read by Robin Sachs
If you like your psychopaths creatively sadistic, then John
Dodds’ Bone Machines will appeal in
large measure.
If you like your psychopaths creatively sadistic, then John
Dodds’ Bone Machines will appeal in
large measure.
Oscar Wilde remarks in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray that ‘no artist has ethical sympathies’.
In Bone Machines, artist Stephen
Morrell demonstrates precisely that. Enjoying critical acclaim for his art,
which combines photography, sculpture and all the commodification of
contemporary installation work, he affects the disdain, ambiguity and
superiority of the modern artist and maintains the rich tradition of excess and
hedonism of the cynically creative. What Morrell exhibits is a charnel.
Gay men, naive young girls and unsuspecting older women go
missing. Ray Bissett, a journalist with
a failed marriage, another failed relationship and political skeletons, has a
daughter who joins the ranks of the disappeared. Police detective Tom Kendrick
knows all about Ray’s past and is exasperatingly unhelpful.
Bone Machines is
full of the masculine violence that is Glasgow. Men and women, generally
speaking, fulfil their gendered roles. Everyone smokes. Robin Sachs’ reading
drives the plot along, and there is a lack of resolution in the denouement that
promises perhaps more tales of torture and death.
* * *
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