Crime Always Pays
"Crime is but a left-handed form of human endeavour." W.R. Burnett
Updated: 20 min 33 sec ago
Crime Always Pays
As all three regular readers will be aware, last week I posted the first chapter in my work-in-progress, DANNY BOY, inviting comments and criticism. It was a hugely useful exercise, I have to say, and a heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated.
Below I’ve posted Chapter One again, which was rewritten in the last week to incorporate most, if not all, of the critiques. I’ve also posted Chapter Two, in the hope that people will be as generous with their time and comments as they were last week. If you have better things to do, I perfectly understand.
The first chapter, incidentally, takes place in Loutro, on the south coast of Crete; for those of you interested, the specific setting of the fictional house patrolled by Dan Noone is the very top-right corner of the picture above, the copyright of which belongs to K. Mavrakis.
And now, Dear Reader, over to you …
Chapter 1
A dying man, she said, if he’s any kind of man, will live beyond the law. Gripping my hand in her papery claw as she pulled me close enough to hear her last choking whispers.
A fierce woman, my mother, and never fiercer than the night she died. A hawk like so many women before her, gentled by her times and generation to live as a dove, but we whom she loved knew she hovered above us, sharp-eyed and unblinking, alert to any threat to her precious brood and poised on an instant to wheel, fold her wings and plunge.
Her talons gouged my palm. ‘Do you have me?’ she whispered, and it was nearly a screech.
‘I have,’ I said.
I am my mother’s only son.
Tonight I learn if I’m any kind of man.
They’ll come before dawn, slipping down out of the hills like the andartes of old. In that cold hour there’ll be no goats to spook, no stones kicked loose, no moon to glint dull on the blackened barrels of their guns. Brave men, these Sphakians, and tough as heartwood, but crafty with it. Born to survive at any cost but dishonour. The old laws, and only the old laws, endure on this coast: hospitality, physics, vendetta. All else is choice and personal taste.
Eight hours, then, give or take. The light already thickening, dusk sifting in. The moon full and low over the eastern bluff. Too early yet for stars.
‘Night falls so fast here,’ Berte tells the tourists, ‘you can almost hear the bump.’
They laugh at the whimsy because Berte has a shaved head, an elephant seal nose and the eyes of an ex-bouncer who got bounced so hard by a crew of neo-Nazi Angels that he kept on bouncing, a stone skipped from Utrecht to the southernmost point of the continent until he touched down here, a village so remote it’s accessible only to those who hike or sail in. Seven years now he’s been telling that joke. Except night doesn’t fall here. It rises, drifting up out of the earth to settle like good stout. Down below the village curves out around the bay, the murk blurring its white cubes to that of a pearl necklace loosely strung. Yet the peaks above still glimmer gold along the ridge and a zinc horizon slices sky from sea. The Libyan Sea, the nameless sky.
Here I stand, I can do no other …
Loutro is the perfect place to die.
It will be warm until long after midnight. The air hangs trapped in the bowl of the bay, hemmed in by the faint offshore breeze. Just pacing the balcony, a cigarette cupped in one hand, the solid comfort of Berte’s Colt in the other, is enough to raise a sweat, set my back a-prickle. From the village murmurs carry across the water, beach in a swush of surf, wash on up the hill. The early diners gathering. Chairs scrape, a cork pops. Then a trill of laughter, the chink of knife on plate, the hiss and spit of grilling fish. A whiff of kalamari wafts up on the breeze, roasting lamb speckled with oregano, the sharp bite of lemon. My mouth waters and I swallow hard. Hunger has its own logic, but there will be no last meal for the condemned man. We are long past the pieties.
For relief I bring up the gun and sniff for the trace of cordite that still lingers and by the miracle of chemistry his face appears behind my eyes. That singular arrangement of features, unique as a fingerprint, that had haunted me day and night until earlier this afternoon, high in the hills under the burning sun, when they hung suspended above the blunt sight of the Colt. The sharp point to his chin, the hollow cheeks, the curving beak of the nose. The terror in the hooded eyes for that moment when he believed I would pull the trigger, the flash of relief that soured to sneering triumph as I lowered the gun.
But it wasn’t his terror I’d come for. It was the storm that boiled up in his eyes, of helpless rage and fear, but especially fear, when I said, ‘We have Courtney.’
At last he understood. The rest was ceremony. The plan being that he’d die long and hard, tortured in mind and body and soul.
I spark another smoke and rub my thumb on the crosshatched grip of the Colt. Trying to imagine his agony as he dragged himself down the slopes under that merciless sun, across rock and scree, through the coarse maquis, a dying animal with only one thought in mind.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d made it. A tough nut, Whelan, and besides, the more adventurous hikers stray from the trails every day, flirting with rock-slides and heatstroke and the imagined romance of finding themselves lost on a lunar landscape. It’s not impossible that some Good Samaritan schooled in First Aid might have heard him screaming, or happened across him slumped in the lee of a boulder, or spotted the fresh trail of blood and tracked him down.
I wonder, if he did make it, if they’ll send him up the slope from the village when the time comes, crawling along the moon-silvered path as staked goat and sacrificial lamb. This to judge how rash I am, how good a shot, how lethal my intentions. By now they know that I’m capable of leaving a man to die but perhaps they are wondering if I can actually kill. A quantum leap in moral terms, perhaps, but a difference that could well shape their entire strategy.
I spark another smoke to kill the hunger pangs and somewhere between the clink-flick and the flaring flame the Boop appears. She has this trick where she sneaks up from behind and ducks in between my legs, forcing her head through, her pudgy arms gripping my thighs. A tiny Samson about to haul on her pillars. This time, when she twists her head to look up, her wide blue eyes are solemn. ‘Smoking nasty, Dada,’ she says.
Nothing like disappointing his child to flay a man’s heart.
‘It is, love,’ I say. ‘Tell Momma I’m finally giving up.’
She forces herself all the way through my legs, then turns to stands before me with one hand on her hip. A two-foot tyrant. She wags a finger. ‘I put you,’ she says, ‘on the thinking chair.’
I flip the cigarette away and reach to ruffle her blonde hair but she ducks away, pouting.
‘Won’t be long now, Bumbles,’ I say.
All at once her face brightens, the chubby cheeks flushing, a gleam of milk-teeth in the dusk. ‘Dada come in a liddle bit?’
‘Another liddle bit, Boop. Tell Momma that Dada is coming.’
She flinches. The blue eyes cloud. ‘I not find Momma.’ Her lower lip trembles. ‘I missed her.’
Lost her, she means. ‘I know, love, but we’ll find her together. Dada will help.’
The eyes widen again. She quivers with repressed hope. ‘Find Momma?’
‘Exactamundo, Boop. Can you say exactamundo?’
‘Zakamundo!’
‘Good girl. Kiss for Dada?’ I hunker down as she flattens her pink lips, stifling her giggles, arms thrown wide as she launches herself at my chest. For a split second I even allow myself to believe she is real but as always she dissolves at the last moment and passes through and is gone, and I’m left as cold as an empty church and she the last echo of a whispered prayer. One shudder is all it takes to leave me drained, exhausted, and it occurs to me to put the barrel of the Colt in my mouth, be done with it, but then a raucous burst of laughter explodes from the hushed murmurings below, a high-pitched screech of denial, and I remember that there are promises to be made good before this night is done.
Inside, and despite the white-tiled floor, the whitewashed walls, the room is dim as a cave. A brief yellow glow when I open the fridge to take out the plastic bottle of orange juice, a tub of yoghurt with a pair laughing strawberries on the label. I bring them across to the bed where she lies cruciform, ankles and wrists lashed to the bed’s legs. There’s no denying she’s a pretty girl. Brown eyes that are almost almond in shape, the irises flecked hazel. In direct sunlight, when she smiles her crooked smile, the flecks are green.
No flecks in the subterranean gloom. No smile tonight. Her nostrils flare as I perch on the bed, place the yoghurt and juice on the locker. When I take the balled sock from her mouth she spits dry, works a sandpaper tongue across her lips. Eleven years old, perhaps a little older. These days it can be hard to tell.
The juice first, tilting the bottle to her lips. She drinks greedily, sucking it down. While she gasps I dab the run-off from her chin with a corner of the sheet, then open the yoghurt, spoon it home. She’s ravenous.
‘There’s fruit,’ I say. ‘A banana, if you want it. Or an apple?’
‘Banana.’
I fetch the banana, peel it back. She devours it in four bites. Then the rest of the juice. When I try to replace the gag she ducks her chin, then tosses her head from side to side. I wait for her to run out of steam.
‘Listen to me, Courtney. Courtney?’
‘Please, Danny,’ she says. The cold defiance begins to melt, her eyes watering now. ‘Please.’
‘Ssshhh.’
‘I’m not …’ She swallows the words like so much poison. ‘Please, don’t.’
Eleven years old, but old enough to have heard the stories of what happens to young girls who find themselves strapped to strange beds. Nothing I could say would calm her. As gently as I can I grip her cheeks with thumb and finger, squeeze her mouth open. Poke the balled sock in. She chokes, tries to say something, then gags way back in her throat.
‘He’ll come for you, Courtney. Don’t doubt that. He’s on his way.’
Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, although there’s no telling if they’re tears of rage or fear or self-pity. All three, probably.
I put the banana skin and yoghurt carton in the bin, the empty juice. Her eyes never leave me. I sit on the other bed and roll the last of the cigarettes. Soon enough, as hard as she fights it, the red-limned eyelids start to droop. Hardly surprising. She’s had as tough a day as she’s ever likely to have. Besides, the orange juice was laced with two crushed Dalmanes.
‘It’s okay to sleep, Courtney. He’s coming for you. Do you believe he’s coming?’
She nods. Her head jerks, then slips sideways, her chin resting on her shoulder.
‘Then sleep.’
I wait, rolling cigarettes, until she drifts off.
Out on the balcony it’s fully dark. The moon sailing high and perfectly round, God’s mouth pursed in a disapproving moue. By now the village is a blaze of light, the bay burnished gold, the moored boats so many steeplechasers clearing low hurdles as they rise and fall with the swell. From somewhere further up the hill comes the zizz-zizz of a lone cicada.
I set the straight-backed chair in the corner of the balcony tucked tight against the parapet so that when I sit the wall comes to just below my shoulder. From here I can watch the village, the bay, the eastern headland. I try to eat an apple, but hungry or not, I have no appetite. No will to refuel a machine bent on obliteration. No taste in my mouth but the thick furring of smoke on my tongue, the metallic tang of adrenaline. Below me sounds the flat tinkle-tankle bell of a stray and anxious goat. By now the village is a babble of voices, a strange opera underpinned by the music from Berte’s bar. An outboard motor rumbles, the diesel misfiring twice before it catches, and a runabout noses out onto the water to slalom slowly between the moored boats, angling across the bay. Picking up speed now, the nose rising, its wake shattering the gold leaf into shards as it arcs out towards the eastern headland.
They’ll beach near Hora Sfakion to cut off my retreat, come west along the trail, spread out across the hills. A two-hour hike at a steady march, four to five hours for a cautious advance, one leapfrogging the other, all the while half-expecting a bullet from the dark.
During the war, what Kosta calls the German War, the Sphakians wondered what all the fuss was about when everyone else turned andarte and took to the hills. Living like bandits was what the Sphakians did, Kosta reckons. What they are and will always be.
When the motorboat disappears around the point I go back to watching the village again. A pointless exercise, the blaze of light leaves the western headland, the hills beyond, black as pitch. If I had infra-red glasses I might see them drift away in ones and twos, out past the dock towards the ruined fortress, creeping up out of the alleyways into the gullies and ravines like so many cats on the prowl. The night’s hunt begun. Possessed of the stealthy patience of those who know that time and night are their allies, who know that any help I have called for will arrive too late, if it ever comes.
This will be their one mistake.
As crafty as they are, they presume I think as they do. That above all else any man holds sacred, the survival instinct reigns supreme.
Were they Persians advancing on the Hot Gates, they could not be more wrong.
The Boop, bored, wanders out from the room with her hands behind her back, scuffs a toe against some cracked concrete.
‘You come in a liddle bit, Dada.’
‘A liddle bit, Bumbles. Just another liddle bit now.’
Seven hours now, give or take.
Down below in the village, Berte cranks up the music. Johnny Cash. First the Hammond organ, wheezing like it’s been peppered by a blast of buckshot. Then the voice, that yearning growl that trembles with the sure knowledge of death, a voice that calls not from beyond the grave, but rumbles up from under the impossible weight of six feet of packed earth.
“O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling …”
Chapter 2
If you’re going to post a man a bullet, take the trouble of scratching his name into it, the least you can do, it’s common decency, is get the spelling right.
Dan None.
‘Fucking illiterates,’ JP said. He sat hunched in, arms crossed on the table. Tilting his head this way and that to examine the cartridge from every angle. ‘Nine millimetre Parabellum,’ he said. ‘Ugly bastard, isn’t it?’
It was all that, and especially the blunt nose. For some reason I’d always thought bullets were pointed but that blunt nose was a battering ram.
‘Si vis pacem, para bellum,’ JP said. ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’
‘Fuck the Latin lesson, JP. What do I do with it?’
We were sitting outside Poppies at a rickety aluminium table. A fresh spring morning, the pines rising behind the Powerscourt Arms midnight green against a pale blue sky. Pigeons perched on the cupola atop the campanile, their cooing an irregular rhythm to the traffic’s ebb and flow. Across the way The Kingfisher’s terrace was packed with yummy mummies soaking up sunshine and gossip, and the couple of tables outside Kennedy’s beside the doctor’s surgery were both taken. A busload of tourists en route to Powerscourt wandered around snapping the quaint Telefon sign on the old phone-box, the gothic curio that had once been the village school. A marmalade tabby snoozing on the low wall at the foot of the campanile woke to the sound of feathering clicks. It stretched and yawned, glanced around in disdain, then stalked off across the road.
JP had ordered a double espresso and a homemade blueberry muffin. I’d asked for a latte but it was going cold in the glass. Even the thought of it swilling down on my greasy guts made me want to puke.
Enniskerry doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but every car with a passenger was a potential drive-by. Any one of the tourists in their shades and baseball caps could have been a stone-cold killer.
The hangover was cruel but the paranoia was worse. The combination had my hands shaking and a cold sweat plastering my shirt to my back.
JP refused point-blank to sit inside. For one, he liked a smoke with his coffee. For two, he wasn’t the kind to spook easy.
The ring box lay on the table, hidden from casual glances by the salt and pepper shakers, the plastic container with its sugar sachets and condiments.
‘See this here,’ JP said, using the tip of his pinky finger to point at the cross gouged into the blunt tip. ‘That makes it what they call a dum-dum. So it flattens on impact instead of punching through. Cop that little lot in the face, it’ll take your head clean off.’ He tut-tutted, sipped some coffee. ‘Banned by the Geneva Convention, that is.’
‘JP.’
He looked up. ‘What?’
‘I just got a bullet in the post.’
‘I know, yeah.’
‘Shouldn’t you be asking me how it arrived, how it was delivered, all this?’
He sipped some coffee and let his gaze drift away. ‘You know I can’t get involved, Dan. We’ve been over this. If you’ve anything to say, Brady’s your man.’
‘Make a statement, you mean.’
‘Yeah. Make the fucking statement.’
‘What’s the point?’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit.’
‘What bullshit?’
‘This fucking bullshit.’ He threw up his hands. ‘You slopping around looking like something that crawled out of a hole. Like something that’s had its back broke. Wallowing in fucking misery, getting pissed every night …’ He made a point of sniffing the air. ‘Fuck’s sake, Dan, I can smell it from here. When’s the last time you took a shower?’
‘Because that’s what matters right now. Personal hygiene.’
‘What matters,’ JP said, lowering his voice and hunching in again, ‘is you’re letting these bastards win.’
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘You tell me now, guarantee me, that if I make a statement the DPP will take the case to court. I’m not even talking about winning the case, just that it’ll make it to court.’ I dug out my mobile phone, placed it on the table. ‘You tell me that and I’ll ring Brady right this fucking second.’
He sat back, folded his arms. A big, tough and blocky man, square across the shoulders, solid through the jaw. A little too Plod for an undercover cop, maybe, in this day and age of tech wizards and forensic specialists, which was maybe why he’d been moved upstairs, to play chess master rather than do the dirty work himself.
I like my cops old-fashioned, though. To look like they can take a good punch.
‘This isn’t about the case, Dan. It’s about you letting yourself get ground down, crawling back under that stone. And being happy about it,’ he raised a stubby forefinger to stall my protest, ‘because it’s easier that way. Because that way you don’t have to deal with how shitty the road back is going to be.’ He shook his head. ‘You think the statement has anything to do with the case? Or that the case is about, what, justice?’ He snorted. A flash of something fiery in the cold blue eyes. ‘It’s about you, Dan. You taking back who you are from the bastards who took it all away.’
Psychobabble bullshit. I’d had it from the doctor, the shrink. Cora too. Even my mother, in her inimitable way, had had a try.
The last person I expected it from was JP.
‘What I want,’ I said, ‘is Rachel and Emily back. Me I can do without, just Rachel and Emily will do it. They want to meet me halfway, do a deal, I’ll take Emily.’ He flinched at that. ‘Sorry, but that’s how it is.’
JP wasn’t just any cop. He had a stake. I’d lost my wife and baby girl. He’d lost his sister and only niece, his godchild.
You’d assume my stake was bigger, but Rachel and JP had always been close. When they were kids people mistook them for twins all the time. Only eleven months between them. Even as adults, if you got in past the bone structure and focused on his eyes, it could have been Rachel staring back.
Lately I hadn’t been meeting JP’s eyes much. Lately I hadn’t been meeting anyone’s eyes much.
That morning had started the same as any other. I’d slept late, just as I had every morning for the past four months, having cultivated the habit of spending the wee small hours staring down the smooth bores of a double-barrelled malt. An expensive game of Russian roulette, given that my father and both of his brothers should have been buried in a pickle jar rather than a coffin, but those hard little shots of Black Bush blew my brains out every night, allowing me to forget, for those few sainted hours, that I didn’t have the balls to take it all the way.
I crawled from my pit and brewed some coffee, spent half-an-hour shuffling around feeding the hangover with juices and effervescent potions. I can’t even remember if I heard the slap of the post landing on the mat in the hall.
The doorbell rang. Then again, and again. In the empty house the cheery ding-dong sounded coarse, profane.
‘Christ’s sake, Frankie,’ I muttered. ‘Just leave it in the box.’
I got a lot of parcels and packages, books mainly, but CDs and DVDs too, most of them too bulky to fit through the letterbox. Hence the toolbox I’d left beside the doorstep, so Frankie wouldn’t have to roust me away from the desk every morning.
The bell rang again.
I was in a pretty foul mood when I flung open the door on an unseasonably mild day.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Frankie said, glancing up from scribbling a note. He’s a chirpy sod at the best of times, which was another reason I’d been trying to avoid him lately, especially first thing, but that morning he was revelling in the warm weather like only a postman can. He crumpled the note and handed over the package. ‘You never know,’ he beamed, ‘it might even be worth something.’
I signed for it with shaking hands while Frankie warned that April, when it comes in like a lamb, goes out like a lion.
‘I think that’s March, actually. Take care, Frankie.’
Back inside I tossed the post and parcel on the kitchen table, popped the kettle on. Dropped a brace of Nurofen. There being nothing else to do while the kettle boiled, and presuming from its tasteful black wrapping and gilt bow that it was the latest funky marketing ploy, I opened the parcel.
It was a small cube, a ring box. Inside the box, plush red velvet. Embedded in the velvet was the bullet, polished to a gleaming finish.
At first I thought it was one of those stupid cufflinks.
When I realised what it was, my first thought was how innocent it looked. A little poignant, even. A bullet is what it is, sure. But it doesn’t have much say in what it does or where it goes.
Like a new-born infant, blind and swaddled in its red velvet.
I’d picked it up before it occurred to me to think about fingerprints. Maybe I already knew there wouldn’t be any prints. Not after all the trouble they’d taken, the macabre artifice of it. Sending it by registered post. The gilt bow, the plush velvet. Carving my name.
There was more.
A note, folded carefully into squares so that it fit snug under the velvet.
I am so, so sorry. Please forgive me. But no one else can understand how this feels. How pointless. I love you all. x DanI refolded the note, put it back under the velvet. Replaced the bullet. Got up and made myself a coffee and found my phone and came back to the table and sat there looking at my name, etched black into silver.
Dan None.
I sat at the kitchen table looking at that bullet for a long, long time. Sunshine lancing down through the blinds. The coffee went cold. I don’t know how many cigarettes I smoked.
I should have been scared. Even if the booze had burned off every last cell, some instinct should have kicked in.
But all I could think was that they’d be doing me a favour.
Eventually, and because I didn’t know what to do with the bullet - Put it away with the cutlery? An ornament for the top of the TV? - I’d rang JP.
‘Do I get protection?’ I said.
‘For what?’
‘What d’you mean, for what? They’ve sent me a bullet.’
‘Sure. As a warning, what’ll happen if you make a statement. But you’re not making one, so you’ve nothing worry about.’
‘Except they don’t know I’m not making one.’
‘They don’t, no. But if you don’t make the statement, they’ve no reason to follow through. Like the bullet says, if you want peace …’
‘You think these fuckers know Latin?’
‘They know bullets.’ He sipped some espresso. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You think there’s a message in there?’
‘Like what?’
‘Dan None. As in, “And then there were none.”’
‘Forget about my name, JP. Focus on the fucking bullet.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If you want I can make some calls, see if I can get a squad car to drive by the house once in a while. But if you think they’re going to blow the overtime budget stationing a guy at your front door …’
‘You’re saying I’m not worth it.’
‘I’m saying it’s about priorities.’
‘So if I want protection, I need to put myself in danger first.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it. You’re meeting them halfway.’
‘What’s the other way?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah.’
He drained his espresso, met my eye. ‘If you want the cold truth, Dan, they think you’re a waste of space. Holing up under a rock, drinking yourself stupid …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s like the man says, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. And you’re the guy can make this case work. All you need to do is put Anto Whelan at the scene and it all clicks. Maybe the case won’t stick, I don’t know. But they’re looking at you, this guy who’s lost his wife and child, and they just don’t understand why you’re not working with them. And now you’re looking for protection?’ He shook his head. ‘The way Brady’s thinking, he should be slapping restraining orders on you, maybe keep you under house arrest for your own good in case you do something stupid like wander off looking for Anto Whelan on your tod.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ he said. He folded his arms and leaned in again. Staring down at the table, like he was the bearer of news no one should ever have to hear. ‘I know how these scumbags think,’ he said. ‘And there’s every chance that this,’ he nudged the ring box with a knuckle, ‘isn’t meant as a threat.’
‘No?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d say they’re already pretty sure you’re too chickenshit to testify if it ever goes to court, because if you were going to make a statement you’d have made it already.’
‘So what is it?’
‘Ever seen that movie, The Four Feathers?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
© Declan Burke, 2010
Retired history teacher and genteel spinster Charlotte Graves is outraged when the wooded property adjoining her own crumbling pile is destroyed to make way for a mansion. The new house belongs to ex-Marine and self-made banker Doug Fanning, who is overcompensating for his humble origins by building a monument to his success in the last bastion of Old Money on the fringes of the well-heeled town of Finden. On discovering that the town has misused the land donated to charity by her philanthropic father, Charlotte sets out to sue the town, with the intention of having Doug’s mansion torn down. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s brother, Henry Fanning, the president of the Federal Reserve, is battling to prevent fraudulent trading by Doug’s bank from tipping the economy into meltdown. The fourth main character in Adam Haslett’s debut novel is teenager Nate, a former pupil of Charlotte’s who comes to her for extra-curricular tutoring, and who develops a crush on Doug.
UNION ATLANTIC is Adam Haslett’s debut novel. He has previously published a collection of short stories entitled YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE (2003). The collection dealt mainly with mental illness, depression and closet homosexuality.
Some of those themes are amplified here. Charlotte, for example, suffers from borderline dementia, and has long, rambling conversations with her pair of dogs, a mastiff called Sam and a Doberman called Wilkie.
It’s also possible to argue that all the characters are suffering from some kind of depression that varies in terms of its severity. Henry is still experiencing the grief that came with the death of his wife some years ago. Meanwhile, Doug and Nate embark on a physical relationship, Nate as a result of his crush on Doug, Doug because he finds it convenient to have sex with Nate.
What’s at stake in UNION ATLANTIC is no less that the soul of America itself. Charlotte Graves represents all that America aspires to be as she rigorously questions the status quo and puts herself and what remains of her reputation on the line for the sake of intellectual progress and an unshakeable belief in the rightness of time-honoured values.
When ‘the town’ explains that they had to put the parcel of land Doug eventually builds on because their annual budget is under-funded, Charlotte rages in an internal monologue:
“The referendum for school funding had failed at the polls and they had to look to their assets. Never mind the breach of faith. Never mind the lobotomized, negligent short-termism of it all, as if a one-time windfall could ever fund an annual expenditure. What had government become these days but the poorly advertised fire sale of the public interest?”Doug Fanning represents the brash, pioneer spirit, which is here depicted as the rapacious greed for money, his nouveau riche trappings and short-term ambitions in sharp contrast to the genteel old money represented by Charlotte, even if the ‘old money’ she represents has been hollowed out over time to leave little more than the shell of the once impressive house that now crumbles around her.
Henry Graves is the philosophical fulcrum of the piece. As a Graves, he is a scion of old money, and sympathetic to Charlotte’s campaign; as president of the Federal Reserve, he is the invisible hand that regulates the often chaotic flow of capital upon which financial predators such as Doug Fanning depend. “Simply put, Henry Graves was in charge of the biggest pumping station in the plumbing of world finance. His most vital function was to keep money moving. To do it quickly. And, above all, to do it quietly.”
That Henry is the most sympathetically drawn character in the novel suggests that Haslett also sympathises with America’s financial plight, both domestically and internationally, the latter in its role as the world’s banker and honest broker. His theme is one of money as necessary evil, but an evil best regulated by a sober and alert conscience; hence the references to Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the manipulation of market forces that were required to drag America out of the Great Depression. The novel offers many parallels with 1930’s America, right down to the fact that there’s nothing like a good war to boost GDP, and goes so far as to suggest that that model is deliberately replayed again and again in a never-ending cycle of boom, bust and boom.
A prologue sets up Doug’s early life as a Marine, and the minor part he played in the shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet during the first Gulf War. The bulk of the novel, however, takes place in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a time when America was sandbagged not only by 9/11 but by the collapse of Enron, which threatened in turn to collapse the entire banking system in America. When a rogue trader operating on the Asian markets under Doug’s aegis leaves a five billion dollar hole in UNION ATLANTIC’s finances - a hole big enough to swallow the entire bank - the all too familiar story of the last number of years clicks into place.
Haslett writes in a pleasingly crisp, elegant style. The subject matter of high finance could have made for a dry and confusingly complex narrative, but in focusing on the flesh-and-blood elements in the machine he largely side-steps this potential hazard.
There is, perhaps, too much emphasis placed on maintaining the integrity of Charlotte’s internal monologues, which can render them dense and oblique for the reader, but for the most part Haslett’s prose is unflinchingly direct when it comes to getting to nub of his characters’ motivations. His skills as a short story writer are obvious too in the way he studs his narrative with poignant detail. By the same token, there’s no doubting that despite the conservative settings and characters, UNION ATLANTIC is unmistakably a liberal polemic in tone.
As Charlotte says to Doug:
“Because that matters more than anything to you, doesn’t it? Dominance. That’s the childish pleasure you people can’t get enough of. You get your fix dressed up in a suit, but it’s no different than a drug. You’re angry. And once the men like you start this war of theirs, people will die by the thousands to cure that feeling in them.”The fact that the former Marine Doug provides the downbeat climax to the novel by ‘enlisting’ as a mercenary and crossing the border from Kuwait into Iraq on the first day of the invasion of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ gives the novel a pleasing symmetry, even if the metaphor feels unnecessarily overcooked.
All told, UNION ATLANTIC is a bracing tale of modern America, a pleasingly complex novel that boasts a populist but thoughtful brand of intellectual investigation of the forces that shape our world. Recommended. - Declan Burke
Adam Haslett's UNION ATLANTIC is published by Tuskar Rock.
It’s a pic-a-nic, Boo-Boo. If you do happen to be in the vicinity of the Electric Picnic this coming Saturday, September 4th, here’s a gentle reminder that the crème-de-la-crème of Irish crime writing (and one clot) will be yakking it up over at the Arts Council Literary Stage as part of the Mindfield offerings over the weekend. Yours truly is said clot, hosting a conversation between the inseparable Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes (above right) and Gene Kerrigan about the books that inspired them to take reading and writing seriously when they were kids, so expect more than one reference to Enid Blyton. As for your humble host, and given the way the writing career isn’t exactly working out as anticipated, I’m planning on breaking out my radical ‘trapped-in-a-box’ mime routine. Don’t say you haven’t been warned … The following weekend, Dun Laoghaire hosts the Mountains to Sea literary festival, and I’ll be front and centre at 12 noon on Saturday 11th for what promises to be an enthralling hour of conversation between Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville - providing, of course, the Dun Laoghaire folks provide an interpreter that allows our delicate Southern ears to decipher those beguiling Norn Iron accents. Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION is one of the finest thrillers I’ve read so far this year, and is even better than his many-splendoured debut, THE TWELVE, while McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE, which is published in November and offers a fictionalised version of a true crime that occurred in 1950’s Newry, is probably his best novel yet. All in all, a tantalising prospect.
I’m also hoping to get along to see Kate Atkinson at the Mountains to Sea festival. I missed out on WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, but Atkinson’s recent release, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, is a tremendous piece of work. She’ll be in conversation with Mia Gallagher at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, the 11th, at the Pavilion Theatre …
… quite a few men and women must go, very few of whom are in any way mean. In fact, they’ve all been pretty generous in contributing to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY, a collection of essays, interviews and short fictions written by Irish crime writers about the sudden explosion in Irish crime writing (academics in a tizzy, right). Declaration of Interest: the collection has been put together by your humble host. As all three regular readers will be aware, this project has been simmering for some time now, but I had a meeting with an Irish publisher last Friday morning and it was finally given the green light. Contracts are in the process of being issued, so it’s probably polite not to name names until all is signed and sealed, but the wheels are in motion and GREEN STREETS should see a shelf near you by spring, 2011.
As for the contributors, well, it’s a veritable Who’s Who of Irish crime writing. In alphabetical-ish order: John Banville, Alex Barclay, Colin Bateman, Ingrid Black, Gerard Brennan, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, John Connolly, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Tana French, Alan Glynn, Cora Harrison, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, KT McCaffrey, Eoin McNamee, Cormac Millar, Andrew Nugent, Niamh O’Connor, Professor Ian Ross and Neville Thompson.
You’ll appreciate that I’m biased, but having read all the submitted pieces, it’s a terrific collection. What’s most interesting about it, I think, is the sheer diversity of the writers and the subjects they chose to write about … a fascinating rattlebag, indeed. I’ll keep you posted on developments, naturally, and I’ll be nailing up a list of contents at some point in the near future …
Mulholland Books has been running some very interesting material over on its blog recently, and WINTERLAND author Alan Glynn pitched in this week with his take on ‘the Paranoid Style’, an excerpt from which runneth thusly: It was never going to last that long. Golden ages rarely do. But for a while there in the 1970s, that’s what we had.For the rest, clickety-click here.
Ten years after Richard Hofstadter coined the phrase “the paranoid style” (in a lecture he delivered just days before JFK was assassinated), the national traumas of Vietnam and Watergate were in full swing. Hofstadter’s point was that “they” weren’t out to get you at all — you really were being paranoid. But by the early ’70s, this paradigm had been shattered. The point now was that they really were out to get you, whether you knew it or not, and generally you didn’t until it was too late … Today, paranoia and conspiracy thrillers are dismissed as “voodoo histories” and pretty much seen as a debased form of entertainment.
All of which might lead you to believe that things have changed for the better since the ’70s, that today’s government no longer spies on, or keeps things from, its citizens, that today’s corporations no longer put the profit motive before any moral consideration of their actions, or that Deep Throat’s exhortation in that underground parking garage all those years ago to “follow the money,” somehow, happily, doesn’t apply anymore. This, of course, would be to ignore the truth (undeniably out there), i.e., that since the ’70s there has been an utterly astonishing increase — exponential, Moore’s Law–like — in every form of electronic surveillance, in the influence, reach, and wealth of transnational corporations, and in the sinister privatization of the military-intelligence complex generally …
For an interview (‘The Dark Art of Paranoia’) I conducted with Alan Glynn for the Sunday Times earlier this year, clickety-click here …
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE GODFATHER. I loved the richness of the characters. It made you wish you were born Sicilian. I liked the diversity between and humanization of the ruthless.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Stephen Dedalus, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. I loved this book. Absolutely. James Joyce is why I wanted to be a writer.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Stephen King, Clive Barker, Charlie Huston and Snorri Sturlson. I love horror and violence. It allows me to appreciate the peace and calm of my life. I’m an absolute freak about Norse culture and society. The old Viking sagas are violent, contemporary and give us a glimpse into the politics of 9th century life and how similar that is to our current state in some ways.
Most satisfying writing moment?
The smell of the printed pages the first time I opened the box of my new novel. I have been writing for over sixteen years. I started with role-playing games and transitioned into film and screenwriting. But there is just something different about a novel. A commitment of time, energy and plot that is the marathon of storytelling.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD [by Declan Hughes] would definitely be my top candidate.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is I need absolute peace and quiet to work. I miss time with my children when I’m really locked into a session. Distractions break my cycle and I either have to stop all together or miss out on all the fun my family has in my absence. But the best reward for me is to entertain people. I love the fact that something I created in my brain that poured through my soul and out the fingers moved someone. I have the best job in the world. I get to watch the world and comment on what I see. I get to create anything in my world and make it reality on paper.
The pitch for your next book is …?
The disavowed son of a fallen angel conspires to kill the Antichrist, finding redemption and his humanity along the way.
Who are you reading right now?
Stieg Larsson, Stephen King, Craig Larson and Henry Perez.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
WRITE. I can always find someone else to read to me. I would be miserable without my ability to tell stories. When I’m not writing, I’m talking. I’m always creating.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Violent, raw and entertaining.
JS Waters’ THE MODERN PRIMITIVES is published by Draeconis.
As all three regular readers will be aware, I’ve been tipping away at a new novel for the past few weeks - or radically rewriting an old novel, to be precise about it. I was doing fine until about ten days ago, with nearly 20,000 words under my belt (all new, unfortunately, given that I’m supposed to be stripping back at 150,000-word m/s to something a little less unwieldy), when for some reason I decided to go back and start again. Worse, the new start has the unmistakable aura of the dreaded prologue. Anyway, I’m having trouble finding the right note, the exact tone of voice. Below I offer for your delectation my scrawlings to date, and please feel free to toss brickbats and barbed-wire my way - all feedback is welcome - and please feel free to comment anonymously if you prefer. Think of it as a book club of sorts, albeit with the novel in its embryonic phase. The working title, by the way, is DANNY BOY, which is in part a wee homage to a fellow Irish scribe.
As for the pic above, it was taken from the northeast of a village called Loutro, on the south coast of Crete, where I spent a very enjoyable holiday seven or eight years ago. If there’s a more perfect place on the planet to set a novel, I don’t want to know about it, or at least not until I’ve worked my way through this one.
Roll it there, Collette …
Chapter 1
Out to the balcony as dusk sifts in, the light whisked thicker by a billion wings. A full moon low over the eastern bluff. From up here you can only marvel at how swiftly, how visibly, the dark comes on. A fine black mist sheeting in. ‘Night falls so fast here,’ Berte tells the tourists, ‘you can almost hear the bump.’ Not that it falls. What I’ve noticed is that the dark rises, drifting up out of the earth to settle in strata like good stout. Down below the village curves out around the bay, the murk already blurring its lines and angles to that of a pearl necklace loosely strung. Yet the peaks above still glimmer along the ridge and a zinc horizon slices sky from sea. The Libyan Sea, the nameless sky. Too early yet for stars.
Here I stand, I can do no other …
It will be warm until long after midnight. The air hangs trapped in the steep bowl of the bay, hemmed in by the faint offshore breeze. Just pacing the balcony, the cigarette cupped in my palm, is enough to glaze my forehead with sweat and set my back a-prickle. Indistinct murmurs carry across the water from the village, beach in a swish of surf, wash on up the hill. The early diners gathering. Chairs scrape, a cork pops. Then a trill of laughter, the impatient chink of knife on plate, the hiss and spit of grilling fish. A whiff of kalamari wafts up on the breeze, roasting lamb speckled with oregano, the sharp bite of lemon. My mouth waters, and sure enough my stomach starts to grumble. To distract myself I rub the ball of my thumb on the crosshatched grip of the Colt and imagine his agony as he drags himself across the stony ground, through the coarse maquis, a dying animal with only one thought in mind.
But of course, he won’t come alone.
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by …
The Boop has this trick where she sneaks up from behind and ducks in between my legs, forcing her head through, her pudgy arms gripping my thighs. A tiny Samson about to haul on her pillars. This time, when she twists her head to look up, her wide blue eyes are solemn. ‘Smoking nasty, Dada,’ she says.
There’s nothing like disappointing his child to flay a man’s heart.
‘It is, love,’ I say. ‘Tell Momma I’m giving up.’
She forces herself all the way through my legs, stands before me with one hand on her hip, wags a finger. A two-foot tyrant. ‘I put you,’ she says, ‘on the thinking chair.’
I flip the cigarette away and reach to ruffle her blonde hair, but she ducks away, pouting. ‘Won’t be long now, Bumbles,’ I say.
All at once her face brightens, the chubby cheeks flushing, milk-teeth gleaming in that perfect smile. ‘Dada come in a liddle bit?’
‘Another liddle bit, Boop. Tell Momma that Dada is coming.’
She flinches. The blue eyes cloud. ‘I not find Momma.’ Her lower lip trembles. ‘I missed her.’
Lost her, she means. ‘I know, love, but we’ll find her. Dada will help.’
The eyes widen again. She quivers with repressed hope. ‘Find Momma?’
‘Exactamundo, Boop. Can you say ‘exactamundo’?’
‘Zakamundo!’
‘Good girl. Kiss for Dada?’ I hunker down as she flattens her pink lips in a parody of a pucker, arms thrown wide as she giggles and launches herself against my chest, and I close my eyes and beg for just this once, to feel her again just one last time …
Back inside, and despite the white-tiled floor, the whitewashed walls, the room has grown dim as a cave. A brief yellow glow when I open the fridge to take out the plastic bottle of orange juice, a tub of yoghurt with a pair laughing strawberries on the label. I bring them across to the bed. There’s no denying she’s a pretty girl. Brown eyes that are almost almond in shape, the irises flecked with hazel. In direct sunlight, when she smiles her crooked smile, the flecks are green.
No flecks in the subterranean gloom. No smile tonight. Her nostrils flare as I perch on the bed, place the yoghurt and juice on the locker. I reach behind to the small of my back and slip the Colt from my waistband and hold it up until she nods. Then I tuck the gun away and take the balled sock from her mouth. She spits dry, works a sandpaper tongue across her lips. Eleven years old, perhaps a little older. These days it can be hard to tell.
The juice first, tilting the bottle to her lips. She drinks greedily, sucking it down. While she gasps I dab the run-off from her chin with a corner of the sheet. Open the yoghurt, spoon it home. She’s ravenous.
‘There’s fruit,’ I say. ‘A banana, if you want it. Or an apple?’
‘Banana.’
I fetch the banana, peel it back. She devours it in three bites. Then the rest of the juice. When I try to replace the gag she ducks her chin, then tosses her head from side to side. I wait for her to run out of steam. ‘Courtney,’ I say, ‘listen to me. Courtney?’
‘He’ll fucking kill you,’ she says, low and cold. ‘He’ll feed you to the fucking pigs. He’ll -’
As gently as I can I grip her cheeks with thumb and finger, squeeze her mouth open. Poke the balled sock in. She chokes, tries to say something, then gags way back in her throat.
‘He’ll come for you, Courtney. Don’t doubt that. He’s on his way.’
Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, although there’s no telling if they’re tears of rage or fear or self-pity. All three, probably.
I put the banana skin and yoghurt carton in the bin, the empty juice. Sit at the desk, nudge the laptop out of sleep mode. Roll a smoke while it whines and whirrs, its lights flickering. When it settles down to a quiet hum, and the wi-fi light is showing a steady green, I open up Gmail.
Sam -I click send, wait for the whoosh, then fold down the laptop’s lid. Glance across at Courtney. As hard as she’s fighting it, the red-limned eyelids are beginning to droop. Hardly surprising. She’s had as tough a day as she’s ever likely to have. Besides, the orange juice was laced with two crushed Dalmanes.
