BOOK REVIEW: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR BY LEX JONES

Duality is a theme that runs through noir fiction like veins through a body; innate to the very concept, expressed through its characters (that almost universally reveal hidden faces and agendas as their narratives unfold), its aesthetics (noir cinema in particular has traditionally exhibited a chiaroscuro quality, playing with light and shadow in a manner that is overtly theatrical; heightened and contrived rather than realistic, as a means of emphasising mood and atmosphere) and its morality (traditional archetypes are undermined in noir fiction; characters split and shed themselves, revealing facets that the audience might be shocked by, a willingness to transgress that defeats assumption and expectation).
 
In that, the genre has much in common with the likes of horror, science fiction and some forms of fantasy, all of which not only utilise similar means, explore similar themes, but are also as densely -and often bafflingly- codified.
 
Fortunately, Lex Jones's novel, The Other Side of the Mirror, demonstrates an understanding of this that delves far beyond the mere surface level:
 
From the first instance, duality is everywhere, from the setting (a cleverly nameless, monolithic “City” that is bisected into not only two halves but two distinct and contrasting cultures by a river whose name also expresses the duality between life and death, memory and forgetting) to the characters, most of whom are simultaneously sympathetic and repugnant, morally grey whilst also expressing certain absolutisms.
 
This fascination with contrast and contradiction runs throughout the novel, from the cultural divides that exist between the east and west sides of the river to those between characters who conflict on almost every level (the casually homophobic police detective, the domestic gay housemate, the moral serial killer, the corrupt city officials and so on and so forth). It's a tricky tightrope act in context with the down-and-dirty, gritty reality that the novel paints, to maintain degrees of verisimilitude that allow the reader to feel connected to the world and its characters but to also revel in the archetypes they represent.
 
Lex Jones manages that by simply not making a muchness of the issue: as with all of the book's central themes, everything is sub-textual (a factor that arguably defines noir fiction in its essence): there are no moments whereby the narrator attempts to explain to the reader what they should be taking from any of the dualities or contrasts that the book paints, no moment in which characters attempt to nudge the reader towards certain interpretations of the material: it simply provides the setting, the characters, the circumstances in which they operate and then allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
 
Which is a breath of fresh air (or, in this instance, polluted, stagnant, stinking city funk). It's a struggle to find genre fiction of any description that doesn't condescend to its audience, that treats its readers with a degree of respect and intellectual courtesy. That this work takes the pains to do so is immediately endearing, as is the luridly hideous reality it concocts:
 
Here, Jones's horror influences are on full display, alongside clear input from various other sources: the anonymous “City” is not only a place of extremes and dualities, but also a stinking, foetid hive of human filth, of -often unspoken- atrocity, in which most characters are merely struggling to survive in the face of poverty, abuse and normalised violence.
 
The “City” itself becomes a kind of character as the plot progresses; some heaving, barely conscious beast that the characters are merely fleas and parasites to scratch out of existence. Its hostility takes on a conscious malevolence that, once again, is entirely implied, never made overt, but which pervades the entire narrative, no moment of resolution without its ambiguity, no mystery resolved without some fresh cruelty or deceit or level of human degeneracy being revealed.
 
In the wrong hands, such consistent grime and filth can alienate a reader, the trudge through the sewer of the sub-conscious too foul and poisonous, too toxic to endure.
 
Fortunately, Jones knows his audience well and is aware that anyone who sticks with the novel likely does so for that very reason: there is a kind of masochistic appeal here, as there often is in such material: noir, police procedurals, horror and murder mysteries (all of which this piece comprises to greater or lesser degrees) arguably maintain their audience on the basis of their willingness to explore what other forms of fiction will not, to rake the sub-conscious muck of humanity and hold it up to the moonlight.
 
