Kala by Colin Walsh
This is the best page turner that I read in 2024. I don’t consider the term ‘page turner’ to be reductive and so it would be better to say that this is one of the best books I read in 2024. It has an archetypal murder mystery se-up but is a book with real depth and psychological insight. It proves the point that genre labels can be limiting. This story has as much resonance as many of the books that make the literary awards shortlists.
The set-up, though – old school friends meet up in Kinlough, on the west coast of Ireland, 15 years after their world was ripped apart. In the summer of 2003, their final year before finishing school, the beautiful, charismatic and fearless Kala, the core member of their gang of six school outsiders, disappeared. Now a music gig and family wedding see the remaining five all together, again, in Kinlough just at the moment that the remains of a body are found in nearby woodland.
I said it was archetypal. How many murder mysteries begin with the disappearance of a beautiful young woman? And how many stories bring together older, changed characters back to the scene of that disappearance to reflect on the youthful joys and sorrows of their past? Secrets, remorse and guilt naturally emerge; and here we also get a series of clues, some red herrings and a powerful denouement.
The novel moves easily between the story of the young friends’ typical teenage rites of passage in the early 2000s and the present-day narratives from three of them: Mush, Helen and Joe. The latter who came from a more advantaged family than the rest of the gang was always destined for some amalgam of fame and success. Mush on the other hand has remained in Kinlough with a love for the place and its people based on a clear-eyed evaluation that accepts the bad with the good. He is loyal, hardworking but damaged, both physically and emotionally. Mind you as a recovering alcoholic so is music superstar Joe. How much of this damage is linked to Kala’s disappearance becomes more clear as the search for the truth about the past unfolds. Helen, the third narrator, is different again; she has made a successful career in Canada as an investigative journalist- plenty of subtext there, of course - and she has unresolved issues in her relationships with the family and friends left behind.
What makes this more than just a superior murder mystery novel is the time and care taken with the characters. Walsh carefully develops their bond as well as the tensions between them in the flashback episodes. He explores how these disparate characters find solidarity and belonging in their gang of six because of their differences from the rest of their peers. And this in turn enables Walsh to explore the social constraints based on tradition and religion that are at the heart of the central mystery and so many of the other secrets and deceits that begin to emerge as the old friends try to make sense about what happened to Kala.
As I say, though, the mystery of Kala, whom Walsh portrays as a luminous, captivating presence, is only part of this novel’s appeal. It ranges over class, criminality as well as the sort of wilful turning away by a community that was such a strong feature of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novella ‘Small Things Like These’. Similar to that book, this story exposes the dark underbelly beneath the carefully constructed mythology of the Irish craic. Strongly recommended.