Iron House by John Hart

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on July 12, 2011

Iron House starts as the story of a man (Michael) who wants to leave the crime family in which he was raised after escaping from a brutal orphanage. Michael's desire to change his criminal life is motivated by his love of a woman (Elena) who doesn't know that he's a mob enforcer. Iron House later tells the story of Michael's attempt to defend the brother (Julian) he hasn't seen in years from the crime family's retaliation. Michael discovers that he must protect Julian from a different kind of harm when dead bodies are discovered on the estate of the senator who adopted Julian. The two stories eventually connect in unexpected ways.

John Hart strives to bring literary quality to his prose. Often he succeeds. Occasionally he reaches for metaphors that don't quite work, or has characters speaking with unnatural eloquence. I nonetheless regard Iron House as an unusually well written thriller. The plot is clever and, although it threatens to go over-the-top toward the end (as is the trend in thrillers), the story managed to stay within the realm of plausibility, if only barely.

While the story is surprisingly good, the characters lack depth. Michael is a garden-variety "killer with a heart." Elena's initial decision to rid herself of this monster is believable, but her later waffling is inconsistent with the limited personality that Hart gave her. The gangsters are stock gangsters and Julian, supposedly a brilliant author of children's books but deeply damaged, is a character we never get to know.

Iron House has other problems. A minor one: All the characters are convinced that if Julian is arrested (and the police are determined to arrest him for the dead bodies that are found on the senator's estate despite the complete absence of evidence against him), he will respond to an interrogation by making an incriminating statement. I can't believe Julian, at thirty-two, is so weak-willed that he can't remember to answer the first question with "I won't talk to you without a lawyer," at which time questioning must cease. And even if Julian is that weak-willed, the army of lawyers working for the senator would hang a sign around his neck invoking Julian's Fifth Amendment privilege. All the hand-wringing about Julian's impending arrest is nonsensical.

A more serious problem: I think John Hart cheated by trying to make the reader like (or at least empathize with) Michael. Hart repeatedly tells us that Michael was raised "to be better than the things he did" but that's dishonest. We are the things we do. Michael is a killer. Sure, we're told that he only killed other criminals, a caveat that Hart apparently added so readers wouldn't reject Michael out of hand, but by killing other criminals Michael was advancing the goals of his adopted crime family. Hart skates around Michael's true nature, does his best to make Michael seem like a decent man, probably because he knows that many readers dislike books if they don't like the characters. I think Iron House would have been just as good -- better, in fact -- if Michael's murderous past had been directly confronted and more openly displayed.

So: good plot, strong writing, weak characters, not entirely honest, and a few other problems but not so many as to destroy my appreciation of the story.

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