I’m going to be ducking out for a while. The file comes attached, along with both transcripts. The story will need a polish, I only finished it this evening. Feel free to dice and slice as you see fit. I’ll be in touch.
Cheers,
Dan
‘It’s okay to sleep, Courtney. He’s coming for you. Do you believe he’s coming?’
She nods, sluggish.
‘Then sleep.’
I wait, rolling cigarettes, watching until she drifts off.
Out on the balcony it’s fully dark. By now the village is festooned with fairy lights, the bay burnished gold and shimmering with the rise and fall of the swell. From somewhere further up the hill comes the zizz-zizz of a lone cicada. The moon fully up and perfectly round. God’s mouth pursed in a disapproving moue.
I slip free the Colt and angle my arm until the its blunt sight splits the moon.
The hour of Doom is drawing near, and the moon is cleft in two …
The house was built into the side of the hill. A sheer drop beneath of ten feet or so, then three, maybe four hundred yards of steep slope to the village below. Broken ground, fuzzed with maquis, you could hide a small regiment in its dips and hollows. Too brightly lit for a frontal assault, the path a silvery thread in the moonlight. Maybe when the time comes they’ll send him up that path, dragging his shattered leg behind him, decoy and sacrificial lamb. His daughter, unconscious on the bed, the staked goat that draws him on.
As for themselves, they’ll come from the north, circling up out of the village to slip down from the black hills like the andartes of old. Shadows in velvet.
No telling when they’ll come. The circling around will take hours, and they’ll wait until the tourists are tucked up in bed. But they will --
There. A motorboat skimming out across the bay, arcing towards the eastern headland, its wake shattering the gold leaf into tiny shards. A little late in the evening for running errands, boys, for dumping sacks of rubbish beyond the pebble strand that lies to the east of the bay.
They’ll beach near Hora Sfakion to cut off my retreat, come west along the trail, spread out across the hills. A two-hour hike at a steady march, three to four hours for a cautious advance, one leapfrogging the other, all the while half-expecting a bullet from the dark.
Brave men, these Sphakians, and tough as heartwood, but crafty with it. Born to survive at any cost but dishonour. The old laws, and only the old laws, pertain here: hospitality, physics, vendetta. All else is no more than choice and personal taste.
When the motorboat disappears around the point I go back to watching the village again. A pointless exercise, the blaze of light leaves the western headland, the hills beyond, black as pitch. If I had infra-red glasses I might see them drift away in ones and twos, out past the dock towards the ruined fortress, creeping up out of the alleyways into the gullies and ravines like so many cats on the prowl. The night’s hunt begun. Possessed of the stealthy patience of those who know that time and night are their allies, who know that any help I have called for will arrive too late, if it ever comes.
This will be their one mistake.
You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave. I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead …
As crafty as they are, they presume I think as they do. That above all else any man holds sacred, the survival instinct reigns supreme.
Were they Persians advancing at the Hot Gates, they could not be more wrong.
‘You come in a liddle bit, Dada.’
‘A liddle bit, Bumbles. Just another liddle bit now.’
And so I smoke and wait for my killers, an ear cocked to the murmur from the village, the swushing surf, the zizz-zizzing cicadas, alert but not reacting to a loose stone kicked free above on the slopes, the tinkle-tankle of a stray and anxious goat, for when andartes come they come as black angels, in deathly silence, and like an old man worrying at his kombolói I count off the minutes caressing the Colt’s grip with my thumb, now and again allowing it wander across to the safety to ensure the snib is off.
O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling …
© Declan Burke, 2010
And now, Dear Reader, it’s over to you. The comment box is open for business …
Being the latest in the 300-word chuckle-fest digests, regurgitated by yours truly. This week: DON’T BLINK by James Patterson. To wit: DON’T BLINKThis article first appeared in the Evening Herald.
by James Patterson and Some Typist
Chapter 1
OHMIGOD! I can’t believe the Janjaweed are trying to kill me in Darfur! Boom!!!
Chapter 2
Whew, that was a bit too close for a magazine journalist who once nearly won a Pulitzer. Back in boring old NY, now.
Chapter 19
FYI, my gorgeous editor and BFF Courtney is engaged to Richard, the richest man in NY. She’s blonde. He’s evil.
Chapter 24
Oh no! There I was having lunch in boring NY with a mysterious baseball player, and a Mafia lawyer gets his eyes gouged out at the next table!
Chapter 35
Lucky I had my tape recorder running, eh? Pulitzer prize, here I come!
Chapter 46
By the way, I’m in love with Courtney. Sob.
Chapter 49
Like, NO WAY! Someone killed the mysterious baseball player!
Chapter 58
Am I next?
Chapter 109
Police protection, Chief? I don’t need no stinkin’ police protection! I nearly won the Pulitzer once. The TRUTH will protect me!
Chapter 1002
CRASH! BANG!
Chapter 1003
WALLOP!!!
Chapter 1004
Sorry, just fell down the stairs a bit there.
Chapter 1309
OHMIGOD! I can’t believe Richard did the dirt on Courtney!
Chapter 1457
Did I mention my niece? The feisty blind 14-year-old? No? Well, she LOVES baseball. And she’s soooooooo brave. We could all learn a thing or two from --
Chapter 90210
Oh no! I’ve been kidnapped by dastardly Mafia types! Am I about to … DIE?!!
Chapter 200,001
Golly-gosh, that was a lucky escape.
Chapter 451,357
Jings! Someone blew up my car!!!
Chapter 1,000,004
Phew! Guess I’ll just amble on out to the ’burbs where my sister lives with my feisty blind 14-year-old niece. They’ll never find me there.
Chapter 1,000,005
Well, who’d a thunk it? Bad people. In the ’burbs. Run away!!!
Chapter 4,00,098
Oh well, back to NY. Courtney needs me to pick up the shattered pieces of her blonde heart.
Chapter 9,234,343
Boom! Kablooey! Rat-a-tat-a-tat!!!
Chapter 11,345983
Bish-bash-bosh. And, indeed, more bosh. The End.
The Digested Read, Digested: Blink and you’ll … Oh.
“Dr Livingstone, I presume?” “No, it’s Yes.” “Yes?” “Yes, Dr Yes.”From his Caribbean lair - which is built entirely on the foundations of recycled offshore accounts, apparently - comes the news that the Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman’s next offering will be titled DR YES, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:
You don’t say no to Dr. Yes, the charismatic plastic surgeon on the fast track to fame and fortune. But when the wife of obscure and paranoid crime writer Augustine Wogan disappears shortly after entering his exclusive clinic, the Small Bookseller with No Name is persuaded to investigate. As fatherhood approaches, our intrepid hero is interested only in a quick buck and the chance to exploit a neglected writer, but he soon finds himself up to his neck in murder, make-up and madness – and face to face with the most gruesome serial killer since the last one.That tome hits the shelves on September 30th, and we’re already rubbing our grubby paws with glee. The official launch takes place in Waterstone’s in Dublin during the first week in October, apparently, with TAFKACB also performing a reading at Blanchardstown’s Draíocht theatre. When we have more details, you’ll be the first to know.
Speaking of theatres, and the funny things that may well happen on the way to them, Bateman’s theatrical debut, ‘National Anthem’, will play at the Baby Grand Opera House during the Belfast Festival, which runs from October 15th to the 30th. For all the details, clickety-click here …
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I find no guilt in reading anything at all.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Sniffing my first book.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Anything by John Connolly.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Anything by John Connolly.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Not having to get up early or wear a suit. The isolation.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Bonnie and Clyde meets WUTHERING HEIGHTS.
Who are you reading right now?
Justin Cronin.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Bloody hard work.
Peter Robinson’s BAD BOY is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
A couple of snippets that snuck in under the perennially malfunctioning CAP radar, kicking off with Morning Ireland’s TV interview with the ever radiant Ava McCarthy (right) last May, when THE COURIER, her second Harry Martinez thriller, hit the shelves. A wide-ranging chat it is, too, incorporating computer hackery, insider trading and the illicit diamond trade. To find out why Ava will never again buy a diamond, clickety-click here … I’ve also been disgracefully neglecting the latest Benjamin Black novel, ELEGY FOR APRIL, which also appeared a couple of months back. Happily, the good folk at Euro Crime are, as always, on the ball, with the gist of the review running thusly:
“The plotline follows similar themes to the previous books in the series: a toxic cocktail of families, sex, religion and hypocrisy, with a sprinkling of privilege and political influence thrown in for good measure. There is relatively little emphasis on Quirke’s day job in this book; the author concentrates his focus on Quirke’s struggle to remain on the wagon. The actual plotting is somewhat languid, eventually proceeding hastily to a dramatic denouement coming from a flash of intuition by Quirke. But with writing of this quality, quibbling about the pace of plotting feels somewhat churlish; ELEGY FOR APRIL is another slice of classy Emerald Noir.” - Laura RootNice. Meanwhile, Dermot Bolger’s latest offering, NEW TOWN SOUL, which also appeared a few months ago, is a YA novel that’s not strictly crime fiction, but sounds like it blurs the lines between quite a few genres.
To wit: Imagine what it must feel like to be a doll within a doll, to lose your own identity and spend your life in darkness … Joey thought he’d done all the research on his new classmates before he met Shane and Geraldine. Shane is his new best friend, calm and cool with a personality for every occasion and a strange sense of recklessness about him. But why does Shane make Geraldine so uncomfortable? They’re both hiding something from Joey and the answer can only be found in the old house on Castledawson Avenue - Souls are snatched and gambles taken in this distinctly Irish supernatural novel set in Blackrock, Dublin. Based on the concept of changelings, Bolger’s first young adult novel is a thrilling gothic ghost story with a romantic subplot.And the verdict?
“NEW TOWN SOUL is taut, mysterious and gripping to the last word. Dermot Bolger gets under the skin of the teenage experience and explores the dark side of the teenage psyche. A beautifully crafted thriller.” - Eoin ColferThank you kindly, Mr Colfer sir.
Finally, if you happen to feel peckish in the vicinity of Dalkey on September 2nd, Declan Hughes will hosting a special lunch at the Royal St George Yacht Club (there’s posh) that includes vittles and the appetite-whetting prospect of Squire Hughes giving it large from his latest offering, CITY OF LOST GIRLS. For all the details, clickety-click here …
I had a piece published recently in the Irish Examiner called ‘Famous Last Words’, the idea being that writers nominate their favourite last lines from a novel. Declan Hughes, Tana French, Val McDermid, Eoin Colfer and Adrian McKinty were among the contributors, and it went something like this … Famous Last WordsThis feature first appeared in the Irish Examiner.
It’s one of the most understated finales of any novel, and yet the last lines of To Kill a Mockingbird, delivered after Atticus Finch consoles his daughter Scout in the wake of the Boo Radley affair, have an enduringly quiet resonance. “He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s classic coming-of-age tale, we asked a number of authors to tell us their favourite last lines from a novel.
“‘Murder doesn’t round out anyone’s life except maybe the murdered’s, and sometimes the murderer’s.’
‘That may be,’ Nora said, ‘but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory.’” - The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Declan Hughes, author of City of Lost Girls: “I like this because it sums up the complex, open-ended nature of the new type of crime fiction Dashiell Hammett was writing, where justice and order were not restored at the end.”
“Poor Eric came home to see his brother, only to find (Zap! Pow! Dams burst! Bombs go off! Wasps fry: ttsss!) he’s got a sister.” - The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Niamh O’Connor, author of If I Never See You Again: “To the very last line, The Wasp Factory manages to just keep the surprises coming.”
“Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that way.” - Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Adrian McKinty, author of Fifty Grand: “If the world were not a fallen place someone would help the blind man. And perhaps, eventually, someone will.”
“ … I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like made and yes I said yes I will Yes.” - Ulysses by James Joyce
Patrick McCabe, author of The Holy City: “With no contest, it’s Molly at the end of Ulysses. It makes a perfect circle of the narrative.”
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” - Middlemarch by George Eliot
Ruth Dudley Edwards, author of Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing: “Middlemarch is the wisest novel I know, and its ending is a wonderful tribute to all those fine but forgotten people to whom the world has owed so much down the generations.”
“I laid my cheek against his hand and breathed with him until the last breath. ‘You done good, kid,’ I whispered, when he was still at last.” - O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton
Ava McCarthy, author of The Courier: “Snappy sound-bites are all very well, but they usually just deliver an intellectual impact. For me, the last line should capture the core emotional change that has occurred at the very heart of the story. An emotional ingredient is far more enduring.”
“When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” - Peter Pan by JM Barrie
Eoin Colfer, author of And Another Thing: “This is a brilliant sentence at once romantic and cutting, which gets straight to the heart of how young people are and I think that was J.M Barrie’s gift; he understood children.”
“I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I know longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.” The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
Brian McGilloway, author of The Rising: “In a book about books and how we respond to them, where objects such as a Rose have become so symbolic that they lose all meaning, the final phrasing is beautiful.”
“Are there any questions?” - The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Val McDermid, author of The Fever of the Bone: “I like novels that leave space for my own imagination, and I like the confidence and wit of Atwood’s ending.”
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
“On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.” - The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Ed O’Loughlin, author of Not Untrue & Not Unkind: “I love the way it aches.”
“Enough.” - Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Aifric Campbell, author of The Loss Adjustor: “Updike closes his four volume ‘Rabbit’ masterpiece with one word, and with this masterful stroke, he captures the joy and pain and beauty that is at the heart of all endings for readers and writers alike: we cannot bear to say goodbye, but it is time to let go.”
“My dearest, said Valentine, has the count not just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words - ‘wait’ and ‘hope’?” - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
William Ryan, author of The Holy Thief: “That last line is a neat encapsulation of the thousand odd pages that precede it, and a perfect finish to a book I love reading.”
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Deborah Lawrenson, author of Songs of Blue and Gold: “It’s just magical.”
“He told me what he was going to do when he won his money then I said it was time to go tracking in the mountains, so off we went, counting our footprints in the snow, him with his bony arse clicking and me with the tears streaming down my face.” - The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Tana French, author of Faithful Place: “This line captures everything that’s punch-in-the-gut powerful about the whole book - that expert mix of black humour, vortexing insanity and terrible sadness.”
I was thinking of writing a post full of mock-bluster and bravado about the inclusion of a story of mine in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 (ed. Maxim Jakubowski), claiming that, all things considered (other than the fact that I’m not actually British, unless you’re talking about how the UK and Ireland together make up the British Isles), I’m perfectly entitled to consider myself on a par with very fine writers like Ian Rankin, Colin Bateman, Kate Atkinson, Simon Kernick, Louise Welsh, Andrew Taylor, et al. I’m not, of course. I’m long way off par with those writers, and many others in the compilation, and all false modesty aside, I’m not entitled to delude myself that I am either.
That said, it’s a massive shot in the arm. Not a shot of confidence, but the far more dangerous speedball-style blend of hope and conviction. Because the story wasn’t written as a conventional crime story, and remains, to me at least, something of an oddity - and right now, I have a novel out on spec that wasn’t written as a conventional crime novel, and is something of an oddity. And not only that, but I’m currently in the early stages of rewriting a novel that wasn’t written as a crime novel, which looks as if it too will become - my best intentions of lashing it into genre straitjacket notwithstanding - something a little off-kilter.
And while it’s a massive leap of faith to believe that the publication of one story will necessarily lead to the publication of a novel, or novels, the inclusion of my story in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 offers just enough hope to give me the courage of my convictions.
They do say, of course, that it’s the hope that kills you in the end …
Anyway, I’m off back to the writing. In the meantime, here’s the full rundown on THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 - and congrats, by the way, to fellow Irish Brits Gerard Brennan and The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman on their inclusion:
The must-have annual anthology for every crime fiction fan – the year’s top new British short stories selected by leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski. This great annual covers the full range of mystery fiction, from noir and hardboiled crime to ingenious puzzles and amateur sleuthing. Packed with top names such as: Ian Rankin (including a new Rebus), Alexander McCall Smith, David Hewson, Christopher Brookmyre, Simon Kernick, A.L. Kennedy, Louise Walsh, Kate Atkinson, Colin Bateman, Stuart McBride and Andrew Taylor. The full list of contributors is as follows: Sheila Quigley, Nigel Bird, Jay Stringer, Paul D. Brazill, Adrian Magson, Colin Bateman, Gerard Brennan, Matthew J. Elliott, Andrew Taylor, Lin Anderson, Christopher Brookmyre, Ray Banks, Declan Burke, Liza Cody, Simon Kernick, Stuart MacBride, Allan Guthrie, Ian Rankin (two stories, including a new Rebus), Nick Quantrill, Edward Marston, Nicholas Royle, Zoe Sharp, Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey, A.L. Kennedy, Roz Southey, Phil Lovesey, David Hewson, Amy Myers, Marilyn Todd, Peter Turnbull, Keith McCarthy, Alexander McCall Smith, Stephen Booth, Denise Mina, Mick Herron, Kate Atkinson and Louise Welsh.
I had one of those pieces on ‘Nordic Writers Wot Aren’t Stieg Larsson’ published in the Sunday Independent last week, which featured contributions from Jan Costin Wagner, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Hakan Nesser. It went a lot like this: The Thrillers Who Came In From the ColdThis article first appeared in the Sunday Independent.
With the second movie of the ‘Millennium Trilogy’ coming at the end of August, a Hollywood remake of the first movie starring Daniel Craig and (rumour has it) Scarlett Johansson already in the works, and the discovery of a fourth Blomkvist-Salander novel on his computer, it’s fair to say that the publishing phenomenon that is Stieg Larsson has some way yet to run.
Aficionados of the genre, however, are aware that Scandinavian crime writing has much more to offer than Stieg Larsson. The Sweden-set ‘Martin Beck’ series of novels written by husband-and-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered a milestone in the evolution of the realist crime novel, while Henning Mankell is a household name, particularly for his Kurt Wallander novels.
A whole new generation of Scandinavian crime writers have emerged in the last decade, however. While the sub-genre has its roots in Sweden, the crime novel is now indigenous to Norway and Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Writers such as Karin Fossum, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Jø Nesbo, Jan Costin Wagner, Karin Alvtegen, Håkan Nesser, KO Dahl, Camilla Lackberg, Leif Davidson, Arnaldur Indridason and Gunnar Staalesen are hugely popular not only at home, but increasingly so abroad too.
The conventional theory has it that the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 had a seismic impact on the Swedish psyche, one consequence of which was an explosion in crime writing. Given the seriousness of the catalytic event, the crime novels were taken seriously by the Swedish literati, resulting in an ever-increasing quality of writing and criticism.
Swedish author Håkan Nesser, on the other hand, takes an irreverent approach to the question of why there has been such a boom in Scandinavian crime writing.
“When I’m in my most optimistic mood I tend to answer, ‘It’s due to the fact that we are such damned good writers,’” he says.“Right now we probably have the world’s largest number of good crime writers per capita, but please be aware of that we also have the world’s largest number of bad crime writers!
“There is no such thing as a ‘Swedish way’ of writing a crime story,” he continues. “We are all different. The only thing we have in common is that we write in Swedish. Any reader who reads a book by Stieg Larsson, a book by Karin Alvtegen and a book by myself will realise this immediately. We all have different styles, different plots, different aims and agendas.”
German author Jan Costin Wagner, who sets his novels in Finland, agrees. “Basically I think that every author has to find their own language,” he says, “their own key topics, characters and ways of approaching a story. And, of course, not each Scandinavian crime novel is a good one. But apart from that, I think that many Scandinavian crime writers understand how important it is to be serious and committed to their story and their characters.”
Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir believes that Iceland offers a unique setting for the crime novel.
“Iceland, with its 300,000 inhabitants, is a whole lot smaller population-wise than most countries,” she says. “As a result, the atmosphere here is still quite similar to that of a small town, despite our attempts at becoming cosmopolitan. This allows for complex interactions and ties between characters that differ greatly from those one expects in stories that take place in a big city. Another ingredient of the social fabric that differentiates us from other western countries is an unusually high belief in the occult and the supernatural, which adds an element that would probably strike a false note in crime stories based elsewhere.
“Also,” she continues, “old secrets, vendettas and misdeeds might lie dormant here but they are never fully forgotten - or forgiven. When the social aspects just described are coupled with the smorgasbord of eerie scenery my geologically active country has to offer, Iceland thankfully has the makings of a wonderful backdrop for good, fun and creepy murders.”
While Sigurdardottir highlights the physical and social aspects of her settings, Wagner identifies a more psychological appeal.
“I don’t feel committed to a ‘school of writing’,” he says, “because I want to stay committed to my own inner movement: that is most important for everything I write. I feel close to the Scandinavian crime writing because Scandinavians quite often stay focussed on the inner, maybe hidden, life of a story and a character. I like novels which surprise the reader by finding their way beyond cliché.I like the silent moments, the words that are hidden behind the lines; I also like the silent showdown and not so much the bombastic one, which is based on a kind of formal, expected resolution.”
The idea that the modern Scandinavian crime novel offers a blend of social realism and a more introspective take on the traditional crime narrative is echoed by Håkan Nesser.
“Ingmar Bergman is a cineastic icon around the world,” he says, “and for most people a Bergman character is the true essence of a Swede: gloomy, depressive, suicidal, tragic, silent and deeply, fundamentally unhappy. But interesting, somehow.
“I like to think that the above is not an accurate description of our national character,” he says, “but in all clichés there is an element of truth. And actually – though I find it a little hard to acknowledge – such stereotypes might be good material for characters in a crime story: morose men and women who can store grudges inside themselves for half of a lifetime, and then one day take desperate but calculated action like a bolt out of the blue.” - Declan Burke
Håkan Nesser’s THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE is published by Mantle.
Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s ASHES TO DUST is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE is published by Harvill Secker.
Incidentally, I finished Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE last night, and it’s a terrific piece of work. Highly recommended.
“Surely there are Italian policeman who are not obsessed with their stomachs?” I wrote that line, which appears in the post / column below, on the basis that virtually every fictional Italian policeman I’ve come across in the past appears to have a food fetish, to the point where it’s ripe for parody. Is it a trope unique - Anthony Bourdain notwithstanding - to Italian crime fiction? I tend to skip over the various menus, cooking instructions and food porn descriptions on the basis that food is a fuel for me - I like it when it’s tasty, I don’t mind when it’s not. Anyway, shortly after writing that column, I read Conor Fitzgerald’s THE DOGS OF ROME, which features the Rome-based Chief Inspector Alec Blume. The good news is that Blume is not a foodie - at one point he even snacks on dry breakfast cereal - and the better news is that THE DOGS OF ROME is an unusually assured debut. It’s a gripping police procedural that manages to illustrate meticulous nature of an investigation and the complexity of the politics of Italian policing without ever getting bogged down in detail, while Blume himself is something of a rara avis, being possessed of a melancholic Scandinavian disposition despite the Rome setting.
Fitzgerald is an Irish writer, albeit one long domiciled in Italy, while Blume himself is an American who has most of his life in Italy. The combination gives both men an insider’s eye for detail and an emotional distance from their subject matter, and the result, written in a style that is both taut and elegant, is a very fine debut indeed.
The latest of yours truly’s crime fiction review columns appeared in the Irish Times yesterday, featuring Stuart Neville, Tana French, Alan Furst, Karin Fossum, Ruth Rendell and James Patterson, among others. To wit: Lennon Takes the LeadThis article first appeared in The Irish Times
In the context of Northern Ireland, ‘collusion’ is an ugly word denoting state-sponsored murder during the Troubles. In COLLUSION (Harvill Secker, £12.99, pb), Stuart Neville takes pains to illustrate the extent to which collusion ‘worked all ways, all directions’, and continues do so in the murky world of covert operations. Belfast Detective Inspector Jack Lennon, a minor character from Neville’s debut THE TWELVE, takes the lead here as he investigates the fall-out from the slaughter that accrued when ex-paramilitary Gerry Fegan went on the rampage. The novel has the page-turning quality of Neville’s debut, which recently won the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller of the Year, but it’s Neville’s clear-eyed appraisal of the real-politik of the post-Ceasefire Northern Ireland that gives it real heft.
In FAITHFUL PLACE (Hachette Books Ireland, £12.99, pb), Tana French also gives prominence to a minor character from a previous novel. Undercover cop Frank Mackey appeared in both IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS, but here he is the narrator, sucked back into his former life when the corpse of the girl he’d once planned to elope with to England is discovered on his old stomping ground, Faithful Place in inner city Dublin. As always, French is as exercised by the psychology of criminality as she is by the investigation of the mystery, and the result is a gripping, literate thriller laced with black humour.
The latest in her Inspector Sejer series, Karin Fossum’s BAD INTENTIONS (Harvill Secker, £11.99, pb) is another novel that trades heavily in the psychology of the criminal mind. Fossum sets up a scenario in which no actual crime is committed when a young man steps off a boat into a lake, to subsequently drown, but explores instead the morality of those who were with him as they finesse the details to their own advantage. Tautly told in a crisp translation from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund, the story is a riveting exploration of the consequences of crime, a whydunit rather than the traditional whodunit.
Two aging brothers are murdered within hours of one another in RIVER OF SHADOWS (MacLehose Press, £18.99, pb), the debut from Italian author Valerio Varesi. Commissario Soneri investigates against an atmospheric backdrop of a wintry northern Italy, as the Po floods its banks. The plot neatly explores the ramifications of the Italy’s internal Fascist-Communist struggle during WWII, and Joseph Farrell’s translation is appropriately poetic, but Soneri himself is rather less fascinating, being yet another in a long line of urbane, sybaritic Italian detectives. Surely there are Italian policeman who are not obsessed with their stomachs?
Equally atmospheric is Alan Furst’s SPIES OF THE BALKANS (W&N, £18.99, hb), the 11th in his ‘Night Soldiers’ novels, which are set in Eastern Europe prior to and during WWII. Set in Salonika in 1940, undercover policeman Costa Zannis awaits the inevitable invasion of Greece by Italian forces, and finds himself drawn into establishing an underground railway for Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. The literary style belies a deftly paced plot in an old-fashioned spy thriller more reminiscent of John Le Carré and Graham Greene than Ian Fleming. Highly recommended.
Jeff Lindsay’s DEXTER IS DELICIOUS (Orion, £12.99, hb) is the fifth in his series about a homicidal Florida psychopath who harnesses his urges and only kills for the good of society. The twist here is that Dexter, who can barely describe himself as human, has his entire life overthrown when his wife gives birth to a baby daughter. Struggling to deal with emotions for the first time, Dexter has to deal with the appearance of his equally homicidal brother, all the while helping to investigate what appears to be a cannibalism spree. Lashings of gallows humour help to sugar the pill, but even though the tale moves swiftly towards its climax, it’s difficult to ignore the nagging thought that Dexter might well have outlived his novelty.
DON’T BLINK (Century, £18.99, hb) is the latest offering from James Patterson, co-written with Howard Roughan. Magazine journalist Nick Daniels is plunged into peril when he goes to interview a former baseball player at a New York restaurant, only to witness the Mafia lawyer at the next table get his eyes gouged out. The usual Patterson tropes of very short chapters and cliff-hanger endings help to move the action along at a furious pace, but the characters couldn’t have been more crudely drawn had Patterson and Roughan used crayons and cardboard. The story somehow manages to be utterly implausible and entirely predictable, and has all the literary merit of a laundry list. If you’re in the mood for a migraine, this is the book for you.
Ruth Rendell is one of the few authors who can claim to be as prolific as the James Patterson factory, although, despite publishing her first novel in 1964, she has yet to learn how to pander to her readers.TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS (Hutchinson, £18.99, hb) features a host of characters, all of whom live in or near the flats of Lichfield House in north London, most of whom have their lives impacted by a number of crimes that occur in the locality, ranging in seriousness from identity theft to marijuana farming to murder. It’s by no means a conventional crime novel; in fact, it’s much more a social novel that incorporates criminal activity. That the tale succeeds brilliantly on both levels is due to Rendell’s telling eye for detail when it comes to characterisation, a quietly elegant style, an acerbic take on modern Britain and an irrepressible delight in storytelling that results in a novel bursting at the seams with ideas, narrative digressions and twists and turns that are as heartbreaking as they are unexpected. In a nutshell, a wonderfully satisfying novel. - Declan Burke
Following on from the runaway success of last week’s Digested Read chortle-fest, herewith be another. To wit: The Digested Read: BLOOD’S A ROVER by James EllroyJames Ellroy’s BLOOD’S A ROVER is published by Windmill Books.
Dig it, hepcats: bad men on the rise. Tricky Dick, Edgar J Vamp.
Check it now:
RIP MLK. Sayonara Bobby the K. Kuba’s gone, KIA. Hey, is that Mickey Mobster looking south to the Dom Rep? Factor in some Papa Doc rebop. Voodoo dogz howl at the moon and the moon she swoooooooon.
Kut to: kinky karnival for the good guyz. Ticker-tape for Wayne Tedrow, Dwight Holly. Feds ‘n’ foes both sides of the line.
Tell it like it is.
Dig that Mormon KKK vibe.
Factor in Don Crutchfield. Peeper, doper, small-time lech. Hopped on the lewd nude and her foxy afro. Be he me?
Cherchez la femme, mofo.
Scarfing acid, riding the wave. Get wise, dogz: the wave, she ride you.
Throwdown guns - check. Truck full of coke - check. Head hipped on jazz - check. Heart hopped on jizz - check.
Check in, check out.
Kut to: the Brothers rocking the Black Power hour. The revolution reverb. Spooks, mooks and soul-power crooks. Go Panthers! Infiltrate, annihil-hate.
Hate is good. Hate is whole. See it, feel it, taste it, eat it, be it.
Say, there’s Sal Mineo. Scuzzy Hollywood vibe. Rat Pack ratz and fat Vegas catz. Say a prayer for Mom’s apple pie.
Tell it like it is.
Be kool. Spritz some jive. Hustle the muscle. See America hex itself, re-hex, de-hex.
Redz under the bedz. Redz in the bedz. Kick their Kommie keisters all the way back to Moskow.
Green emeralds. Black ops. White cops. Blue-eyed boys and green-eyed girls. Read it and wipe.
Shoot-’em, loot-’em, dilute-’em. Brute force is truth force. They got the guns but we got the honeys.
Demokkkracy my lily-white ass.
Tell it like it is.
The Digested Read, Digested: Here be monsters. O, America!
A couple of dates for your crime fic diaries, folks. On September 4th, Irish crime writing takes to the stage at the Electric Picnic, when Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt and Gene Kerrigan assemble to talk about the business of books and writing, with yours truly standing by to make sure they all colour inside the lines. The idea of the gig is to talk to crime writers about books in general, and not just crime writing, with each of the authors offering a couple of examples of the novels that first inspired them to start reading and writing … although there’s every chance, of course, that they will be crime novels. The first book I can remember having a profound impact on me was about a guy called Bill Badger, he was an actual badger who lived on a barge moored on a canal … I can’t remember anything about the story, I was only about four at the time, but it was pretty riveting stuff.
(Holy Moly, I’ve just discovered that there were nine Bill Badger books! Right, that’s Lily’s bedtime reading sorted for the next couple of months.)
Anyway, I’ll also be asking the trio about Irish crime novels that they think deserve rehabilitating, or possibly republishing, in light of the recent explosion of Irish crime fiction. Some suggestions I’ll be making: Seamus Smyth’s QUINN; John Kelly’s THE POLLING OF THE DEAD; TS O’Rourke’s DEATH CALL; Hugo Hamilton’s SAD BASTARD; and Vincent Banville’s DEATH THE PALE RIDER.
Elsewhere, Dun Laoghaire’s Mountains to the Sea literary festival runs from September 7th to 12th, and boasts a small but perfectly formed crime contingent, with Kate Atkinson in conversation with HELLFIRE author Mia Gallagher on Saturday the 11th. I read Atkinson’s latest, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG last week, and it’s terrific stuff.
The gig I’ll be getting along to, though, is the fascinating pair-up of Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville (noon, Saturday the 11th), gnarled veteran and callow lieutenant, respectively, of Norn Iron letters. I read McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE last month, and it’s probably his finest novel yet; while Neville’s latest, COLLUSION, is a superior offering to his very fine debut, THE TWELVE. All in all, should be a cracking afternoon. For all the Mountains to the Sea details, clickety-click here …Finally, for those of you scratching the itch to write a novel of your own, the Author Rights Agency, under the aegis of Svetlana Pironko and Kevin Stevens, is offering a 26-week course in ‘The Making of a Novel’, which comes complete with an individual assessment from the course directors on your work. The fee - brace yourself, Bridget - is €2,000, but course contributors include Ken Bruen, Siobhan Parkinson, Catherine Dunne and Marita Conlon-McKenna. Do bear in mind that your humble host has absolutely no connection with said course, and is simply doing a mate a favour by giving it a shout-out. All the details can be found here …
I am reminded, though, every time I hear about writing courses, about the (hopefully apocryphal) story about the tutor who stood up on the very first night of a writing course to address his students.
“Who here really wants to write?” he said.
A full show of hands.
“Who’s willing to get up at five in the morning to write?” he said.
Maybe half the hands go up.
“Who’s willing to slough off all their friends and most of their family in order to write?” he said.
Five or six hands go up.
“Who’d be willing to let their mother die in order to be able to write about it afterwards?” the tutor said.
One hand goes up.
“Okay,” says the tutor. “So why the fuck aren’t you at home, writing?”
Maybe it’s just me, but a chart of this writer’s writing life would probably look a lot like a seismograph during a quake hitting 7.2 on the Richter Scale, or a polygraph attached to Janet Evanovich during an interrogation during which she was asked if she really believed - like, seriously now - that four of her novels were worth an advance of fifty million dollars, or thereabouts. (What bugs me about the Evanovich demand for $50 million advance - I’ve never read any of her novels, so I’m in no position to say if she’s worth it, although it’s fair to say that you’d need thumbscrews to truly convince me - is that if she’d only asked for $49 million, there’d still have been a spare million left over to divide up between a thousand or so other writers, giving them not necessarily a living wage but the hope that some day, they might just be able to earn a crust from this gig. And you’d have to imagine that, out of that thousand, at least one would be able to come up with something a little fresher than a tired reworking of a raddled old post-feminist parody. But I digress.)
Anyway, that seismograph chart - the life of a struggling wannabe writer is one of rapid and violent ups and downs, and far more downs than ups. That goes with the territory, puts fire in your belly, and if nothing else, gives you an overwhelming desire to succeed even if it’s just to prove the bastards wrong.
The last week or so has been pretty much typical. A little birdie whispers the very bad news that one of the best Irish crime writers has had his / her American contract cancelled for lack of sales. Shameful stuff, totally unexpected and utterly depressing, given that he / she is a terrific writer who is never less than entertaining and also pretty illuminating about the world we live in right now.
That’s the biz, I suppose.
For me personally, it’s been a decent week. I got a green-ish light on a project I’ve been working on for about two years, of which more anon. I also heard that there are two US publishers taking a good long squint at BAD FOR GOOD, and that initial reactions have been very positive. Not that that amounts to a molehill of beans, in real terms, but still, it’s good to know that someone out there is reading it, and liking it.
I’ve also been doing quite a bit of writing, largely because I joined a ‘writing group’ last month. Four people, decent skins all, coming together to pool resources and give one another a helping hand over the various humps and hillocks that get in the way of putting words on paper. We all have our own agendas, and we’re all at different stages of the publishing game, which will be very healthy, I think. For my own part, my needs are threefold. One, that said decent skins apply shoe leather to my skinny white ass and get me writing again; two, that that process will help me rewrite a novel currently labouring under the weight of its 149,000 words into something more taut, elegant and accessible; and three, that I can get back to writing the way I used to write in the good old days before I ever got published, and start telling stories just for the fun of it.
That might sound a little naïve, but during the last two years or so, I’ve started at least five different novels, investing anything between 10,000 and 30,000 words in each. Every time I came grinding to a halt, worn down by the constant process of second-guessing the industry, particularly the bean counters to whom most editors have to answer these days, worrying if what I was doing was commercial (very probably), or commercial enough (hard to say), or if I wouldn’t be more profitably employed shouting down a well (very probably).
Fun. Not a word you hear very often when people talk about writing in particular and the publishing industry in general. But it’s why I started writing, way back when, those halcyon days when the process of putting words in their best order was enjoyable for its own sake. A very serious kind of fun, of course, given that writing is a serious business, whether or not the business takes you seriously. But fun.
My little girl arrived home yesterday from crèche with a paper folder full of drawings and doodles and paintings and sparkly stuff, my favourite of which you can see above. Bright, colourful, bold, fun. Was Lily worried about what anyone thought about her picture when she was painting? Hardly, given that she’s only two years-and-a-bit old. Had she any idea that when her silly old sentimental Dad saw it, his heart would feel like it might explode? Probably not. Did she just get stuck in and splash the paint around and do the best job that fun would allow? I’d imagine so. Will anyone ever pay for it? Not that I’d ever sell it, but no.
The ‘writing group’ met for the first time last month, and the plan is that we assemble in mid-September with 2,000 words each to show for our efforts this month. The good news there is that I’ve already racked up 15,000 words in the last three weeks, although the bad news - given that I’m supposed to be rewriting the damn thing - is that said 15,000 words are all brand new and freshly minted. Mind you, the process of writing that section has allowed me to identify not only a massive, glaring flaw in the novel, but also how to rectify it.
I’d say that that 15,000 words will save me about 40,000 by the time I get into the heart of the story. Anyway, good news / bad news. This week it’s mostly good, and high-ho for upward and onward, at least until next week, when I’ll very probably plummet off the precipice again.
The main thing, though, is that it’s all good, that I’ve started to rediscover that sense of fun again. Maybe, given the fact that none of my previous offerings have overly taxed the boys ‘n’ gals at Nielsen, I’ll have to send out the redrafted novel under a pseudonym, as I’ve discussed before. And maybe (very probably) it’ll never see the light of day, because I’m already a beaten docket as a published writer at the age of 41.
And so what? What I get from writing - fun, joy, self-worth, all the good stuff you tend to forget about after too long at the coal-face - is far too precious to entrust to the publishing industry, or at least the publishing industry in its current, ultra-conservative incarnation. As the quote from Isak Dinesen I’ve tacked to my PC monitor says, “I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”
Lately I have been mostly reading: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay; COLLUSION by Stuart Neville; FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French; RIVER OF SHADOWS by Valerio Varesi; DON’T BLINK by James Patterson; TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS by Ruth Rendell, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson, and THE DOGS OF ROME by Conor Fitzgerald.
Jeff Lindsay is the bestselling author of five ‘Dexter’ novels: DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (2004), DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER (2005), DEXTER IN THE DARK (2007), DEXTER BY DESIGN (2009) and DEXTER IS DELICIOUS (2010). The novels are set in contemporary Florida. The first Dexter novel, DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, wasn’t just a popular success, it was also nominated for a ‘Best First Novel’ Edgar. It was subsequently dropped from the category, however, when it was discovered that Jeff Lindsay had previously published novels under a different name.
The character of Dexter is an intriguing one. He is a broadly sympathetic sociopath, and can be read as a linear descendant of both Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Robert Harris’s Hannibal Lecter.
Where Dexter differs from these characters is in the way he harnesses his homicidal impulses in order to kill only those particularly vile criminals who are a threat to society. In effect, and while works a day job as a forensic technician for the Miami Police Department specialising in blood traces, his true calling is as a vigilante who believes himself to be reinforcing the thin blue line.
Dexter was taught at an early age to control and channel his homicidal instincts by his father, Harry, who was himself a Miami cop. Dexter operates to a strictly observed ‘Code’ of ethics, according to which he only ever kills other killers.
The novels are told in the first person. The tone is jaunty, with Dexter acutely aware of his failings, and also of how incongruous his nature is. The first-person narrative allows for plenty of asides to the reader, and lashings of morbidly black humour. The pace is swift, with short, snappy chapters maintaining the momentum.
He is married to Rita, who has two young children (Astor and Cody) from a previous relationship. Rita is oblivious to Dexter’s true nature. Her children, however, share his dark secret and his instincts.
The current novel, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS, offers a number of twists on the standard Dexter story. The story opens with the birth of Dexter’s child, Lily Anne, which has the effect of ‘humanising’ him to a degree that he previously considered impossible (Dexter frequently refers to himself as ‘inhuman’). The novel also introduces Dexter’s long-lost brother, Brian, who appears to have a malign interest in Cody and Astor.
The narrative thrust of the story has Dexter helping his foster-sister, Detective Sgt Deborah Morgan, investigate a series of gruesome murders perpetrated by a group of Miami-based cannibals.
Lindsay treads a very fine line in the Dexter novels. Readers respond well to the fact that Dexter privately cuts through a lot of red tape and the usual boring detail of police procedural work in order to render a very crude form of natural justice.
By the same token, Dexter himself works for the Miami Police Department, and is publicly bound by a more conventional expression of law and order. It is also to his credit that, as the novels have progressed, Dexter has become more aware of his own failings.
