All Was Lost by Steven Maxwell

Published by ‎ Pushkin Vertigo on March 1, 2022

All Was Lost is an appropriate title for a story of desperate actions taken by people who are willing to risk losing everything. The plot is noir on steroids.

Orla McCabe, an Irish transplant to Liverpool, is photographing a crumbling abbey at night when a “lurching figure” leads her to a “shooting box,” a small enclosure used by hunters. She takes photos of a scene that resembles a small-scale death camp when someone shoots at her. Orla drops her camera and driver’s license as she flees. Outside the shooting box, she pauses to take a gun from the hand of a dead man. She also grabs a suitcase full of money that the dead man must have been guarding.

Orla’s impulsive decision raises questions about the morality of theft. In Orla’s judgment, she took money from bad people who would use it for bad purposes. Why should they have money when she struggles as a cleaner, when her husband has a month left on his work contract, when their home has been repossessed and when she has a baby to feed? In Orla’s view, the worst thing about not having money “isn’t that you don’t own things, it's that you don’t own yourself.” The money represents freedom.

News stories soon make clear that, seen in a different light, the money represents the fruits of human trafficking. Orla’s husband Liam doesn’t want anything to do with it. To him, it’s the devil’s money and Orla has cursed their family by taking it. To Orla, the harm caused by the traffickers has already been done. She believes the money will make them better people and will give their daughter the life she deserves. She clings to that belief long after it becomes apparent to the reader that Orla has no obvious way out of the predicament she made for herself.

While the philosophical struggle between Orla and Liam persists throughout the novel, Orla spends most of her time running. She runs from people who want the money and, when one of them finds it, she runs after the money. Her primary stalker is Dolan, who has been tasked by Cy Green with recovering his money. The pursuit leaves death in Orla’s wake and threatens the welfare of her husband and daughter.

As that story unfolds, Cy’s interest in human trafficking has become an embarrassment to the in-law who presides over their crime family. He assigns his son, Millar Sweet, the job of cleaning up Uncle Cy’s mess. The fast-moving action leaves the reader wondering whether Sweet or Dolan will find Orla before they settle scores with each other.

Two cops, Lynch and Carlin, are also on Orla’s trail. Carlin has his own money problems, thanks to loan sharks who are threatening his family. Lynch has a different problem, involving an affair with a married woman he hopes to rescue from a dangerous man. It does not seem that things will end well for anyone in this violent story of temptations and bad choices.

Apart from a couple of children, Liam is the novel’s only innocent character. His flaw is that he is too trusting. Lynch is not entirely innocent, but he at least feels the need to do something good with his life, something unselfish. Orla and Carlin have made their beds, but the reader will worry that they might suffer undue punishment for their sins. Orla might not be admirable, but she is determined and resourceful. That’s enough to make readers care about her.

Maxwell establishes a grim atmosphere with fading light, barking dogs, and abundant blood without slowing the pace of this tight novel. The plot is built on one surprise after another as the short chapters count down from 67 to 0. The penultimate chapter changes everything. Despite the shocks, the story never feels contrived. All Was Lost is a brutal crime novel, the kind of story that isn’t meant for weak stomachs, but it is also an intriguing character study of the choices people make when they feel lost, when temptation bumps against their sense of being crushed by life.

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