass for the capital of the Chechen Republic under attack by the Russians, he wanders befuddled and lost, finding it impossible to suss his way to the train station and back home to the outer suburbs, where he can reconnect with the middle-class way of life as it developed in late 20th and early 21st century Ireland: memorization of suburban railway time tables, calculating which train will get him into work just after time and out of work just before time, formal dinners where he can whimsically analyze--in the company of mortgaged-up-to-the-hilt neighbors--the merits of different types of pasta, tomato sauce, red wine, white wine and Indian or other take-away dishes while ogling and caressing the knees of his wife's best friend.

Ger stumbles into a fight with a Romanian beggar, kills the man and flees the scene. The next day, unsurprisingly, the murder does not trouble his conscience. Its consequences only begin to concern him when he realizes he didn't dispose of the murder weapon so that it couldn't be found. His worries are compounded when it turns out that another member of the beggar clan saw him do it. The only one of the ten commandments that Ger respects is the eleventh one, "Thou shan't get caught", but, when he does get found out, every problem becomes an opportunity, in line with his innate approach to life, that of the devil-may-care chancer. Any event that would render a less hedonistic man catatonic with fright becomes something to flip to his advantage in his only serious quest: how to satisfy every one of his five senses, every day, in every way.

The Head of the Beggar clan sets his people on Ger's tail. They take him to some weird and wonderful places as they inform him how they will exact retribution. One of those places is a mansion in the middle of the Phoenix Park occupied by a gang of people who wander the streets of Dublin in search of ill-gotten gain (this is NOT the Irish National Police Force, which occupies a totally different mansion in the Park).

Although the main plot of the book has nothing to do with how Irish Complaints Offices' resort to Soviet style methods to keep their more recalcitrant employees mouthing sweet nothings to dissatisfied customers, or ass-licking around the coffee machine, there are very some very funny scenes when Ger is put on obligatory sick leave for questioning his non-promotion and told to report to a psychiatrist on a near-daily basis to prove that his behavior is normal. This interferes with him spending afternoons in the sack of his anorexic mistress.

I began to read this in a hot and humid hotel room in an African city, feeling nostalgic for a few words describing the ould sod. But Ruby Barnes's belly-laugh provoking, high-wire act of dissecting the pretensions of modern-day Ireland, and showing what it takes to thrive, namely the "Ger Attitude", replaced the desire for the fickle charms of Kathleen ni Houlihan with the commonsense thought that I should stay where I was. I read the final electronic page of this fine comic novel of Ireland, laid the Kindle beside me and began to hum that age-old song of wisdom, McAlpine's Fusiliers, "Oh Mother Dear, I'm over here and I'm never coming back....."

Nevertheless, a few days later, I found myself on a flying visit to Dublin. The city was in the midst of a four-day heatwave, with nary a beggar, dead, alive, or in the Phoenix Park to be seen. Whose view of Dublin was the right one? That of Ger, Ruby Barnes's main character in Peril, or the one of my own eyes and the Irish Tourist Board's? I decided to download to my Kindle another Ruby Barnes novel. I recommend you do the same. show less