What is interesting about the Dexter novels is that they present the reader with a moral conundrum. The anti-heroes in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Robert Harris and Jim Thompson, for example, are sympathetically drawn, but it’s always clear that they are not intended to be read as forces for good.
Dexter, on the other hand, is a serial killer, yet Lindsay wants the reader to accept that Dexter is a positive character, and that the world is enhanced by his acting on his murderous impulses, regardless of how refined and sophisticated he has rendered those impulses. For all the jaunty humour and self-deprecating asides, this conceit never fully works for me.
I also had issues with the extent to which Dexter, a crime scene technician, was free to accompany Detective Sgt Morgan as she sped around Miami investigating the case of the feasting cannibals. Dexter spends far more time out of his office than in it, with no superior asking questions about his absences, and while Lindsay makes great play of the adversarial relationship between Dexter and Morgan, and the extent to which she bullies him into going along with her whims (she detests her new partner, for example, and prefers Dexter’s company and insights), the frequency of such trips make the story increasingly implausible.
That said, Lindsay is not aiming for gritty realism here. The Dexter novels (and the spin-off TV series) have far more in common with CSI Miami than The Wire, say. The novels are intended, you’d have to assume, as wish-fulfilment hokum, and for the most part they fulfil their remit.
Dexter’s black humour begins to grate after a while, particularly in terms of his self-deprecating references to his weaknesses when compared with the stronger women in his life, and especially as we know that he is capable of tremendous savagery. Humour is a very personal thing, of course, but I did find that it detracted from the character rather than added to him.
Much more interesting is Lindsay’s take on Dexter’s extended family, even if very few of the characters are linked to Dexter by flesh and blood. The latest arrival, Lily Anne, is the exception.
His father, Harry, was an adoptive father; he has a foster-sister, Sgt Deborah Morgan; his ‘children’ previous to Lily Anne are Cody and Astor, Rita’s son and daughter from a previous relationship. His brother, Brian, turns up in the new novel, after a long period of estrangement.
Other than Lily Anne, Brian is Dexter’s “only biological relative, as far as I knew, although considering the little I had uncovered about our round-heeled mother, anything was possible.”
While this extended, complex family offers the promise of some insights into the nature of the contemporary fracturing of the traditional nuclear family unit, Lindsay does very little to develop it. His frequent declarations of love for his new baby sound heartfelt at first, although they do become rather banal through repetition.
More significantly, perhaps, the construction of the novel - the swift pace, the short chapters, the jocular tone - are not conducive to Lindsay exploring any theme or subject in any great depth. This is as true of Dexter’s own psychological complexities as it is of his complicated family.
All told, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is a fun, breezy read that demands too little, given the seriousness of its subject matter, of the reader. For a more profound take on the mind of a psychopathic killer, read Patricia Highsmith or Jim Thompson instead. - Declan Burke
Jeff Lindsay’s DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is published by Orion
A couple of weeks back I posted about how chick lit author Melissa Hill was turning her hand to crime fiction by co-writing, with her husband, a novel featuring a Dublin-based, Quantico-trained forensic investigator called Riley Steel. And good luck to them both, and all who sail in that particular ship of hope. It was subsequently brought to my attention by a gentleman associate who knows such things that Melissa’s protagonist very nearly shares a name with one Riley Steele (right), who has, apparently, carved out a lucrative niche for herself in the making of movies that are unlikely to ever be produced by Disney, say.
Now, I’d imagine that the Riley Steel / Riley Steele confluence is just one of those coincidences that occur from time to time - Riley Steel / Steele is, after all, a pretty common name. But it did get me thinking about the Google-based marketing opportunities that might be derived from giving your protagonists names that might allow them to be confused with porn stars. Or, better still, publishing a novel under a nom-de-plume that might allow you to be confused with a porn star. Or, even better still, writing a novel about a feisty porn star who investigates the tragic death of a series of her colleagues, taking an appropriate revenge on the scumbags who prey on vulnerable women, then giving it to an actual porn star to publish under her own name, splitting the profits 50/50. I’m thinking of calling it THE GIRL WITH THE LETHAL RAMPANT RABBIT VIBRATOR.
You never know. After vampires, zombies, Swedish journalists and angels, porn stars could be the next big genre-lit cross-over, complete with rewrites of classic novels. To wit: RUBBINGSOME CRUSOE, THIS HON FOR HIRE, JEREMY NORTHANGER ABBEY, MOBY-DICKED, ONE BLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, THE FRENCHING LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, THE LUST OF THE MOHICANS, BRIGHTON COCK, THE NAKED AND THE DEAD … oh, hold on.
Anyway, you can see where I’m going with this. No, don’t thank me, publisher-types. It’s all part of the service …
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
DAS FRÄULEIN VON SCUDERI, or MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It is not the best detective work ever written, but it is the first. It would be nice to be the inventor of the genre.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
As a child, I adored the Just William books, all of which I read in Cabinteely library. William lived in a closed, safe and comfortable English country garden world that I wanted to step into. Of course, I now feel that would be a twee and hellish place to spend my adult life. So, if I am really allowed to be any fictional persona from any book, and be accorded his or her concomitant strengths and defects, I suppose I’d go for the character known as ‘God’ in the Old Testament.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Popular science books. I find everything a read in them utterly fascinating, though I am too stupid to retain any of the information they impart. But even though I learn nothing from them whatsoever, I always feel enormously reassured and comforted to be reminded of the presence of those highly intelligent people thinking about complex and intricate matters that are quite beyond me. Good science writers are like antibodies to the viral ignorance of politicians, sociologists, psychologists, economists and literary theorists. The pleasure is a guilty one, because these books form no part of the long and often boring reading list I need to get through for research purposes.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing ‘Chapter 1’. I tend to be feel a bit disappointed with most of what follows.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
What I consider the best piece of music, art, literature, TV or food changes from hour to hour. That said, I have enormous respect for THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE by John Banville, which surely counts as a crime novel. I think it marked the beginning of a new type of modern, urban and sophisticated movement in Irish literature, which is continuing to develop today.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Cormac Millar’s THE GROUNDS has all the right ingredients. I find that many good movies, including HBO TV series, force characters to operate in constructed and constricted spaces, which Millar does in his book. That said, I find there is much to the truism that bad books make great moves and great books make bad movies, so perhaps there is some lousy Irish crime novel out there that I will never read but is destined to become a classic movie.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The luxury of working from home is offset by having to live at your place of work. It’s like spending your whole life with that guilty Sunday-night-and-I haven’t-even- started-my homework-and-here-I am-watching-TV feeling from school. That, and abject penury.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Commissioner Blume investigates the death of an Irish forger whose false masters hang in major galleries worldwide. Based on a true story.
Who are you reading right now?
Camen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff: THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: EIGHT CENTURIES OF FINANCIAL FOLLY.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. When I read, I rewrite in my head, or imagine writing responses, or I plot out where I think the book is going. So reading encompasses writing. Also, we read for the comfort of knowing we are not alone, but we write for fear that we are. As for God appearing, cf. question 2.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Place, character, mortality.
Conor Fitzgerald’s THE DOGS OF ROME is published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Tony Clayton-Lea interviewed the ever radiant Alex Barclay (right) for the Irish Times to mark the publication of TIME OF DEATH, and was clearly very taken by the feminine charms of his interviewee. To wit: A CITY-CENTRE Dublin hotel, Saturday morning, July 31st. A slim, attractive woman in a silver-blue top with strategically-placed zips, tight jeans and black, heeled boots sits down in a low sofa and starts to speak. She will spill only as many beans as she wants to, and will, occasionally, be as difficult to determine as the stain on a nearby rug.For the rest, clickety-click here …
Half conundrum, full beauty, Irish crime writer and former journalist Alex Barclay is currently sitting atop various bestseller lists with her latest novel, TIME OF DEATH. Her fourth book in a thriller-writing career that commenced six years ago with DARKHOUSE has clearly benefited from her former role as a journalist. Discipline with words, awareness of deadlines, structure, research, and knowing how important beginnings, middles and ends are to stories have filtered down into a writing style that is as trim as Barclay herself.
She won’t give too much of herself away, either, which also comes from her former life of interviewing people and hearing too much personal guff; Barclay sticks to the facts, clear and simple.
How come no one ever mentions how trim I am when they interview me? Or my tight jeans and strategically-placed zips? More to the point, how come no ever wants to interview me?
Oh. ‘Best-seller lists’. Right.
I had a bit of fun messing about a couple of weeks ago with some drafts for a project called ‘The Digested Read’ - basically, you take a novel and condense it into 300 words. Given that I had a lot of fun reading Lee Child’s 61 HOURS, I thought I’d take a crack at it first. To wit: The Digested Read: 61 HOURS by Lee Child
Hi, me again. Jack Reacher. Can’t say much more than that, we only have 61 hours.
Just don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Or happy. Or sad.
Don’t you find that emotions just confuse stuff?
Anyway, there’s this snowstorm, and a snowed-in town, and a killer on the way. Well, two killers if you count me. But I’m a good killer. Hey, I’m ex-military. Killers don’t come much better than that.
Where was I? Oh yeah - 55 hours to go. Jeez, the cops in this town are hicks. I don’t think they’ve even killed anyone before. Amateurs.
God, it’s cold. And just look at all that snow. Can you imagine High Noon set in Fargo? No? Good. 47 hours to go.
Did I mention the frail old lady who’s testifying about a hand-off she saw that could bring down an international drug-smuggling ring involving Mexicans and Hell’s Angels and Russians? She’s a librarian, but whoa - feisty! 39 hours to go.
This Mexican drug lord - ay, caramba! He’s one tough guacamole. But enough about him, how about that snow? Hold up - is one of the hick cops a stooge for the bad guys? Say it ain’t so, Joe. 28 hours to go.
Snow, snow, go away / Come back another day. 14 hours to go.
Lemme see, that’s three corpses so far. Two bad guys, one good. Isn’t it time for me to start shooting yet? Note to self: get a gun from the frail old lady. 8 hours to go.
Hmmmm. Dead cops all over. More snow. The librarian’s a book, she’s just been checked out. Time to get angry? 1 hour to go.
Badges, Mexican drug lord? I don’t need no stinking badges! Bang. Bang-bang.
The End. 0 hours to go.
The Digested Read, Digested: Jack’s back. Bang-bang. The End.
An interesting tome hoves over the horizon, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and rejoicing in the title FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES. To wit: Whether it be the London of Sherlock Holmes or the Ystad of the Swedish Wallander, Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco or Donna Leon’s Venice, the settings chosen by crime fiction authors have helped those writers to bring their fictional investigators to life and to infuse their writing with a sense of danger and mystery. FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction’s greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work. Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city’s dark streets and hidden places. The book includes beautifully designed maps with all the major locations that have featured in a book or series of books - buildings, streets, bars, restaurants and locations of crimes and discoveries - allowing the reader to follow Inspector Morse’s footsteps through the college squares of Oxford or while away hours in a smoky Parisian cafe frequented by Inspector Maigret, for example. Aimed at the avid detective fan, the armchair tourist and the literary tourist alike, FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.Maxim let yours truly loose on the fictional private eyes of Dublin, but don’t let that put you off. The intriguing line-up includes Barry Forshaw (Brighton, Edinburgh, Sweden and Venice), Sarah Weinman (New York and Washington DC), Peter Rozovsky (Iceland), John Harvey (Nottingham), Oline Cogdill (Florida), J. Kingston Pierce (San Francisco), Martin Edwards (Shropshire), David Stuart Davies (London), and Maxim himself on virtually every city in Christendom not already mentioned.
The title is due in September, and already I’m dreading its arrival - the fear of not coming up to the mark has me quaking in the boots I bought specially for the occasion. For what it’s worth, though, the ‘Dublin’ entry concerns itself with the private eyes created by Vincent Banville, Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes, all of whom are terrific writers, and all of whom I quote liberally, so hopefully I can skate by on their talent.
Incidentally, for those of you wondering where Benjamin Black comes into all of this, he doesn’t, given that his protagonist, Quirke, isn’t a private eye. Which is a shame, but there you go - that’s remits for you. Boo, etc.
.jpg)
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I still love John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING - it’s both brilliantly written and we all know the great story behind it’s success. Gives me goose pimples just thinking about it.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I’m a Mike Hammer wannabe in disguise ...
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Well, I just ordered the hardback version of THE BIG O from Amazon ... but recently I’ve been reading Declan Hughes and Ian Rankin.
Most satisfying writing moment?
I’m hardly ever satisfied with my writing - so I’d say that the most satisfying point of the day is when you can almost feel the first cold beer in your throat before you even approach the fridge ...
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I love all of Declan Hughes stuff so far - more than anything else Irish I’ve read - so maybe THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’m amazed John Connolly’s work has not already been filmed ... I see Russell Crowe as Charlie Parker ...
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Not being able to start writing when you want to / Not being able to stop when you should ...
The pitch for your next book is …?
Yet to be written ... I’ve got three unfinished novels on the go and at least two others plotted out ... Time is my enemy.
Who are you reading right now?
Ken Bruen - BLITZ - I picked up a ‘Do Not Press’ edition last time I was on Charing Cross Road ...
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Blunt, hard, cold.
T.S. O’Rourke’s DEATH CALL is now available on Amazon Kindle
‘Jack Taylor’, the pilot for the movies based on Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS, screened last night on TV3, and I have to say - reluctantly - that I don’t buy Iain Glen (above, left) in the lead. It doesn’t help that his faux-Irish accent wanders all over the map, but that’s not the biggest problem.
The script, and particularly in the voice-overs, makes something whimsical of Jack Taylor’s fatalism. In the movie, Jack Taylor is a broth of a boy, prone to the odd eye-twinkle, a tough man to deal with if you push him too hard.
In the novels, or in my reading of them at least, Jack Taylor is a dangerous bastard to know, a man fuelled on anger and Jameson, a man who is as hard as only the truly brittle can be, who know that just one more shove or punch or insult could shatter the façade.
It also doesn’t help that the movie, being a movie, needed to make of THE GUARDS a straightforward narrative of investigation, whereas the novel, and all the Taylor novels, are a post-modern take on the detective story, for the most part philosophical ruminations occasionally linked by the need to have some investigative narrative.
I suppose the difference is that, in the movie, Jack Taylor was investigating a series of crimes, rather than investigating Galway itself as a microcosm of the new Ireland.
There was a lot to like, it has to be said, not least of which was the depiction of Galway city, and there were some good performances in the minor roles.
And hey, maybe Iain Glen has the chops to convince an audience that isn’t familiar with the Bruen novels. Fans, though, will be disappointed, I think. For some promo vids, and to make up your own mind, clickety-click here …Meanwhile, it’s been a busy week for Irish crime fiction. Staying with TV3, the ever-radiant Alex Barclay was on the Ireland AM couch, talking up her latest offering, TIME OF DEATH. The conversation includes a very nice shout-out to John Connolly and Declan Hughes - clickety-click here for more …
Staying with Declan Hughes … I don’t know if you could call Emma Donoghue’s new novel, ROOM, a crime novel, even though it concerns itself with some rather despicable criminal activity, but Squire Hughes was suitably impressed when reviewing it for the Irish Times. All the details are here …
Staying with reviews: the eagle-eyed Maxine Clarke has organised her reviews by country over at the Petrona blog, and her introduction to her Irish reviews cites Gene Kerrigan, Brian McGilloway, Alan Glynn and, erm, yours truly. But don’t let that put you off - there’s some really good stuff just about here …
Elsewhere, Peter Rozovsky reviews Declan Hughes’ latest, CITY OF LOST GIRLS, while the good word has already started to tumble in for Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION …Finally, and veering off the straight-and-narrow of crime fiction, congrats to all who were responsible for having Dublin declared a UNESCO City of Literature last week; and congrats too to Irish scribes Emma Donoghue and Paul Murray, both of whom were long-listed for the Booker Prize, for ROOM and SKIPPY DIES respectively.
Nice work, folks. Very nice indeed …
There are better ways of spending your Bank Holiday Saturday evening than in the company of your brother (right) watching Leonard Cohen perform at Lissadell House, the spiritual home of WB Yeats, but last Saturday evening, I couldn’t think of any. I grew up in Sligo, way up there on the northwest coast of Ireland, during the 1980s, with a love of reading and books, and a love of writing - homework essays, for the most part. When I was 14, someone - I think it was an aunt - gave me a copy of Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits. Suzanne sounded like the kind of interesting girl we never saw in Sligo - half-crazy, living down near the river, with those tea and oranges all the way from China - but it was the second verse that blew me away:
And Jesus was a sailor / When He walked upon the water /Until then, I didn’t know you were allowed write like that, or sing songs like that. Hell, I didn’t know you were allowed to think like that …
And He spent a long time watching / From His lonely wooden tower /
And when He knew for certain / Only drowning men could see Him /
He said, ‘All men will be sailors then / Until the sea shall free them.’ /
But He himself was broken / Long before the sky would open /
Forsaken / Almost human / He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone … /
I’ve had plenty of musical love affairs since I was 14, anyone from the Pixies to REM, Dylan and the Tindersticks, Mozart and the Stones. The one constant throughout has been Leonard Cohen.
I even got to interview him once, albeit on the phone. Despite my star-struck babbling, he was lovely.
(A few minutes before the interview was due to start, I rang up a mate of mine for a chat, just so I could say, when the office receptionist rang through, “Sorry, mate, have to go - Leonard Cohen’s on line five.”)
I’d seen Leonard Cohen live a couple of years back, at Kilmainham here in Dublin, and wonderful it was too to see him in the flesh - laughing, humble, dark and funny.
He does a mean live show, too - three hours plus, with most of the ‘greatest hits’ thrown in. The gig on Saturday night was virtually identical to the one I saw in Kilmainham, which was a little disappointing, and there’s way too much jazzy noodling and virtuoso solos. He did cut loose in the second half with a brilliant version of The Partisan, and the second half was tighter all round, but I’d have loved something rawer, like Avalanche or a good old-fashioned blast of Please Don’t Pass Me By.
I guess the man is entitled at this point to do whatever he wants to do. Gavin hadn’t seen him live before and pronounced it all terrific, so there you go.
Anyway, it was fantastic to see him in the Lissadell setting, where I spent so many Sunday mornings on family breakfast picnics, with Benbulben away to the north and Queen Maeve’s grave atop Knocknerea away to the south across Sligo bay. Idyllic doesn’t come into it. Even the rain stayed away until the very end.
Leonard gave a nice little spiel to about Lissadell in the fading light, and two girls, both wearing silk, one a gazelle … and how he’d learned those verses fifty years before in Montreal, and never thought his steps would take him to Yeats’s spiritual home. Apparently he even requested that he sleep in Yeats’s bed on the Saturday night. All told, it was all very sweet.
Above and beyond all else, though, was how incongruous it all was. If you’d told me at the age of 14 that I’d be watching Leonard Cohen play Lissadell, that he’d sing Suzanne into the fading light still haunted by those young girls wearing silk … well, it was as likely as the possibility of seeing him play on the moon.
I haven’t a doubt in the world that I wouldn’t be a writer, wouldn’t be who I am today, if I hadn’t heard Suzanne at the tender age of 14, hadn’t had everything I’d thought and known and believed blown away in the space of a single song.
Maybe, being from Sligo, I should pretend that it was WB Yeats who first inspired me to pick up a pen. Why pretend, though?
It was just very, very nice to be sitting in the serried ranks on Saturday night while Leonard paid homage to WB Yeats, and in my own half-assed way, just by being there, pay homage in turn to Leonard.
Roll it there, Collette …
Those precious few among you who have read CRIME ALWAYS PAYS - how few! how precious! - will be aware that it is an ebook release, and a sequel-of-sorts to THE BIG O. The reasons why it’s an ebook release are so complicated, pathetic and boring that even I’m sick to the back teeth of them; suffice to say, even if you don’t own an e-reader, the novel is now available to download straight to your desktop computer. So far it’s garnered very little by way of review, mostly because I don’t have the time to go promoting it the way I should, but those that have come in have been very gratifying. The latest is from Sean Patrick Reardon, a relatively recent addition to the ranks of readers of this blog, and the gist of his review runneth thusly: “CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is a continuation of the cleverly written, fast paced, and gut-busting romp, THE BIG O …I thank you kindly, Mr Reardon.
“The story is not so much a sequel as it is a continuation of the lives of the awesome cast of characters, how their lives intersect, and all of the resulting action, mishaps, and follies that result. There is enough ‘flashback dialogue’ to get the gist of what happened in THE BIG O, so reading it is not mandatory, but I highly recommend doing so for the sheer enjoyment, and it does help when reading this instalment.
“Mr. Burke has a unique talent for creating characters and dialogue, and coupled with the solid story, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS delivered on every expectation I had before I started.
“The comparisons to Elmore Leonard’s style are warranted and deserved, but Mr. Burke has managed to put his own unique spin on it. As an avid reader of Mr. Leonard, I can honestly say that I have never laughed out loud as much when reading his novels as I did when reading both of Mr. Burkes. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of suspense throughout the story, but it is so damn funny at times.
“For anyone looking for some escapism, a great read, and a lot of fun, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is for you. The style of narration, dialogue, characters, and the situations and how they play out in the story, are to me reminiscent of Guy Ritchie’s crime capers.”
Meanwhile, if you glance to your left, you’ll see that the venerable Glenn Harper of International Noir had this to say:
“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is part road movie and part farce, reminding me sometimes of Elmore Leonard, sometimes of Allan Guthrie, sometimes of Donald Westlake and sometimes of the Coen Brothers – sometimes all at once.”And if you scroll down a little further, you’ll see that the equally venerable Colin Bateman recently had this to say over at the Guardian blogs:
“If you want to find something new and challenging, comic crime fiction is now the place to go … Declan Burke [is] at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works.”So: if you’re intrigued by new, fresh, smart and subversive writing, clickety-click here for a free sample.
If you’re not, fuck away off somewhere else and stop clogging up my bandwidth.
And have a nice weekend y’all, y’hear?
That cradle and lair of all things Irish crime fiction, Belfast’s No Alibis, hosts the official launch of Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION tomorrow, July 30th, with the details running thusly: No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch party for Stuart Neville’s second novel, COLLUSION, on Friday 30th July at 6:30PM.In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) came complete with a blurb from none other than James Ellroy (“THE TWELVE will knock you sideways. This guy can write.”) and scooped the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller of the Year a couple of months back. Not bad for a debut, but THE TWELVE has also been nominated for a Best First Novel gong in each of the Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards, to be announced at this year’s Bouchercon.
Stuart Neville has been a musician, a composer, a teacher, a salesman, a film extra, a baker and a hand double for a well known Irish comedian, but is currently a partner in a successful multimedia design business in the wilds of Northern Ireland. COLLUSION is his second novel, the follow-up to the hugely successful and award winning THE TWELVE.
I mentioned a couple of weeks back that COLLUSION is a finer novel than THE TWELVE, not least because it’s rather more cynical than its predecessor about joining the dots between ‘the Troubles’ and post-conflict Northern Ireland. Here’s another snippet:
Did anyone live here now? He searched for signs of someone, anyone, making a life on this street. Not a soul. Less than a mile away, millions were being pumped into brownfield sites, building apartments, shopping centres, technology parks. Just across the river, property was changing hands for prices never imagined just a few years before. One-bedroom flats sold for a quarter of a million, snapped up by investors looking to make a killing out of Belfast’s peace boom, desperate to get rich before the bubble burst, as it surely would. And here, not ten minutes away, stood two rows of empty houses with generations of memories rotting away along with the mortar and woodwork, all because small-minded thugs couldn’t see beyond the world of Them and Us.In my humble opinion, COLLUSION is a very fine novel indeed. A good old-fashioned page-turner of a thriller, it should be required reading for those Ivory Tower types who bemoan the paucity of novels addressing social and political flux of contemporary Ireland, and the lack of post-ceasefire literature concerning itself with Northern Ireland.
There was an interesting piece on Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER from Henry McDonald in last Friday’s Belfast Telegraph, which reviews the novel in the context of Ireland’s voluntary amnesia when it comes to the Royal Irish Constabulary. To wit: The RIC was airbrushed from the Republic’s consciousness for 80 years. Artists have a role to play to ensure it doesn’t happen again, says Henry McDonald
Kevin McCarthy’s brilliant first novel, PEELER, rescues from the margins of Irish history a group that the future Free State and Official Ireland airbrushed from national memory: the Royal Irish Constabulary.
When I was taught Irish history at grammar school back in the 1970s, this force was only referred to by a single and dismissive sobriquet -- they were merely the “eyes and ears” of the British Army which Michael Collins had so ruthlessly blinded and deafened in the War of Independence.
At the time we knew nothing about what these officers were actually like, how the vast majority of them were Catholic Irish and what happened to them once the state was created and Ireland partitioned.
In fact, compared with the details of fratricidal brutality wrought by the subsequent Civil War, students were given next to no information about the RIC, its casualty rates, its fate and the future for its members.
PEELER fills that knowledge-gap. The story of its central character, RIC acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe, was not just a hugely enjoyable read, but also socially and historically illuminating.
McCarthy has turned these shadowy, ghostly figures relegated in history as the “eyes and ears” to fully-formed flesh and blood characters, whose lives were as complex and rich as the men in the Flying Columns who hunted them down.
PEELER is, first of all, a detective novel, a hunt for a suspected serial-killer who has brutally murdered a young woman and abandoned her mutilated body in the remote West Cork countryside at the height of the war.
While trying to survive one of Collins’ assassination squads, O’Keefe and his colleagues now find themselves searching for a murderer who has left the word ‘Traitor’ on the young woman’s body.
That word prompts the British military-political establishment to think that the victim has been singled out by the West Cork IRA who suspected she has been passing on information to the RIC and the Army.
Meanwhile, the IRA has set up its own parallel murder inquiry and has appointed West Cork Brigade intelligence officer Liam Farrell to head up the investigation.
Farrell represents the coming power in the land, the guerrilla on the verge of taking over law and order, the republican poacher turning Free State game-keeper.
To McCarthy’s credit, both O’Keefe and Farrell are sympathetic characters with deep internal lives. Farrell is tortured by the necessities of war, of its brutal imperatives.
O’Keefe is also a victim, a mentally scarred veteran of the First World War, who witnessed his regiment being slaughtered at Suvla Bay by the Turks.
Yet it is not just the two main rival Irish figures pitted against each other in a race to catch a serial murderer that are multi-dimensional characters.
McCarthy even evokes sympathy for the English demobbed soldiers hastily drafted into an auxiliary military force to curb the armed insurrection or as they are more notoriously known, the Black and Tans.
As a veteran whose brother fell beside him under Turkish machine gun fire, O’Keefe regards some of these men as brutes and others simply as brutalised by war and crushed into service in Ireland through poverty.
McCarthy’s book indirectly provokes bigger questions about the legacy of Ireland’s violent past -- especially for those of us in Northern Ireland.
At present, the devolved administration at Stormont and the British Government at Westminster are grappling with various notions of how to confront what happened in the north over the last 40 years.
The approach thus far has been piecemeal with selective inquiries, the appointment of four Victims’ Commissioners and the Eames-Bradley process.
It has been, in essence, confusing and misdirected probably because in the end any exploration into the past, let alone the ‘truth’ of the Troubles is to going to be politically loaded.
Northern Ireland seemingly faces two options in terms of truth and reconciliation: it can go down the Spanish road towards the ‘pact of forgetting’, when all of Spain post-Franco agreed to put the crimes of the civil war aside, re-enter Europe and move on; or it could adopt a South African Truth and Reconciliation process, an official ‘national cleansing’ in front of the cameras, open to all.
The reality is that there is going to be some cobbled together compromise, a third way of muddling through.
While the victims and their families as a whole might receive some retrospective compensation, or even psychological help and support in a new Troubles-Trauma centre, there will neither be Spanish-amnesia or South African-style collective catharsis. The answer to questions such as ‘what or how did that all happen?’ cannot be properly offered by officialdom in any shape or form.
Perhaps the only positive way to explain where we have come from will be in the guise of novels, plays, films, poetry, documentary and so on. (Time, by the way, for broadcasters -- particularly the BBC -- to lift the unofficial ‘embargo’ on Troubles-related themes and give artists the space and the support to explore some of the most important events of our lives over the last 40 years through the medium of film and drama.)
Shelley once declared that poets are the unelected legislators of the world; they can also be their truth-tellers.
Let’s just hope that all those untold stories of our conflict just past won’t have to be told eight decades later the way the narrative of the forgotten RIC have been finally brought back into public consciousness by Kevin McCarthy’s dark, brooding, multi-layered, morally complex masterpiece. - Henry McDonald
The cliché has it that a man’s life flashes before his eyes before he dies. Paul Harding’s remarkable novel, the first debut to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 10 years, burrows into the heart of this truism in search of the truth of the human condition. The story opens as the unwitting memoir of George Washington Crosby, who, Harding informs us in the very first line, ‘began to hallucinate eight days before he died’. George has been dying for some time, and is surrounded in the family home by his wife, children and grandchildren. A solid citizen, George has lived a quietly successful life, indulging in his spare time a love for tinkering with old clocks that has come to define who and what he is:
“When his grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the [grandfather] clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart.”As George grows progressively more feeble, and his mind wanders farther afield, Harding introduces another character: Howard, George’s father, a travelling salesman from the turn of the century who peddled his wares in the back woods from a mule-drawn cart. Where George, as an horologist, is fascinated with the art and science of measuring time, Howard is prone to epileptic fits that not only disrupt and distort his perception of day-to-day life, but eventually erupt into an event that shapes the lives of future generations.
Aptly enough, Harding’s parallel narratives proceed by fits and starts, with time a fluid and often contrary element as the story advances. George’s mind flutters back and forth through time, alighting on moments in his family’s extended history and observing with a poet’s facility for detail whatever here-and-now he happens to find himself in.
At one point, Howard covertly watches the young George build a boat to set sail on a pond in the woods:
“What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from ocean siege or October breeze.”Harding is a consummate wordsmith, and the novel is studded with such prose-poems. Delicious to read, and reread, they do raise the question of how George and Howard, neither one particularly well educated men, become so fluently and instinctively poetic in their interior monologues.
That said, the novel opens with George beginning to hallucinate, so perhaps it’s best to simply accept the novel in its entirety as a feverish dream. Besides, and despite the rigorously unsentimental tone and its occasional flourishes of sobering realism, the novel is equally invested with surreal moments, and even hyper-realism. Harding, for example, interrupts the narrative with frequent excerpts from the Rev. Kenner Davenport’s treatise The Reasonable Horologist (1783), a fictional and often hilarious account of the history of time-pieces. None of this, we are being warned, is to be taken too seriously.
That warning, it appears, extends to life itself. Are we to depend for the truth of three generations of family on the wanderings of George’s enfeebled mind? Are we to depend, when it comes to measuring out our lives, on clocks and watches, when all attempts to come to terms with time, space and the universe at large must in the final analysis be considered ‘improvisations built from the daydreams of men’?
In invoking the Rev. Kenner Davenport, and the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment in which his fictional treatise was published, Harding also invokes the belief that the universe is a vast piece of machinery. One day, runs the theory, we will understand everything, if only we apply logic and reason to its cogs and gears. In the context of this novel, however, we are being persuaded to believe this courtesy of George’s dying ramblings and the poetic fancies of Howard’s epileptic mind.
The notion that we can distil reason and meaning from the universe if we simply apply the correct tools - memory, thought, words in their best order - is revealed in Harding’s hands as the fallacy it has always been. What does the universe know, or care, of the tiny implements horologists use to pin time in its place?
Short enough at 191 pages to be read in one sitting, TINKERS is a superb novel that deserves and demands a more measured reading experience. Part prose-poem, part philosophical investigation, it is a wholly satisfying excavation of limited lives lived to their fullest capacity. - Declan Burke
This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post
Some days it seems like I’m always the last to know, etc. Further proof that we’re staring into the abyss of an economic apocalypse, if any were needed, comes with the news that best-selling Irish chick-lit author, Melissa Hill, has turned her hand to writing thrillers. To wit: Bestselling Irish chick-lit author Melissa Hill has switched to thriller writing.
A new book she has co-written with her businessman husband Kevin was bought this week for a six-figure sum by Simon & Schuster in the UK and big money deals have also been done for other countries.
The forensic crime thriller is called TABOO and represents a major literary crossover for Melissa whose eight chick-lit novels to date have all been bestsellers.
TABOO was snapped up by publishers in several countries within 24 hours of being offered by Hill’s agent. It’s the first in a series she and Kevin will be penning together under the name Casey Hill. - John Spain, Irish Independent
So wot's it all abaht, then? Quoth Irish Publishing News:
TABOO, the first of a six-figure, two book deal, will be released in Spring 2011 and will feature the character Riley Steel – a Quantico trained forensic investigator who comes to Dublin to head up the GFU, a new state-of-the-art Irish crime lab.Riley Steel, eh? In a way it’s almost too neat for words. Chick lit celebrated the shopping-and-fucking excess of the Celtic Tiger, most of it the literary equivalent of shiny, tacky bling. Now that the party’s over, and everyone’s wondering who paid for it on the never-never, crime fiction steps in to investigate.
Hey, maybe Amanda Brunker will slip a mickey finn into her next Champagne novel.
So: am I going to bellyache about the chick-lit brigade stomping all over the crime scene in their six-inch stilettos? Nope. Could. Not. Be. Arsed. The best of luck to Melissa with her new venture, and here’s hoping it’s not a one-way street. I, for one, would pay big bucks to read Gene Kerrigan’s chick-lit tale of a former Dublin gangster who has gone all Gok Wan and hit the runways of Paris and Rome modelling Armani briefs, but only as a front for his undercover role as a globe-trotting hitman. Gene? You know it makes sense …
Danish 13-year-old Nikolaj - aka Niko - is orphaned when his parents die in a car crash. Reared by his older sister Sanne - aka Sis - Niko becomes dependent on Sis’s love, and resorts to self-harm and violence to ensure the dependence is mutual. The downward spiral into self-loathing culminates in Niko’s battering his girlfriend, Silje, the consequences of which eventually cause Sis to commit suicide. At the lowest moment of Niko’s life, a strange man appears in his living room, claiming to be Jesus Christ …Lars Husum’s debut is similar in tone to early work by Bret Easton Ellis (especially Less Than Zero) and Chuck Palahniuk. His protagonist, Niko, is a wilfully abrasive character intended to challenge conventional mores, as the potentially provocative title suggests. While his circumstances, and particularly the death of his parents at such a formative age, lend themselves to the reader’s sympathy, Niko is a bland kind of sociopath. A peeper and a stalker, he regularly provokes fights and mutilates himself.
All of this is perversely designed to strengthen the bond between Niko and his older sister, Sis, and Husum is effective in the early part of the novel at achieving his aim. The fact that Niko appears to lack the courage of his convictions, however, make him an irritating protagonist.
The fact that Niko’s mother was a much-loved pop star in her native Denmark plays a significant part in the story, especially near the end. It’s also quite convenient for Husum, given that Niko, who has in part inherited his mother’s fortune, has plenty of free time in which to indulge his navel-gazing.
In effect, we are presented with a bratty, self-absorbed rich kid with virtually no redeeming features other than his brutal honesty about his emotional and psychological shortcomings. This honesty, however, only reinforces those characteristics of Niko that were unlikeable to begin with.
Niko’s downward spiral into utter self-loathing finally reaches rock bottom when he batters his girlfriend, Silje, into a coma. When his long-suffering Sis hears the news, she finally gives up on Niko - and herself. Despite the fact that she is herself in a happy relationship, and has recently had a baby son, Sis commits suicide.
Shortly afterwards, Niko wakes up one morning to discover a hairy, sandal-wearing man in his apartment. The man tells Niko that he is Jesus Christ, and has come to help. Tough love is the order of the day.
In order to help himself, Niko must first help others. On Jesus’ advice, he leaves Copenhagen behind to move to Tarm, the rural part of Jutland where his mother grew up. Embraced by the locals, Niko establishes a team, or ‘family’, that will assist him in his ultimate goal - to rehabilitate the broken Silje.
Husum’s style is pleasingly direct, and not without a coarse but very effective black humour. The idea of dropping a Jesus Christ figure - Husum never confirms if the character is real or a figment of Niko’s imagination - into a modern city in a Western, secular world is a bold stroke, and throws up all manner of fascinating potential narrative strands.
Unfortunately, Husum fails to capitalise on the idea. The Christ character engages only fleetingly with Niko, and the conceit seems only half-realised. While the Christ character tells Niko that he is the Christ who ‘came with a sword’, for example, there is never any sense that there will be consequences for Niko if he fails to take Christ’s advice.
For that matter, and despite some superficial changes, Niko’s character hardly changes throughout the novel, a fact confirmed by the rather squalid finale. Nonetheless, and despite his reprehensible behaviour, and admitting to such, he appears to be universally loved by those he meets.
Niko isn’t particularly handsome, and he’s far from charming. Neither does he squander his money on his friends. In fact, we are given no good reason as to why people might want to spend time in his company, let alone actually like him.
It’s possible, of course, that Husum intends the novel to be a parody of the liberal Christian culture of contemporary Western civilisation. Hence the biker-style Jesus, and the Pollyanna characters who take the violent and self-absorbed Niko at his word when he asks for forgiveness. But while the novel is undoubtedly archly contrived, it lacks the persuasiveness of satire. Husum paints in broad strokes, and few of his characters have the kind of depth that might make them convincing acolytes to Niko’s very narrow definition of what constitutes redemption.
Another irritating aspect of the novel, the number of coincidences it contains, could also be considered an element of an archly contrived satire, and it’s probably best to steer clear of accusing a writer of MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST of introducing deus ex machina. Unfortunately, this novel thrives on coincidence. Denmark has a population of roughly five million people, but Niko regularly bumps into characters on the street, or in wine shops, or finds that they have friends in common. The fact that Silje is a singer with a band would be sufficient to establish a meeting of minds when she and Niko first meet, given the fact that Niko’s mother was a famous pop singer; but Silje is not just a singer, she is the singer in a band that do cover versions of Niko’s mother’s songs.
MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST is a potentially subversive conceit swamped by a self-indulgent and repetitive narrative. With a stronger editor on board, the novel could well have said important things about liberal Christianity in Western culture, and the West’s attitude to religion in general. At the very least it might have been an entertaining novel. As it stands, however, MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST is a heavy-handed satire that lacks the wit and depth to truly offend or inspire. - Declan Burke
MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST is published by Portobello Books.
Aka, ‘Top O’ the World, Omagh’. Via the ever diligent Peter Rozovsky comes the news that feisty whippersnapper Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley Edwards scooped the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger at Harrogate for her monumental work AFTERMATH: THE OMAGH BOMBING AND THE FAMILIES’ PURSUIT OF JUSTICE, and hearty congrats to her. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer lady. Word has it that Stuart Neville was on hand to manfully handle the obligatory jeroboam of champagne, and that a good night was had by all. Incidentally, I finished Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION during the week, and the good news is that it’s a better novel that his award-winning debut, THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), which I remember Ruth Dudley Edwards praising to the skies for its compassion early last summer. Ah, serendipity.
Meanwhile, and in a not particularly impressive showing for Irish writers, William Ryan was shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for his debut THE HOLY THIEF. I liked that one a lot, too.
Elsewhere in Irish crime fiction this week, Maxine Clarke reviewed Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND for Euro Crime, with the gist running thusly:
“WINTERLAND is a brilliant book … There are just so many things to like about this book, which is exciting, gripping and perfectly structured as well as having great emotional depth and insight. If you only read one book for the rest of the year, make it this one.” - Maxine Clarke, EurocrimeNice. And Bernice Harrison was impressed with Arlene Hunt’s BLOOD MONEY over at the Irish Times. To wit:
“Hunt is a skilled crime writer, able to build and sustain suspense – but never at the expense of credibility – and her dialogue zings with authenticity. The clever plot is carried by a cast of deftly drawn characters, who are all as recognisable as the Dublin locations Hunt puts them in. And there’s humour here, too, mostly in Quigley’s realisation that he’s in danger of becoming a sad, lonely loser and, if he’s not careful, a cliche of a private investigator. He’s a character worth watching out for in future.” - Bernice Harrison, Irish TimesSpeaking of Arlene Hunt, she was on the Ireland AM couch over at TV3 last week, alongside Declan Hughes, chatting about Ireland AM’s Book of the Month, Bateman’s THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL.
This week it was the turn of The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman himself, who reckons that his speciality subject, were he ever to go on Mastermind, would be Liverpool Football Club rather than crime fiction. Yep, I always knew the man had impeccable taste. Oddly enough, co-presenter Mark Cagney suggested that while “you could throw a rock out that door and hit a female Irish crime writer,” there seemed to be a lack of male Irish crime writers once you get past Bateman, John Connolly and Benjamin Black.