Here, that factor is evident on every page, even the most casual or domestic moment providing reminders of how stark and unpleasant life is within The City (not to mention how cheap). Violence, abuse and cruelty are par for the course in this world; the vulnerable are preyed upon, chewed up and ground down whilst the most sociopathic rise to positions of predatory influence and power.
 
Even the book's protagonist, Detective Carl Duggan, is hardly an attractive or even likeable character (violent, cynical, casually cruel), which, again, runs the risk of alienating certain readers, but works extremely well in context with the setting and its unspoken mythology: Duggan might be a foul-mouthed, cruel, often bigoted piece of work (his misogyny and casual homophobia shine through on numerous occasions) but he's also resolute and fair minded, far less corrupt and immediately harmful than many of the superiors and societal mechanisms he's forced to deal with (all of whom boast their own particular shades of rot).
 
The world Duggan operates in is innately cruel, callous and hostile: in order to maintain what thin veneer or delusion of stability -let alone justice- exists, he has no choice but to be as uncomprising, to do what others in his station will not. This lends him a degree of autonomy and freedom that others don't enjoy, not to mention insularity against the filth that clogs the engine of The City and its culture.
 
He is the classic incorruptible: a kind of foul-mouthed puritan who regards himself as entirely apart from the cesspit he's been born to and forced to clean up. In that, he reflects not only a kind of inverse saint but also classical mythological figures such as Sisyphus (an allusion to Ancient Greek mythology that, in context with certain other elements of the text, suggests sub-textual layers of interpretation and resonance).
 
Furthermore, Duggan is entirely in-keeping with the style of fiction Jones is attempting to reference: a classic trope of noir is for the protagonist (very often a reporter or private detective) to run afoul of some plot or illegality only to reveal their own depths of corruption (usually at the hands of a femme fatale archetype). Duggan simultaneously reflects that trope and inverts it: he is down and out, he is callous and cruel and often desperate but does not compromise his own ideals, no matter how earnestly The City enjoins him to. If he reflects any character in popular media, it would be Detective Gene Hunt from the UK TV series, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes: not a “real” police detective but an exaggeration of one drawn from fiction, removed from reality by several shades of separation but also intimately bound to the equally exaggerated one in which he operates.
 
Another subtle parallel with those series lies in the book's suggestion of an underlying metaphysics (again, not unusual for noir fiction; just like the hyperbolic, highly poetic modes of dialogue characters in such work tend to utilise, noir narratives often incorporate references to religion, mythology and other abstractions, which they explore via ostensibly more mundane, realist settings, characters and circumstances). Again, part of the strength of the book is that nothing is made overt: there is no grand, revelatory moment in which the distorted hyper-reality of The City is peeled back and the characters (and reader) get to see the hidden celestial mechanisms, the hand of God at work. Rather, they remain largely ignorant of that factor in their lives, so much parts and products of the setting, they are no more aware of its theatricality and contrivance than characters in a play are.
 
Instead, Jones opts for a far more subtle form of suggestion and implication; The City itself operates as a kind of limbo or upper-circle-of-Hell, in which the characters are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves owing to the circumstances occurring around them, the natural violence and dirt and desperation of their reality.
 
That death and murder are so commonplace in this setting hardly comes as a surprise when one considers that the river bisecting The City in two is named “The Styx.” It's no coincidence that the first body recovered washes up on its shores, nor that the situation mirrors other classic TV shows of a similar stripe (most notably, of course, Twin Peaks). The reader is left to infer these elements without characters -or the narrator- attempting to explain them overtly. There are no moments in which characters start to suspect the underlying workings of this world, no revelatory visions or moments of blinding clarity. The closest the book comes are the occasional hallucinatory moments (which often, conspicuously, occur around the river) in which Detective Duggan sees the faces of murder victims he has yet to provide closure for, which are painted in an overtly psychological rather than metaphysical light.
 
