{"id":543,"date":"2018-09-03T07:37:54","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T07:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/?p=543"},"modified":"2018-09-03T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T17:16:23","slug":"breaking-bread-with-monsters-a-dark-immorality-play-from-lisa-cutts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2018\/09\/03\/breaking-bread-with-monsters-a-dark-immorality-play-from-lisa-cutts\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking bread with monsters: a dark Immorality Play from Lisa Cutts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world is, alas, not straightforward \u2013 choices are hard, mistakes are made, doubts are cast and events in the past shape and often warp the future; all elements captured in Mercy Killing<\/em>, by crime writer and real-life detective, Lisa Cutts. Centred around the murder of a known paedophile, Cutts deliberately muddies the waters throughout the novel, crafting a story that makes the reader\u2019s reactions to characters less than straightforward, playing on our unease.<\/p>\n

\"\"What Cutts is exploring in the novel, a gritty, urban police procedural informed by her own experiences as an investigating detective, is the idea that bad things can come from good intentions, a concept which affects all the characters involved in the drama, and which sees each of them grappling with their own conflicts and making uncomfortable liaisons. At the head of the case, DI Powell is fully aware that, to solve the case, he must ‘break bread with a monster,’ and knows precisely the moment when he crosses the line.\u00a0 His personal dance with the devil involves a meeting with the less than wholesome Martha, who leads the Volunteer Army,\u00a0 a group of local people which at first seems to have a positive mandate –\u00a0 those involved are \u2018trying to make it as safe for people as they can about living with sex offenders around them and we want to work with the police. We\u2019re trying to do our bit to help.\u2019 Yet urban vigilantes taking the law into their own hands is never a good idea, and later in the book the reason for the creation of the group is revealed, arising as it does from yet another evil beginning.<\/p>\n

DC Sophia Ireland’s own stance on pursuing criminals neatly outlines the whole moral dilemma of the book: \u2018we can\u2019t live in a society that thinks it\u2019s ok to kill them off without so much as a trial.\u2019 She has a firm grasp of the the crux of the book right there \u2013 the battle between justice and righteousness. But she in turn has an internal conflict: she is not convinced that DC Gabrielle Royston is suited to investigating the case, but does not want to betray a colleague \u2013 and Royston\u2019s own situation is not clear-cut, either\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"
Writing from experience: Lisa Cutts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For all the grim issues the novel confronts, they are balanced by touches of humour throughout the story. One of the threads running through the plot is Powell\u2019s slowly unravelling marriage \u2013 a situation arising, it becomes clear, again out of the best of intentions; in one scene, he returns late from work yet again, and undresses next to his wife in the hope that there might be an amorous encounter. ‘ \u2018Don\u2019t roll your bloody socks into a ball.\u2019 Her words were accompanied by the sound of her turning over, and the click of the light switch\u2026Sex was certainly off.\u2019<\/p>\n

From the outset, Cutts creates a series of characters, none of whom has a clear-cut status that is morally right or wrong. The reader is left unsure where to place their sympathies, and is thereby drawn into the depths of a web of moral ambiguity. Each suspect \u2013 and some of the police, too \u2013 has a stain on their character, which only becomes clear as the novel unfolds, but each has some element of their background, some aspect to their story, that means a straight and outright condemnation by the reader is not possible. It\u2019s an effective device that pulls the reader onwards, leading them through what might be called an \u2018immorality play,\u2019 a darkly intricate tale where, as one of the characters observes early in the novel, even though the case may be solved and justice brought, there can be no winners.<\/p>\n

Mercy Killing<\/em> is the first in Cutts’ East Rise Incident Room series,\u00a0 published by Simon and Schuster<\/a> in 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world is, alas, not straightforward \u2013 choices are hard, mistakes are made, doubts are cast and events in the past shape and often warp the future; all elements captured in Mercy Killing, by crime writer and real-life detective, Lisa Cutts. Centred around the murder of a known paedophile, Cutts deliberately muddies the waters throughout … Continue reading “Breaking bread with monsters: a dark Immorality Play from Lisa Cutts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1150,1201],"tags":[21880,49768,168678,168683],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}