Erm, well, there’s the guy you had on last week, Mark, called Declan Hughes. And Brian McGilloway, who’s been on the show at least twice, and possibly three times. And then there’s Ken Bruen, Adrian McKinty, Paul Charles, KT McCaffrey, Alan Glynn, William Ryan, Gene Kerrigan, Eoin McNamee, Stuart Neville, Kevin McCarthy, Garbhan Downey, Rob Kitchin, Gerry O’Carroll, Robert Fannin … and they’re just the writers who’ve published a novel in the last year or so. Mark? Sack your researcher, post-haste.
For the vid of Bateman in all his glory, clickety-click here …
I don’t know about you, but I like good books. I’m not too demanding: a gripping story, fascinating characters and an inventive use of language are generally enough to make me happy. Like, say, Adrian McKinty’s debut, DEAD I WELL MAY BE, which at the time I read it seemed not entirely unlike a Bourne novel rewritten by Cormac McCarthy. The folks at National Public Radio seem to like it too, given that the novel has been chosen as one of its ‘Killer Thrillers’ - “the 100 most pulse-quickening, suspenseful novels ever written”, according to the NPR.
Marvellous news for McKinty, and for Tana French and Ken Bruen, both of whom are also flying the Irish flag. Or so you’d think. Quoth McKinty over at his interweb lair:
“Somehow DEAD I MAY WELL BE has been long listed as one of National Public Radio’s ‘Killer Thrillers’. I say somehow because unlike every other book on the list DEAD I WELL MAY BE isn’t even in print anymore.”Now, between you and me, the fact that DEAD I WELL MAY BE went out of print isn’t just a disgrace, it’s something of a metaphor for how rotten is the state of Denmark, if we can in turn accept ‘Denmark’ as a metaphor for ‘the publishing industry’. In fact, so disgraceful is it that I can’t muster the requisite anger and indignation - it’s kind of bone-crushingly depressing, to be honest. I can rant and rave about the fact that I can’t get published, and people are perfectly entitled to say, ‘Listen, mate, you’re actually not very good - get over yourself.’ They can’t say that to McKinty, because the man is a brilliant writer, and has the critical kudos and awards to back him up.
What to do? Well, you can vote for DIWMB over at the NPR site here - the poll closes on August 2nd. And once you’ve done that, you can hoppity-skip-jump over here, because it appears the good folk who decide such things are reprinting DEAD I WELL MAY BE. And not a moment too soon, even if it is (or appears to be) a POD edition.
God bless your cotton socks, NPR.
Yon Eoin Colfer’s a busy man these days. Not only did he launch the latest Artemis Fowl novel by ‘virtual live’ webcast on Tuesday, he was yakking it up at Harrogate this morning (Thursday) and then zooming across to Dublin to launch ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX at Eason’s at 6.30pm. Has Eoin learned a thing or two from Artemis about time-travel, the art of bi-location and sundry other handy tips ‘n’ tricks? Or is Eoin so stinkingly rich these days he can afford his own private Lear jet? Personally, I’m hoping it’s the latter … Anyhoo, ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX. What the jiggery-poo is all that about, then, blurb elves?
ARTEMIS FOWL’S CRIMINAL WAYS HAVE FINALLY GOT THE BETTER OF HIM . . . Young Artemis has frequently used high-tech fairy magic to mastermind the most devious criminal activity of the new century. Now, at a conference in Iceland, Artemis has gathered the fairies to present his latest idea to save the world from global warming. But Artemis is behaving strangely – he seems different. Something terrible has happened to him . . . Artemis Fowl has become nice. The fairies diagnose Atlantis Complex (that’s obsessive compulsive disorder to you and I) – it seems dabbling in magic has damaged Artemis’ main weapon: his mind. Fairy ally Captain Holly Short doesn’t know what to do. The subterranean volcanoes are under attack from vicious robots and Artemis cannot fight them. Can Holly get the real Artemis back before the robot probes destroy every human and life form?As always, I’m going to go out on a limb and say, Yes, she very probably will …
Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Garbhan Downey (right), author of THE AMERICAN ENVOY. To wit:“I never base my characters on actual people – apart from one, which I’ll get to in a minute. But I do accept that now and again my heroes and villains unwittingly adopt attributes of punters I’ve met in real life.
“Five years ago, for example, a retired IRA man asked me to sign a copy of OFF BROADWAY – a book of short-stories set in the North’s post-ceasefire underworld. I looked at him deadpan and wrote, “To X, an inspiration”. I then handed the book back to him, saying nothing. In fairness, he had the grace to burst out laughing – and told me he was away to ring his lawyer.
“It would be silly to deny that life inspires art. The Barkley family – a gang of dirty businessmen who appear in all six of my novels – share many traits with the rash of carpet-baggers who infest modern Ireland. “Sparkly”, “King-Size” and “Darkly” Barkley have each been responsible for shed-loads of scams, which are thinly disguised accounts of real-life cons I was never to expose as a newspaper editor.
“Sparkly runs a host of quasi-legal shop-fronts for the Boys; King Size is a race-fixing jockey with sidelines in property development and blackmail; while Darkly is a consultant or, if you’d prefer, “the type of guy who stands in front of the brothel and offers to sell you your photo back”. And though I never met a triumvirate quite so crooked in my day job, I’m sure there are a few out there who will occasionally wince with recognition – and perhaps even a little pride – as they’re reading the books.
“Unlike in the real world, however, I have taken great care to spoon out proper retribution to my Barkleys: suspending one from a window-ledge; affixing another to a bunny-boiling wife; and infecting a third with a vicious STD.
None of them, you’ll be pleased to learn, live happily ever after – indeed, two don’t live at all any more ...“The Hurleys – who are central to both RUNNING MATES and THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES - are a mostly-decent republican clan, representing those in Northern society who struggle valiantly to put the old ways behind them but occasionally fall back into bad habits. Or, as they’re more often referred to nowadays – “the government”.
“The Hurleys, as you’d expect, are known as “The Hurlers” as a tribute to our national sport and a formerly-preferred method of chastisement. But it is important too that characters develop with the changing times. Hence, Harry the Hurler, the family patriarch, becomes entangled with a glamorous senior police chief; his brother Gerry gets himself a “late-learners degree” and becomes an MLA in Stormont; Jimmy Fidget, the youngest, has a guilt-induced breakdown before setting up his own security company; while Donna, the white sheep, shacks up with the Taoiseach. And again, I would insist that the Hurleys are certainly not based on real people, despite several claims to the contrary (and two unproven lawsuits).
“Lou Johnston, aka Letemout Lou, the leading lady in several of my books, is a bossy and beautiful lawyer-turned judge, who - despite her cranky shell - is kindness itself. I would stress for the record, however, that although I myself am married to a beautiful lawyer who is kindness itself, any and all resemblances are purely coincidental. (Note to editor – I took great care to drop “bossy” from that second clause...)
“The identities of my players are very important to me – I have to have a firm grip in my head as to who they are, when I’m writing them. So it helps if the names are obvious and pertinent: Tommy Bowtie is a solicitor; Shakes Coyle is a dried-out drunk; Getemup Gormley is the failed bank-robber; Time-Gents is a barman; Hate the World is a hitman; Nora Tora Tora has a bad temper; Ruth Ball, the man-eater, becomes “Buster”; Chiselling Phil is a barrister-turned-negotiator; Stammering Stan is a not-very-confident newsreader; the priest who “cures” homosexuals is Fr “Bend-em-Back” Behan; and the Taoiseach’s intelligence expert is John the Bugger.
“Derry people, I believe, are particularly talented at summing up people in a single word or pithy phrase. They work hard at it. I once asked in a pub why a particular man was known as “Jimmy Choo-Choo”, to be told that he had taken part in a training course at the railway station 20 years previously.
It always makes sense. A prominent Glasgow republican, now living in Derry is, naturally, known by locals as “Taff”. “My late brother was an artist at it. He was never bested for the mot juste – so much so that I once even dedicated a story to Rónán “Give Everyone a Middle Name” Downey. I remember sitting with him as we listened to a very stoned friend attempt to sing “Just a Gigolo”. Rónán immediately dubbed him John “I Ain’t Got No Body” Smith*. The name stuck.
“On only one occasion did I directly transpose a real person into a novel. He was heavily fictionalised, though for obvious reasons I am happy that he will never out himself as my muse.
“I have to confess it was Mark Durkan, the Foyle MP, who put the idea into my head. We were swapping yarns in Radio Foyle one morning, when Durks started chatting about a constituent who, when asked to leave his office, went down on all fours and ran around the desk, barking like a dog.
“I couldn’t resist it. In my first novel THE PRIVATE DIARY OF A SUSPENDED MLA, I just had to give him a cameo role. A man whose mission in life is to torment rising political stars. A man who breaks the wing-mirrors off your car, if you don’t come quick with the bail money. A headcase among headcases. The nemesis of all would be young Kennedys. The curse of all Camerons.
“Step forward Mister J. “Bite Me” O’Boyle. You know who you are.” - Garbhan Downey
* Identity changed to protect the victim.
Garbhan Downey’s THE AMERICAN ENVOY is published by Guildhall Press.
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Can we stretch it to thrillers? HARRY’S GAME, by Gerald Seymour. He can do dialogue and pacing like no other. Or perhaps Le Carré’s A MURDER OF QUALITY. Ditto the dialogue. You can almost taste it.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Prince Myshkin. He runs under the radar.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Guilty as accused: mysteries and thrillers.
Most satisfying writing moment?
I’ve published a dozen books over the years, but getting my first royalty check for my narrative history, HITLER IN VIENNA, thirty years after publication was definitely a high point. No lie. That book was sold I don’t know how many times from the German original, translated, sold in revised editions (without my blessings) and I never saw a dime. Only financials for years were the photo rights I had to pay for with each new edition. But patience pays out. I now can afford five bottles of plonk.
No. On second thoughts, I believe I will frame the check.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is promotion - endless, ceaseless (is it even productive?) promotion. The best is that feeling of getting it right, nailing a scene or character with exactly the right words.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Here’s for book four of my Viennese Mysteries series, set around 1900: THE KEEPER OF THE HANDS is a murder mystery that quickly morphs into a thriller of assumed names, false identities, and internecine turf battles between espionage arms of the state, employing the technology and tradecraft of a century ago. It is also a work of social and political commentary in which the demands of state power trump the privacy of its citizens, a scenario that is prescient of our own times.
Who are you reading right now?
Perhaps this is my guilty pleasure: I always have several books going at the same time, fiction and nonfiction. Nabokov’s SPEAK MEMORY, THE AGE OF WONDER by Richard Holmes, and Jonathan Littel’s THE KINDLY ONES.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Neither. Don’t believe in God.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’m breaking the rules (so I can’t count, so sue me) and quoting from Kirkus about my last novel, REQUIEM IN VIENNA: “Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber.”
J. Sydney Jones’ THE EMPTY MIRROR is published by Minotaur Books.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … Back when I was still young, dynamic and bearded, I lived in Portstewart in Co. Derry, doing my level best to avoid lectures at the nearby university of Coleraine. Of marvellous assistance in my endeavours to avoid toil of any kind were my housemates and fellow Panucci Brothers (above) - l-to-r: Davy ‘the Reader’ Panucci, Dec ‘the Alibi’ Panucci, Barry ‘the Hat’ Panucci, and Mik ‘the Orange’ Panucci, and Barry ‘De Niro’ Panucci. And, yes, we were all old enough to know better, even back then.Anyway, we got some bad news last year about Davy Gray, aka Gravy Day. I’ll let Gravy pick up the story:
“In February 2009, two weeks before my 36th birthday, I collapsed in work and was taken by ambulance to Belfast City Hospital. The next day following an MRI scan I was given the devastating news that the scan revealed a significant tumour on the right side of my brain. To say this was a shock is obviously a huge understatement. I had not experienced any of the symptoms associated with a brain tumour, and had led what I considered to be a fit and healthy lifestyle.Much as I hate to use this here interweb yokeybus to flog anything but my own paltry tomes, I’m agreed with Gravy that this is a worthy cause. Over to you, folks …
“After a few days I was moved to the neurology unit of Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital but after performing a biopsy the neurosurgeons at the Royal told me they considered the tumour to be inoperable - in their opinion the risk of causing brain damage during surgery was too high.
“Despite this setback, I decided to get a second opinion and was referred to a surgeon at The Beacon Hospital in Dublin. After examining my case, the surgeon in Dublin told me that, in his opinion, surgery offered "no significant risk" and he agreed to operate on me. In April 2009 after a major operation, my tumour was successfully removed. In June I began a 6 week course of concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy at the Northern Ireland Cancer Centre. This was followed by 6 months of chemotherapy, the last dose of which I received in January this year. To our enormous relief, a scan at the end of January was completely clear and showed no sign of disease.
THE CHARITY - “Every year in the UK, 16,000 people are diagnosed with a brain tumour and more people under 40 die of a brain tumour than from any other cancer. Despite these statistics, brain tumour research is woefully under-funded and lags significantly behind other cancers.
The Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust is the leading adult and childhood brain tumour charity dedicated to scientific research and patient support in the UK. To date the charity has spent £5m on innovative, world class research projects led by top UK and international scientists.
“The charity’s aim is to raise awareness, significantly fund brain tumour research and to give support to brain tumour patients, their friends and family, and to give hope to brain tumour patients in the future. Further details at www.braintumourtrust.co.uk
THE EVENT - “The 26th annual Warrior’s Run takes place on 28th August 2010 in Strandhill, Co.Sligo.It’s a gruelling 15km run from the beachfront in Strandhill to the peak of Knocknarea mountain, around Queen Maeve’s Cairn and back down to the beachfront again. The race is classified as a road and hill race or multi-terrained - nine of its kilometres are on paved roads, but six kilometres in the middle include a 700 foot climb through fields and along loose gravel and heather paths. I have competed in the race several times in the past and always find it a huge challenge but great fun too! Further details are at www.warriorsfestival.com
HOW TO DONATE - “To donate online please go to www.justgiving.com/warriorsrun. Donations are in sterling, but for those of you in the eurozone or elsewhere on the globe, justgiving.com accepts payments by all major credit cards and by PayPal.
PLEASE DIG DEEP AND DONATE TO THIS VERY WORTHY CAUSE!”
Kevin McCarthy points us in the direction of Edward Conlon, scion of a long line of Irish-American cops, and recommends BLUE BLOOD, Conlon’s memoir of his time as an NYPD cop. Sounds like a right corker - here’s the intro to Brian Schofield’s excellent review of the book in the Sunday Times: In the unlikely event that you should ever shoot a New York police officer, it might be helpful to know the lengths to which their colleagues will go to catch you. In one particularly dogged pursuit, the force bought a nightclub and populated it entirely with undercover officers posing as mafiosi. Night after night, for months, a young wannabe wiseguy called Henry Vega socialised with the mock mobsters, chasing an invitation to become a “made man”. Eventually, he sought their trust by bragging about the time he shot a cop — only to discover, in a blur of badges and guns, that he was the star of his own personal Truman Show.For the review in its entirety, clickety-click here …
That might sound like the overcooked plot of a TV police series, but the source is BLUE BLOOD, Edward Conlon’s memoir of seven years as a New York policeman, which oozes a credibility that’s beyond question. This ribald, unsparing description of life in the NYPD blue was a publishing sensation when it hit bookshops in America in 2004, garnering fans from Jay McInerney to James Frey.
But at that time it was considered too detailed and parochial for British tastes. Then came The Wire, a television show that proved that a fanatically accurate portrayal of American cop talk, drugs trafficking and police office politics could draw a small but manically dedicated UK audience. So now Blue Blood has crossed the pond — but this gritty, grimy epic is no cheap cash-in, more of a high-water mark of realism and insider knowledge, against which the television shows have to measure up …”
Conlon’s advice to anyone who’s watched too many cop shows on television is strident: “You want to know what my job is like? Go to your garage, piss in the corner, and stand there for eight hours.” - Brian Schofield, the Sunday Times
Apparently Conlon has now written a novel, called RED ON RED, which is due to be released early next year. Could be a cracker …
Erm, Des? The good news is that I haven’t, so you’re not missing much.
Meanwhile, and for a different kind of viewing experience entirely, Declan Hughes and Arlene Hunt (right) appeared on TV3’s Ireland AM last week.They were there, ostensibly, to chat about the programme’s book of the week, Bateman’s THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL. As you’ll see if you clickety-click the link, poor old Bateman hardly got a mention, as the conversation veered off almost immediately into exploring the whys and wherefores of the explosion in Irish crime fiction. Still, it’s a good chat, and anyway yon Bateman is rich as Croesus, and doesn’t need any unnecessary plugs from mere mortals. Rounding off this less-than-comprehensive round-up of crime fic doings in Ireland this week is an interview with Stuart Neville over at that bastion of all things Irish and manly, Joe.ie. For those of you still unaware of the fact that Neville’s COLLUSION, which is the follow-up to THE TWELVE but not strictly a sequel, will be appearing on a shelf near you next month, it’s a nice little refresher as to how the bould Stuart’s debut took on all comers last year and ended up as the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller of the Year.
I’m about halfway through COLLUSION right now, and it’s terrific stuff.
All the pace and punch of THE TWELVE, but with a snarkier edge, particularly when it comes to detailing the more squalid aspects of The Troubles. To wit: ‘Everybody knows it all, but no one says anything. Look, collusion worked all ways, all directions. Between the Brits and the Loyalists, between the Irish government and the Republicans, between the Republicans and the Brits, between the Loyalists and the Republicans.’ Toner ran out of breath and his face reddened. He pulled hard on his cigarette and coughed. ‘All ways, all directions. We’ll never know how far it went. All the small things, all the big things. Loyalists supplying Republicans with fake DVDs and Ecstasy tablets. Republicans wholesaling laundered diesel and bootleg vodka to Loyalists. Feeding off the hate, letting on they’re fighting for their fucking causes when all the time they’re making each other rich. And the killings. How many of our own did we set up for the Loyalists to take out? How many of their own did the Loyalists set up for us? How many times did I get a taxi to some club or other on the Shankhill with a name in an envelope, and two days later, some poor cunt from the Falls gets his head took off?’Stirring stuff. Let’s hope no Loyalist / Republican sympathisers go rushing over to Amazon to give COLLUSION a negative review on the basis of that little lot, eh?
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I suppose everyone says THE BIG SLEEP, don’t they? It’s THE GREAT GATSBY of crime fiction. And I like to think that I’d be just slapdash enough to forget, in true Chandleresque style, who killed that chauffeur.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond. I remember being very impressed, as a kid, when I read GOLDFINGER and learned that Bond concealed his Walther PPK in a book called THE BIBLE DESIGNED TO BE READ AS LITERATURE. I think that was when I realised that true style is in the details.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The Spenser novels by the late, great Robert B. Parker. Starting with THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT in 1973, Spenser evolved into one of the great heroes of American popular fiction. Spenser isn’t really a noir protagonist in the true sense – he never compromises, and he’s always right. The Spenser books are basically romances in which the questing hero always triumphs, which I reckon is what makes them so satisfying.
Most satisfying writing moment?
When I was about thirty pages from the end of BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK, I suddenly knew what the last paragraph would be, and I scribbled it down then and there. The most satisfying moment was realising everything else was done and I could finally type that final paragraph.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Declan Hughes’s Ed Loy novels are turning into a running commentary on the state of the nation, using the PI genre as a hook. I suspect Ed is the first fictional gumshoe ever to find himself in negative equity. And Hughes can really write, too.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE KILLING KIND by John Connolly. Because of the villain, mostly: Mr. Pudd, the unbelievably creepy arachnophile psychopath who kills people by jamming their mouths with chloroformed black widows. You could traumatize a lot of people by putting Mr. Pudd on screen.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
I can’t see much of a downside. The best thing is when you know you’ve got something right – a sentence, a paragraph, even a section title.
The pitch for your next book is …?
I have to write the bleedin’ thing first.
Who are you reading right now?
In my non-writing life I’m supposed to be doing a PhD on Norman Mailer, so I’ve just read a memoir called MORNINGS WITH MAILER by Dwayne Raymond, who was Mailer’s personal assistant for the last four years of his life. What amazed me was the account of Mailer’s work ethic. The man revised everything five or six times, even if it was just a Christmas card.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I think if God appears, I’ll have bigger problems ...
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I aim for clarity, honesty, and what you might call “flow” – I want people to turn the pages.
The paperback edition of Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK is published by Pocket Books.
Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Arlene Hunt (right), author of BLOOD MONEY. To wit: “I grew up on a steady diet of crime fiction. From the rough and tumble streets of Hill Street Blues to the verdant lushness and academic spires of Morse in Oxford, it mattered not the location. Once there was murder and mayhem involved I was a captive audience. I devoured every crime novel I could get my hands on, reading Wambaugh and Chandler alongside Jackie magazine and Just 17. I could think of nothing I enjoyed more than a rainy afternoon sprawled out on the sofa, my nose buried in a PD James or Agatha Christie novel.Arlene Hunt’s BLOOD MONEY is published by Hachette Books Ireland.
“Stemming from this base it seemed entirely natural that I might one day grow into a crime fiction author. There was just the small matter of how to go about it.
“Before I developed QuicK Investigations I pondered long and hard over who I wanted as my ‘good guys’. I wanted a team, I wanted them to be as real as possible. I did not want a cerebral genius like Morse or Holmes, nor a tough guy like Pike or Marlowe. I did not want a melancholy alcoholic, or a prim snoopy old lady. What I wanted was someone to whom I could relate. Someone who has to slog hard to get to the truth, someone flawed, someone who would make mistakes, someone with secrets. Someone with trust issues. I wanted a novice, willing to put the work in, willing to try.
“Someone like me.
“With this as my blueprint I set to scribbling and within a week I had my rookie detectives, John Quigley and Sarah Kenny. The offices of QuicK Investigations, located in a rundown building on Wexford Street, had opened for business.
“John Quigley is a heart a thoroughly decent man. He is not the brightest, or the most driven, but at his core he is the sort of person to whom the troubled turn. If John can help you he will. Sarah Kenny was a more complicated creation. She would need to be the counter balance to John’s slightly work shy attitude and his cockiness. She would be the brooder, the one mired in a personal battlefield that required her to be sharper and more serious. Though I did not want her to come across as a harpy, she has to be the one to rein in the impulsive John. She is also the person with the maturity to handle the mundane day to day running of the office, making sure the bills get paid on time and the insurance is up to date. Y’know, all the boring stuff that John has little interest in.
“They were to be the yin and yang of the QuicK agency. They each bring different skills to the table, as individuals they have weaknesses, as a team they are stronger. John and Sarah have evolved over the course of the books. Older now, more cynical, they are almost as real to me as flesh and blood people. It tickles me greatly when I get emails from readers asking what they are up to now, expressing dismay over happenings or sympathy for them. Sarah Kenny and John Quigley, once a daydream and a slice of wishful thinking, have become a reality.” - Arlene Hunt
J. Sydney Jones (right), author of REQUIEM IN VIENNA and THE EMPTY MIRROR, was kind enough to host an interview with yours truly over at his blog, Scene of the Crime. The gist of Sydney’s interviews concern themselves with settings, and how a particular setting influences a novel. I talked mostly about my home town, Sligo, the setting for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG EMPTY. To wit: “Historically, Sligo town is a fascinating place. There are records of the ancient Greeks trading at Sligo port; Sligo Abbey was founded in 1252. It’s an old town, then, and the centre of the town reflects that: the streets are narrow, and there are plenty of interesting alleyways down which a man might wander who is not himself mean. The modern town incorporates many sprawling suburbs, some of which are more salubrious than others, which again makes for an interesting juxtaposition. In certain parts of Sligo, literally crossing the road can make the difference between real estate selling for €80,000 and €400,000. That in itself creates a certain tension.Not that you’d know it from the excerpt Sydney posts from THE BIG EMPTY, a Harry Rigby private eye novel of mine currently out under consideration.
“There’s a saying in the West of Ireland that the Celtic Tiger never learned in swim, which is why it never crossed the Shannon into Connacht (said Tiger, presumably, being too dim to use one of the many bridges that cross the Shannon). Sligo was one of those towns that didn’t benefit hugely from the boom years, although it has transformed itself in the last decade or so. Today it’s a brash, progressive place – you can sip your café mocha on the remodelled riverfront with the best of them – but there is a sense that many of the changes are superficial, and you don’t have to go very far from the centre of town before you notice the shabby and threadbare corners, the boarded-up shop-fronts. All in all, I find it a fascinating place – but then, I’m biased. I love it.”
To wit: It was better out in the suburbs, and it was mostly all suburbs, but the town was a heart-attack of concrete and chrome. Old streets, high and narrow, arteries that had thickened and gnarled so the traffic trickled or didn’t move at all. The light a frozen glare shot with greens and reds, blinking pink neon, fluorescent blues. Boom-boom blasting from rolled-down windows, the deep bass pulsing out muscles of sound.For the interview in its entirety, clickety-click here ...
On a bad night it took fifteen minutes to crawl the two hundred yards along Castle Street into Grafton Street. The mob shuffling out of the chippers wore hoodies over baggy denims, the dragging hems frayed. Night of the Living McDead. The girls in cropped tops over bulging bellies with hipster jeans showcasing cheese-cutter thongs. In case someone might think they weren’t wearing any underwear at all, maybe.
I skipped O’Connell Street, heading east along John Street, turning north down Adelaide and then west at the new bridge onto Lynn’s Dock, a grapefruit moon hanging low above the quays. Finn playing The Northern Pikes, Place That’s Insane. On along Ballast Quay to the docks proper, a spit of land jutting out into the sea, maybe forty acres of crumbling warehouse facing open water. Behind the warehouses lay a marshy jungle of weeds. Once in a while there was talk of turning it into a nature preserve, a bird sanctuary, but no one ever did anything about it. The birds came and went anyway.
Down at the breakwater the Port Authority building was nine stories of black concrete, a finger flipping the bird to the town. Sligo’s Ozymandias, our monument to hubris, built back in the ’60s when Lemass had all boats on a rising tide and the docks were buzzing, a North Atlantic entry point for Polish coal, Norwegian pine, Jamaican sugar, Australian wool. Oil tankers moored down at the deepwater. Russians slipped ashore and never went to sea again. The first African, a Nigerian, was a celebrity. They called him Paddy Dubh and he never had to pay when he bought a pint of stout.
Then the ’70s slithered in. Crude oil went through the roof. The coal stopped coming, then the sugar. The channel silted up. Paddy had to buy his own stout. Things got so bad the Industrial Development Authority had to buy the PA building and then lease back two of the nine stories to the Port Authority. Even that was a farce, the IDA loaning the PA the money to pay the lease.
Then the ’80s, a good decade to be a weed or a rat. Everyone forgot about the docks, or tried to …”
It’s a karma thing, probably. The dastardly French cheat Ireland out of their place at the World Cup finals in South Africa, and then crash and burn to a humiliating first-round exit. Meanwhile, Ireland’s very own Tana French is getting all the good vibes going, particularly from US reviewers. To wit: “While it is a basic readerly instinct to trust the first-person narrator, especially when he’s a police detective, in Ms. French’s novels, the detective-narrators are as much the sources of mystery and danger as they are bringers of light, order and law to the dark world of crime, and the endings are not tidy returns to peace and order. Those who read for the plot may be disappointed by FAITHFUL PLACE, but those who value psychological complexity and vivid characterization, who aren’t afraid to have their generic expectations turned inside out, who like their thrillers with a strong regional and literary savour, owe themselves the pleasure of Tana French.” - The Washington TimesErm, Tom? ‘Not much fanfare’? Do try to keep up …
“Some thriller writers burst onto the scene in a sudden blaze of hype, while others bubble under the level of mass awareness for years before gaining a significant following. Two authors who have been steadily attracting fans—but not much fanfare—are Tana French and Dennis Tafoya. Both are likely only to widen their audiences with their latest work.” - Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
Elsewhere, the Courier-Journal had this to say:
“FAITHFUL PLACE is Tana French’s best book yet (readers familiar with IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS will recognize this as an incredible feat), a compelling and cutting mystery with the hardscrabble, savage Mackey clan at its heart.”Meanwhile, Myles McWeeney at the Irish Independent reckons that the novel is “more a sprawling inner-city Dublin family saga than a thriller in the strictest sense of the word. But that in no way takes away from the power of this enthralling and wonderfully nuanced book. Rosie and Frank’s story, told in flashback, hooks the reader from the beginning, the characters are masterfully drawn, and the author’s ear for Dublin dialogue is pitch-perfect.”
And here’s Adam Woog in the Seattle Times: “Irish writer Tana French hit the big time with her stunning cop-drama debut, IN THE WOODS and followed it with an equally brilliant book, THE LIKENESS. Both demonstrated French’s gift for merging the best traits of the crime genre with the compassionate insights and nimble prose associated with ‘serious’ literature. A third dazzler, FAITHFUL PLACE, puts Detective Frank Mackey, a supporting actor from THE LIKENESS, front and centre.”
If you want to hear Tana’s dulcet tones, clickety-click here for an NPR interview conducted by Lynn Neary …
… and if you fancy reading an excerpt from Chapter One, here’s a flavour courtesy of the New York Times, which kicks off thusly:
My father once told me that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for. If you don’t know that, he said, what are you worth? Nothing. You’re not a man at all. I was thirteen and he was three quarters of the way into a bottle of Gordon’s finest, but hey, good talk. As far as I recall, he was willing to die a) for Ireland, b) for his mother, who had been dead for ten years, and c) to get that bitch Maggie Thatcher.Needless to say, Janet Maslin at the NYT gives “Tana French’s expertly rendered, gripping new novel” the thumbs up …
So there you have it. FAITHFUL PLACE. What are you waiting for?
REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED is an audacious exercise in joining the dots between Ireland’s mythological heritage and the current explosion in contemporary Irish crime writing. Basically, Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone have commissioned a number of modern crime stories based on Irish mythology. Contributors include Brian McGilloway, Arlene Hunt, Ken Bruen, Adrian McKinty, Una McCormack, Garbhan Downey, Sam Millar and Stuart Neville. Among the myths invoked are those of Diarmuid and Grainne, the Children of Lir, Queen Maeve and the Brown Bull of Cooley, the Hound of Cu Chulainn, and the Banshee. What editors Stone and Brennan have attempted to do is draw parallels between the narrative tensions of an ancient and modern form. Much is made, for example, of the female characters in the myths, such as Queen Maeve and Grainne, as forerunners of the manipulative and often deadly femmes fatales of crime fiction.
It’s also true that narrative fulcrums such as greed, sex and the lust for power are timeless, as most of the stories here confirm.
Arlene Hunt’s ‘Sliabh Ban’ is a modern take on the Queen Maeve story, in which revenge plays a considerable part in motivating the main character, whose husband has not only run off with a younger woman, but taken her prize racehorse with him. Hunt’s story is perfectly pitched between myth and modern story, particularly in terms of the tragic ending.
On the other hand, Adrian McKinty’s story ‘Diarmuid and Grainne’ makes few concessions to the myth that inspired it. While acknowledging the elopement element of the myth, it is to all intents and purposes a hard-nosed tale of an undercover cop on the Border between the Republic and Northern Ireland making a fatal error of judgment while investigating dissident Republicans. Gritty and brutal, it belongs in the category of contemporary story, and shies clear of indulging the mythological aspects.
John McAllister’s ‘Bog Man’, on the other hand, reverses McKinty’s approach almost entirely: his protagonist is Tarlóir, an enforcer of the peace who goes up against the Morrigan clan in the years immediately following the arrival of St Patrick. McAllister drenches his tale with ghosts, gods and the superstitions of pre-Christian Ireland. In effect, McAllister frames the ancient tale with the modern concept of the police procedural. Where McKinty takes the myth and looks forward, McAllister takes the contemporary form and looks back. Both are equally persuasive.
Less persuasive in terms of style is Neville Thompson’s ‘Children of Gear’, a riff on the ‘Children of Lir’ story. Thompson sets his story in modern Dublin, yet uses the ancient names for his characters in a tale of a family lost to heroin. The net result is that the story never allows the reader to accept the story as fully myth or modern crime story, but that unsettling aspect contributes to the fact that Thompson’s forceful and unadorned reworking of the myth is a haunting one.
Some stories have only a tenuous connection to Irish mythology and legend - John Grant’s ‘The Life Business’, for example, offers a couple of glancing references to St Patrick in what is otherwise a compelling coming-of-age tale. Others, such as Ken Bruen’s ‘She Wails Through the Fair’, which takes the myth of the banshee for its inspiration, are entirely suffused with by the story’s inspiration.
Two stories, both police procedurals, are faithful to the mythology to an almost simplistic degree, yet both are the most successful at drawing out the timelessness of the myths. Brian McGilloway’s ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ and Garry Kilworth’s ‘Hats Off to Mary’ seem to skim the surface of the source material: entirely contemporary, they both convey the apparent simplicities of the mythological narratives, while also sketching in the often crude motivations that lie beneath what we often simply skim ourselves when rereading mythology.
REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED doesn’t always reach the standards set by its audacious concept. By its very nature, and the nature of the material from which the stories take their inspiration, the tone is uneven, with some stories trading in black humour, others in irreverent revisionism, and some striving too hard to locate what is essentially a prehistorical morality in a contemporary setting.
That said, the collection is for the most part a vibrant reimagining of a body of literature that is in danger of being preserved in the literary equivalent of aspic. It is at worst a long overdue shot in the arm for Irish myths and legends, and deserves to be taken seriously as a courageous attempt to revitalise a tradition that is in danger of being smothered in academic dust. - Declan Burke
Meanwhile, here’s a link to a piece on REQUIEMS I had published in the Irish Times last month.
Lately I have been mostly reading: MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST by Lars Husum, ORCHID BLUE by Eoin McNamee, SPIES OF THE BALKANS by Alan Furst, BAD INTENTIONS by Karin Fossum and FALLING SLOWLY by Robert Fannin.
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Travis McGee (from the John D MacDonald books).
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t feel guilty about reading anything.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Publication of my first book, MARTYN PIG.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Depends how you define ‘Irish crime novel’. Does John Connolly’s THE REAPERS count?
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE REAPERS (if allowed).
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best thing – all of it. There is no worst thing.
The pitch for your next book is …?
London, 1976, the long hot summer, the birth of punk rock, and a young Irish boy known as Billy the Kid.
Who are you reading right now?
Christopher Hitchens.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’m an atheist, so neither (and even if I wasn’t an atheist, I’d just tell Him to go away).
Kevin Brooks’ iBoy is published by Puffin.
I had a piece published in the Irish Times yesterday, the gist of it concerned with the development of the crime novel in settings and countries not necessarily associated with the traditional haunts of crime fiction. To wit: How the World Became One Big Crime SceneThis feature first appeared in the Irish Times.
From the Palestinian Territories to Mongolia and beyond, crime writers are using international locations to tackle global themes
The popular perception of crime fiction is that it’s the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, black sheep of the literary family. Unsurprisingly, it’s quite popular with the ladies, perhaps as a result of the broad mind it has developed on its travels.
The success of Stieg Larsson’s Sweden-set ‘Millennium Trilogy’ has alerted mainstream readers to the fact that the crime novel has an existence beyond its traditional enclaves of America and the UK. Larsson, of course, is following in the footsteps of his countryman Henning Mankell, while ‘foreign’ settings for crime novels are nothing new for aficionados au fait with the groundbreaking works of Georges Simenon (France) and Sjöwall and Wahlöö (Sweden), and latterly the likes of Andrea Camilleri (Italy), Colin Cotterill (Cambodia), Michael Dibdin (Italy), Jo Nesbø (Norway) and Deon Meyer (South Africa), to mention but a few.
Three years ago, writing in the New Yorker, Clive James celebrated international crime fiction offerings from Ireland, Scandinavia and Italy while simultaneously deriding the limitations of the genre’s form. “In most of the crime novels coming out now,” he said, “it’s a matter not of what happens but of where. Essentially, they are guide books.”
What James failed to recognise is that the crime novel, by virtue of engaging with issues of law and (dis)order in a timely and relevant fashion, tends to be at the cutting edge in terms of addressing society’s fundamental concerns and broaching its taboos.
Per Wahlöö, for example, claimed that the motive behind the ten-book Martin Beck series written with his wife was to “use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideologically pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type.”
Peeling back layers of cant and perceived wisdom is a theme that writers are currently exploring in settings as diverse as Canada, Poland, the Palestinian Territories, Brazil, South Africa and Mongolia.
“Toronto has been proud of its label as one the most multi-ethnic cities in the world for the past twenty years or so,” says John McFetridge (right), whose Let It Ride is set in Canada’s great melting-pot city. “There’s been some great literature written here, but there hasn’t been much written about crime. And there’s been plenty of crime. Almost everything in my books is inspired by real events, from the closed brewery turned into a giant marijuana grow-op to the beauty queen pulling armed robberies at spas, to eight members of a gang killed in one night. I wanted to write what I saw going on in my city that not many people were talking about.”
Mike Nicol, the author of Killer Country, is one of a new breed of South African writers inspired by Deon Meyer. “During apartheid the only fiction was literary fiction,” he says. “It was believed to have the seriousness that our political condition demanded. So there was no crime fiction – or almost none, although there were some very good novels from James McClure and Wessel Ebersohn.
“After the end of Nelson Mandela’s presidency in 1999 it became obvious that the new government wasn’t terribly different from the old government. Apartheid was gone but the politicians remained politicians. There was widespread cronyism, fraud, corruption, embezzlement within government, collusion between cops and gangsters, a collapse in the education system, a collapse in the health sector as AIDS denialism became a national policy, and an unhealthy relationship developed between the private sector and the public sector that was a mixture of threat and bribery. As a crime writer, I felt I was back in business.”
Matt Benyon Rees (right), a journalist, sets his Omar Yussef series of novels in the Palestinian Territories in order to humanise the newspaper headlines. “I wanted to show the Palestinians - whom we all think we know from daily news reports - as they are and to make readers realize that they didn’t really know them at all. Detective fiction is perfect for such a manoeuvre because it requires readers to examine very closely what’s happening in the story - there’s not much room for gloss. When it’s placed in a foreign culture, the reader’s attention has to be that much closer and the writer has to look again at every element of his descriptions.
“Fiction, strangely, is a much better way of getting at the truths of a foreign culture than political analysis,” he continues. “Politics and journalism are based around liars and those who observe liars at work but often neglect to point out that the liars are lying. Fiction can’t lie.”
The classic dramatic conflict between have and have-nots forms the backdrop to Leighton Gage’s Chief Inspector Mario Silva novels, which are set in Brazil.
“Brazil is a rich country,” he says, “but it’s still a developing country. As such, it continues to have highly inequitable income distribution. That’s changing, and changing rapidly, but it’s still true that this country’s taboos (unlike the ones Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler et al had to contend with) can vary immensely depending upon where you stand in the socioeconomic pecking order. Forcing one of your children into prostitution is repugnant, for example, but there’s no taboo against it if the alternative is to let your other children starve.
“That’s an extreme case, obviously, but Brazil is full of societal issues that don’t arise in so-called First World countries. Liberation theology, for example, has been condemned by the Princes of the Church, but many of Brazil’s poorer priests practice it. Excessive concentration on the promise of reward in heaven, they say, often propagates social injustice on earth. So, at one end of the scale, a defence of liberation theology is taboo. And, at the other end, not embracing it is equally taboo. How could I possibly live here, be a writer, and not want to tell people what a fascinating place this is?”
Michael Walters sets his Nergui novels in the former Soviet satellite of Mongolia.
“I’m not exactly exploring ‘societal taboos’,” he says, “but writing about a society which is still in the process of trying to work out exactly what its values (and therefore taboos) ought to be. The relationship between ‘legality’ and ‘morality’ is sometimes far from clear.In my first book, for example, I was trying to work out the links between individual murder and corporate crime, and the way in which, in a society desperate for economic growth, the corporations can sometimes, maybe even literally, get away with murder. In my second, I was looking to explore the difficulty of trying to establish legitimate law enforcement in a society where corruption is endemic and, historically, the word ‘police’ has usually been preceded by the word ‘secret’.”
“In a pretentious mode,” Walters says, “I’d quote the line from Gramsci: ‘The old is dying, the new is struggling to be born and in the period of interregnum there arise many morbid symptoms.’ That’s a pretty good description of some aspects of Mongolia. The ‘morbid symptoms’, of course, make perfect material for crime fiction.” - Declan Burke
I’ve no idea what the hold-up was, but Alex Barclay’s eagerly awaited fourth novel, TIME OF DEATH, finally arrives this month, with FBI agent Ren Bryce suffering the consequences of an ostensibly successful undercover operation that left one or two loose ends without a frilly bow. To wit: FBI agent Ren Bryce’s hunt for some of the country’s most dangerous killers is about to turn into a nightmare. There is unfinished business between Ren and those she is pursuing, and soon she is forced to confront both personal and professional traumas. Then someone close to Ren is murdered and secrets from her past look set to be revealed, throwing her into a world of fear, paranoia and danger. Dark forces are at work and someone is determined to destroy Ren’s life. But time is running out and Ren must catch a killer before he catches her …TIME OF DEATH hits a shelf near you on July 22nd.
