The Penguin Man

Ted Thring is a book reviewer for the Queen’s University radio
station.

The first part of this novel deals with the boyhood of Myles McKenna,
the product of a dyslexic family in the Irish ghetto of Lowell,
Massachusetts, where most people labor in the textile mills. When Myles
and his two sisters are abandoned by their father, their mother is
unable to cope. In a desperate move, she ships them off to her mother, a
drunken harridan who lives near Dracut. The old lady’s relentless
bullying eventually drives Myles to set fire to the house, with fatal
results. Myles is sentenced to the juvenile correction centre at
Shirley.

As the second part opens, Myles has been released from the centre and
is living in Boston where he works as a bartender in the local Irish
pubs—not the best occupation for a man who has inherited the family
tendency to alcoholism. The one bright spot in Myles’s life is his
volunteer work at the Boston Aquarium. When the aquarium mounts an
expedition to the Falkland Islands to study the flora and fauna, he tags
along. Murder and mayhem result when a group associated with petroleum
interests tries to sabotage their work.

The Penguin Man is a lively yarn but not for the squeamish due to the
graphic descriptions of killings and a violent rape.