One Man's Opinion: REVOLVER by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI

The bullets were fired 50 years ago. They're about to hit home.

There are times in life when you just need a particular kind of book. Something that will take your mind off everything else and will smooth the edge of restlessness when what you need is to settle. Revolver did that for me this week, even if it did keep me up way past my bedtime last night to undo some of that good work. 

The novel opens in 1965. Stan Walczak and his partner George W Wildey are taking a break from their duties while they sip cool beer in a Philadelphia bar. Within a couple of pages we know enough about them to understand that we like them and that they live in interesting times. The mood is good and the music's fine. It's a shame that their time is interrupted by a customer pointing a gun. 

Chapter Two takes us on thirty years. Same family, same city, same profession, different case. Jim Walczak stands outside the bar where his father was killed thirty years earlier. 

Chapter Three and the next generation of Walczak's are gathering to commemorate the murder of their grandfather. 

The structure continues in a similar sequence from there. 

Working back from 1964 to the opening chapter, we get to find out how Walczak and Wildey came together. They make a hell of a team as they set out to clean up the streets of the city's toughest area. Slowly but surely, we come to understand that they're getting themselves into waters that are murky and shark-infested and in which they are way out of their depth. It becomes clear that their killing was more likely down to their own actions than the pure accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

In 1965, Jim Walczak is struggling to keep hold of his sanity and his family life. Haunted by the killing of his father and the release of the man suspected of the murder, he's also investigating another homicide involving a young journalist with a bright future.

In 2015, Jim's daughter Audrey has ideas of her own. She's a flunking student of forensic science who sees only one option to help her straighten out her life, and that's to solve the mystery of her grandfather's slaying once and for all. In order to do so, she needs to poke a stick into the hornets' nest of her family history and risk alienating herself from even more alienation. 

Each of the stories is wonderfully told. The excitement builds and the need to understand what's happened over the three generations grows exponentially as the plots unfold and twist together. The layers compliment and feed off each other in a wonderful and natural symbiosis. Pace gathers and tension mounts as the storylines ratchet up, but never at the expense of attention to detail. Elements of backstory for each character are handled with subtlety and the interesting facts about the city are dripped in in such a way that they are always welcome and never get in the way. 

The resolution to the novel is extremely satisfying. Not only does it bring the whole of the past together, it also sets out the present and the future. It would have been so easy for such a complex work to fall flat on its face at the last hurdle, but Revolver sails over it. 

I love this one. The characters and sense of culture and place are top class. It's right up there as one of the favourites of my year. Michael Connelly gets a quote on the cover, suggesting that Swierczynski is 'A great storyteller.' How absolutely Mr Connelly has hit the nail on the head. This one's glorious.