Meanwhile, I’ve been mulling over for quite some time now (the entire three minutes since the idea occurred to me, to be precise) about how masculine are the current crop of Irish female crime writers. Not the writers themselves, of course - a more radiantly fragrant bunch of roses you’d be hard pressed to find the length and breadth of Christendom. As authors, though, they do tend to have a masculine edge. Alex Barclay’s hard-nosed Ren Bryce could by no stretch of the imagination be described as girly; Arlene Hunt not only writes of a partnership that is half male, but she did away entirely with the female half for her current offering, BLOOD MONEY; Tana French’s latest novel, FAITHFUL PLACE, features an entirely convincing male detective as its protagonist, as did IN THE WOODS;
Cora Harrison’s series protagonist Mara is a judge in mediaeval times, an era not renowned for its enlightened attitude towards gender equality; Ava McCarthy’s female lead goes by the name Harry; and to say that Ingrid Black’s protagonists have balls would be anatomically incorrect, but metaphorically on the nail. Is it the case - Niamh O’Connor’s female detective being a hard-pressed domestic goddess at home, for example, but a ballsy woman at work - that the ladies are reflecting the fact that, in Ireland today, women have to work twice as hard as men in order to get paid half as much? Or are they simply having fun with gender politics? Or is it that, being the backward soul that I am, any woman not sporting kitten heels and a cleavage in which you could park a moped is immediately classed as unfeminine?
The comment box is open for business, people …
Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Sam Millar (right), author of THE DARK PLACE. To wit: “Write what you know, some old sage once wrote, many centuries ago. So mostly, that’s what I do: write what I know.THE DARK PLACE is published by Brandon Books. Sam Millar is a judge of the Aeon Awards.
“Karl Kane, my Belfast PI, always up to his neck in debt, shit and blood, is not unlike me – especially the debt bit. Although I would love to say he’s my alter ego, unfortunately – or fortunately, depending how you look upon him – he’s a hybrid of two other men, one fictional and the other real. I don’t even make it into the equation.
“One part of Kane is based on James Scott Rockford, usually called Jim, sometimes Jimmy, or if you’re feeling really courageous, Jimbo. Mostly people will recognise Jim from the Rockford Files.
“Still, despite not being me, there are some uncanny familiarities between myself and Jim Rockford.
“Rockford served time in San Quentin Prison, not the most hospital of places at the best of times.
“I served time in quite a few American prisons, even less hospitable, at any given time.
“Rockford received five years for armed robbery. Later he received a pardon.
“I received five years for an armed robbery. Later I received a pardon from President Bill Clinton.
“He lives in a dilapidated home on the beach, 29 Cove Road, Paradise Cove.
“I live in a dilapidated home, minus the beach, and I sure as hell ain’t giving my home address!
“Just like Rockford, Karl Kane would sooner duck a fight than swing his fists, and rarely carries a gun, unless his life – or the life of those he loves –is in danger.
“Kane also has the same dress sense as Rockford, which is pretty depressing, to say the least. He’ll wear anything provided it’s always within easy reach. He wore a pink bathrobe, for fuck sake, in the opening page of his latest adventure!
“Now, that’s the fictional part of Kane.
“The other man who gets the dubious honour of influencing my take on Kane was my father, one of the true ‘tough guys’ with a heart bigger than his punch. Big Sam, as he was affectionately known throughout Belfast, was a gentleman to a fault. Always a lover of the underdog, he was a socialist when it wasn’t fashionable to be one, a pugilist and a writer of millions of unpublished stories (a bit like Kane). He loved women, good brandy and gambling. A trinity that probably sent him to an early grave, but at least a happy one. I remember one day as a kid telling him I was going to be a writer, just like him. He smiled proudly (I think. I hope.) and patted me on the head. Years later, in the penitentiary, I decided to immortalise Big Sam, in a way he would love. And so the genesis of Karl Kane came eventually about.
“Sadly, Big Sam never got to see Kane, or the way I saw him in Kane. I think he’d be very happy with the depiction. Just one thing, though: Big Sam would never wear a pink bathrobe. Me? Well, that’s telling, and writers never tell. They only show ...” - Sam Millar
An Irish author, an Italian setting, and a literary crime novel courtesy of a former arts editor who has produced a current affairs magazine for foreign embassies in Rome: Conor Fitzgerald’s debut THE DOGS OF ROME is an intriguing proposition. The early word is good too. To wit: “A powerful and hugely compelling novel. Dark, worldly and written with tremendous style and assurance.” - William BoydNice. Meanwhile, the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:
“Guaranteed to whet the thirst of international crime fiction fans. This promising debut is reminiscent of early Michael Dibdin, and that is more than enough to put Fitzgerald’s series on your radar.” - Booklist
“Impressively plotted … those who like their gritty crime thrillers with a European flair will be well rewarded.” - Publishers Weekly
Rome. A city where rules are compromised. And compromise rules. It's one of the hottest days of the year. Chief Inspector Blume is enjoying a rare solitary lunch in a tranquil corner of Trastevere when an unwelcome phone call intrudes with news of a brutal killing a few streets away. Arturo Clemente is no ordinary victim. His widow is an elected member of the Senate, and Blume arrives at the scene to find enquiries well underway, the case itself apparently clear-cut, a prime suspect quickly identified. Blume must fight to regain control of the investigation, but well acquainted with the city's underworld, he knows from bitter experience that in Rome even a murder enquiry must bow to the rules of politics. But when worrying shortcuts sanctioned by one of his superiors are uncovered, it seems events are being manipulated from on high. The complex and uncomfortable truth Blume will unravel will shock even him, and his struggle for justice may yet cost more innocent lives ...Incidentally, Conor Fitzgerald has in the past “collaborated in the translation and annotation of “Scritti Italiani” by James Joyce. These consist of lectures and essays in Italian written by Joyce while in Trieste and Rome, and were included in JAMES JOYCE OCCASIONAL, CRITICAL AND POLITCAL WRITING (Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford 2000).”
Hmmmm. James Joyce? Leopold Bloom? Inspector Blume? Let the third-form theorizing commence post-haste …
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
This is going to be interesting, as PJ Brooke is two of us, Jane Brooke and Phil O’Brien. Phil is Creative Genius; I turn dodgy drafts into decent prose. Phil’s family on his father’s side is from Clonmel, County Tipperary, and on his mother’s from Germany. He had the misfortune to be schooled by the Jesuits in Glasgow, went to Chile after University, was radicalized there, briefly joined the International Marxist Group after the Chile coup, got a University post in Glasgow at the Institute of Latin American Studies and supported solidarity and anti-war movements. I’m a nice girl from Pontefract, a market town in Yorkshire, who spent too long behind a desk in Glasgow. We met at a Green Party meeting. He had terrible hair, and worse tee shirt. His sisters think he looks okay now. Anyway, the crime novel - THE NAME OF THE ROSE (Umberto Eco). We agree on that one.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Me? Lizbeth Salander of course. Pure wish fulfilment: getting to beat up the bad guys, rescue hero, AND steal a Harley Davidson. Phil, having had a much more interesting life than me so far, would settle for being Father William of Baskerville.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Phil follows the footy – strong Barcelona supporter. I read cookery books. Phil eats the outcomes.
Most satisfying writing moment?
For me, we’d finished the first complete draft of BLOOD WEDDING, but the ending seemed … well … limp. We’d spent best part of five years on it. And just couldn’t come up with the plot twist we needed. So I asked my aunt (80 at the time) to have a wee look at it. And she said, “It wasn’t x that did it, it was y.” So we thought again, revised the draft, wrote two more chapters, and the whole thing fell into focus something wonderful. For Phil, the most satisfying writing moment was just finishing the bloody thing.
The best Irish crime novel is?
Ah … we have a bit of a problem here ’cos I’m writing this in Granada, Spain, and our big library is in our main house in Glasgow. But we enjoyed, in part, Benjamin Black’s THE SILVER SWAN. The gloomy pathologist, Quirke, struck a chord, as did some superb writing. “The past was tied to him like a tin can to a cat’s tail …”
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Stretching the definition of Irish to include those across the Atlantic, Denis Lehane’s MYSTIC RIVER was a pretty good novel, but rambled somewhat. But Clint Eastwood trimmed and tightened it into a brilliant, brilliant movie, a dark Shakespearian tale.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is when the plot just won’t come together, but you can’t put the damn thing aside because the publisher needs the complete typescript next month. So you just have to keep plugging away, and hope inspiration strikes before repetitive strain injury kicks in. The best thing is when a trivial observation illuminates an entire chapter, or maybe when characters start to speak for themselves. That’s good.
The pitch for your next book is?
Pretty graduate student Leila is doing research on the impacts of the Spanish Civil War on a village outside Granada. She’s Muslim, but that's not her main thing. But then Leila is found dead under a bridge, and a badly mishandled police investigation spirals out of control when the prime suspect, a Muslim kid from Leeds, turns out to have connections with a radical mosque in London.
Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading Michael Dibdin’s COSI FAN TUTTI. Phil is reading ANATOMIA DE UN INSTANTE, novelist Javier Cercas’ extraordinary account of 23 February 1981, when troops stormed the Spanish Parliament building, and Spain’s democracy was nearly strangled at birth. With luck, the coup attempt is going to be the jumping off point for another Max Romero novel.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I would opt for reading, ’cos there are folks out there who write far better than we do. Phil, being a Jesuit, would argue the point with God, and probably win.
The three best words to describe your own writing are?
Looking at our reviews on Amazon, people use the words “evocative “, “political” and “absorbing” quite a lot. Which I suppose reflects what we are trying to do … to share with readers our pleasure in Granada … an exotic and beautiful city, which was the last Muslim kingdom in Europe. We use Granada to explore the fault-lines in Spanish politics going back to the Civil War (the dress rehearsal for the Second Word War), and try to find in conversations, newspaper articles and graffiti, human stories that people might want to read.
A DARKER NIGHT by PJ Brooke is published by Soho Constable.
Currently the shining peak of Mt TBR here at CAP Towers, Tana French’s FAITHFUL PLACE has been garnering some tasty reviews, not least from Laura Miller over at Salon.com, where she describes French as ‘the Kurt Gödel of crime fiction’. Excerpts run thusly: “French’s hypnotic storytelling remains in full force in this novel, despite having shaken off the dreaminess that suffused IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS. This is Roddy Doyle territory, an excavation of that particular torture experienced by those who want to break out of a hopeless, working-class world but keep getting sucked back in by the loyalty that is its one redeeming quality. FAITHFUL PLACE is wrenching to a degree that detective fiction rarely achieves: Frank -- a cocky devil who prides himself on his skilful lying and ability to play other people -- gets pulled apart psychologically as he pursues Rosie’s killer, and the reader undergoes it with him. By the end, it’s difficult to distinguish what the real crime is or who committed it …All of which is very nice indeed. For the full review, clickety-click here …
“Which is not to say that French doesn’t solve the novel’s technical mystery or that the answer isn’t tightly cinched into her larger themes. Like Kate Atkinson, who has grafted the contemporary novel of manners onto the bones of the detective story in her Jackson Brodie series, French sticks to the genre’s brief while conveying it into new territory. But where the Brodie books are all pretty much the same in tone and subject matter, French does something fresh with every novel, each one as powerful as the last but in a very different manner. Perhaps she has superpowers of her own? Whatever the source of her gift, it’s only growing more miraculous with every book.” - Laura Miller
So, the Big Question: Will we be hearing Tana French’s name being spoken in the hushed tones reserved for literary prize winners some day soon? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …
Good news for mild-mannered, Derry-based English teachers everywhere: Brian McGilloway’s GALLOWS LANE has made the cut for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and belated congratulations to him. The full short-list runneth thusly: IN THE DARK – Mark BillinghamIt’s a strong list, so whoever wins it will have their work cut out, and good luck to all contenders. If you’re Irish, however, and given that the government is waffling on about how an exports-led ‘creative economy’ will lead us out of recession, it’s your patriotic duty to vote Brian. The voting form can be found here, people, and the closing date for voting is July 21st: you know what to do …
THE SURROGATE – Tania Carver
A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE – RJ Ellory
THE CROSSING PLACES – Elly Griffiths
DEAD TOMORROW – Peter James
GALLOWS LANE – Brian McGilloway
DOORS OPEN – Ian Rankin
CHILD 44 – Tom Rob Smith
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ... What crime novel would you most like to have written?
It’s a tossup between THE CONCRETE BLONDE (Connelly) and DEMOLITION ANGEL (Crais). Who could have come up with a better opening line than in THE CONCRETE BLONDE: The house in Silverlake was dark, its windows as empty as a dead man’s eyes. Gives me shivers every time I read it. And the story holds up all the way through, too.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I suppose it’s cheating a bit, but the one that comes to mind is Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s girl chum. I’d love to have gone to Hogwarts. As I was born in England, I’m strongly attracted to the scenery and Hermione is just the kind of little knowitall smartass that I’m afraid I was. Expecto Patronum!
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Can’t say I feel a bit guilty, as when I take some time out to read, I believe I’ve earned it: John Sandford, Michael Connelly, Tess Gerritsen, Deborah Crombie, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Crais, Jonathan Kellerman, and so on, and so on ...
Most satisfying writing moment?
Ripping open the carton of finished books and seeing the reality—a major publisher believed my books are good enough to publish!!! Nothing like that feeling. Or does that count as a writing moment? How about having written a scene and just knowing it works.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Sadly, I haven’t the foggiest—would you recommend one for me to begin my education?
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ditto above, I’m ashamed to say.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: having to handle promo and sales numbers. Best: seeing my characters come to life on the printed page and readers emailing that they just had to stay up all night to finish the book(s).
The pitch for your next book is …?
LAST WRITES, coming out July 6th: What does an old stuffed bunny have to do with a fundamentalist religious cult and a forensic handwriting expert? … Erin Powers is a member of a religious sect, living in an isolated compound called the Ark. Now her husband and young child have disappeared, leaving behind a cryptic note with a terrifying message. In desperation, Erin seeks help from her estranged sister, Kelly Brennan, who in turn enlists the aid of forensic handwriting expert Claudia Rose. Claudia seizes on an unexpected opportunity to use her special skills and becomes one of the few outsiders ever to be invited inside the cult compound. With time fast running out, Claudia must uncover the truth about Kelly’s missing niece before the prophecy of a secret ancient parchment can be fulfilled and a child’s life is written off for good …
Who are you reading right now?
Just finished Michael Palmer’s SECOND OPINION and am about to dive into John Sandford’s latest ‘Prey’ novel (he is my top favourite author). Sandford’s characters are all so real, the dialogue so true to life, I always look forward to spending time with them.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Too tough a choice, I guess I’d have to kill myself … Or would I really? It’s a mystery …
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’m going to cheat and pick three words that I like best from reader mail: Evocative, suspenseful, intelligent.
Sheila Lowe’s LAST WRITES is published by Signet Books.
I had a piece published in the Irish Examiner about three weeks ago, just in time for the World Cup, suggesting that those who consider today’s game of football a tad less manly than that of yore simply aren’t up to speed on contemporary manliness (image courtesy of drinky.org). I also predicted a Spain v Holland final, except I hadn’t factored in those pesky Germans. To wit: Ah, the World Cup. Every time I see a ridiculously hyped sports shoe ad featuring ridiculously hyped footballers poncing about with Table Mountain in the background, I’m eight years old again.
The smell of cut grass. Jumpers down for goalposts. “Bags I’m Mario Kempes.” “No, I’m Kempes.” “Sound so, I’ll be Johnny Rep.”
The 1978 World Cup Final. Argentina, the hatchet-tackling hosts, versus Holland, the silky-skilled purveyors of Total Football. No contest, right?
Except just as the ref puts his whistle to his lips to start the game, my mother says, “Now remember, Argentina are the Catholic team. Holland are the Protestants.”
Result? 3-1 to the Pope’s Rovers.
Football has changed since those halcyon days, of course. For starters, you can bet your bottoming-out euro that no contemporary international footballer is heading to South Africa with the intention of defending the honour of the Vatican / Martin Luther / Buddha / et al.
Worse, these days footballers are overpaid whinging cheats. Back in the good old days, the last thing you’d want an opponent to know was that he’d hurt you with a bad tackle. Today it seems like every tackle, good or bad, is an audition for Swan Lake. Then there’s the chaps who can’t wait to take their shirts off to display their unnecessarily tanned and muscular torsos, not to mention the unnatural predilection for orange / yellow / red / green football boots. And the quite frankly embarrassing displays of mutual affection that include hugs, kisses and the patting of behinds …
It’s just not very manly, is it?
Except, unfortunately, it is.
Yon striker rolling around on the ground in agony after a centre-half accidentally brushed up against his perm? It’s just football’s equivalent of the man-cold.
And what man, after achieving a nigh-impossible feat - toe-poking a heavy balloon into an empty rectangular structure, say, or completing a report only two days behind deadline - hasn’t wanted to rip off his shirt and sprint around the office, to slide knees-first towards his adoring fans gathered around the water-cooler?
What man isn’t ridiculously over-paid, at least by comparison with the women gathered around the water-cooler to discuss exactly how useless he is?
What man doesn’t enjoy a little touchy-feely male bonding, be it celebrating a goal, rolling a maul on a mucky pitch or plunging into the scrum at the bar come closing time?
What self-respecting man wouldn’t revel in the mindless adulation of millions of fans for excelling in an utterly pointless exercise?
What man could resist the allure of a war with rules and a referee?
And the man hasn’t been born who can resist the temptation of pointing at a group of other men and chanting - regardless of the language, or the actual lyrics employed - “Ours is bigger / La-la-la / Bigger than yours / La-la-la …”
Hell, the advent of red / yellow / white / orange football boots even allow us to tap into our inner shoe-diva.
Ah, football. How do we love you? Let us count the ways …
As for this year’s winners, Spain look good. Xavi, Iniesta, Torres, Villa, Fabregas. They’re the reigning European Champions, and unbeaten in all competitions since God was a boy. And even though there’s a pretty good chance they’ll come up against the silky-skilled young guns of Holland in the final, they’re Catholics.
No contest. - Declan Burke
Hmmm. You go away on holidays and the world turns upside down. Brazil and Argentina go out of the World Cup at the quarter-final stage, Sligo beat Galway (after hammering Mayo in the previous round) to make the Connacht Final, and a crime writer wins Australia’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award. This being a books blog, we’ll concentrate on Peter Temple. First off, hearty congrats to the man. Not only is he a terrific writer, but a little birdie tells me he’s a decent human being to boot.
I’m a little bit wary, though, of the way the crime fiction niche of the blogosphere has been jumping up and down about TRUTH’s success. The general impression appears to be that crime fiction is finally getting its turn in the sun, and that the barriers between genre fiction and prestigious prizes are being broken down.
I doubt very much if that is the case. Rather, I’d imagine it’s the case that Peter Temple’s TRUTH is an excellent novel, and has been rewarded as such. Those who think that TRUTH has breached the ivory tower of the literary establishment, and that crime fiction is about to pour through the gap, will be sorely disappointed.
The Guardian had an excellent piece last week on Peter Temple’s win, following up on the news with a query as to whether a crime novel will ever win the Booker Prize, for example. Contributors included Ian Rankin and John Banville, but the most pertinent comment came from Morag Fraser. To wit:
For Morag Fraser, a Miles Franklin judge for the past six years, it is simply a question of quality. “Most crime novels that I have read (and I read one a week, often more) will never win the Miles Franklin or any other ‘literary’ prize because they do not work language hard enough, and they do not think originally and with sufficient depth and imagination,” she said. “They may gratify but they do not surprise the way great literature does.”All of which should be patently obvious to crime writers, but is patently not. Of the 25 or so crime novels I’ve read so far this year, only three - Alan Furst’s SPIES OF THE BALKANS, John Hart’s THE LAST CHILD and Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE - allowed me to forget that I was reading crime fiction. In other words, and despite working within the parameters of crime fiction, they were simply novels, rather than a specific type of novel.
“In the case of Peter Temple’s TRUTH, the divide was so comprehensively crossed that we did not think much about the conventions of crime fiction except to note that Temple was able to observe them rather as a poet observes the 14-line convention of the sonnet or a musician the sonata form: as a useful disciplinary structure from which to expand, bend or depart.”
There is a tension inherent in writing genre fiction, of course.
Every author writes the best novel he or she can, but the commercial imperative at the heart of genre fiction means that, in order to appeal to as big an audience as possible, the best of intentions are often compromised in order to fit a story or a character into a particular format. That well may prove successful and profitable in the short-term, but in the long run, an adherence to formula is undermining crime writing. It’s worth quoting Morag Fraser again: “Most crime novels … do not think originally and with sufficient depth and imagination. They may gratify but they do not surprise the way great literature does.”Not every novel can be great literature, of course, just as not every novel can win a prize. But here’s the thing: originality, and depth and imagination, can surprise, even if they ‘fail’ to gratify. And here’s the other thing: there’s only so many brass rings to be grasped at. The thousand, or ten thousand, wannabes chasing Lee Child’s coattails, or the thousand, or ten thousand, bandwagon-jumpers currently labouring over their version of THE GIRL WITH THE DA VINCI TATTOO, are far more likely to be commercially successful with an original work than a second- or third-rate knock-off of a proven winner.
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog (in a comments box, I think) that the novel is the most potent tool we have when it comes to understanding, or trying to, what it means to be human and alive. You can argue for music and theatre and psychology and whatever you’re having yourself - I’m biased in favour of the novel. The point being that Peter Temple was rewarded with the Miles Franklin Award not for writing a crime novel, or an excellent crime novel, but for writing a superb novel that explores the human condition.
Last month, writing about the plethora of crime fiction awards, I said this:
I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits.These days, more often than not, I’m reading crime fiction out of a sense of duty, and turning to ‘literary’ fiction for my kicks.
It may be hard for some crime writing fans to stomach, but Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin Award not because he is a crime writer, or even a very good crime writer, but because he is the exception to the rule.
The Irish Times continued its ‘Crime Beat’ round-up of recent crime fiction titles yesterday, with yours truly casting a cold-ish eye over new offerings. To wit: There’s more to Scandinavian crime fiction than Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. THE SNOWMAN (Harvill Secker, £12.99, pb), the seventh in Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series to be translated into English, finds the laconic police inspector Hole investigating what appears to be the work of a serial killer who targets women, whose deaths are marked by the mysterious appearance of a snowman. Hole’s hard-bitten, hard-drinking and self-loathing mannerisms are the very stuff of stock characterisation, but Nesbø is fully aware of the genre’s conventions and is most enjoyably readable when subverting them. Needle-sharp dialogue and a vividly detailed depiction of Oslo and its hinterlands are bonuses, as is Hole’s rueful awareness of his limitations.
Anne Zouroudi’s THE LADY OF SORROWS (Bloomsbury Publishing, £12.99, pb) is the fourth novel to feature Hermes Diaktoros, aka ‘the Fat Man’, a gentleman detective with apparently limitless resources. Set in Greece some decades ago, the novel finds Hermes investigating the famous ikon of Kalmos, which may or may not be a fake, depending on whether one’s religious faith can be measured in drachmae. Fans of more hardboiled fare might be disappointed by the lack of blood and gore; Diaktoros is a detective very much in the vein of Miss Marple, and tone and pace are equally gentle. Where Zouroudi scores, however, is in her lovingly detailed descriptions of Greek island landscapes.
The Roman detective Falco returns in Lindsey Davis’s NEMESIS(Century, £18.99, hb), the twentieth in a series that turns a sardonic eye on the foibles of ancient Rome. Falco’s old foe Anacrites, a Praetorium spy, plays the foil here, as Falco investigates a series of murders connected to a gang of freed slaves. As always, Davis’s cutting wit and Chandleresque observations are as much a pleasure as the page-turning quality of the tale, as she blows the dust off historical Rome with considerable glee. Also published by Century is FALCO: THE OFFICIAL COMPANION (£19.99, hb), in which Davis fleshes out the backdrop to each of the Falco novels.
From historical Rome to mythical Ireland: REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED (Morrigan Books, £8.99, pb), edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, is a compilation of modern crime stories derived from Irish myth and legend.Queen Mhaca (Arlene Hunt and Stuart Neville), the Banshee (Ken Bruen), the Children of Lir (Neville Thompson) and Cuchulainn (Tony Black) are among the legends mined for inspiration in a collection that is uneven in tone but never less than challenging in its ability to draw parallels between contemporary criminality and its pre-historical origins. Adrian McKinty’s ‘Diarmuid and Grainne’ and Brian McGilloway’s ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ are the pick of the bunch.
Another unusual Irish offering comes from Robert Fannin, whose FALLING SLOWLY (Hachette Ireland, £12.99, pb) is a Kafkaesque tale set in Bristol. Devastated when he arrives home one lunchtime to discover that his girlfriend has committed suicide, Desmond Doyle is further shocked to learn that Detective Inspector Harry Kneebone is determined to prove that Doyle was responsible for her murder. As his life starts to fall apart, and Doyle ‘falls slowly’ in a downward spiral, he begins to question his own sanity - and whether he is, in fact, his girlfriend’s killer. A tautly plotted tale, this quickly belies its languid pace and philosophical musings to become a compelling, cerebral thriller.
In THE WINGS OF THE SPHINX (Mantle, £14.99, pb), Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano negotiates the labyrinthine social strata of Sicily as he pursues the killer of a young woman who can only be identified by a butterfly tattoo, the ‘sphinx’ of the title. Montalbano’s 11th outing has some of the qualities of a soap opera, as the tribulations of the inspector’s love life are as integral to the narrative as his professional duties, during which he uncovers human trafficking into Sicily conducted by a rather surprising cabal. Deftly plotted but sedately paced, the story suffers from a lack of urgency, particularly as the most terrifying danger the inspector encounters is the threat of his favourite restaurant having to go without fresh fish for the duration.
John Grisham’s latest offering, THEODORE BOONE (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99, hb), is yet another legal thriller from the bestselling master of the courtroom drama, but the twist here is that the eponymous hero is a 13-year-old ‘lawyer’. The precocious offspring of two lawyer parents, Theodore ‘represents’ his peers in legal issues - for example, talking his best friend April through the legalities of her parents’ divorce. When he is approached by a fellow teenager with an insight into a murder case currently being tried, however, Theodore quickly finds himself out of his depth. Reminiscent at times of To Kill a Mockingbird in the way it offers a child’s-eye view of the legal niceties of the adult world, the novel has a direct, unaffected tone that gives Theodore’s plight an unexpectedly poignant twist. By the same token, the plot’s lack of conflict - Theodore is universally admired by young and old, for example - makes for a frustratingly simplistic narrative.
Far more complex and challenging is Maureen Gibbon’s THIEF (Atlantic Books, £12.99, hb), in which Suzanne, a teacher who was raped as a 16-year-old, strikes up a relationship with Alpha Breville, a convict serving prison time for rape. Gibbon, who was herself raped as a teenager, offers no simple solutions to the scenario she devises for Suzanne: THIEF does not deliver the polemic, panacea or ersatz catharsis of the conventional crime novel. It is, however, a fascinating insight into one woman’s journey to come to terms with an horrific crime many years after the event. Despite its quietly elegiac tone, and Gibbon’s frequent philosophical digressions, THIEF is a riveting page-turner that is as uplifting as it is harrowing. - Declan Burke
This article first appeared in The Irish Times
Sean Black publishes DEADLOCK this month, the follow-up to last year’s LOCKDOWN, which tome garnered the following paeans: “Sean Black writes like a punch in the gut. Funny, tough, and furiously paced, LOCKDOWN explodes off the page.” -- Jesse KellermanAll of which is very nice indeed. Meanwhile, the blurb elves have been wibbling thusly about DEADLOCK:
“A thrilling debut that locks you in and loads up the tension.” -- Simon Kernick
“Sean Black writes with the pace of Lee Child and the heart of Harlan Coben.” -- Joseph Finder
His mission should have been straightforward: to keep one man alive for one week. One prisoner - super-intelligent and brutally violent, Frank ‘Reaper’ Hays is a leading member of America’s most powerful white supremacist prison gang. One bodyguard - ex-military bodyguard Ryan Lock has been hired to protect him. His mission is to keep Reaper alive for a week until he can be brought to trial. One week to stay alive - but Lock soon realises that he faces the toughest assignment of his career - just to survive ...Call me a cynic, but I’m betting he makes it …
Suzanne, a thirty-something teacher, moves from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis to the north woods of Minnesota. The plan is to cut all ties from a failed relationship with her ex-boyfriend Richaux, and to give herself some time alone, and to swim in the lake beside the cabin she has rented from Merle. Lonely for company, Suzanne posts an ad in a Lonely Hearts section of the local newspaper. One of the respondents is Alpha Breville, a convict serving time in Stillwater Prison. When Suzanne asks about his crime, he tells her that he raped a woman. Suzanne responds by telling him that she was raped herself, when she was 16.
“We were two sides of a coin,” she says. And so begins an unusually perverse relationship …
THIEF is an emotionally complex novel. While it is told in the first person by a woman who has been the victim of a rape, Suzanne does not portray herself as a victim. In part that’s because the rape happened half a lifetime ago, and Suzanne has had many years to accommodate herself to the event and its consequences. The wound is no longer raw, the shock no longer fresh.
For the most part, however, the emotional complexity is the result of who Suzanne is, and her way of looking at the world. Certainly, being raped at a young age has coloured her perception of the world in a particular way, and very possibly contributes to the fact that in her personal relationships, she actively seeks out danger, or at least the potential for danger, and that she is drawn to the kind of man whom her friends consider unsuitable.
By the same token, Gibbon is at pains to point out that Suzanne was a strong-willed and assertive character before she was raped. She was sexually precocious, independent of thought, and grew up in an environment that taught her to value herself in terms of how others valued her sexually:
“So even if I was sixteen when Frank L---- raped me, I was a different sort of sixteen: not a virgin, in love with my own orgasms, already certain my main worth in the world was sexual … That’s what I mean when I say it was probably inevitable that some harm should come to me. At sixteen I so much wanted to be part of the adult world, I started pounding on the door. Not surprisingly, it let me in.”However, Gibbon does not make Suzanne’s rape an inevitable consequence of her sexual activity. In fact, she’s at pains to make the point that Suzanne’s rape was the consequence of her opening herself up emotionally to people, and that opening yourself up - given the environment she grew up in - almost inevitably meant doing so physically.
In another writer’s hands, Suzanne’s experience might well have resulted in her becoming a closed-off character, unable or unwilling to develop any kind of relationships with men, and harbouring revenge fantasies. Suzanne, however, has an entirely healthy appetite for sex and intimacy, not as a defence mechanism, but as the physical manifestation of Suzanne’s fascination with the human condition. While her relationship with Breville the convicted rapist initially and understandably offers her the opportunity to vent her spleen about her own experience in particular, and against the concept of rape in general (“I wanted to use Breville,” Suzanne says and we start to wonder who the ‘thief’ of the title really is), it’s not long before she finds her curiosity about Breville - who he was when he raped at 19 years old, and who he is now, after his time spent in prison - comes to dominate their exchanges. Letters give way to prison visits, and soon Suzanne and Reville are engaged in a sexually charged relationship.
THIEF has been criticised for the way in which Gibbon allows Suzanne, despite her experience, to move beyond that and develop a relationship with a rapist. That, however, is a very simplistic reading of the narrative. Gibbon does not set aside Suzanne’s rape; instead it remains a live issue throughout, and becomes a perverse kind of catalyst to a perverse kind of relationship. The novel is not a polemic nor a panacea; like all good novels, it offers up unique characters in a unique scenario, and sets in train a narrative that owes the reader nothing but the truth of its own logic.
What gives THIEF a cutting edge, of course, is the fact that Gibbon herself was raped as a 16-year-old. Indeed, a piece written in the New York Times in 2006, in which she speaks of ‘my rapist’, suggests that at least certain parts of the novel are semi-autobiographical. That experience, of course, is not enough to give Gibbon a free pass to write whatever she likes about rape and its consequences, particularly if what she writes can seem to empathise with a rapist. Writing about Breville’s formative years, for example, Gibbon has this to say close to the novel’s conclusion:
“I kept thinking back to the day I met Breville, when he told me the love of his mother and father and grandfather weren’t enough to help him, and to the day he told me he lost his virginity to his molesting, twelve-year-old cousin. I now understood just how fully he’d told me the truth. Nothing could have counteracted the sexual abuse, the years of underage drinking, the petty thievery, or the violence and chaos he’d lived within. Breville had begun a certain course so early on that his life could only follow one path.To suggest that a man can be driven down a life’s path that will inevitably lead to rape seems a dangerous thing to put into print, but again, it’s important to say that this is a novel, a work of fiction, and that Suzanne’s experience is unique to her.
“On the long drive home it became entirely clear to me that the surprising thing was not that Breville had raped someone when he was nineteen. The only surprise would have been if he had not become a rapist.”
In fact, both Gibbon and Suzanne constantly defy expectations. Despite her rape, Suzanne maintains a healthy attitude towards sex, and the pages are littered with graphic descriptions of sex, masturbation and orgasms. As a writer, Gibbon is at ease with employing a coarse vernacular when it comes to describing sex, including the liberal use of f-words and c-bombs.
There is also Suzanne’s unrepentant acknowledgement of her fascination with ‘unsuitable men’ - her ex-boyfriend, the dope-fiend Richaux; Breville the convicted rapist; Gabriel, the destitute and potentially dangerous cowboy she picks up after posting another ad in the Lonely Hearts pages.
THIEF might well have been an easier read had Suzanne learned to shy away from such men after being raped. It would also have been far less infuriating, challenging and thought-provoking. Anyone who reads THIEF for a conventional narrative arc ending in predictable catharsis will be sorely disappointed.
There is much more to THIEF than its central conceit, however. Gibbon writes with a quiet and understated assurance, rarely lurid in detail or flamboyant in description. Despite that, she is wonderfully adept and occasionally poetic in recreating Suzanne’s bucolic environment, particularly when describing the lake-side flora and fauna.
The lake itself is virtually a character in its own right. Suzanne swims every day, and comes to know the lake in all its manifestations. There is more than a hint that her dedication to swimming, and particularly the joy of floating, has to do with the cleansing properties of the experience, and there are times when the lake takes on the quality of amniotic fluid. That said, however, Gibbon is too clear-eyed a writer to give in to the lure of easy metaphor. “It was like water in a dream,” she writes at one point, going on to say: “The water felt like silk on my hands. No - it felt like water.”
There are caveats, of course, the main one being that the ‘cowboy’ character never really rings true. He is the counterpoint - or the potential counterpoint - to the incarcerated Breville, but apart from his aura of desolation, Suzanne never really explains her attraction to him, or why he should travel long distances to see her. “They were both ciphers,” Gibbon writes at one point about Breville and the cowboy, perhaps acknowledging that the cowboy is one of the few blatantly artificial constructions in a story that feels organically rooted in Suzanne’s unique experience of the world.
That said, Gibbon also makes the same point about Breville: “But the relationship I had with Breville was made up only of words, talk, and letters, and that was what made it artificial and false …” she writes. Their relationship is, on one level, utterly artificial and incongruous. By the same token, any novel is ‘made up only of words, talk, and letters’, and a reader’s relationship with a novel as a form of temporary reality is as artificial and incongruous as any of the relationships explored here.
Gibbon’s job, as a novelist, is to create a world so compelling as to allow we readers to immerse ourselves completely, regardless of whether or not we agree with the logic on which that world turns. In this she has succeeded brilliantly. - Declan Burke
Maureen Gibbon’s THIEF is published by Atlantic Books.
Mrs Wife is a scientist in the field of food health and safety. This suggests that we should be eating the right foods rather than the wrong foods, but the good news is that there’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. Cheeseburgers, whipped cream, a full Irish fry (with baked beans), deep-fried Mars bars - they’re all good. Except for the deep-fried Mars bars, obviously. Anyway, and according to Mrs Wife, the central issue when it comes to healthy eating is variety. Eat nothing but cheeseburgers, say, and you’ll end up a very sick puppy.
I’m wondering if the same applies to books. If reading too much of the same kind of book doesn’t cause problems for the imagination’s digestive system. If reading too much crime fiction, say, doesn’t dull the taste-buds and cause all kinds of mental blockages. I mean, there’s nothing like a week without a good cheeseburger to whet the appetite for a good cheeseburger.
I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction lately, some of it very good indeed, but in the normal run of things crime writing would account for about half or less of my reading. I’ll happily read most kinds of fiction, and ditto for travel writing, science, history, mythology and legend, religion and philosophy, and pretty much anything else that seems interesting and well written.
Life’s too short for eating nothing but cheeseburgers, no matter how tasty they are.
But here’s the thing. I like to write a bit too. And while I do like to write crime fiction, I like to write, or try to write, other kinds of fiction as well.
I like William Goldman. Partly because some of his novels are brilliant (THE PRINCESS BRIDE, MARATHON MAN), but also because he wrote in so many different genres (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being one my favourite Westerns, and All the President’s Men being a superb thriller).
I like John Connolly, too. THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is my favourite of his novels, in part because it’s terrific stuff, but also because of the gamble it represented in this day and age.
If William Goldman were starting out now, would he get away with that kind of genre-hopping? Would Ray Bradbury be allowed to published the superb DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS?
By the way my brain has started flashing lately, I reckon I’m gearing up for a rewrite of a novel that I’ve been writing on and off for the last eight years or so. It’s a bit of a mongrel, because it contains elements of WWII, Greek mythology, quantum physics and a good old-fashioned amnesia story. It’s a mess right now, and clocks in around 150k words, but hey, writing is really rewriting, no?
I also reckon that the most important piece of rewriting I’ll do is on the name that goes on the front of the manuscript. For one, the name ‘Declan Burke’ hasn’t exactly sent the boys at Nielsen into a tizzy. For two, the very fact that I’ve published two crime novels means that I’m now, for better or worse (the latter, mostly), a crime writer, and even though the new story revolves around a crime, it’s not a crime novel. At least, I don’t think it is. Maybe I’m wrong.
Anyway, any suggestions for a pseudonym? I’m thinking Stryker Ramoré.
I’m off on holidays this week (I’m writing this post in advance) and no doubt, in the quieter moments, I’ll be thinking about the rewrite. Whether I can commit to it time-wise. If I’m quibbling about committing to it because I’m afraid I’m not good enough to write the book I want to write. If there’s any real point in investing all that time and energy when there’s a strong likelihood the book won’t be taken seriously regardless of how good I can make it, given that it was written by ‘Declan Burke’.
Questions, questions …
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the holiday. It’s been a rollercoaster six months, and I need the break, and the space and time it affords you to breathe out and sit back and recharge the batteries, and spend quality time with Mrs Wife and the Princess Lilyput. See you next week, folks …
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I am by no means an aficionado of crime novels, but I would have liked to have written [Mario Puzo’s] THE GODFATHER.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Easy, Jay Gatsby.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Bret Easton Ellis. His sequel to LESS THAN ZERO just came out and I’m looking forward to seeing what happened to all the characters.
Most satisfying writing moment?
I was toiling away on the novel, participating and wasting a lot of time on writer’s forums and one day I purchased Stephen King’s ON WRITING. It was the best money I ever spent and from that moment on, I felt empowered, enthusiastic, and had hope that I might just be able to pull it off.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
At this stage of the game, I’m like a schoolboy trying to learn from the many talented Irish crime headmasters I have come to know and read lately. If I had to pick one that has really moved me, it would be RESURRECTION MAN by Eoin McNamee.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I really, really wish Guy Ritchie would take on Declan Burke’s THE BIG O.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Self-doubt and editing are the worst. The best thing by far is the sense of accomplishment. Even if no one ever reads my novel, I set a goal of trying to do it, put in the time and effort, and I’m really proud of myself.
The pitch for your next book is …?
When wealthy Russian mobsters contract L.A psychologist Joel Fischer to develop a device to manipulate minds, the DreemWeever exceeds all expectations. Everything is on track for delivery and a big payday, until two adventurous stoners steal his Dodge Challenger that, unknown to them, contains the DreemWeever in its trunk. Fischer and his crew have two days to get it back or he dies.
Who are you reading right now?
HARD MAN by Allan Guthrie, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS by Declan Burke, and WAKE UP DEAD by Roger Smith. All are excellent and all the crime authors I’m discovering of late make me feel like I did as a kid when I discovered a new band.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Reading. Since I was a child, reading has taken me to foreign lands, exposed me to different cultures, and introduced me to all sorts of interesting characters (real and imaginary). Plus, I could never write, if I didn’t read.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Cinematic, Rock-n-Roll, Twisted.
Sean Patrick Reardon’s MINDJACKER is available via Smashwords.
