The great crime story

May 26, 2019 Book Review…

Book: Beyond the Fence
Author: Sheldon Peart
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

A missing person that shows up dead; a murdered officer; a gangster who cheats death and wrestles with his conscience; a plot to escape the law that goes array; a murderous gang leader flees justice; the cat-and-mouse game of an extortionist; libidinous desires; and a law enforcement department that turns professionalism on its head. Welcome to Sheldon Peart’s cauldron.
Peart has assembled a repugnant cast of characters – dealers in extortion, armed robbery, murder and chicanery. Here, authenticity and truth are smothered under the weight of evil. And those who uphold the law are themselves specious, cold, not unlike those they prosecute.
Vices reign. Gambling, drunkenness, debauchery and womanizing are natural indulgences. This is a world, a hell where the denizens are bound by sacrilege. Peart delivers an exhaustive, thrilling page-turner. He is vividly descriptive, setting the stage meticulously with polished, well-defined characters that eventually roam our psychic space. We are moved, repulsed by their flaws, their insensitivity, their madness.
Goodness is purged and evil infects the hearts of men. We are introduced to Johnny’s Invisible Posse, a brutal gang that feeds on murder, bank robberies, burglaries and hijackings. And the fairer sex, namely, Sadie and Dorothy, wives of Buddom and Turnbull, are revolting. Their spouses fare no better.
In this Jamaican underworld, Turnbull goes missing and the police zero in on Sadie and her husband. And we are introduced to Inspector Black, a nauseating human being, a relentless libertine who exceeds the limits of decency. Startled we are when a junior officer warns the Inspector of his indiscretions. “Anyway, may I remind you that you should never get emotionally and sexually involved with the subjects of a case you are investigating.”
We are not dismayed when the Inspector ignores sound advice and succumbs to the sexual advances of Turnbull’s wife. That Inspector Black is beleaguered, haggard, and a possible victim of a festering, transferable disease is hardly surprising. In a high-octane scene, Sadie threatens to expose him: “Maybe your lawyer will think of something which could be mutually beneficial…You are hereby charged with sexual molestation of a prisoner – badgering her for sex and physically abusing her when she refused your advances.”
Alas, some good investigative work is marred by threats against suspects and looming police brutality.
And we ask: “Who will guard the guards?”
Sadie and Dorothy are provocateurs, duplicitous, exploitative, mendacious and perfidious. Sexual predators they are. Sadie is called “a bloody liar and murderer,” by law enforcement, worthy of nothing but incarceration. She is also prey to a spiteful bully of a husband.
She is pummeled relentlessly. In one wrenching moment, Buddom frighteningly explodes. “Sadie closed her eyes as he approached her. She didn’t see the roundhouse right punch which caught her flush on the cheek…The left uppercut tore through the air with a mighty swoosh. But his sharp right hand to her groin knocked her to the floor. She was stock-still, sobbing, crumpled and bleeding.” Somehow she survives.
Broken ribs and a battered face heal, but her soul just cannot. The wiles of Sadie are in full bloom as she stages a scene to exculpate her husband, who has just slit the throat of her lover.
In a ravine that has swallowed countless bodies courtesy of the Invisible Posse, they dispose of the body in the dead of night as lightning pierces the sky and rain muddies a scene of horror. But they are tormented by their own schemes and fate deals a deadly blow to the wife-batterer. Will Sadie follow in like vein?
Gang leader Johnny sets the lugubrious tone when he leaves his partners in crime for dead during an aborted operation. The charred body of Chappy, electrocuted at the fence of Buddom’s property is followed by Charlie, who narrowly cheats death after being struck by his ruthless boss.
At the outset, a chilling warning is served that Peart’s work is daringly gory. Only Johnny’s daughter Natalie, seems to be authentic, a breath of fresh air. But in this sordid existence, no one can be certain.
Johnny, though, is not steely as he wants us to believe. He crumbles under pressure, a bundle of nerves when forcibly challenged. He “shuddered with fright and his lips trembled,” when interrogated by Inspector Black about his involvement in the disappearance of Turnbull. Eventually the wheels of justice begin to turn, slowly. Johnny becomes the hunted, a prey – besieged by law enforcement and a taunting female voice spewing secrets that threaten his freedom. Johnny must pay the piper.
When the smoke clears from this smoldering stench, Johnny is nabbed in the United Kingdom. But somehow the long arm of the law is severed and evil is ever present. Shockingly, Sadie narrowly escapes the slammer and we scratch our heads, muttering under our breath: “Sometimes, crime does pay.”

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