Set in present-day Philadelphia, FUNERAL OF LIES drips with cynicism. Evan is a PR specialist who’s unexpectedly hired by his uncle to manage his mayoral election campaign, following the death of the previous mayor. Author A.E.S. O’Neill succeeds in giving a warts-and-all account of politics, both the conventional and the family sort.

As a protagonist, Evan is rare: he’s difficult to like, but hard to ignore. Brought up in “the deep truth of atheism” in an Irish-Catholic family, he sees everyone’s game, despises (or at least harbors an active dislike for) the pretenses of father and mother, aunt and uncle. If not exactly a misanthrope, he seems to spend most of his time resenting or internally poking fun at those around him. He is also somewhat vain, snappy with words, and an incipient failure—having run through a succession of jobs in New York. Seven decades ago, and with a few world-weary years shaved off his age, he would have been Holden Caulfield.

But he gets away with all of this because he is exceptionally good at his new job. His shoot-from-the-hip assessments of people are usually accurate. What emerges from his commentaries is a morality tale between the whiter-than-white approach of his uncle (the sort of would-be politician who idolizes Lincoln) and Evan’s more quotidian approach. When kompromat on the other guy (a politician of the “insincere, smarmy, staged” sort) comes his way, Evan itches to use it. The contents of a manila envelope function as the novel’s Chekhov’s gun, and the only part of the plot that’s somewhat telegraphed.

O’Neill has a good ear for resounding phrases—“Death always draws a bigger crowd than birth,” for example, will remain in the memory—and the plotting is tight and clinical. In the end, FUNERAL OF LIES comprises a cold-eyed meditation on power and finds it intoxicating. The irony of the book is that it’s not Evan’s uncle who should be running, but Evan himself. To paraphrase his own words, he is the one character in his family who appreciates that lies don’t have to be true; they just have to be said.

A.E.S. O’Neill’s FUNERAL OF LIES offers a hard-nosed look at municipal politics and the intoxicating influence of power.

~ Craig Jones for IndieReader