Waterstones’ ‘Fresh Blood’ campaign, currently in its second year, aims to showcase ‘some of the best new crime writers around’. The fact that one quarter of this year’s list is taken up by Irish writers is a sign of just how healthy 2009 was for Irish crime writing: step forward Alan Glynn (WINTERLAND), Gene Kerrigan (DARK TIMES IN THE CITY) and Stuart Neville (THE TWELVE, aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST). Unsurprisingly, all three novels finished in the top four (along with John Connolly’s THE LOVERS) in the inaugural ‘Crime Always Pays Irish Crime Novel of the Year’, with THE TWELVE topping the poll - no mean feat for a debut novel. Mind you, and as I said at the time, the fact that WINTERLAND was published in November worked against it, voting-wise, and I have no doubt it would have polled even better had it had a longer shelf-life.
Anyway, the bottom line is that all three are terrific novels. Clickety-click here for a review of THE TWELVE, and here for a review of WINTERLAND, and here for DARK TIMES IN THE CITY. Or better still, go out and buy them, all three.
Oh, and if anyone reading this has read any (or all) of the titles, don’t be shy about telling us what you thought about them. You know what to do …
Laura Miller wrote a piece on e-publishing for Salon.com during the week, during the course of which she railed against those aspiring authors who are already celebrating the impending demise of the traditional ‘gatekeepers’ - agents, editors, publishers - of the publishing industry. The ‘gatekeepers’, she argues, perform an invaluable service to readers by filtering an occasional diamond from the vast numbers of manuscripts that constitute the ever growing slush pile. In abandoning the traditional publishing model and going straight to (electronic) print, she says, authors are simply exposing readers to the slush pile. The net effect of ‘civilian’ readers being so exposed, she says in a rather apocalyptic finale, is one of “crushing your spirit instead of refreshing it … How long before you decide to just give up?”
As it happens, I broadly agree with Laura Miller on e-publishing. Any business conducted without some form of quality control won’t be in business for very long.
I did take exception, however, to one word in Miller’s piece, and it’s contained in the following excerpt:
“Digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry,” a recent Wall Street Journal report proclaimed. “Self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.” To “circumvent” means, of course, to find a way around, and what’s waiting behind all those naysaying editors and agents, the self-publishing authors tell themselves, are millions of potential readers, who’ll simply love our books! The reign of the detested gatekeepers has ended! - Laura MillerThat word, as you’ll probably have guessed given the title of this post, is ‘millions’.
Before I started this blog, back in 2007, I knew no more than a handful of writers. At this point, I probably know hundreds. Some of them have had one book published, others are bestsellers.
I also have friends who are aspiring writers. In fact, I met two of them on separate occasions during the last week, and while we talked about other stuff, as you do, just to be polite, the general thrust of the conversations centred on books and writing.
The theme was largely one of frustration: not being able to find time to write (pesky children); not being able to find an agent; not being able to get our books published. The usual war stories. And then there’s the other frustrations: the idea that won’t behave itself and sit quietly on the page; the virtues, or otherwise, of excessive plotting; the words that come, okay, but like Yeats’ peace, dropping slow; the conflict between establishing a compelling pace while still maintaining quality on a word-by-word basis. And all the other issues of craft that tend to pop up when you’re spitballing over a cup of coffee.
Here’s the thing, though: in all the years I’ve been listening to writers, publishing or aspiring, small, big or mid-list, I’ve never once heard the phrase, “I’d love to sell a million copies.” Neither, for that matter, have I ever heard a reader say, “I want to read a book written by a writer who’s sold a million copies.”
Maybe I’m hanging out in the wrong coffee shops, but the writers I know talk about interesting ideas, about different ways of telling a story, about phrasing and style, about the use of language.
Readers - and I’ll always be more of a reader than a writer - tend to talk about good books, interesting characters, moral dilemmas, beautiful writing.
The industry, meanwhile, is at another table, very probably in another coffee shop, talking about bottom lines and sales figures and marketing and promotion and million-selling behemoths.
I’m not naïve. I understand publishing’s economies of scale. And I do appreciate that we’re living through a global recession. But it seems to me that there’s an ever-widening disconnect between the publishing industry and the people - writers and readers - it depends upon.
Good books are still being published, certainly, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the quality control ‘gatekeepers’ are these days more interested in maximising profits from the likes of Dan Brown, James Patterson and Stieg Larsson than they are in investing in novels and authors that are unlikely to sell a million copies per book.
Yes, I understand that such writers finance a publisher’s speculative investment on an unknown writer. But the inexorable logic of the current model is that more and more funds must be pumped into the brands and franchises to keep the ledgers balanced, with the result that investment in aspiring, new and mid-list writers is drying up. If you don’t believe me, ask Charlie Williams.
Rob Kitchin, himself an aspiring author, blogs about yours truly over at The View From the Blue House. In effect, he’s bemoaning the fact that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the sequel to THE BIG O, is only available via e-publishing. Which is nice, but Rob isn’t really writing about me. He’s writing about authors who are, as he says,
“ … marginalised by an industry that is increasingly seeking to de-risk their investment by judging authors and their works against a narrow set of criteria, rather than nurturing and supporting them. There are plenty of authors and bands who have worked away producing acclaimed work for years, perhaps not making mega-bucks but nonetheless not losing anyone money, before going stratospheric. If a condition of a writing career is immediate success then there is every danger of producing an entire generation of one book authors, killed off and demoralised before they’ve had chance to blossom into mature, successful writers with an established reader base. It’ll also work to reproduce a certain kind of formulaic writing and stifle creativity and risk-taking – think of Hollywood film making at the minute.”Laura Miller is correct to suggest that a lack of regulation, or quality control, is likely to bedevil the coming boom in e-publishing. By the same token, the evidence of bookstores - and certainly the bigger chains - suggests that when the publishing industry uses the phrase ‘quality control’, it’s control rather than quality that’s uppermost in their minds.
If the industry is truly concerned about readers giving up on reading, then its big problem is not e-publishing. It’s the wall-to-wall bullshit lining bookstore shelves from New York to Sydney.
Lashing out at scapegoats might temporarily deflect attention away from the fallacy at its core, but if the industry truly believes that stamping its feet on the little people represents progressive thinking, then we’re all - readers, writers and ‘gatekeepers’ alike - in bigger trouble than anyone imagined.
Philosopher, journalist, novelist, political activist, Oxford professor: Roger Scruton is a man of many interests, most of which he invokes in his latest non-fiction treatise on the state of the world. Following on from his most recent offerings, ENGLAND: AN ELEGY (2006), CULTURE COUNTS: FAITH AND FEELING IN A WORLD BESIEGED (2007), and BEAUTY (2009), THE USES OF PESSIMISM is a polemic against the ‘unscrupulous optimists’ who propagate false hopes without considering the consequences of their unbridled optimism. Scruton sets out his stall in the preface: “I have no doubt that St Paul was right to recommend faith, hope and love (agape) as the virtues that order life to the greater good. I have no doubt too that hope, detached from faith and untempered by the evidence of history, is a dangerous asset, and one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions.”
Citing the French Revolution, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia as examples, Scruton argues that offering a utopian ideal without factoring in a necessary dash of pessimism leads to untold suffering, not least because the idealists refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of their ideal, and the historical shortcomings of unfettered idealism in general. When Robespierre et al failed to deliver liberté, égalité et fraternité, for example, the response was not an examination of the revolution’s core beliefs to see where it had come up short, but the lopping off of those heads that dared to point out the failings.
Warming to his theme, Scruton then points the finger at more contemporary manifestations of ‘false hope’. Modern educationalists, for example, are derided for fostering a culture in which individual excellence is considered divisive within a classroom. The EU project also gets it in the neck. Scruton draws parallels with the genocides and gulags that flowed from the Communist Revolution. “Of course,” he says in relation to the EU, “the goals are less ignoble and the results more benign. Nevertheless, there seem to be few if any ways in which mistakes can be rectified or the people who make decisions held accountable for the results of them. […] However foolish it may be for the European institutions to take charge of some matters best dealt with by the Member States, no power, once transferred, is ever recaptured. Ridiculous regulations can be duly laughed at from top to bottom of the Union; but the laughter rings hollow, since it meets with no response. A cavernous void lies at the heart of the European process, a void into which questions are constantly called out by the people, and from which no answer ever returns.”
That ‘less ignoble’ and ‘more benign’ might suggest that the author has his tongue partly in his cheek, although Scruton, a Conservative socio-economic thinker, is never happier than when adapting Edmund Burke’s observations on the French Revolution to the latest example of anti-democratic utopianism. He makes some compelling arguments here, however, first setting forth his theme on the dangers of false hope, then outlining the means by which the ‘unscrupulous optimists’ tend to refute opposing arguments, or negate those arguing entirely (the perverse logic of which inevitably leads to the guillotine, the gulag or the concentration camp). The latter half of the book, and despite Scruton’s sober style, is a deliciously provocative deconstruction of perceived truths that have embedded themselves in Western civilisation, often to the detriment of the culture fostering them.
Deliberate obfuscation emanating from academia; the ‘false expertise’ that constitutes theology; multiculturalism; the moral relativism that unpicks generations of practical wisdom; the Western liberal guilt that actively conspires in the rise of a radical Islamism that wishes for nothing more than the destruction of Western civilisation: all these, and more, are examined under the harsh light of Scruton’s Conservatism.
The result is a challenging read, although Scruton, in his determination to ram home a point, occasionally overreaches himself. “To doubt the equivalence of gay sex and heterosexual marriage is to evince ‘homophobia’,” he writes, “the moral equivalent of the racism that led to Auschwitz. Likewise, public criticism of Islam and Islamists is a sign of ‘Islamophobia’, now a crime in Belgian law; and ‘hate speech’ laws are on the statute books of many European countries, making the mere discussion of issues that are of the greatest concern to our future into a crime.”
Such statements are useful in that they alert the reader to the need to add a pinch of salt, along with Scruton’s prescription for a dash of useful cynicism, when reading THE USES OF PESSIMISM. That said, this is a bracingly enjoyable venting of Conservative spleen, not least because Scruton’s Canute-like stand against the prevailing tide of neo-liberal orthodoxy is very probably doomed to be ridiculed and marginalised by the very means he outlines himself. - Declan Burke
This review was first published in the Sunday Business Post.
The Thought Fox - aka Faber editor Katherine Armstrong - posts a piece on her blog titled ‘In Praise of Emerald Noir’, in which she offers a list of the ‘25 best writers of Emerald Noir’. It’s a comprehensive list - so comprehensive, in fact, that it even includes yours truly - with proceedings kicking off thusly: “I grew up in Northern Ireland in the eighties and nineties, which was probably not Judith Chalmers’ first point of call for Wish You Were Here but still, it was home. As most people will remember, Northern Ireland during that period was an interesting place to be if you were particularly keen on scaring yourself silly. The television most evenings would have talk of car bombs, murders, knee-cappings and other assorted terrorist activities. Going to school in Belfast every day on the train you became used to having to get a replacement bus service due to bomb scares. For anyone who wanted to skip class the various alphabetical groups bent on death and destruction could guarantee that no one would question your excuse for being late – there always seemed to be a bomb scare somewhere.For the full list of 25 Irish crime writers, clickety-click here …
“Throughout the difficult years there were books that focused on the Troubles – you know the stuff – where an English spy from British Intelligence would invariably fall in love with a Catholic girl who would betray him to the IRA and he’d be executed. But there was a huge gap in the market for really good home grown crime fiction. Over the past twenty years or so there has been an emergence of what has become known as Emerald Noir. It’s gritty, it’s realistic, and contemporary Ireland – both north and south – is a whole lot better for it …”
Naturally, and given the nature of such things, even a list of 25 Irish crime writers is going to miss out on a few names that really should be in there. John Connolly doesn’t make the cut because he doesn’t set his novels in Ireland, but Armstrong’s roll-call of honour doesn’t include Julie Parsons, Paul Charles, Liam O’Flaherty, Garbhan Downey, Ava McCarthy, Peter Cunningham, Hugo Hamilton, Rory McCormac, Vincent McDonnell, Cora Harrison, or - shock, horror! - Twenty Major. On the upside, it’s nice to see that the list does include Eilís Dillon, Eugene McEldowney, Jim Lusby, Andrew Nugent and Vincent Banville, all of whom tend to get overlooked in discussions about Irish crime writing.
Perhaps understandably, the list is also short on recent debutants, such as Niamh O’Connor, Kevin McCarthy, Gerard O’Donovan, Gerry O’Carroll and Rob Kitchin. There are also a number of mavericks who deserve a plug, like TS O’Rourke, John Kelly, Patrick McGinley and Seamus Smyth, all of whom were writing Irish crime fiction when it was neither popular or (even less) profitable.
So there you have it. Any names that should be on that list, but aren’t? You know what to do …
Some reviews are good, some are bad, others are quirky. This review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS popped up on Smashwords over the weekend, and is without doubt the loveliest review I’ve ever had. To wit: When I was a kid and it was too hot to play outside, I would talk my mother into giving me a quarter if I didn’t have one, and then I’d grab my bike and hightail it down to the drugstore.
By the time I hit the railroad tracks I’d be sweating. But downtown they had big trees with lots of shade and the pedalling would be easier.
I would walk into the drugstore and head down to the comic rack. I would get what I could get for my quarter and head back. Going back I would pedal harder, full of anticipation. Just before I got to the house, I’d make a quick stop at the gas station and get a soda (ok, I had an extra dime.)
I’d get home, turn on the fan, open that soda, spend a little time looking at that glossy cover and then I’d turn to the first page.
Man, life couldn’t get better than that.
Well, this is better than that. Shake a couple of bucks out, grab a Coke and have yourself a nice afternoon in the shade. ***** - Francis Roderick
Yesterday I had the very rare joy of a Saturday afternoon all to myself, when I could have (a) toddled off to Dalkey to listen to Declan Hughes and John Connolly wax lyrical about ‘the 10 Crime Novels to Read Before You Die’, (b) watched a World Cup game in its entirety, or (c) got horizontal on the couch and cracked open Robert Fannin’s FALLING SLOWLY. I was very tempted to go for (a), but being a lazy bugger, and being all World Cupped out after England’s tragi-comic adventure against Algeria, I eventually opted for (c). A good choice, as it happens, and the early signs are promising in a Kafkaesque way. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, if anyone was at the Connolly / Hughes gig, and made a list of their 10 novels to read before you die, I’m all ears …Incidentally, Crime Watch hosted a John Connolly ‘9MM’ interview earlier this week; clickety-click here for more. And THE WHITE GALLOWS author Rob Kitchin also found himself staring down the same barrel: you can find his answers here.
Staying with interviews, Sue Leonard recently quizzed William Ryan for the Irish Examiner, when William had this to say about the origins of his debut, THE HOLY THIEF:
“I’d read Isaac Babel’s short stories and was working on a screenplay of his life (Babel was executed in Russia’s reign of terror). I found that whole period in Russia fascinating.For the rest, clickety-click here …
“I took a hero – Korolev, working with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, who is not the brightest. I threw him in this situation and waited to see what would happen. I’m interested in dictatorship; in how ordinary people behave in extraordinary situations.
“You were required to give absolute loyalty in the Stalinist period. They were prepared to do bad things, believing that the end justified the means. Communism was a religion really. It offered paradise on earth and in the near future. The only way they could function was to believe, ‘This must mean something’.”
Finally, TV3’s Morning Ireland programme hosted Gerard O’Donovan during the week, with Gerard offering insights into the whys and wherefores of his debut novel, THE PRIEST, and why he decided (with his tongue firmly stuck in cheek, presumably) to ‘put the crucifix back at the heart of Irish writing’. More seriously, the conversation then goes on to investigate the challenge of writing a credible crime novel in Ireland that features a serial killer, particularly as Ireland has never had - officially, at least - a bona fide serial killer. So: why hasn’t Ireland had its very own serial killer? Is it because we’re all too nice ‘n’ cuddly ‘n’ twinkly-eyed ‘n’ pleasantly drunk to bother? Or because there’s always been any number of ‘causes’ available to offer an umbrella of political respectability and sectarian motivation if you’re of a mind to snuff people out?
For Gerard O’Donovan’s TV3 interview, clickety-click here …
Lately I have mostly been reading: THE USES OF PESSIMISM by Roger Scruton; THE WINGS OF THE SPHINX by Andrea Camilleri; TINKERS by Paul Harding; and THIEF by Maureen Gibbon.
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Probably one of my two all-time favourites - either Dashiell Hammett’s RED HARVEST or James Lee Burke’s HEAVEN’S PRISONERS. These two books had a greater influence on my own writing than just about anything else.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
This is a tricky question. I wouldn’t really want to be a character in most of my favoorite books because usually they suffer a great deal and very bad things tend to happen to them. I love Dave Robicheaux, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with him. So, definitely someone with a happy ending, or multiple happy endings. Spenser, maybe?
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I teach English at a university, so I think most of my colleagues would consider almost everything I read a guilty pleasure. To name names, though, Stieg Larsson is probably my current favourite. I do read a lot of thrillers and graphic novels, but I don’t really feel the pleasure is guilty at all, because there’s so much high quality writing across just about every genre these days.
Most satisfying writing moment?
The first time I held a copy of A KING OF INFINITE SPACE in my hand.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s IN THE WOODS. It would have to be a European production, though, because I can’t imagine an American version staying true to the novel.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst is the sitting still. I think best when I’m moving. Walking is especially good. But when I sit still, my brain seems to slow down. The best is when a scene or a moment really comes together, especially after ten or eleven drafts.
The pitch for your next book is …?
In THE PAIN SCALE, as Danny Beckett recovers from the events in A KING OF INFINITE SPACE, he’s faced with the toughest case of his career - the murder of a young mother and her two children, which leads him into a tangled plot that involves him with adversaries ranging from Ukrainian killers to United States congressmen.
Who are you reading right now?
I just started Justin Cronin’s THE PASSAGE, and so far, it’s living up to the hype. And at the beginning of every summer, I start itching for the new James Lee Burke novel, so I can hardly wait for THE GLASS RAINBOW.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Reading. Just last week, I said to someone I wish I could quit my job and just read all the time. It’s been a bit longer since I’ve said that about writing.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
A former teacher and current friend of mine, Long Beach poet and fiction writer Gerry Locklin said A KING OF INFINITE SPACE had a “powerful personal intensity.” I’ve always liked that.
Tyler Dilts’ A KING OF INFINITE SPACE is published by AmazonEncore.
Being the first in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. First up: Ava McCarthy (right), author of THE COURIER. To wit: “Harry Martinez has been with me a long time. Actually, that’s not true - I only created her in 2004. But it feels like she’s always been here. The seeds of her character first sprouted while I researched an earlier novel. One of my characters was a small-time hacker (don’t ask me why), and the more I researched hacking, the more fascinated I became. I loved the whole idea of someone intruding on a system, creeping around like a burglar, covering their tracks, peeking at sensitive data. The concept fairly rippled with tension and danger, and suddenly, Harry Martinez sprang to life. I could picture exactly how she would be: an ace hacker; a forensics whiz; resourceful, independent, enduringly curious, and with just a touch of larceny in her soul. I can still remember the goose bumps I’d felt at my discovery: I’d created my own techno private eye.
“People often ask me why I chose the boyish name Harry, and for a long time, I didn’t have an answer. Instinctively, I knew the name was right, but I couldn’t for the life of me explain why. One publisher even rejected THE INSIDER, the first book in the series, on the basis that he “couldn’t be doing with a girl called Harry.” I cursed him roundly, but I didn’t change her name. Obviously, on one level I wanted to convey tomboy characteristics: Harry is gutsy, resourceful, unsentimental and feisty. But why I felt a woman couldn’t exhibit these qualities while going by the name of Susan, I couldn’t quite rationalise. Until recently, that is, when someone mentioned that her daughter loved the girl called George from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. The rush of insight was like a cartoon light bulb in my head. I’d grown up on Enid Blyton; I’d admired George enormously. She was fiery and obstinate, loyal and brave. Her real name was Georgina, but she never answered to anything except George. Was she the first childhood role model for Harry?
The subconscious weaves its fabric in unexpected patterns. Maybe I’m right after all, and Harry has been with me a long time.“The Harry Martinez books start from tiny ideas, random notions that happen to make me curious. Back in the day, I used to be a physicist, so I like to know how stuff works. THE INSIDER, for instance, began with a curiosity about insider trading. I researched the mechanics of it and by the time I’d understood the characters inhabiting that world, I knew I wanted to write a story around them. The second book in the series grew from a curiosity about diamonds. I looked under the hood, digging deep below surface clichés, and learned about the world of underground mines, expert diamond cutters and international diamantaires. And out of that world evolved the story of THE COURIER. For the third book, I’m sniffing around several trails, including scam artists and the Basques of northern Spain. Who knows where that will lead …
“But that’s just the hammer and chisel side of things. Otherwise known as The Plot. While my conscious self hews out great chunks of action, my subconscious just keeps on weaving. Knit one, purl one. And as the story plaits together, a pattern of emotional nuances will emerge almost in spite of me, until finally it dawns on me what I’m really writing about. With THE INSIDER, for instance, I came to understand that apart from insider trading, I was writing about the relationship between an estranged father and daughter. In THE COURIER, my subconscious turned to the complexities of mothers and daughters, and the struggle for self-belief. In the third book in the series, I have recently realised that, apart from scam artists and the Basques of northern Spain, I’m exploring the whole notion of family and identity.
“So while Harry came to life for me in a single, goose-bump moment, the inkling for a story doesn’t arrive all at once, and sometimes the hammer and chisel can even bend it out of shape along the way. But if I manage to hold onto the emotional vision by the end while staying true to Harry’s character, then I consider that a success.” - Ava McCarthy
THE COURIER is published by Harper.
God bless the interweb. Back in the day, and in the normal run of things, THE BIG O (being a co-published title with no marketing budget behind it when it first appeared in 2007) might have picked up a few press reviews and then crawled away into a dark corner to die. Happily, and given the ever growing network of bloggers and webnauts that exists among readers and writers, reviews still occasionally pop up. The latest comes courtesy of Rob Kitchin, a fellow scribe who blogs at The View from the Blue House, with the gist running thusly: “THE BIG O is a comic crime caper – think of Carl Hiassen strained though a noir filter. The story is broken into a succession of short scenes each written from the perspective of one of the six principle characters. The structure works to provide a nice, quick pace and enables Burke to flesh out the characterisation, where each person is slightly larger than life with certain foibles … The only thing that grated after a while was the use of coincidence, which was clearly deliberate but edged towards excessive … THE BIG O is a very enjoyable read and a comic crime caper that is genuinely comic.” ****Obviously, it’s nice to know that Rob Kitchin liked - for the most part - the novel, and very generous he was too. What I liked about the review, though, is that few punches were pulled, when it would have been easier for Rob to gloss over what he didn’t like and simply emphasise what he did like (full disclosure: I’ve met Rob Kitchin once, and thought he was a nice bloke). He’s not the first to point out that the story of THE BIG O turns (gyrates) on an excessive use of coincidence; and whether that conceit was deliberately intended or not, readers are fully entitled to find it grating, irritating or simply unbelievable. They’re also fully entitled to call me on it.
For what it’s worth, I think that that kind of robust critique is welcome and entirely healthy. It certainly beats having him gush about my book and me gush about his (Rob Kitchin has just published his second novel, THE WHITE GALLOWS), an all too common practice these days, and one that serves neither writer nor reader.
On an altogether more rarefied level, the venerable Sarah Weinman recently blogged on a similar theme, when she mused aloud about ‘awards fatigue’. The gist of the piece was the proliferation of crime fiction awards (Anthonys, Barrys, McCavitys, Shamuses, Edgars, et al), the difficulty in differentiating one from another, and the overall worth (or otherwise) of having so many awards, all in the context of whether or not the awards are successful in raising the profile of the winning and nominated authors with an audience beyond that of crime fiction aficionados.
Both EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O were nominated for awards, bless their cotton socks, so I’m in a position to say that, yes, it’s lovely just to be nominated. By the same token, and looking at the big picture, there appears to be a very real danger that crime writing, even with the very best of intentions, is creating a closed-loop feedback of mutual celebration. In a nutshell - and this is where Rob Kitchin comes in - when everything is good, nothing is good.
Running parallel to the mutual celebration is the occasional statement from an author or critic from outside the crime fiction circle, which suggests that crime fiction isn’t as well written as it might be, or is too formulaic and predictable, or too simplistic in terms of form to reflect the complexity of the human condition. The reaction tends to be one of closed ranks, and dark mutterings about snobbery and prejudice, and reverse-snobbery accusations about ivory towers and self-indulgence.
In one sense, that’s actually nice to see - it demonstrates the all-for-one and one-for-all nature of the crime fiction community. It’s failing, however, is that it’s a short-term view. All criticism is valid, and particularly when it offers opinions we’d rather not hear. We’re coming up hard now on the centenary anniversary of what I consider to be the birth of the modern crime novel - those collections of pulp short stories that would eventually crystallise into novels by Paul Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, et al - and yet the form, structure, intent and ambition of the crime novel has hardly changed in almost one hundred years.
Content has changed to reflect contemporary concerns, certainly, but society, culture and civilisation have mutated in ways that would have been scarcely conceivable even to Jules Verne in his pomp. Is the proliferation of awards doing the crime novel any favours? Are we being honest enough with ourselves as to the enduring worth of crime fiction? Are we too stubbornly closing ourselves off to valid criticism that threatens (and apologies for the tortured metaphor) to prick the bubble of our closed-loop feedback?
I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits.
Oh, and I’d also like a week in the Greek islands, preferably paid for by some commercially suicidal publisher who wants to publish one of my novels.
Any takers?
Slavery is an ugly concept that strikes to the very heart of the human experience. In this her 15th novel, Isabel Allende focuses on the impact of slavery on women and children in particular. As the daughter of a slave, her heroine Tété, who is known to her nearest and dearest as Zarité, is born into slavery. When French plantation owner Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue in 1770, he buys Tété to serve as his wife’s maid. The intertwined destinies of Tété and Valmorain form the narrative spine of ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA. It’s an epic tale set against a fertile historical backdrop, which incorporates the slaves’ revolution on Saint-Domingue, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Allende explores all strata of society, creating a panoply of characters that includes priests, doctors, prostitutes, buccaneers, soldiers, society madams, slave overseers and radicalising abolitionists. For all its grand sweep, however, the novel is an intensely personal tale of Tété’s struggle to survive, endure and finally escape the shackles of slavery.
The story is told for the most part in a formal third-person narrative, but Allende blends the political and the personal by allowing Tété to occasionally step forward from the teeming dramatis personae and deliver first-person accounts.
Allende’s vivid prose makes this an intoxicating read at times, whether she’s describing the lushly beautiful hinterland of Saint-Domingue (the island that would later be divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic) or the heartbreaking cruelty meted out to slaves on the merest whim of their owners. The tale itself, meanwhile, has a compelling quality as the relationship between Tété and Valmorain becomes intensely personal, and blood-lines blur as emancipation becomes a political reality.
Most notable of all, however, is Allende’s barely restrained sense of moral outrage at the fate of the slaves who were doomed to work themselves to death on the sugarcane plantations of Saint-Domingue. While she refers for the most part only elliptically to the horrendous tortures and deaths perpetrated by the white masters, the complete physical, sexual and psychological control exerted over Tété makes for utterly depressing reading. Or would do, were it not for Tété’s unbreakable will and her unshakeable faith in her own worth.
In preaching her gospel, however, Allende has a propensity for veering into a didactic mode that sits uneasily with the novel’s internal logic. Tété’s personal accounts offer a deeper understanding of the character’s motivations, for example, and are particularly heart-rending when she speaks of the children she has had by her master. However, it is never explained as to how a plantation slave garnered the education that might allow her write so persuasively, while the prose employed is too fluent to be convincing as an oral account.
There are times, too, when Allende’s prose becomes unnecessarily fervid. Describing Tété’s forbidden dalliance with the revolutionary slave Gambo, for example, she writes:
“ … she swung astride him, ramming into herself that burning member she had so longed for, bending down to cover his face with kisses, lick his ears, caress him with her nipples, rock on his hips, squeeze him between her Amazon’s thighs, undulating like an eel on the sandy floor of the sea. They romped as if it were the first and the last time, inventing new steps in the ancient dance.”There is also a shallow quality to the characterisation of the minor players, who tend to be all good or all bad, depending on their emotional intelligence and their sensitivity, or otherwise, to the slaves’ plight. Valmorain, on the other hand, is a fascinating character precisely because he is neither good nor bad. Instead he is a weak and vain man who allows evil be done in his name, and one from whom - appropriately, given his historical context - a simplistic and reductive redemption is ultimately withheld.
All told, however, ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA makes for an enthralling read, an unusually thought-provoking page-turner. While Allende makes deft use of contemporary allusions - the appalling poverty of what would one day become Haiti, some minor flooding in New Orleans - there is no doubting the relevance of the central thrust of her story, which is that slavery is no less a blight on humanity now than it was in the past. - Declan Burke
This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post
I don’t know if you’ve heard of Harry Taylor, or his new novel ROGUES, RICHES AND RETRIBUTION. I came across the novel courtesy of comments left on my last two posts, when ‘Audrey’ and ‘Becky’ were both kind enough to leave rave reviews of the book. Being no stranger to hype myself, I investigated a little further, and discovered that Harry’s PR and marketing is being handled by an outfit calling itself Author Marketing Experts, Inc., which is headed up by Penny Sansevieri. The blurb on the website reads thusly: People don’t simply buy a book; they crave a brand. We transform authors, new and seasoned, into a brand. We will help you develop your media voice and platform. We will position you and your books online and offline and generate brand recognition, drive targeted traffic to your website and sell books.I don’t know about you, but I ‘crave a brand’ in much the same way as most people crave venereal disease. But maybe that’s just me.
Our team of book marketing specialists, book marketing strategists, journalists, bloggers and SEO experts will promote your book 24/7, while you sleep. Leave all the heavy lifting to us.
10 Bestsellers. In the last 15 months, we have helped launch 10 major bestsellers. Will you be next? To start promoting your book online right now, click here.
For over ten years, we have been promoting authors and books online and offline - getting them the publicity and media coverage they deserve.
Online, we place your book on genre specific and relevant websites. By hand, we create permanent backlinks that drive interested readers from sites with tons of visitors to your web site. Backlinks typically drive thousands and often tens of thousands of interested readers to your site for years to come. Readers can buy your book, join your email list and join your story …
Anyway, my real issue with Penny Sansevieri and AME, Inc. is not that she and her ‘team of book marketing specialists, book marketing strategists, journalists, bloggers and SEO experts’ are peddling the on-line version of snake oil. (For example: “In the last 15 months, we have helped launch 10 major bestsellers.” Great - but is there any chance you might tell us the title of even one of those bestsellers? Or is it a secret?)
No, my issue with Penny Sansevieri is that she and her vaunted ‘team’ simply don’t understand on-line marketing, at least in the context of the publishing community.
Creating hand-crafted backlinks is one thing: being a sneaky shit by posting comments with embedded urls on websites and blogs is quite another. Not only is that the practice of a parasite feeding off the work of others, it’s counter-productive. Because what anyone involved in the blogging community of books knows better than anything else is the incredible generosity that bloggers extend to authors, and particularly new authors, who are desperate for a few molecules of oxygen publicity.
Really, all you have to do is ask. For a mention, for a review, for a link to your site - anything at all. In my experience, which is very much that of a hype-hungry struggling writer, most bloggers will bend over backwards to accommodate you in some fashion.
My experience of Penny Sansevieri’s underhand methods, on the other hand, is that it will get bloggers’ backs up, and create resistance to the title being stealth marketed.
I’ve been blogging for quite a few years now, and I’ve done my best to help out fellow writers in any way I can. In effect, I’ve built my own presence on the web, and I’ve done so with the willing help of an ever-expanding network of fellow bloggers and writers. What Penny Sansevieri does is the equivalent of waiting until I’ve built my house, then sneaking up to spray-paint her message on my wall. Not only is that rude and anti-social, it’s counter-productive, in that I’m now likely to be ill-disposed not only to her message, but to those authors she represents.
It’s possible that I’m doing Penny Sansevieri a disservice here, but I can only react to my own experience of her work. And my experience is that Penny Sansevieri is attempting to muscle in on a community by using underhand, parasitical methods. If anyone - including ‘Audrey’ and ‘Becky’ - have had different experiences, please feel free to leave a comment in the box below.
Finally, a word for any author represented by Penny Sansevieri, should they stumble across this post. I don’t just run a ‘genre-specific’ blog that’s wide open for short-term exploitation by those so inclined. I also review books for a wide variety of broadsheet newspapers here in Ireland, which then post said reviews on-line. Now, I can’t guarantee that if Penny had approached me personally with one of the titles she has previously marketed to bestsellerdom - CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE AMERICAN IDOL SOUL, for example - that it would have been reviewed on Crime Always Pays, or elsewhere. But I can guarantee you that any title that comes to my notice as a result of underhand practices will receive short shrift here.
I got a press release during the week - I don’t think it’s fair to mention the publisher, nor the writer it was plugging - that offered the following reasons as to why women are hooked on crime fiction: 1. Our relationship with the prospect of danger; from a young age women are primed to expect fear.All three regular readers of CAP might want to believe that I inserted # 4 just to make sure they were paying attention, but I’m afraid not: somebody, somewhere, believes women are so thick - or perhaps just the ones that read crime fiction? - that they read crime novels for survival advice.
2. Escapism; pure enjoyment.
3. Anti-romance.
4. Possibility of learning survival tips to use if we’re kidnapped.
As for the other reasons: aren’t men primed from an early age to expect fear? Don’t they read for escapism and enjoyment? Aren’t men - historically, fatally - anti-romance?
Honestly, folks, some days you wonder why you do it …
The chandeliers at CAP Towers fairly jingled with delight this morning, after Eoin McNamee’s forthcoming ORCHID BLUE popped through the letterbox. Not only was I being treated to an advance-advance copy (the novel isn’t published until November), but I didn’t even know there was a McNamee novel forthcoming. Quoth the blurb elves: January 1961, and the beaten, stabbed and strangled body of a nineteen year old Pearl Gambol is discovered, after a dance the previous night at the Newry Orange Hall. Returning from London to investigate the case, Detective Eddie McCrink soon suspects that their may be people wielding influence over affairs, and that the accused, the enigmatic Robert McGladdery, may struggle to get a fair hearing. Presiding over the case is Lord Justice Curran, a man who nine years previously had found his own family in the news, following the murder of his nineteen year old daughter, Patricia. In a spectacular return to the territory of his acclaimed, Booker long-listed THE BLUE TANGO, Eoin McNamee’s new novel explores and dissects this notorious murder case which led to the final hanging on Northern Irish soil.McNamee has carved out a tasty little niche for himself writing fictions based on true crimes (THE BLUE TANGO, RESURRECTION MAN, 12:23), and ORCHID BLUE is at base camp as we speak, testing its crampons and donning an oxygen mask in preparation for its fast-track assault on Mount TBR. Wish it bon chance, people: this is one that simply won’t wait …
Yet another interesting debut to watch out for: Yvonne Cassidy’s THE OTHER BOY, which flashed across the CAP radar late last week. The early word is that it’s a literary psychological thriller, and the name ‘Tana French’ leaps to mind when perusing the blurb elves’ witterings below. To wit: “‘You know that moment between sleep and waking? I read somewhere that the first thing that comes into your head is what you desire or fear the most. I don’t know if that’s fully right though because for years when I opened my eyes I used to think of Mark.’Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot of hard work to me. “If you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself …”. You think James Patterson and Dan Brown got richer than Croesus by asking people to find stuff out for themselves? Eh? And it’s not like life isn’t busy enough without having to down tools during a book and go finding stuff out. Gah, grumble, rhubarb, etc. …
“I’m JP Whelan and I said that, the thing about Mark, to my shrink. He’s always trying to get me to talk about what happened all those years ago, when we were just kids.
“I wasn’t always seeing a shrink, I wasn’t even always JP, I used to be John-Paul. Here’s where I’m supposed to tell you about all that, about my life with Katie and Abbey in London or before then, back in Dublin, with Dad, listening to the Beatles and how those were the only times I really felt safe.
“But then I’d have to tell you about my brother Dessie and what happened with Mark.
“But it doesn’t all fit into some neat little box, my story. I wish it did. So if you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself, because even now I’m not sure what the truth is.”
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
So many, from DOUBLE INDEMNITY to LA REQUIEM via the Ripley trilogy and Rebus series. Recently, Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE was enviably great.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Chili Palmer on a good day, Joe Pike on a bad one.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Tabloid reporters.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting published, especially by Sphere here and Scribner in the US.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Any of Brian McGilloway’s novels.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE PRIEST, but if that’s not allowed, Gene Kerrigan’s LITTLE CRIMINALS.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Effort / reward – and the tightrope between them.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Here, mister, do you want to buy a really cracking crime thriller ...
Who are you reading right now?
Michael Connolly (THE SCARECROW), Simon Lewis (BAD TRAFFIC) and Ruth Dudley Edwards (AFTERMATH).
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, although I think God might have other issues to tackle me on first.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Roller… coaster… ride.
Gerard O’Donovan’s THE PRIEST is published by Sphere.
Three Brooklyn cops have very different careers: Eddie (Richard Gere), about to retire, no longer cares about doing the right thing; undercover drug agent Sal (Ethan Hawke) is bending the rules until they break; while Tango (Don Cheadle) is so far undercover that he’s beginning to forget who the good guys are. Antoine Fuqua’s sprawling tale is a mini-epic, with the three parallel narratives playing off one another and intersecting in a final, cataclysmic finale. It’s been quite a while since Fuqua’s Training Day (2001), which was his finest hour until now, but he brings a similar quality of intensity and gritty reality to this production.
The film asks interesting moral questions of its protagonists. While the narrative is ostensibly about the war taking place either side of the thin blue line, in reality the story is more concerned with characters who are at war with themselves. To a large extent, the conflict in Brooklyn’s Finest is internalised, which is a difficult concept to portray convincingly on screen.
All three leads put in fine performances, with Gere and Hawke surprisingly impressive after years of mediocre work. Richard Gere, in particular, turns in an eye-opening performance: overtly passive, given that his character is simply clock-watching until he can retire, Gere invests his deadpan role with a rare depth, particularly in the few scenes he shares with Eddie’s hooker-squeeze, Chantel (Shannon Kane), where Eddie’s sense of longing for something - anything - he can commit to is palpable.
Also impressive is Ethan Hawke, whom we tend to associate with fey, sensitive characters. Fuqua - who previously worked with Hawke on Training Day - draws a compelling performance from the actor, who creates a character who is to be pitied and sympathised with despite his dirty dealings.
The supporting cast plays an unusually strong part, with Wesley Snipes, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lili Taylor and Ellen Barkin all good value for money.
The movie is arguably too long for its own good, but each separate strand works on its own merits, and it seems churlish to suggest that any of the triptych should be cut back. Fuqua combines a steady pace with dynamic editing to create a tension that seeps through all three stories. He also keeps the story rooted in the gritty, scuzzy details of life on the streets and invests proceedings with a degree of realism that is at times disturbing, all the while blending the cops’ domestic and professional lives, and the subtle ways in which the line between right and wrong can be blurred. - Declan Burke
Leaving aside the Artemis Fowl series for one moment, anyone who has read Eoin Colfer’s (right) HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS will know that he has a genuine affection for the tropes of crime fiction. The short story ‘Taking On P.J.’ in the Ken Bruen-edited DUBLIN NOIR further suggests that Colfer has the chops to write for an adult audience as well as a YA one. So the news - which comes via The Bookseller, although CAP first mentioned it way back in November 2007 - that Colfer is to publish an adult crime thriller is long overdue. To wit: Headline has acquired Eoin Colfer’s first foray into adult fiction, a noir crime-thriller entitled PLUGGED, for publication next year. Marion Donaldson bought British Commonwealth rights for an undisclosed sum, in a deal conducted by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor. The deal was completed yesterday afternoon (9th June). The deal does not affect Colfer’s ongoing relationship with Penguin, which publishes his children’s books.All of which is fine and dandi-o for Eoin Colfer, but that’s yet another quality name to be added to the seams-bursting list of top Irish crime novelists. Think of the fan club meetings, people! Much more of this and we might have to use an open-air phone-box next year …
Donaldson said: “[Writing for adults] was just something he decided to have a go at, and he has done it completely brilliantly. We were very keen right from the start, as everyone is such a huge fan of his children’s series Artemis Fowl. Obviously, this is intended for the adult market - there is a certain amount of violence in it - but you can still hear his voice in it, and people who have grown up on Artemis Fowl will be drawn to it. It’s very different [to his children’s books], but it has that tone.”
PLUGGED is set in New York and New Jersey, and the main character is an Irish man “who lives just this side of the law but gets embroiled in things outside of the law”, Donaldson said.