This factor lends the story a degree of metaphorical freight it might have otherwise lacked: the moment the reader begins to suspect or sense this underlying layer of interpretation, everything takes on shades of metaphor that elevate the piece and make it a far more engaging work. Without that, it would have been a well-written, grim and gritty, noir detective drama with some vaguely horror-flavoured moments. Engaging, fun, but fun only.
 
With that, it becomes something else: it accrues meaning and poetry in the manner of, say, Frank Miller's Sin City (which it resembles tonally and aesthetically to certain degrees). The comic-book element is worthy of note, in that it is an extremely visual, painterly novel: scenes and characters are rendered in a highly aesthetic style, the grime and murkiness of The City's streets counterpointed by the lurid lighting and exaggerated décor of up-market casinos and hotels, manors and apartments. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see this rendered in a comic book form at some point, which format the story would lend itself to beautifully.
 
Whilst there is definitely an over-arching narrative, the story consists of several loose “episodes,” all of which function on their own terms but also feed into the wider tale. These episodes generally consist of bodies that Duggan is invited to assess, murders that The City's more conventional police forces are reluctant or ill-equipped to handle. This may not appeal to some readers, as most of these sub-plots are quite neatly structured and contained (again, very much resembling the episodes of a TV show), whereas others will no doubt enjoy the shifts in pace, tone and focus that occur.
 
Duggan is the consistent element, along with The City itself, both of whom increasingly reflect one another in their intensity, simultaneously expressions of one another and counterposed in terms of their aspects. In context with the aforementioned underlying metaphysics, Duggan takes on the quality of a grizzled angel, weary of the wars against Hell and its forces, sick with the mire and muck of humanity in a way few others can comprehend.
 
Those that do not have a background in noir fiction and cinema may find certain elements of the stoy difficult to digest: like the form that it emulates, The Other Side of the Mirror incorporates exaggerations and distortions, theatrical dialogue and situations that may be puzzling to those that don't already have a grounding in the genre. Likewise, they may find some of the caricatures and stereotypes the book deals in off-putting or problematic, as this is the manner in which noir fiction classically operates: characters are not necessarily characters as they might be in other forms of fiction; they are larger-than-life exaggerations and distortions that work on an almost mythological level rather than in psychological reality.
 
That said, Jones takes pains to invest them with just enough in the way of ambiguity and shading to make them interesting to a post-modern palate; they are nowhere near the stark simplicity one might find in a Raymond Chandler story, for example: here, the archetypes are muddied by influence from other forms, most notably gritty police-procedurals and murder mysteries, which lends the entire novel a quality and texture not unlike the film Se7en or similarly grim works.
 
Engagingly and economically written, atmospheric and stylish, a work that not only knows its own influences but how to play with and subvert them, The Other Side of the Mirror is an examination of human filth and unbending morality, of civilisation on the verge of collapsing into chaos and the suffering that order requires.
 
A more than worthy example of the evolution of its core traditions.
 
 
 4 out of 5 Gingernuts.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR BY LEX JONES

Carl Duggan has worked as a Detective in the city for a long time. The kind of long where you’ve seen everything, and seen it twice. With that in mind, it comes as no surprise to him when a pregnant nineteen-year-old girl washes up on the banks of the Styx. But something about this one is different, and before Carl gets any answers, two more bodies join the pile - a corrupt Judge and a big-shot lawyer. Carl’s gut tells him there’s a connection. There are the little things, the tiny details that others would ignore. The bodies keep on coming, then a second case rears its head: three young men with nothing in common except their sexuality, each murdered in their own home. Gaining little assistance from his fellow officers, Carl goes it alone into the darker regions of the City. Along the way, he makes acquaintances and enemies of the City’s more colorful residents, including the beautiful sister of the first dead girl, a Catholic hit-man dubbed ‘His Holiness’, and a shady casino owner named Dice. The closer he gets to the truth, the more Carl’s life is put in danger, forcing him to move further and further away from the rule of law. Never once does he suspect that the two cases are so intimately linked, or that the truth could be so close to home.

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