Review: Tadhg Coakley’s Before He Kills Again

TW: rape, murder, gender-based violence 

Before He Kills Again by Tadhg Coakley. Mercier Press, 2023. €16.99, 367 pages. 

The much-awaited sequel to Whatever It Takes, the first novel in Detective Tim Collins’ crime series, has finally hit our bookshelves! Before He Kills Again returns the reader to the streets of Cork City and to morally grey Garda Collins, whose strong will and sense of morality find him battling not just Cork’s criminals, but also his colleagues. 

This installment is dedicated to “the victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. And to those who protect and look after them.” Collins’ latest case surrounds the brutal rape and murder of a woman in her own home. Author Coakley’s use of the insidiously prevalent dead girl trope to bring attention to the issues of incel culture and rising gender-based violence is effective, but may feel tone-deaf to some readers. Collins’ insistence that “whoever did this can never take away the colour of her eyes” would give the impression that Helen’s personhood is key to the novel, but she receives little development in the 345 pages that follow. 

At times, the novel’s take on gender-based violence seems more treatise than story; we are hit repeatedly with statistics (“only 230 of 1,000 sexual assaults are reported. Of those, only 46 lead to a charge and nine lead to a prosecution”, “did you know that 26 per cent of women in Ireland have experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15, and that 41 per cent of people in Ireland know a woman who has been a victim of some form of domestic violence?”, “in sexual assault about 50 per cent of perpetrators know the victim but in sex-related homicide the percentage is much higher at 87 per cent”), as well as criticisms of the system (“there’s a great sense of shame and a huge shortage of emergency accommodations, not to mention inadequacies in the law protecting witnesses”, “the reason the system is so much in favour of men, even men who attack women, is that men set up the system”). While each statistic provided and claim made is relevant and important to highlight, the tone sometimes feels incompatible with the character speaking, as if they’re a vessel for the information rather than an agentic character. That said, the novel is certainly an excellent source of learning on this topic. 

Key to the novel’s plot (and, indeed, to the rise of gender-based violence in Ireland) is incel subculture. Again, the novel’s exposition on this topic is not particularly subtle (“have you heard of this incel crowd? … it’s short for involuntary celibacy”), often delivering huge tracts of information:  

The main characteristics of incels is that they blame women for their lack of sexual success. Hence the hatred. They go online to what they call the “Manosphere” and find likeminded people and many of them are then radicalised and act out on their perverted “principles”. They don’t refer to us as women, by the way, that’s too humanising. They call us “Foids” which is short for “Female Humanoid Organism” or “FHO”. They use a lot of acronyms. They also refer to women as “Stacy” or “Becky” depending on the woman’s appearance. 

The author’s use of incel to refer to the entire movement (much as one might refer to ISIS, Antifa, etc) is at odds with any usage I’ve ever heard (namely, incel as a singular noun referring to a member of the subculture--an incel-- or in genitive constructions--incel culture), suggests an unfamiliarity with the subculture which would lead me to question its inclusion in the novel. This is furthered by the novel’s hammy depictions of incel forums: “they will all bow down eventually, like my wife (or as I call her, The Cash Cow)”. Still, the use of incel to refer to the culture in its entirety lends a gravity to the movement, while the theatrical messages show its ridiculous nature. 

From the novel’s outset, Collins’ thoughts and dialogue are rife with run-on-sentences. I felt this gave his point of view a realistic, stream-of-consciousness type style, but with further reading considered it may have been an error. Repeated mispunctuation in dialogue (“Hi Rose thanks for the help”, “everything’s fine we’re working away”) as well as a scene where dialogue is mislabeled as Collins rather than Hega suggests this was an editorial oversight rather than a stylistic feature. 

The novel does an excellent job of examining the pervasive nature of misogyny. The narrator notes repeatedly that colleagues direct questions at Collins rather than his partner Deirdre, even when she’s addressing the room. Many people close to the murder case are involved in controlling relationships. Deirdre observes the “laddish” culture of the station, hating it. Through the family of his romantic partner, Collins encounters the misogyny of GAA clubs, and the rape-culture that permeates the lives of teenage girls. He also is called out on his own misogyny, chastised for viewing his partner as a baby-sitter rather than the excellent garda she is. Moved to another case against his will, Collins is again confronted with the effects of gender-based violence and incel culture. The novel’s plot very accurately depicts the saturation of misogyny in our culture, illustrating the statistics in human terms. 

Collins’ character is perhaps the most interesting element of the novel. From the outset he is depicted as particularly compassionate man: Deirdre, comments that it seems “as though Collins cared more than she did” about the murder victim, and a later encounter reveals that he isn’t “one of the ‘let them rot in hell’ brigade”, but rather shows compassion to criminals too. At the same time, Collins has a reputation for breaking the rules, and says himself that he’ll bring the murderer “to justice … whatever the consequences”. Between the violent attack he perpetrates in the novel, and an uncomfortable scene in which he misspeaks and says that criminals need to be put down rather than put away, Collins’ moral greyness is fascinating, and I’m excited to see how it develops in the next installment.  

It’s not just Collins who suffers from moral ambiguity in the novel. The Garda Síochána are portrayed simultaneously as heroic and unscrupulous. Deirdre admits to the guilty pleasure of murder inquiries, the superintendent smirks when Collins has a complaint made against him, and there are worries that the “fucking do-gooders” will take issue with Collins’ violent attack. In relation to catching murderers, Deirdre invokes the phrase used by the IRA after their attempted bombing of Thatcher: “those pricks have to get lucky every time … we only have to get lucky once”. At the same time, we’re told that community gardaí “do good work”, we’re asked to feel sorry for Collins when he’s called a pig, and for the station when the “media coverage was incessant”. We’re asked to blame murder on underfunding: “when people like Jones cut loose, the politicians start flinging blame for their own failures”. With our real-life gardaí hanging up on domestic violence calls and partaking in gender-based violence, this criticism of an Garda Síochána couched in the point of view of a garda who is blind to much of these failings is quite powerful. 

Enjoyable as a stand-alone piece, Collins’ complexity will no doubt have you searching up its prequel and anxiously awaiting the next installment. While the novel isn’t without its flaws, it has shoot-out scenes to get your heart racing, and a thrilling double-climax you won’t find elsewhere. For those who like to do a little more reflecting, the novel certainly lends itself to this: the connections between misogynistic violence and men being applauded for breaking the rules are drawn tenuously, but backed up completely by the rest of the novel. Ultimately, this is a perfect crime novel to throw in your suitcase this summer.