It will be a lead title for Headline next year, with a paperback to follow later in the year or 2012, she added. Although the deal is just for one book, Donaldson said the team “would hope he would write more”. She added: “We would love to see him continue with the character, although there is no commitment to write more books - we are just very excited to have one.”
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I am John Tracer. But somehow he stays the same while I just keep getting older.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
It more like, Who do I look at for guilty pleasure? The short list includes Jenna Jameson, the little blonde who mixes paint at Ace Hardware and an extraordinary Eucharistic minister at St. George’s.
Most satisfying writing moment?
In the western Proud Men, Charlton Heston said a line in which I used a cousin’s name, a throwaway for me, but Chuck spoke with such chilling conviction about the man’s rapacious appetite for other people’s land, I had to call my cousin and apologize before the piece aired. Of course, I wasn’t really sorry at all.
The best Irish crime novel is…?
I can’t speak about Irish crime fiction, but I think Ireland’s most eloquent alcoholic bomb-maker was Brendan Behan. I particularly admire BORSTAL BOY and CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
MALIBU PALMS. The narrator is a drunk, and the author happens to be the grandson of a bronc buster named Harney. When my mother was growing up, she was told never to tell anyone she was Irish. Being half-Mexican was OK. Boy, have times changed.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
My folks thought I was going to be a physician when I grew up. When they finally realized that I meant to be a writer, they took it as a sure sign that I would turn out to be a drunk and homosexual. They got half of it right.
The pitch for your next book is…?
The Shroud of Turin is a priceless Christian relic that means absolutely nothing to Harv Weisman, a secular New York cop who immigrated to Israel to work for Mossad as a way of avenging the murder of his wife and children by terrorists. Harv is skeptical about the power of any faith until The Shroud is stolen and used to blackmail the land of his fathers.
Who are you reading right now?
THE KOREAN WAR: PUSAN TO CHOSIN: AN ORAL HISTORY by Donald Knox.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God always stays in character. He wouldn’t do that.
The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
“...whimsical, lurid, offbeat.” - The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1996.
Jeff Andrus’ MALIBU PLAINS is published by Booksurge Publishing.
Colin Bateman (right) was kind enough to give me a very generous plug last week, in a piece he wrote for the Guardian’s Book Blog, in which he claimed that comic crime fiction is a ‘new and challenging’ way of dealing with what can often be moribund clichés in the crime writing genre. Peter Rozovsky picked up the ball and ran with it over at Detectives Beyond Borders, where the conversation became a debate about the use and abuse of gratuitous violence in crime novels, and particularly against women. There’s no doubt that employing comedy in crime fiction is a high-wire act. Crime is a very serious business, in more ways than one; violence, rape, torture and murder are not matters to be taken lightly. My big problem, as a writer, is that I love the crime novel form, and that I find it very difficult to write without trying to be funny. I have tried to write stories that are serious in tone, but I get bored very quickly, and find myself repressing the instinct to poke fun at the foibles of the characters, their ambitions and hubris. That puts me in an awkward position, not least because a good friend of mine died violently many years ago, and it goes against the grain to underplay the consequences of violence of any kind.
My first novel, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, was an attempt to write an homage-of-sorts to the novels of Raymond Chandler - in other words, the novel was serious in its intent, but its protagonist, Harry Rigby, was prone to comic quips and asides to the reader. As best as I can remember without rereading it, the story contains two murders, both of which, I hope, receive their full due in terms of their consequences. The story also contains occasional outbreaks of non-lethal violence, most of which is perpetrated against Rigby, and again, I tried to do justice to the reality of my own experience of physical violence - that it is brutal and nasty, and as psychologically unsettling as it is physically debilitating. That said, Rigby at one point ships a bullet in his gut and - after a brief period of recuperation - goes merrily on his way. Plausible? Definitely not, according to a number of reviewers. By the same token, none of the violence is gratuitous, nor is it excessively detailed or gruesome.
By the time I came to write my second novel, THE BIG O, I was a little worn out by the forensically detailed emphasis on violence and murder in the novels I was reading, and particularly burnt out by those authors who were gleefully celebrating the extent to which their novels were plumbing the depths of human depravity. The form I decided on was a homage-of-sorts to Elmore Leonard, with a nod to Barry Gifford, but I also set myself the challenge of writing a crime novel that contained no murders at all, and the bare minimum of violence.
Apart from self-inflicted harm, the novel contains two actual episodes of violence: a dog has its eye removed with a fork, and a man - one of the bad guys - gets shot in the knee. By the standards of the kill-count in the crime novel today, that’s positively quaint. The comedy aspect was a bit more challenging. Many reviewers commented on the number of coincidences in the novel: some were willing to play along with the conceit, others found it a bit wearying. My intent, for what it’s worth, was to write a comic crime novel according to the classical definition of comedy - i.e., in classical Greek drama, tragedy is considered to be undeveloped comedy. In the context of the novel, a group of characters scheme and plot towards the finale, growing increasingly desperate to achieve their aims even as fate - in the form of those coincidences - becomes a noose around their necks. I suppose the general idea was that of ‘Men plan and gods laugh’ - either way, the concept was one of poking fun at the illusion of human control over our actions and their consequences in what is essentially a blind and pitiless universe.
My third novel, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which is currently out under consideration, is an attempt to get at a different kind of comedy. Again, it’s a crime narrative, in which a hospital porter deranged by logic decides to blow up the hospital where he works, in order to illustrate how all civilisations (in this case, Western civilisation) are undone from within rather than destroyed by external forces. The humour is decidedly darker than previously; the protagonist, Karlsson, allows for no limits on his imagination when it comes to inventing ingenious ways to persecute his superiors. But the form, too, is an attempt to move away from the traditional crime novel narrative. It’s a meta-fiction, in which failed writer Declan Burke finds his own person, and that of his family, under attack by his deranged creation, Karlsson. The idea is to fold back the violence writers propagate onto the writer himself, and to have Declan Burke live with the consequences of his wilful depravity. Whether the conceit works is up to others to decide, but for now I’m happy that the story is at least an attempt to come to terms with the responsibility a crime writer bears in terms of the ways in which he or she employs violence in their novels.
Anyway, that’s my two cents on the comic crime novel. I should point out, by the way, that my own experience of writing and publishing comic crime novels has been that while readers tend to like them as a change of pace from more serious fare, they’re not generally taken all that seriously by the industry’s mainstream, either by publishers or readers. That may well be because of the way I’ve written those particular novels, or because people don’t as a rule take comedy seriously. I’d imagine it’s very probably a combination of both. Bateman, whose debut novel DIVORCING JACK poked fun at warring paramilitaries and won the Betty Trask prize, and whose THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL recently won The Last Laugh award at CrimeFest, is one of the few exceptions. And that’s a shame, I think. Writers of serious crime novels who overdose on gratuitous violence and torture porn are no more realistic in terms of the truth of crime than comedy writers who exaggerate the tropes and blend genres. The funniest novel I’ve read so far this year has been Anthony Zuiker’s DARK ORIGINS, a laughably bad tale of an anally-obsessed serial killer mastermind, at the conclusion of which I had the overwhelming desire to take a shower. At the very least the comedy writers, bless their cotton socks, are serious about making you laugh.
Yours truly had a piece in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago about REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, a collection of contemporary crime stories based on Irish myths and mythology. The launch of said tome, which is co-edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, takes place this coming Thursday, June 10th, at No Alibis in Belfast, with the blurb elves wittering thusly: No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch of Irish crime fiction anthology, REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, on Thursday 10th June at 6:30PM.Lately I have been mostly reading: THE LAST CHILD by John Hart, THE HOLY THIEF by William Ryan, ISLAND UNDER THE SEA by Isabel Allende, THE LADY OF SORROWS by Anne Zouroudi, THE PLEASURE SEEKERS by Tishani Doshi, NEMESIS by Lindsey Davis, and THEODORE BOONE by John Grisham.
Along with co-editor Gerard Brennan (of Crime Scene NI fame), we’re expecting appearances from the following contributors: Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, T.A. Moore, Tony Bailie, John McAllister and Garbhan Downey, so this is sure to be an evening to remember.
Book your spot now by emailing David (david@noalibis.com), or calling the shop on 9031 9607.
Peter James’ (right) latest novel, DEAD LIKE YOU, just went straight to No. 1 on the UK hardback fiction list. Not that he’s boasting, mind, although there is the small matter of the achievement preventing James Patterson from zipping straight to No. 1 for the first time in 10 years. Anyhoo, here’s an interview with Peter James from last weekend’s Sunday Independent, which kicks off thusly: Do you know how much your body’s organs are worth? According to Peter James, in the hands of illegal organ traffickers, your parts are worth roughly one million dollars.For the rest, clickety-click here …
The best-selling novelist is a man of many and diverse interests, including criminology, the paranormal and science. He’s also a movie producer who holds a racing driver’s licence. His late mother was glove-maker to the Queen. He once owned a Second World War bomber plane ...
In short, James is an interesting man. Articulate, cultured and softly spoken, the 61-year-old divides his time between his homes in Notting Hill, London, and Brighton, which he shares with his partner, Helen.
“Brighton’s great,” he says of the setting for the Roy Grace series of Dead novels. “I think a sense of place is as important as character. A lot of the great crime novels that I’ve admired, such as Rebus in Edinburgh, Hiaasen’s Miami, Ed McBain in New York, and so on, are very true to their setting. And Brighton for me is perfect ... For nine years running it was the ‘injecting drugs death capital’ of the UK. We lost it last year to Liverpool,” he grins disarmingly, “but we got it back this year.”
James got his first writing break in 1971, on a pre-schoolers TV programme in Canada called Polka Dot Door. Despite subsequently writing and publishing three spy thrillers, however, commercial success eluded him.
“The real tipping point for me,” he says, “was when I was pouring my heart out to a friend of mine, who was writing jacket blurb at Penguin. And she said, ‘Why are you writing spy thrillers?’ So I said, ‘Because I read somewhere there was a shortage.’ And she said, ‘You’ll never make money from writing something because you think it will pay. You have to write what you’re passionate about.’ That was the best advice I’ve ever had …”
Spanning four decades from 1968 to the present day, Tishani Doshi’s debut novel is a tale of forbidden love as experienced by one Indian family. Babo Patel travels from Madras to London in the late 1960s, to work and study, and finds himself adrift in an alien environment. The Patels are a Jain family, but Babo indulges in cigarettes, alcohol and meat. Most horrifying to his family, however, is the news that Babo has fallen in love with a foreigner, the Welsh girl Sian. The Patel family, led by the patriarchal Prem Kumar, lay down certain conditions for Babo and Sian. The couple pass their test with flying colours; and not only that, when Sian eventually comes to visit Babo in Madras, she decides that she wants to live in India when they get married, and raise their children there.
Although she is an award-winning poet, Doshi doesn’t overburden her story with metaphor and simile, as might have been expected. Despite the central theme, that of forbidden love, Doshi maintains a light touch throughout that often borders on whimsy. There is also plenty of humour, a good deal of it directed at perceptions and prejudices, particularly those preconceived notions of India that Westerners tend to harbour. That said, Doshi also has a fine time inverting the snobbery, and showing the Patel family to be as ignorant about Britain and Western customs as Westerners are about India.
The setting, on the south-east coast of India, is pleasingly exotic, particularly as the story takes us back to the ’60s and ’70s. Doshi sketches a bustling, colourful city of Madras without ever overloading the detail, allowing us to absorb the strange and wonderful sights through Sian’s eyes.
The story also moves back and forth to Britain, first to London - a rather grey and drab London, despite the fact that Babo and Sian meet at the height of the Swinging Sixties - and then the village of Nercwys in Wales, Sian’s home place. While Nerccwys is pleasingly quaint and rural, it suffers by comparison with Madras, and particularly with Anjar, its rural equivalent in India, where Babo’s beloved grandmother Ba lives.
As well as the main characters of Babo and Sian and their daughters Mayuri and Bean, Doshi also introduces us to a teeming cast. Chief among them are Sian’s parents Bryn and Nerys, who are understandably worried about how their daughter is going to make a life for herself in a strange culture; Babo’s brothers and sisters, who are a raucous bunch; and Babo’s grandmother, Ba, who plays a quasi-mystical role. She can, for example, smell people coming while they are still miles away, and has a sixth sense for danger, particularly when it is likely to impact on her extended family. Of all the secondary characters, Ba is the most vividly drawn; indeed, there are times when she is the most illuminating of all Doshi’s characters.
While the novel makes for pleasant reading, there is a telling lack of friction in the story. Few obstacles are put in the lovers’ way once they pass their initial test; Sian adapts to living as a Jain wife in Madras with what appears to be effortless ease; the pair meet with very little in the way of bigotry or prejudice; fate does not intervene to invest the tale with a tragic twist. The narrative unfolds very smoothly, and while there are deaths to be mourned as the years pass and people age and sicken, the tale lacks the kind of tension that develops when a character’s morals, principles or even physical limits are tested. The one hurdle the couple have to overcome is dealt with very early in the story, and it is cleared with considerable ease. While that makes for a romantic tale, it doesn’t make for a very satisfying one. The novel does end with a cataclysmic event, but it arrives far too late to influence the tone of the story.
The absence of significant tragedy and conflict in the narrative may well reflect Doshi’s own experience of growing up a ‘hybrid’, as she puts it, in a mixed-race marriage. If that is the case, then it’s hard to begrudge her what appears to have been an idyllic childhood. As the old cliché has it, though, happy childhoods don’t necessarily make for great novels.
THE PLEASURE SEEKERS is many things - sweet, nice, exotic and endearing. But despite its theme of forbidden love, this is not a novel to excite the passions. - Declan Burke
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Dostoevsky, it embodies to me the two ingredients of the story of a villain. It personifies that a criminal can run but can’t hide, the inevitability of his punishment. It’s a profound insight into the dark soul of a criminal.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jack Rebus from Rankin’s novels - I see in him a lot of the darkness of myself and the weakness of human nature.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I go back and go back and go back to Charles Dickens’ TALE OF TWO CITIES and Victor Hugo’s THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. And of course J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Most satisfying writing moment?
When I got to writing the last line of the last chapter of THE GATHERING OF SOULS.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING. I love Connolly’s style and his encroachment into the supernatural that seems to accompany his books. I’m very much an aficionado of the paranormal thanks to my own personal experiences.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Brian McGilloway’s border thriller GALLOWS LANE would adapt to the screen very well. There’s a richness in his style and tapestry that would suit the movies. But especially it is the depth of his characters – in particular Inspector Ben Devlin - and the scale of the plot that includes suspect arms finds and shadowy MI5 figures that would keep you on the edge of your seat.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is that I’m lazy, and it’s an absolutely ordeal – I’d have to be handcuffed to the chair. The best thing is probably getting the first copy hot off the press that will make up for the blood sweat and tears. I’ve always been more of the outdoor type, and that need for discipline hamstrings me.
The pitch for your next book is …?
I wouldn’t want to dig too deeply into that yet, but it’ll probably go further into the exploration of Quinn’s and Doyle characters, set in Ireland’s gripping world of crime, which extends right across the globe (as seen in recent happenings in Spain), and which we all live in. There will be a certain international element in their next case.
Who are you reading right now?
Stieg Larsson - I just finished the last novel of his tremendous trilogy, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS’ NEST. For me, Stieg Larsson is the most original contemporary crime writer, almost the revelation of crime writers in the last twenty years. My breath was taken away when I read the first book. It is a much abused world he depicts, and I just couldn’t stop, I was blown away.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. It is the last refuge and comfort of old age.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Authentic. Heartfelt. Uncompromising.
Gerry O’Carroll’s THE GATHERING OF SOULS is published by Liberties Press. The image is used courtesy of the Evening Herald.
The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman had a nice piece over on the Guardian Book Blog today (Thursday, 3rd), in which he waxed lyrical about the comic crime novel. The gist runneth thusly: “ … humour in crime fiction is nowadays a rare bird. I was struck by something my friend, thriller writer John Connolly – 7m sales and counting – said at a writing workshop, that comic crime fiction, with rare exceptions, is never going to sell and will forever be frozen out of the major prizes. The Last Laugh Award that my latest book – The Day of the Jack Russell – has picked up is a fantastic honour, but to put it in perspective, it was announced at Bristol’s international convention on crime fiction at the same time as those other biggies, the e-Dunnit Award for best ebook first published in the UK and The Sounds of Crime Award for best abridged and unabridged audiobooks. All three were vastly overshadowed by the concurrent announcement of this year’s Crime Writers’ Association Dagger awards shortlist, which is not noticeably troubled by anything likely to put a smile on your face. John Connolly has a point …Now, yours truly is a native-born and horny-handed son of the soil of Eireann, as some of you know and some of you even care. But I’m more than willing to overlook the fact that I’m now - according to Bateman, at least - a subject of Queen Elizabeth II, bless her cotton socks, on the basis that he reckons I’m (a) comic, (b) challenging, (c) loved and (d) young. Said last - young! - being by far the most important attribute, obviously. Take that, mid-life crisis!
“Which means, bizarrely, that if you want to find something new and challenging, comic crime fiction is now the place to go. British authors like Robert Lewis, Charlie Williams, Malcolm Pryce, Chris Ewan, Declan Burke and Len Tyler are at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works. They may not yet be hogging the bestseller lists but at least they’re adding some wit and balls to a moribund genre. What they’d all probably say, if I could be bothered asking them, is that people who read their books love them, it’s getting them to pick them up in the first place that is the difficulty.”
Bateman, by the way, will be appearing at the Gutter Bookshop next Wednesday, June 9th, where he’ll be waffling at some length about the paperback release of the award-winning THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL. Click on the pic top right for all the details …
Elsewhere, Joe Long, a good friend of this blog, and of Irish crime writing in general, forwards me on an article from the Irish Echo celebrating the rise and rise of Irish crime writing. Quoth Joe:
“John Connolly is the pied piper,” said Joe Long, a graduate student at New York University. Ten years ago, he met Connolly at a reading in New York and they became firm friends. Soon, Long, who has lived all of his 58 years in Manhattan, was hooked on Irish crime fiction. “There’re all great,” he said. “It’s not just good crime writing; it’s good Irish writing.”For more, clickety-click here. But be warned, it mentions me a bit …
Actually, I’m having a pretty good week, I have to say. I got a nice email from someone running an on-line book club asking if I’d be interested in BAD FOR GOOD being their July pick, this despite the fact that BAD FOR GOOD has yet to be published. I don’t mind telling you, I was pretty flattered …
Speaking of which: we (aka Team Laughably Impossible Dream, aka the group of crack optimists doing their damnedest to inflict the demented wibblings of yours truly on an unsuspecting public) got a little nibble on said BAD FOR GOOD this week, and from a rather impressive source. Protocol demands that I gloss over the details; suffice to say that the house publishes two of the finest crime writers of all time. Again, I’m pretty flattered. And not only that, but it transpires that there are two other houses displaying ‘serious’ interest. All of which amounts to a hill of beans, of course, but hey - only one of those beans needs to be magic, right?
On top of all that, it looks like it’s going to be a sunny Bank Holiday, for once. I’m off to the Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan on Saturday June 6th, there to hook up - all going well and Sat Nav permitting - with Brian McGilloway and Ed O’Loughlin, the idea being to (a) promote the bejasus out of two of the finest contemporary Irish authors, (b) chat about THE INFORMER and THE ASSASSIN, the ur-noir novels of Liam O’Flaherty and (c) wonder aloud to no great practical purpose about whether contemporary Irish novels are engaging with the political realities of Ireland today in the way O’Flaherty rather bravely engaged with his. If you’re in the general vicinity of Monaghan, we’ll be yakking it up in the Butty Barn at 2.45pm: do drop by for a heckle or two.
For the full Flat Lake Festival line-up - which includes Anne Enright, Alexei Sayle, The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, Eoin McNamee, Dermot Healy, Shane McGowan, Eugene McCabe, greasy-pig wrassling and generalised debauchery - clickety-click here …
If you’ve read Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), and you’re a football fan, and particularly a fan of Brazil circa 1970, you’ll understand why, in my many private conversations with myself, I tend to refer to Stuart as ‘Nevellino’. All of which is a rather circuitous - indeed, a veritable banana-shaped free-kick - way of letting you know that Stuart has uploaded Chapter One of THE TWELVE’S sequel-of-sorts, COLLUSION, over at his interweb portal. To wit: CHAPTER ONEFor the rest, clickety-click here …
“We’re being followed,” Eugene McSorley said. The Ford Focus crested the rise, weightless for a moment, and thudded hard back onto the tarmac. Its eight-year-old suspension did little to cushion the impact. McSorley kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror, the silver Skoda Octavia lost behind the hill he’d just sped over. It had been tailing them along the narrow country road since they crossed the border into the North.
Comiskey twisted in the passenger seat. “I don’t see anyone,” he said. “No, wait. Fuck. Is that the peelers?”
“Aye,” McSorley said. The Skoda reappeared in his mirror, its windows tinted dark green. He couldn’t make out the occupants, but they were cops all right. The tarmac darkened under the growing drizzle, the sky a blank, heavy sheet of grey above the green fields.
“Jesus,” Hughes moaned from the back seat. “Are we going to get pulled?”
“Looks like it,” Comiskey said. “Fuck.”
Hedgerows streaked past the Focus. McSorley checked his speed, staying just below sixty. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve nothing on us. Not unless you boys have any blow in your pockets.”
“Shit,” Hughes said.
“What?”
“I’ve an eighth on me.”
McSorley shot a look back over his shoulder. “Arsehole. Chuck it.”
McSorley hit the switch to roll down the rear window and pulled close to the hedgerow so the cops wouldn’t see. He watched his side mirror as Hughes’s hand flicked a small brown cube into the greenery. “Arsehole,” he repeated.
Comiskey peered between the seats. “They’re not getting any closer,” he said. “Maybe they won’t pull us.”
McSorley said nothing. He raised the rear window again. The car rounded a bend onto a long straight, the road falling away in a shallow descent before rising to meet the skyline half a mile ahead. He flicked the wipers on. They left wet smears across the windscreen, barely shifting the water. He’d meant to replace them a year ago. McSorley cursed and squinted through the raindrops.
A white van sat idling at a side road. It had all the time in the world to ease out and be on its way. It didn’t. Instead it inched forward to the junction, the driver holding it on the clutch. McSorley wet his lips. He felt the accelerator beneath the sole of his shoe. The Focus had a decent engine, but the suspension was shot. Once the road started to twist, he wouldn’t have a chance. He eased off the pedal. The van drew closer. Two men in the cabin, watching …
Newly promoted detective Jo Birmingham operates on the mean streets of Dublin. Ambitious and anxious to prove a point to her male colleagues - one of whom is her ex-husband, Dan, who is also her boss - Birmingham muscles in on the investigation into a series of killings that appear to have been committed by someone who has a grudge against Dublin’s gangland. The killings are ritualised, and appear to have a religious motive. Parallel to the thriller aspects of the novel runs Jo Birmingham’s personal life. Separated from her husband, Jo is struggling to find enough hours in the day to maintain her home. She lives with her teenage son, Rory, and her one-year-old, Harry, both of whom are a huge drain on her resources, particularly time. Jo also suspects that Dan is having an affair with his secretary. This, naturally, adds to the friction in their professional relationship, and leads to a number of delicious confrontations.
Where the personal and political meet in a more explicit fashion, however, is the fact that Birmingham is conducting a one-woman campaign on behalf of victim’s rights, whom she believes are ill-served by the court system. Niamh O’Connor personalises this even further with a postscript to the novel: “Like Jo Birmingham, I too feel that the scales of justice are too heavily weighted in favour of the accused and need to be rebalanced back towards the victims of crime. This novel is our opening salvo.”
The novel is a pacy page-turner, and delivers a satisfying crime thriller. What’s particularly satisfying is the way in which O’Connor manages to imbue the story with gritty detail without ever holding up the story in order to divest herself of too much technical information. As a crime correspondent with the Sunday World, O’Connor spends much of her time in the company of Gardai, criminals and victims, and as a result the novel has a hard ring of authenticity.
Even though the basic plot - cop chases serial killer - is one that is becoming rather hackneyed these days, the fact that the story is so rooted in a contemporary Dublin reality gives it a cutting edge. Birmingham is a likeable character, despite her spiky, abrasive nature. This is off-set by her private self, which is marginally less spiky and abrasive, but what gives her an added dimension is her campaign on behalf of victims’ rights. - Declan Burke
Robert Polito’s SAVAGE ART is one of the best literary biographies I’ve ever read, although it’s fair to say that Jim Thompson (right) gave Polito plenty of material to work with. Below is a very brief overview of Thompson’s career, which was published last Friday in the Irish Times in advance of the release of Michael Winterbottom’s reboot of THE KILLER INSIDE ME. To wit: Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me had a torrid time at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. Based on a novel by Jim Thompson, the film sharply divided critics, being booed for its portrayal of excessive violence against women and praised for its fidelity to its source material. In this much at least, the film is true to Jim Thompson form. Thompson has always divided people, and never more so than when creating his grotesque characters.
Played by Casey Affleck in the movie, Sheriff Lou Ford is a split-personality psychotic. Amiable and soft-spoken in public, he is privately a monster. In the 1952 novel, Ford is the prototype for what would become the archetypal Thompson creation, being a nihilistic and violent loner with a perverse philosophy which is accessed in frightening detail via a first-person narrative. But Thompson wasn’t simply writing schlock-horror. His peer Geoffrey O’Brien dubbed him ‘the dime-store Dostoevsky’ for his fascination with the Russian author, while Stephen Frears, who directed The Grifters in 1990, claimed that Thompson’s work had uncanny parallels with Greek tragedy.
Born in 1906 in Oklahoma into a well-to-do family which subsequently fell from grace, Thompson spent his formative years drifting through middle America taking on a variety of jobs that exposed him to the sordid underbelly of the American Dream. He finally settled in California, and in the 1940s published two literary novels that were critically well-received but sold little. A graduate of the lurid pulp magazines, Thompson turned his hand to the more lucrative crime fiction market when he published Nothing More Than Murder in 1949. Then, in 1952, The Killer Inside Me appeared.
Hard-boiled crime writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain had by then long since taken murder out of the drawing room, as Chandler said of Hammett, and dropped it in the alleyway, where it belonged.
What Thompson achieved was to personalise the criminal mind to an unprecedented degree, not simply offering a first-person take on the kind of deranged mind that kills for fun, but exploring in the process the existential extremes to which an unhinged imagination can run. Lou Ford was the precursor to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Robert Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. If good crime writing offers an analysis of a nation’s mental health, Jim Thompson was crime fiction’s Sigmund Freud, contributing a fevered, overwrought and compelling account of the killer inside us all. The quality of Thompson’s output was uneven, which isn’t surprising given that he wrote in a furious outpouring. Between 1952 and 1954, for example, he penned four to five novels per year. Bedevilled by demons, not least of them a life-time’s alcoholism, his novels were often sloppily written. His best work, however - Savage Night, The Getaway, The Grifters, Pop. 1280 - are among the finest and most disturbing crime novels ever written.
Hollywood picked up on Thompson’s skewed vision, with the author first working with Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay for The Killing (1956). Thompson got minimal credit from Kubrick, although that didn’t prevent him from writing the screenplay for Paths of Glory (1957), when Kubrick again denied Thompson his full credit. Disillusioned, Thompson eventually drifted into writing for TV, although by the late 1960s he was virtually destitute and unemployable as a result of his heavy drinking.
Sam Peckinpah adapted Thompson’s The Getaway (1972) in a film starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. The tale of a heist gone wrong, the movie is hailed as a classic example of minimalist crime cinema. Yet the film, and the 1994 remake starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, ended where Thompson’s novel started to get truly interesting, when the pair of mutually suspicious runaways fetch up in a surreal Mexican bolt-hole, doomed to watch their swag dwindle and suffer through Sartre’s version of hell in a microcosm.
Thompson died in 1977 after a series of strokes, a few short years before he was discovered by French filmmakers. In 1979, Alain Corneau adapted A Hell of a Woman to make Série Noire, which was followed in 1981 by Bernard Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, adapted from Pop. 1280. Thompson again found favour in Hollywood, with the pick of a slew of adaptations being Stephen Frears’ The Grifters (1990). The film starred John Cusack and Angelica Huston and garnered four Academy nominations.
Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, which was first made by Burt Kennedy in 1976 and starred Stacy Keach as a lacklustre Lou Ford, might yet find Thompson the subject of a long overdue reappraisal. Be warned, however - you may require a strong stomach. And a pair of earplugs to drown out the boos might be advisable. - Declan Burke
Jim Thompson on Celluloid
The Killing (1956)
A seminal film noir about a racetrack heist doomed to failure, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Sterling Hayden and noir stalwart Elisha Cook Jnr. Clocking in at 85 minutes, there literally isn’t a wasted second. The Getaway (1976)
Sam Peckinpah directed Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in a doomed bank heist. McQueen rejected Thompson’s script as dialogue-heavy, and had the film rewritten to include a happy ending.
Série Noire (1979)
Franck Poupart plays a door-to-door salesman drawn into murder by a teenager prostituted by her aunt. The mood of bleak existential gloom degenerates into utter despair.
Coup de Torchon (1981)
Bernard Tavernier relocated Thompson’s small-town 1950’s America setting to a French African colony in 1938. Racism, simmering tension and psychotic impulses make for a modern classic.
The Grifters (1990)
John Cusack and Angelica Huston play a couple of con artists who just so happen to be incestuous lovers. The final scene is a bleakly harrowing as anything mainstream Hollywood has ever produced.
Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me is released on June 4.
This feature first appeared in the Irish Times.
Well, the votes are tallied, and the winner has been announced: Derek Landy’s SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT has won the ‘Irish Book of the Decade’ award. No mean feat, when you consider that the novel was up against the likes of John Banville, John Connolly, Anne Enright and Sebastian Barry, to name but a few. And pretty damn amazing, to be frank about it, when you consider that Landy’s novel is a YA title featuring a dead / skeletal private eye. A hat-tip to Irish Publishing News for the nod … 
The Irish Times published a ‘Crime Beat’ round-up of crime fiction last Saturday, featuring eight novels of Irish and international interest, including three rather fine Irish debuts. To wit: Three radically different debuts suggest that Irish crime fiction is in a rude state of health. Set in Cork in 1920, Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER (Mercier Press, €10.99, pb) finds the RIC and the IRA pursuing the same killer against the backdrop of the War of Independence. Strong on historical detail and assured in its plotting, PEELER is delivered in an economical style with occasional poetic flourishes. McCarthy hasn’t made things easy for himself in choosing for his protagonist a RIC sergeant who is a veteran of the Great War, and who works alongside Black-and-Tans, but it’s to McCarthy’s credit that Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe emerges as a sympathetic character in a compelling narrative.This article was first published in the Irish Times.
Niamh O’Connor’s IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN (Transworld Ireland, €12.99, pb) is equally authentic, the setting here being the mean streets of contemporary Dublin as Detective Jo Birmingham investigates a series of murders that appear to be the work of a serial killer with a grudge against Dublin’s gangland. A crime correspondent with the Sunday World, O’Connor invests her pacy police procedural with gritty detail, although Birmingham’s struggle to balance the demands of her professional life with her personal circumstance as a single mother raising two boys is as integral to the plot as the traditional crime fiction tropes. Birmingham’s one-woman campaign on behalf of victim’s rights gives the novel its moral ballast.
Moscow faces into the chilly winter of 1936 in William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF (Mantle, £12.99, hb), in which a number of horrific murders coincide with the start of Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’.Militiaman Detective Korolev is assigned to investigate, and soon finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the NKVD, the Orthodox Church, and Moscow’s infamous Thieves. Korolev, a religious man secretly faithful to the Old Regime, makes for an unusually spiritual crime fiction protagonist. Ryan’s stately style belies the page-turning quality of the novel, which compares favourably to Rob Smith’s CHILD 44, not least in terms of Ryan’s evocation of the claustrophobic paranoia of Stalinist Russia.
Meanwhile, two titans of the contemporary crime fiction novel offer hugely satisfying reads. In 61 HOURS (Bantam, £13.99, hb), Lee Child’s ex-military drifter Jack Reacher fetches up in a South Dakota town during a blizzard, and is quickly pressed into service by a police force besieged by a drug cartel bent on eliminating a murder witness. Terse and laconic in style, the novel’s tale owes a significant debt to the classic western High Noon, but the deadpan Reacher is a charismatic and endlessly resourceful protagonist. The hero’s status as a noble loner reeks of James Bond-style male fantasy, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, 61 HOURS is an expertly crafted entertainment.
Scott Turow’s INNOCENT(Mantle, £17.99, hb) is a sequel to his best-selling PRESUMED INNOCENT (1987). Now 60, and long after being acquitted of the murder of his mistress, appeals judge Rusty Sabich finds himself being investigated by his old adversary, Tommy Molto, when his wife dies in unusual circumstances. Blending Sabich’s first-person account of events with third-person narratives, and featuring an elliptical structure that jumps back and forth in time, INNOCENT is a mature and insightful exploration of the psychology of crime that makes a mockery of its title, and a gripping thriller to boot.
Venetian policeman Commissario Guido Brunetti returns in Donna Leon’s A QUESTION OF BELIEF (William Heinemann, £12.99, pb), in which domestic and professional concerns compete for his attention as he investigates the apparently random murder of a court clerk during a sweltering heat wave. Brunetti’s emotional intelligence is both his most effective tool and charming attribute as he negotiates his way through the labyrinthine corridors of power in his search for the truth.While the compassionate Brunetti makes for enjoyable company on his morally complex quest, Leon’s 19th offering lacks a quality of urgency that might have given it a telling edge.
Donna Moore’s sophomore offering, OLD DOGS (Max Crime, £7.99, pb), is a crime caper that centres on two scheming ladies of a certain age, Letty and Dora, who have decided to steal a pair of jewel-encrusted Tibetan dog statues from a Glasgow museum. Pursued by a ruthless killer, the duo inadvertently gather around them a teeming multitude of scammers, blaggers and thieves, all of whom are inept to a greater or lesser degree. Liberally sprinkled with salty Glaswegian vernacular, the manically twisted tale reads like a contemporary but unusually bawdy Ealing comedy.
With only three novels under his belt, John Hart has already won two Edgars, the crime writing equivalent of the Oscar, the most recent of which was awarded last month to THE LAST CHILD (John Murray, £9.99, pb). Set in a small American town where a number of young girls have gone missing never to be seen again, it features two protagonists, Detective Clyde Hunt and Johnny Merrimon, the 13-year-old twin of one of the missing girls.Their intertwined investigation provides Hart with a propulsive narrative momentum, but this is a complex tale that explores concepts as diverse as the abuse of power, paedophilia, domestic violence and the consequences of slavery. While THE LAST CHILD is first and foremost a compelling police procedural, Hart is a subtle author who is in the final reckoning concerned with excavating the best and worst of the human heart. THE LAST CHILD is as fine a novel as you’ll read all year, crime or otherwise. - Declan Burke
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
THE CUTTING ROOM by Louise Welsh left me breathless. It’s tartan noir at its most deft, dark and literary. She really is a master storyteller. It tells the story of Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer who finds a cache of disturbing erotic photos in a house clearance. She takes a character who was in the gutter to begin with and sends him into a downward spiral.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I have no guilty pleasures, only deeply unfashionable ones; once every few years I chain-read Virginia Andrews’ Dollanganger saga.
Most satisfying writing moment?
The day I realised THE POISON TREE was finished and I had actually written a novel. I almost didn’t care if no one read it. (This lasted for about a week. Then I cared again, a lot.)
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ve loved both of Tana French’s novels, IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS; gritty and tender, for me they absolutely capture the dark side of Dublin during the boom.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE LIKENESS (see above) was rich with young, sexy, intriguing characters and the Wicklow mountains are the perfect film backdrop.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The freedom and power of creating new worlds is pretty intoxicating for a control freak like me. Plus, it’s fun; I can tell when I’m writing something good because it doesn’t feel like writing, it feels like reading. The worst thing is the physical discomfort. I know, I’m not exactly working down a mine, but sitting at a desk all day, getting RSI and watching your ass go square slowly impacts your vertebrae and crushes your spirit.
The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s about Paul, a young man who acts as the ‘eyes’ for his childhood friend Daniel, who is illiterate, angry, loyal and charming. Gradually Daniel’s protection turns into a desire for control that threatens to ruin Paul’s life until one night, Paul makes a split-second decision that will get Daniel out of the way for good. With Daniel’s father out for revenge, Paul escapes to build a new life in a different part of the country. There he begins a relationship with Louisa, a woman who has even darker, more dangerous secrets than he does. Who will catch up with Paul first?
Who are you reading right now?
THE WILDING by Maria McCann. It’s a deceptively thrilling literary novel about Civil War, sex and cider. What’s not to like?
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d plea-bargain my soul to be allowed both. If that didn’t work ... well, I write one book a year, and read maybe sixty, so it has to be reading.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Up all night.
Erin Kelly’s THE POISON TREE is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Lee Child’s 14th offering reads like High Noon blended with the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, in which our strong, silent hero finds himself stuck in a blizzard-trapped town, reluctantly helping out the beleaguered local police force. Child is an unusual thriller writer in that his novels - which all feature the same protagonist, Jack Reacher - are sometimes told in the first person voice, others in the third. 61 HOURS is a third-person narrative, which affords an emotional distance from Reacher. This is not strictly speaking a necessary device, as Reacher is an impassive character who is rarely if ever given to emotional displays.
That said, Reacher is himself a likeable character. Although he has been compared to James Bond, his status as a drifter (albeit an ex-military man) precludes him from carrying weapons in 61 HOURS. He proves himself very resourceful in other ways, however, and his eye for detail - and Lee Child’s impressive research - is frequently entertaining.
On the downside, the fact that he is a series character lessens the tension somewhat, given that Jack Reacher will inevitably reach the end of the story in one piece, regardless of how high are the odds stacked against him. Mind you, 61 HOURS ends with an explosive climax, from which it’s difficult to see Reacher escaping. (We’re promised another Jack Reacher novel in six months’ time, so you would have to assume that he survives.)
Child also creates a number of interesting secondary characters, chief among them the local deputy of police Peterson. A hardworking, blue-collar guy, Peterson represents the morality of the piece, along with Janet Salter, an aging librarian who has witnessed a murder and is under police protection. The Chief of Police, Holland, is potentially a more fascinating character, given that his moral compass is skewed, but Child tends to create characters who are either all good or all bad. A Mexican drug lord called Plato accounts for the latter in this novel; again a potentially interesting character, his story becomes little more than a litany of ruthless and often lethal actions as the narrative progresses.
61 HOURS is neither emotionally nor morally complex. That may well be the price readers of high-concept thrillers pay, but there are clear hints that Child is capable of far more complex work than is evidenced in this novel. Despite the attention to detail, and the fact that Child roots the story in an utterly plausible reality, there’s a cartoon quality to Jack Reacher and his world in terms of its black-and-white depictions of good and evil.
For that reason, 61 HOURS demands a suspension of disbelief from the reader that can be hard to sustain. As a kind of trade-off, Child maintains a blistering pace throughout, employing brevity when it comes to chapter length, with each chapter ending on a cliff-hanger.
The caveats are minor, though. This was my first Jack Reacher novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Child’s style is terse and economical, and while the book is a page-turner, the swift pace never felt rushed. - Declan Burke
Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is a soft-spoken, well-mannered Southern gentleman as he patrols his small Texas town, but Lou is not all that he seems. Ordered to run Joyce (Jessica Alba), a local prostitute, out of town, Lou batters the woman to death, then shoots dead the man infatuated with her - even though Lou himself was having an affair with Joyce.Based on a Jim Thompson novel, The Killer Inside Me is told through Lou’s eyes, and features a voiceover from Affleck that offers a chilling insight into the banal evil of a man who is a homicidal psychotic. Affleck’s understated performance is perfectly pitched, creating a sympathetic portrayal of a character who is utterly repulsive - the scene in which Affleck beats Alba to a pulp is harrowing, even by contemporary cinema’s standards. And yet the audience can perfectly understand why Lou’s sweetheart, Amy (Kate Hudson), might fall for him: he is tender, intelligent and well-educated.
The director, Michael Winterbottom, recreates the small-town Americana of the 1950s with an unerring eye, giving the movie a dreamy quality that regularly flips over into nightmare whenever the switch flips in Lou’s head. A good cast provides excellent support, with Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman and Brent Briscoe all paying the price, in one form or another, for attempting to thwart Lou’s plans.
