Rope
Martin Livings
Dark Prints Press, eNovella
Review by Matthew Tait
When Stephen King first published The Green Mile in serial format back in 1996, it was my first large-scale exposure to the realm of death row in a fictional setting. Not just death row, but the electric chair in particular. Although I don’t know for sure, I’m betting there are reams of genre fiction encompassing this particular milieu: everything from stark legal thrillers in the mould of John Grisham, to frightening serial killer fodder that is the unenvious playground of imaginations such as Thomas Harris and James Patterson. However it was King’s magical yet realist tale – for me, anyway – that finally pushed capital punishment screaming into a kind of collective cultural awareness. Upon the tale’s completion I’m sure I’m not the only individual whose curiosity was suddenly piqued by the taboo of modern execution – not only the myriad of methods involved but also the untold stories of the lives behind the curtain: the men and women charged with dispensing unfelt and clinical justice to the condemned.
Martin Livings has, no doubt, had similar thoughts.
Our tale is begun at the turn of last century, with Australia’s Freemantle prison struggling to pull itself out of a national convict past. A nameless narrator shares with us the humble beginnings of being a sanctioned serial killer: that of the hangman. An apprentice from a young age, he is given the responsibility of fashioning his own noose, a rite of passage, that will see him embrace his calling and ultimately being defined by it.
Life itself is a rope with a noose at each end, just like mine.
A short excursion, Martin manages to cram a lot of character study into a very small space, and it’s personally how I like my paragraphs: weighty with exposition and lean on dialogue. In some ways this is partly reminiscent of The Green Mile, whereby story is ultimately foreshadowed by a fiction steeped in sin that leads to a different kind of redemption.
Martin Livings has been traversing Australia’s dark fiction scene for over two decades now, providing dependable tales with a mature rendering of prose. Although short, Rope still manages to deliver something that is unmistakably the authors.
Rope is the second offering from Dark Prints Press new line of eNovellas.
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