Be warned that this is not one for the faint-hearted, as the violence has a perversely intimate quality to it that makes it utterly shocking. That said, as a crime thriller and a forensically telling psychological exploration of psychosis, The Killer Inside Me is a viscerally engaging experience. **** - Declan Burke
Just how timeless, exactly, are the themes of noir? That’s a question implicitly explored by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, co-editors of REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED: IRISH CRIME, IRISH MYTHS, a collection of short crime stories which draws on Irish mythology for inspiration, and features Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, Garbhan Downey and Sam Millar, among others. The book gets an outing in the Arts pages of today’s Irish Times, with the intro kicking off thusly: Star-crossed lovers on the lam. It could be Red and Mumsie in Geoffrey Homes’ BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH; Doc and Carol in Jim Thompson’s THE GETAWAY , maybe Bowie and Keechie in Edward Anderson’s THIEVES LIKE US, or any number of classic noir tales.For the rest, clickety-click here …
But Diarmuid and Grainne?
REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED: IRISH CRIME, IRISH MYTHS is a compilation of contemporary short crime stories based on Irish myths and legends.
“There are many parallels between contemporary crime tales and Irish mythology,” says Gerard Brennan, who is co-editor of the collection, along with Mike Stone.
“Consider one of the most powerful icons of crime fiction: the femme fatale. Seductive, irresistible and deadly . . . this description hangs well on the great queen and Irish war deity, Morrigan, who amongst her many adventures steals from the mighty Cúchulainn, offers him her love, and when spurned, engineers his death.”
If you’re in Dublin tomorrow, May 26th, you could a lot worse than toddle along to the launch of Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER, which takes place at the Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar with festivities kicking off at 6.30pm. For what it’s worth, I’ve read the novel, and I think it’s a terrific debut. Meanwhile, the blurb elves have been wittering thusly: West Cork. November 1920. The Irish War of Independence rages. The body of a young woman is found brutally murdered on a windswept hillside. A scrap board sign covering her mutilated body reads ‘TRATOR’. Traitor. Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), a wounded veteran of the Great War, is assigned to investigate the crime, aided by sinister detectives sent from Dublin Castle to ensure he finds the killer, just so long as the killer he finds best serves the purposes of the Crown in Ireland. The IRA has instigated its own investigation into the young woman’s death, assigning young Volunteer Liam Farrell - failed gunman and former law student - to the task of finding a killer it cannot allow to be one of its own. Unknown to each other, an RIC constable and an IRA Volunteer relentlessly pursue the truth behind the savage killing, their investigations taking them from the bullet-pocked lanes and thriving brothels of war-torn Cork city to the rugged, deadly hills of West Cork.Hats off, by the way, to Kevin McCarthy for doing it the hard way. In Ireland, attempting to create a sympathetic character from an RIC Sergeant - who works alongside Black-and-Tans - is a hard sell, even today. But then, Sean O’Keefe is a complex character. A police officer upholding law and order on behalf of the Crown, he’s nonetheless a proud Irishman and Catholic - and that’s before you get into the ramifications of a story in which the Crown and the IRA are after the same killer. It’s a volatile mix, and Kevin McCarthy does it full justice. I’m already looking forward to seeing his next offering …
John Banville’s alter ego is back with a fourth Benjamin Black novel, the third in the Quirke series. This time, the pathologist has been in situ at an institution called St John of the Cross, drying out. When he comes home, his daughter asks him to investigate the disappearance of her best friend, April Latimer, a well-connected junior doctor at the same hospital where he works. April is independent-minded and is considered to have something of a ‘wild’ reputation in the conservative social atmosphere of Dublin in the 1950s, dictated by a patriarchal Catholic hierarchy which is headed by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who pops up fictionally as a confidante of April’s family. (Other real-life characters of the time also find their way into the story, which can, at times, feel like over-embellishment).
Quirke humours his daughter, and quickly gets to work doing what he does best: poking around, conducting post-mortems on people’s buried secrets and asking questions in an intensely claustrophobic city where a scandal can be hushed up with one phone call from a government minister’s office to a newspaper editor. What he eventually uncovers is deeply unsettling and, combined with Black’s superb characterisation and sense of place, ELEGY FOR APRIL will insinuate itself into the dark crevices of your mind like the novel’s ubiquitous Dublin fog. - Claire Coughlan
Another year, another CrimeFest. I didn’t make it to Bristol this year, unfortunately, given that I couldn’t justify the trip on the basis that I haven’t had a book published since God was a boy, and I have to say that I missed the buzz. Not least of which is the anticipation of gaping in amazement at Donna Moore’s latest epic adventure in footwear. Ah well, maybe next year. Anyway, the good news is that The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman scooped the Last Laugh Award for THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL, said gong being awarded for ‘the best humorous crime novel first published in the British Isles in 2009’. The win is hugely deserved - TDOTJR isn’t just laugh-out-loud funny, it’s also a clever deconstruction of the crime narrative. Quoth yours truly:
THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL is the whimsical title to Bateman’s latest offering, and the second title in a year from a new Bateman series which features a hero who goes under the moniker of Mystery Man. I use the word “hero” advisedly: Bateman’s protagonist is the owner of a Belfast bookshop specialising in crime fiction, and a man who likes to dabble in puzzles and the solving of crimes unlikely to put him in any serious danger. He is a whinging hypochondriac, a coward and misogynist, a bookworm nerd who nonetheless gets the girl and saves the day. He may well turn out to be Colin Bateman’s most endearing creation …Well done, that man. Incidentally, it’s appropriate that the news of Bateman’s win came to me via The Rap Sheet, which venerable organ (oo-er, missus, etc.) is today celebrating its fourth birthday. Drop on over and blow out Jeff Pierce’s candles (oo-er, missus, etc.) …
As for my own weekend, I spent it muddling about in the garden. The weather was terrific (apparently we’re promised, according to the BBC’s meteorologists, the best summer in 130 years - woot!), the barbie was dragged out and dusted down, and much mowing, planting, seeding, pruning, clipping, digging and generalised mooching about was indulged in. The results (see below) mightn’t be as impressive as Bateman’s gong (oo-er, missus, etc.) or Donna Moore’s shoetastic adventures, but humble as it is, it’s mine own, etc.
Alone, frightened and unable to speak English, Tayo (Ruth Negga, right), a young Nigerian girl who has been trafficked into Ireland, escapes from the back of a van in a Dublin alleyway. Picked up off the streets by street-level Mr Fixit Keely (Karl Shiels), Tayo finds a place to stay, work in a lap-dancing club, and the possibility of happiness - which in Tayo’s case means earning enough money to allow her twin sister to come live in Ireland. But Tayo has reckoned without Keely’s capacity for double-dealing, the persistence of her would-be pimp to see his ‘property’ returned, and the relentless nature of a malign fate. Written and directed by Ciaran O’Connor, Trafficked is the closest Irish cinema has come in many years to a bona fide film noir. Although made almost eight years ago, and as such is something of a period piece examining the seedy underbelly of the Celtic Tiger, its subject matter is timely, and indeed timeless.
While the classic noir trope of expressionist lighting is absent, and Tayo far removed from the glamorous femme fatale, the film contains many of the noir staples: bottom feeders scraping a living from the mean streets, star-crossed lovers on the lam, the depressingly inevitable sense that fate will have the final say despite the best efforts of the protagonists.
O’Connor’s seedy Dublin is convincingly portrayed, although there is a preponderance of self-consciously poetic shots of the grim setting, while Negga and Shiels are convincing as a mismatched pair thrust together by circumstance, with the latter in particularly fine form as the charismatic lowlife Keely.
That the couple manage to scrape some tenderness from their brutal lifestyle adds to the film’s appeal, but this is in the final reckoning intended as a slice of gritty realism, and diehard noir fans will revel in an ending that pulls no punches. *** - Declan Burke
This review first appeared in the Irish Mail on Sunday
Yesterday’s CWA nominations for best crime writing threw up very few Irish nominees, surprisingly enough, given that 2009 was a particularly fertile year for Irish crime fiction, although the New Blood, Ian Fleming Steel and Gold Dagger nomination lists won’t be published until later in the year, so hopefully we’ll see a nod or two when they appear. In the meantime we’ll have to console ourselves with the news that Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley Edwards has received a nod in the Non-Fiction category for her monumental work, AFTERMATH: THE OMAGH BOMBING. The book also made the longlist for this year’s Orwell Prize, but didn’t make the shortlist, so here’s hoping the CWA peeps do the right thing.
Meanwhile, it’s hearty congratulations to Declan Hughes and Brian McGilloway, who yesterday made the long-list for the Theakstons Old Peculier ‘Crime Novel of the Year’ Award, for THE DYING BREED and GALLOWS LANE, respectively. Strange to say, but these award nominations are a little frustrating, given that both Hughes and McGilloway have published new titles in the last month or so, both of which are - in my rarely humble opinion - superior to their previous offerings. In other words, and fine novels though THE DYING BREED and GALLOWS LANE undoubtedly are, you’d rather see the chaps judged on where they are now rather than where they were then. Anyway, it looks like it’ll be a pretty tough competition: also making the longlist are Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Ian Rankin, Peter James, Peter Robinson and Simon Kernick, among others. For more, clickety-click here …
Finally, the paperback release of Gene Kerrigan’s DARK TIMES IN THE CITY gets a nice big-up from Arminta Wallace in today’s Irish Times, with the gist running thusly: “Gene Kerrigan’s third novel, following LITTLE CRIMINALS and THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR, is another intelligent, highly readable instalment of the kind of urban neo-noir that is fast making Dublin as recognisable to readers of crime fiction worldwide as is Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh.”For the rest, clickety-click here …
All three regular readers of CAP will be aware that John McFetridge (right) is a terrific writer, or at least good enough to be dubbed ‘the Canadian Elmore Leonard’, which is good enough for me and should be good enough for you too. His current novel is titled SWAP or LET IT RIDE, depending on which jurisdiction you find yourself, but he’s also just released a long short story via Smashwords, called ‘East Coast’. It’s free to download to the viewing mechanism of your choice here, with the frammis kicking off thusly: Bangor, Maine
They called it the New England States-Maritime Provinces Narcotics Officers Drinking Club, a couple hundred cops taking over the entire Days Inn off the I-95 just outside Bangor for the weekend. By Saturday night they had a barbeque set up by the pool, the no glass rule was long gone and the saunas were co-ed. Music blasted, country mostly, a little R’n’B when the Fed from Boston got near the system.
The idea was an informal exchange of information. Rumours, innuendo, which dealers were on their way up, who was bringing in larger shipments, who was the biggest pain in the ass, who was most likely to get killed. All that stuff that couldn’t go in official reports, stuff that wouldn’t ever see the inside of a courtroom but stuff that would be good if the cops on both sides of the world’s longest unprotected border were aware.
In room 202 Staff Sergeant Jerry Northup, the highest ranking RCMP officer on the trip, laid his cards on the table and said, “Even in Canada we call that a full house.”
“You got a lot of time up there to play cards, don’t you?”
Northup pulled in the chips and winked at Sherriff Cousins from Worcester, saying, “Oh yeah, you know us, we’ve got no crime we just sit around in our igloos practicing moose calls and playing poker.”
“You’re in my backyard now.”
Jerry said, you know it, and dealt another hand. The room’s bed had been pushed out into the hall to make room for the table brought up from the restaurant, six cops sitting around it, maybe a thousand bucks would change hands. It was all in fun.
One floor down a naked Constable Evelyn Edwards was on top of a DEA guy from Portland, Maine, both of them very close, and her phone started beeping and the DEA guy said, “Whoa, you’re not going to answer that,” and she said, yeah, I have to, “I’m on duty.”
“You’re five hundred miles out of your jurisdiction, you’re in another God damn country.”
She was beside the bed then pulling her phone out of her jeans in the pile of clothes on the floor saying, we couldn’t all get the weekend off, then into the phone, “Edwards ... Yes, un-huh, wow, really?” She shook her head and the DEA guy knew they weren’t going to finish any time soon.
Edwards pulled on her sweatshirt and jeans and took off barefoot out of the room saying she’d be back and the DEA guy saw her bra and panties on the floor beside her running shoes and thought, hey, maybe they would finish.
In the poker room Sheriff Cousins was raking a pot, a big one, saying he knew his luck was going change when Edwards walked in out of breath, all the guys looking at her messed up hair and she said, “Sergeant Northup,” and Jerry said, “Hey Ev, you looking to lose some money?”
“No sir, it’s about, it’s Superintendent Bergeron.”
Jerry looked at his cards and said, Henry? What now, “Did he lock himself out of the office again?”
Cousins laughed like he knew all about that kind of boss and Edwards said, no sir.
“He died, sir.”
Jerry leaned back in his chair and looked at her. Shit.
Party’s over …
John Connolly has long used supernatural elements in his crime novels, and last year Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE employed the device of an ex-paramilitary killer haunted by the ghosts of his victims. Where both writers have tended to leave it to the reader to judge whether their protagonists are bedevilled by manifestations of evil or a tortured conscience, Ken Bruen has taken a more literal approach in his latest novel, when his series private eye, Jack Taylor, confronts the Devil himself. Galway private detective Taylor has appeared in seven previous novels, making his debut in THE GUARDS (2001). A casual glance suggests that he is a conventional genre creation, a tarnished white knight tormented by past failures, his addiction to alcohol and the spectres of those he has been unable to help. On closer inspection, Taylor reveals himself as unique. Most literary private eyes are bent on parsing the culture they spring from, examining society through the prism of their own morality in the guise of investigating a particular case. If this conceit represents a literary fourth wall, however, Bruen’s post-modernist approach has long since blown it down. Even events as serious as murder happen at the periphery of a Jack Taylor narrative, in which everything that happens is subordinate to the needs of Taylor himself.
THE DEVIL opens with Taylor at Shannon Airport being refused entry into America by Homeland Security. Back home in Galway, he is approached by the mother of a student who has gone missing. Can Jack find the boy? He can’t, as the lad turns up a few days later horribly mutilated, with a dog’s head thrust into his entrails. Rumour suggests that the student was heavily influenced by the malign Carl, who bears a strong resemblance to a Kurt whom Taylor met at Shannon Airport. Soon Taylor has met Carl, and comes to believe that the man is Satan incarnate. As more young people die, Taylor resolves on a showdown that will rid the world of evil.
This is, on the face of it, a preposterously implausible storyline, yet readers would do well to bear in mind that Bruen is a multiple prize-winning author in the US, Germany and France, and that he holds a doctorate in metaphysics. The fact that Taylor embarks on a Jameson-and-Xanax binge after being refused entry to the US may also be a factor in the narrative, which grows progressively more outrageous as Taylor indulges in his indefatigable nemesis, the demon drink.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the backdrop to THE DEVIL is that of a country in the throes of economic downturn, and the havoc the recession has wreaked on individual lives. Time and again Taylor refers to the inequality of the suffering, sketching out the devastation in a line or two of his trademark spare style. The crucial line arrives when Taylor asks his friend Vinny if he believes in the Devil. “Look at the state of the country,” answers Vinny, “and whoever is stalking the land - it ain’t God.”
Bruen gives himself a get-out clause with the implicit suggestion that Taylor’s peculiar brand of self-loathing narcissism, fuelled on drink and drugs, has conjured up the ultimate foe. That said, the novel dares the reader to seriously the notion that evil isn’t just the absence of empathy, as John Connolly recently claimed, but a tangible entity bent on persecution. Told in bright, broad and luridly cheerful strokes, the novel lacks the kind of subtlety to be expected from a doctor of metaphysics. By the same token, Bruen’s radical reimagining of the private eye genre has long earned him the right to challenge our perceptions of how a story can or should be told. - Declan Burke
This review was first published as an Irish Times ‘Book of the Day’ pick.
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Donna Moore’s OLD DOGS. A sweary Ealing comedy.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Matt Helm.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Well I did enjoy THE DA VINCI CODE, but I don’t feel guilty about that. Ian McEwan - he makes me feel all sensible, which is never a good thing.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Any time someone ‘gets’ what I do! Working on the edit of a story with Anne Frasier gave me a real ego boost, mind you.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Adrian McKinty’s Michael Forsythe Trilogy would be great in Paul Greengrass’s hands.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: It doesn’t pay well. Best: it beats working.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Battered bodies and battered Mars Bars.
Who are you reading right now?
I’ve just finished Danny Bowman’s cracking The Windowlicker Maker. Today, I’ll be catching up on stories at BEAT TO A PULP.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write, because then I wouldn’t know how crap my stuff is.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Ad hoc, slapdash, twoddle.
PD Brazill writes the serial WARSAW MOON. His pic was taken by Kasia Martell.
Or, your chance to vote for Irish crime fiction. Voting for the Irish Book Awards’ Book of the Decade ends on May 27th, and you - yes, YOU! - can vote for the best Irish book from the last ten years. Of the 50 titles, two can be considered adult crime titles - John Connolly’s THE LOVERS and Tana French’s IN THE WOODS - while there are two young adult crime titles: Eoin Colfer’s ARTEMIS FOWL and Derek Landy’s SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT. Meanwhile, at a stretch, there are two titles that could be considered literary crime: Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST and David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER. You know what to do, people: your democratic duty calls here …Elsewhere, there was a very nice interview with Declan Hughes in yesterday’s Irish Times, conducted by Arminta Wallace, in which Squire Hughes answers with good grace the perennial question of why crime fiction isn’t taken seriously by those who really should know better. Quote Dec:
“Anyone who reads a page of Chandler and doesn’t realise that it’s better prose than 95 per cent of writers of any kind . . . it’s weird, I think. It’s ignorance, too.”Well said, that man. For the rest, clickety-click here …
In other news, Stuart Neville has got himself a stalker. Jeez, what does a guy have to do to get a stalker around here …?
Finally, the Only Good Movies blog was kind enough to link to Crime Always Pays in a round-up of crime fiction blogs that review crime movies, so I’d better do the decent thing and review one.
To wit: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (18s)
As the title suggests, Lieutenant Terence McDonagh is not a good man. He spends his days apparently investigating crimes, while in reality he’s busy shaking down civilians to feed his drug, gambling and sex addictions. On occasion he offers flashes of morality, taking the lead on an investigation into a drug-related execution-style killing that claimed the lives of men, women and children, but even that investigation simply opens up opportunities for McDonagh to get his hands on illicit drugs. Crippled physically by back pain, and morally by his addictions, McDonagh begins making the kind of mistakes that even a corrupt police department can’t ignore. With time running out and good and bad guys closing in, McDonagh has big decisions to make about his immediate future - if he has one. Set - superficially - in the wake of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, this finds Nicolas Cage taking on the mantle of Harvey Keitel, who starred in the original Bad Lieutenant (1992), which was a genuinely unsettling tale of human degradation directed by Abel Ferrara. This remake / reimagining, which is directed by Werner Herzog, shows flashes of the original’s brilliance, not least when McDonagh starts hallucinating about iguanas while about to confront a houseful of potential killers. By the same token, and despite a gripping tale, this version lacks the scuzzy quality that made the original so compelling. Cage’s performance is an archly knowing one, and despite his many personal and professional handicaps, it’s hard to believe that he suffers the same quality of spiritual torment that Keitel brought to the screen. Similarly, Eva Mendes is rarely less than luminous playing McDonagh’s prostitute girlfriend. A strong cop thriller, it lacks the authenticity that might have made it great. ***
Being the latest in a very occasional series in which the Grand Vizier reclines in his hammock with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets proper writers have a say. This week: Kevin McCarthy (right), whose debut novel PEELER is published next week. To wit: A Debasing Pastime;
or, Notes from a Darkened Room (On FA Cup Final Saturday)
“The funny thing about having a novel published is the number of people who you would categorise as friends—close friends even—who had no idea you wrote novels in the first place. It’s not something you tell people, when they ask you what you did at the weekend. Good weekend? Oh, yeah, I spent it in a darkened room by myself making stuff up.
“I laughed aloud in recognition when I read a recent Guardian interview with novelist Nicola Barker. In it, she says, “Writing is kind of a debased pastime ...” It is, I thought. You slink off, alone, to a darkened room to engage with fantasy. You spend sunny weekends—and early mornings before work and every weekday afternoon and early evenings at it. You sometimes skip dinner to do it. You ignore the sprouting weeds and chipped paint and dysfunctional bathroom fan to do it. You feel guilty when you do it too much and terribly guilty when you don’t do it. Truly, debased.
“So you don’t tell your friends that you spend your free time wallowing in the guilt ridden, guilt driven pastime that is novel writing until, that is, you want them to know about it so they’ll buy your book and make all that reclusive, brain-chafing effort, somehow worthwhile. And in that sense, when you’ve finally had a novel accepted for publication—over a year and a half ago and PEELER will finally hit the shelves next week—it’s as if you are coming out of that darkened room for the first time. Revealing something vaguely shameful about yourself. Dude, your friends say, you don’t strike me as the type to … you know. Write books. Can you hear the music? ‘I’m coming out, I want the world to know…’
“The second thing, inevitably, your friends—or anyone, for that matter—asks when they discover you’ve written a novel that is about to be published is: What’s it about? To this, over time, you come up with a summary of sorts, that reduces the three years of work to a pitch line straight out of Altman’s The Player. It’s called PEELER. It’s about the brutal murder of a woman during the War of Independence. A good cop, an RIC man, a wounded veteran of the Great War, investigates the murder while the IRA investigates it from their side.
“Sounds cool, your friend says. I didn’t know you studied Irish history…
“I didn’t. But I did to write this book. Researching an historical novel is the fun part. It is where you take your general knowledge of a time and place in history, and read out from there and then, read in—primary sources, first hand accounts, police reports, diaries, letters—narrowing the focus until you get inside the heads and the hearts of the men and women who were living through it. How they acted. Why they acted. What they felt. In this, you get beneath the skin of the accepted versions we’re taught in school. Get to the underbelly, so to speak.
“The accepted version is what you are, in essence, reading against and if you read enough, you find that this version merely skims the surface of the truth of history at best. Skims the surface wielding a large brush and bucket of green paint at worst. The interesting thing for me has always been the parts that this conventional, accepted history leaves out.
“JG Farrell, the Liverpool-Irish novelist, renowned for his historical fictions and who died, too young, only a few miles from where I set PEELER in West Cork, wrote: ‘History leaves so much out … It leaves out the most important thing: the detail of what being alive is like.’
The best in popular history strive to uncover this ‘detail,’ lately, more and more. John Keegan, Anthony Beevor, Stephen Ambrose, John D Brewer, Dermot Ferriter, Michael Hopkinson, Peter Hart among others. It is a recent (and lucrative) and much needed step in the democratising of non-fiction historical narrative. But the best historical fiction has always done this. From Robert Graves to Stephen Crane to James Ellroy to Alan Furst. All of these writers scouring the margins, scraping and prodding at the underbelly of the time and place and characters they’ve used and invented to recreate the ‘detail of what being alive is like’—in Imperial Rome or a Civil War battlefield or wartime LA or wartime Bulgaria. With the exception of Graves, they write about the bit players in the larger historical dramas as if they were the grandest players on the stage of history and this is exactly how it should be, because this is how history is to every one of us as we are living through it. It is what I have attempted to do, in my no doubt flawed and modest way, in PEELER. “Get beyond the accepted version and the War of Independence becomes one fought at close range. More men were killed with revolvers than any other type of weapon. Shotguns were often used, again at close quarters. More often than not, killers knew their victims personally. A war of gangland style, tit for tat murders rather than pitched battles. A war of hitmen and death squads on both sides, hunting marked targets and targets of opportunity. It was a war mainly fought in alley ways and ditches and country lanes.
“The version we are taught in school is one of set piece battles and masterfully planned ambushes; of outnumbered Flying Columns sending hardened British Army troops fleeing in retreat. These things happened, I learned, but rarely. The alley way, the darkened lane; the assassination set up in the brothel used by Crown troops, prostitutes tipping off gunmen and ‘donating’ money for the IRA arms fund. The underbelly.
This is where the War of Independence was fought; this is also, it would seem obvious, where crime novels are set. It seemed only natural to go into the darkened room and come out with a crime novel about a PEELER trying to do his work as a policeman while dodging bullets and yearning openly for an end to the killing and an independent Ireland at the same time. This is how most RIC men felt, you learn in your researches. Charged with defending the Crown, most Peelers desired independence for Ireland. They were rightly terrified by the campaign of murder being waged against them by the IRA and yet felt only disgust for most of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries brought to Ireland to help with ‘policing.’ Brilliant contradictions that are so human you can’t not write about them.
“So you narrow the focus, writing now against the accepted version. Using what you have learned in your research, you find you have to write of such things because you are amazed when you read about them and want other people to know.
Still, even in the darkened room, outside life intervenes. Making the ‘debasing pastime’, on occasion difficult, but more often than not, enriching it. As I sit here now (debasing myself!) I can hear the burping rattle of light and heavy machine guns from a live firing exercise at Gormanstown Army barracks, a couple of miles up the coast from my home. Throughout the writing of my new novel PEELER, this was often the case and oddly appropriate, given the subject matter of the book. There is one line in the book, in fact, that I wrote—not an important one, just a small line of atmospheric detail—just because I happened to hear the gunnery exercise that day when I was writing the scene. It is a post curfew prowl through the war ravaged streets of Cork city for the protagonist. In it, RIC sergeant, Séan O’Keefe … ‘made it back to the Daly house without seeing another soul in the streets, sticking to the shadows, using alleys and laneways when he could. Damp pavements. Shot out streetlamps. The distant roar of revving engines, bursts of machine gun fire.’ Of course, I have taken my description of war time Cork from any number of contemporary accounts, but I’m not sure if I would have included that last bit, the ‘bursts of machine gun fire’ had I not heard, just then from outside my window, the sustained, mechanical pop-pop-pop, stu-tt-tt-tter of the gunners in Gormanstown. The outside world intruding.
“Before one even gets to the darkened room, however—forces him/herself there when the sun is (rarely) splitting the proverbials or the local is showing an Arabic broadcast of Man United on a wet Saturday afternoon that begs for the high stool and warm fire—it is outside life that determines what novel you will begin to write in the first place.
“Time between novels—I had written three other as yet unpublished novels before PEELER—is like this: a restless, half-waking state where ideas for new projects come to you with all the promise of a sure thing and are tossed aside like crumpled betting slips before the initial elation has even faded. You find yourself staring blankly at Late Night Poker on the TV, thinking how you would have folded those eights, when suddenly you’re sitting up, scrabbling for pen and paper and scratching out lines of dialogue, scenes envisioned, plotlines, possibilities. Generally, it’s not long after you’ve done this that you realise you’ve just outlined the plot to HEART OF DARKNESS or LONESOME DOVE or DOG SOLDIERS or GOSHAWK SQUADRON; those favourite novels that lie dormant in the mind and influence, in some way, everything you write. But one day, you sit up and scratch out your ideas and say, Yeah, hold on. There’s something here…
“Like all novels, I imagine, PEELER came from a serendipitous convergence things and events. For me: books stumbled upon, snippets of conversation, a plaque on a bridge.
“With PEELER, I chanced upon Myles Dungan’s IRISH VOICES FROM THE GREAT WAR in the local library returned books stack.
Entering the library, I always make my way to this pile first, for some reason and always have since I was a child, anxious to see what others have been reading. More often than not, it’s self-help and the driver’s theory test or Harry Potter novels, but the odd time, a gem like this one reveals itself. Halfway through the reading of Irish Voices—first hand accounts of WWI on all its fronts from the diaries and letters of those who fought, brilliantly compiled and contextualised—it occurred to me to write a fictional account of the bloody assault on V Beach by the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers in the Dardanelles in which over a thousand Irishmen died in a single morning. Fortunately I didn’t write it, as the book I outlined on the back of an envelope was strikingly similar to Sebastian Barry’s book, A LONG, LONG WAY which appeared halfway through the second draft of PEELER. But a seed was planted.“Luck would have it, however, that a second book landed in front of me at roughly the same time, courtesy of my mother-in-law’s research into her own father’s service in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Your father was an RIC man? I thought he owned a shop? He did, after he retired from the Peelers … He’s listed here, in this book …
“Jim Herlihy’s THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY: A SHORT HISTORY AND GENEALOGICAL GUIDE is a fantastic history and compendium of the names and details of service of virtually every man who once served in the RIC. Reading this, I discovered that many RIC men had volunteered to serve in the Great War and returned—if they returned at all—to another more personalised sort of war in Ireland in which they were the primary targets of the IRA campaign for independence. I had known this. I had read of this before, but after having read the stories of the men who had fought in the trenches and beaches of Europe and the Dardanelles in Dungan’s book and now the story of the RIC men returning to home to another war, the story was slowly shifting and reshaping in my head. Questions arising, conflicting with my previous assumptions. Irish men killing other Irish men for the sake of Irish Independence? That was the Civil War, wasn’t it? No, not yet. It wasn’t just the IRA vs. brutal Black and Tans and the British Army? No. Yes. There is more to this, I felt. Dig deeper, go wider to the margins and then hone in, find the detail of what being a copper, a gunman, a Black and Tan was like.
“Then, there was the plaque on the bridge in a nearby town. It is outside of a pub I drink in and I pass it every time I enter the pub. It reads: Near this spot Seamus Lawless and Sean Gibbons were Brutally Done to Death by British Forces while in their custody. September 20, 1920. An deis de go raib a n-anam.
“It is well-known locally, that these Occupying Forces were trainee members of the Black and Tans based at the training depot at Gormanstown Aerodrome—now home to the Irish Army and the live firing exercises I can hear from my room—who sacked the town in revenge for the killing of an RIC man who had just been promoted to District Inspector. This RIC man had been drinking in a local bar with his brother, also an RIC man, to celebrate the promotion, when they became involved in an argument—politics, no doubt—with some members of the local IRA company. Drink had been taken, so the story goes—as do most in the crime reports from the local newspaper today—and a pistol was produced, a man shot dead, the town burnt to the ground and two men tortured, then bayoneted to death and left in the middle of the road at dawn amidst the smouldering ruins. What, I couldn’t help but thinking, were two armed policemen—men with a bounty on their heads throughout the country—doing drinking in a bar with armed republicans? What was it like living, drinking, working in a town where virtually anybody could be armed and there were more police per capita than almost any country in the world at the time and yet, common crime was rampant? What kind of war was the War of Independence?
“It was the kind of war, I discovered, where the most violent and bloody of killings were carried out by men who then organised ceasefires for race meetings and market days. It was a war where women were targeted, tarred and feathered, stripped and raped and daubed with red and blue paint and sometimes murdered for associating with members of the Crown forces. It was a place where innocent men were dragged out of bed by members of an occupying army and shot dead ‘while trying to escape.’ It was a war fought by damaged men fresh from the slaughterhouse of the Great War unleashed at a pound a day upon the people of Ireland. It was a war fought by brave, idealistic, articulate and intelligent men on both sides; men who hated war fighting and policing alongside other men who weren’t living unless they were killing.
“This is, really, what PEELER is about. But enough now. It’s sunny outside, for once. The FA Cup final is on the TV. Time to go back into the darkened room. Back to debasement!” - Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER is published by Mercier Press.
Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ... What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Hmm ... I can think of three and can’t pick between them. THE LONG GOODBYE, THE GREAT GATSBY, THE SUN ALSO RISES.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Sam Spade ... is there any other answer?
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Clive Cussler, Eric Ambler, Homer.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Chapter 41 of THE CHICAGO WAY. Not sure if it’s my favourite passage, but I remember writing it and feeling it in my bones.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
RESURRECTION MEN by Ian Rankin. Scottish, but close enough. (BTW, don’t say that too loud in Glasgow.)
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
RESURRECTION MEN by Ian Rankin.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing is that it’s just you and your characters. The worst thing is that it’s just you and your characters. Make sense? It’s not supposed to. The bottom line is that writing a novel is one of the purest human endeavours anyone can undertake. It uses up no natural resources and creates something out of nothing. Not magic ... hard work ... but pretty damn cool.
The pitch for your next book is …?
A sequel to THE THIRD RAIL. It starts up a week after THE THIRD RAIL ends and all hell breaks loose.
Who are you reading right now?
Got a few going. Cormac McCarthy, Albert Camus, Aeschylus, Alan Furst and Daniel Silva.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Yikes ... I’m Irish Catholic. We don’t like to tempt fate and we don’t like these questions. If I were still a child, I’d say read. Right now, I guess I’d say write.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Physical, cinematic, honest.
Michael Harvey’s THE THIRD RAIL is published by Knopf.
In a recent Arts Lives documentary on RTE, John Connolly suggested that evil is the absence of empathy. That’s an interesting notion in itself, but even moreso in the context of his own work, which features private detective Charlie Parker in an ongoing series, of which THE WHISPERERS is the ninth offering. Parker’s conscience is even more tortured than is the norm for literary private eyes, a consequence of the guilt he experiences over the murder of his wife and child in Connolly’s debut, EVERY DEAD THING (1999). That gruesome double murder also means Parker has an empathy for murder victims that is unusually fine-tuned. But Parker is haunted by more than his own failure to protect his wife and child: the backdrop to Connolly’s novels teem with ghosts, spectres and demons.
Until recently it was left to the reader to decide whether Parker’s otherworldly experiences were manifestations of his guilt or glimpses of something more sinister. However, his previous offering, The Lovers (2009), was unambiguous in revealing that Parker is bedevilled by entities bent on doing evil. That theme is further explored in THE WHISPERERS.
Commissioned by a mourning father to investigate the circumstances of his son’s suicide, Parker finds himself uncovering a smuggling operation run by ex-soldiers who served in the Iraq war. Exactly what they’re smuggling across the Canadian border into Maine is difficult to ascertain, but the contraband has attracted the attention of a number of concerned parties. These include a Mexican drug lord and the smuggling kingpin who unofficially regulates the illegal trafficking that crosses the north-eastern border. But even more sinister elements are gathering in the shadows: Herod, the Captain, and the Collector …
The appeal of Connolly’s novels lies in his ability to successfully integrate two storytelling traditions. The first is a relatively recent one, that of the tarnished white knight of private eye lore, where a detective investigates a particular case in order to shed light on the society in which the character finds him or herself operating. This requires a clear-eyed assessment of contemporary mores and grittily realistic representation of the modern world. Connolly, in examining the consequences of war on individuals, and in particular the increasing numbers of ex-military men who are taking their own lives (and on occasion the lives of others), here explores a phenomenon that has become a silent epidemic in the US.
The second tradition he employs is that of gothic horror, a style popularised by Edgar Allan Poe, who is also credited with penning the first detective story in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841). Connolly’s supernatural creations, however, predate literary tradition. The various spectres and dark manifestations that populate his novels have their roots in prehistory, and they - or what they represent - appear in the earliest cultural tracts. Here Connolly taps into that timeless appeal by invoking demons who first made their appearance during the Sumerian civilisation, one of the earliest of the ancient civilisations of the Middle East, on which the modern political entity of Iraq is built.
It would be reductive to suggest that THE WHISPERERS is a thrilling page-turner simply because Connolly blends the crime and horror genres. He does so, of course, and in this case the join is seamless, not least because his deftly detailed prose and meticulous research creates a voice of compelling authority. With the Charlie Parker series, however, Connolly has tapped into something larger than commercially successful genre-bending. He understands that all literary investigation is an attempt to come to terms with the abiding presence of evil, its source and its consequences; moreover, he understands that mankind’s time-honoured fascination with evil is itself the ultimate investigation.
Crucially, Connolly understands that the horror Kurtz finally reveals to Marlow, for example, is a McGuffin; what matters is Marlow’s pursuit of the truth and the parallel, perverse journey made by Kurtz. But then, all great novels are more concerned with journey than destination. THE WHISPERERS is Connolly’s most ambitious novel yet in that it makes explicit the notion that, for Charlie Parker at least, horror is but a lurid companion on his journey towards the ineffable quality that nests in the heart of darkness. - Declan Burke
This review was first published in the Sunday Business Post
There’s a nice interview with William Ryan over at the Pan Macmillan interweb portal, in which William expands on the whys and wherefores of plot, character, setting, etc., in his debut THE HOLY THIEF. The historical setting is particularly interesting, being Moscow in the mid-1930s, when Comrade Stalin was just starting to flex his genocidal muscles. To wit: Q: Why did you choose to write your book set in the midst of Stalin’s ‘great terror’?For the rest, clickety-click here …
A: “I think it’s a fascinating period of history. The gradual shift away from the early ideals and hopes of the Revolution to the absolute oppression of the thirties was a tragedy for many Soviet citizens, and one that was repeated around the world from Albania to Cambodia. I find it amazing that the Orthodox religion, despite its savage persecution, has emerged possibly stronger than ever in Russia, so Korolev, the main character in the novel, was intended to reflect that undercurrent of religious belief that always existed even at the height of the Terror. He’s an ordinary person living in an extraordinary time, trying to make sense of the world he finds himself in and doing his best to survive without compromising any more than he has to.”
Incidentally, Barry Forshaw likes it ...
“Ryan demonstrates considerable skill in evoking this benighted period, along with a deftness at ringing the changes on familiar crime plotting moves. The auguries for a series, of which The Holy Thief is the first book, are very promising indeed.” - Barry Forshaw, Daily ExpressMeanwhile, I’m curious. The plot of THE HOLY THIEF revolves around a missing religious icon of the Orthodox Church, the quasi-mythical Kazanskaya, and it’s not often you come across a crime fiction protagonist exercised by a strong religious faith, as Korolev is. Anyone have any other suggestions?
As all three regular readers will be aware, most CAP readers only stop off at this blog in order to click through to Lilyput’s World, which blog contains the continuing adventures of a little girl’s quest to pack as much fun into each and every day as is humanly possible. The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I’ve taken down that link, and those of you who are regular visitors to Lilyput’s World may also have noticed that you’ve been blocked out. There are no sinister reasons behind the change, I’m glad to say; it’s just that the Princess Lilyput has started to get a little fussier about who gets to visit her court. If you’d like to be added to the VIP list, please feel free to drop me a line at dbrodb[at]gmail.com, and I’ll be delighted to do so. In the meantime, boopy-doop.
I mentioned Niamh O’Connor during the week in terms of authenticity and her antipathy to the criminals she meets given the nature of her day job as a crime correspondent, and lo! Up pops another debutant author with even stronger claims to authenticity and antipathy. To wit: Gerry O’Carroll was one of Ireland’s leading serious crime detectives. Born in the west of Ireland, Gerry trained in Dublin and was central to the investigation of over 80 murders. He was the first Irish detective to carry a firearm and has appeared at the top of IRA and gangland murder lists. He personally arrested Ireland’s longest-serving prisoners, the serial killers John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans, and was involved in the pursuit of John Gilligan, responsible for the murder of Veronica Guerin. Gerry was first on the scene when the IRA murdered notorious gangster Martin Cahill.Co-written with Jeff Gulvin, O’Carroll’s debut is titled THE GATHERING OF SOULS, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:
This gripping debut introduces series characters Detectives Moss Quinn and Joe Doyle in a race against time to find Quinn’s abducted wife. A touch Denis Lehane meets Joseph Wambaugh, this suspenseful, contemporary Irish thriller looks set to join John Connolly and Alex Barclay’s books as an international bestseller. A year to the day after the death of their son, Moss Quinn’s wife Eva Marie has been abducted. He is Dublin’s star detective, investigating the disappearance of five women and the murder of another the year before. Moss’s number-one suspect walks free from the subsequent trial amidst allegations of police brutality meted out by Quinn’s partner, Joe Doyle, an old-school cop. Quinn’s world is in turmoil, his marriage is a mess, his reputation after the trial is in tatters and now his wife has been abducted. Somewhere out there, his wife is lying bound and gagged, she has been left to die of thirst. In 72 hours she will be in a coma or dead, and there is a voice on the phone telling him the clock is ticking and that the clues to his wife’s whereabouts are in his past ... Building to a heart-stopping finale, with a cast of credible and colourful characters from the criminal underworld and police ranks alike, THE GATHERING OF SOULS is an authentic, dark tale of obsession, revenge and redemption.O’Carroll, by the way, published a non-fiction title, THE SHERIFF: A DETECTIVE’S STORY, in 2006. Meanwhile, there’s a short interview with Gerry over at The Metro, with one snippet reading thusly:
Q: You were involved in dozens of high profile cases over the years. Which arrest and conviction are you most proud of?
A: “Probably the case of John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans, two English career criminals-turned-murderers. They were convicted for robbery and sent to Mountjoy in the 1970s. But because of a blunder they were convicted under false names and later released. They went on a murderous rampage and killed two women, Mary Duffy and Elizabeth Plunkett. These were the most sickening deaths ever afforded to two human beings. People think killers like these go round with the mark of Cain on their foreheads but they were two ordinary looking guys. After we caught them I was handcuffed to Shaw, and he turned and said to me: ‘Gerry, I’m glad you caught me.’ ‘Why’s that?’ I replied. ‘Because we were going to kill one a week.’ That was one of the most chilling remarks ever made to me. They’re now the longest serving convicts in the history of the state.”
God bless Tana French and her fanciful notions. Obviously the various prizes and gushings of critical acclaim that accompanied IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS have gone to her noggin, because over at the Penguin interweb portal she’s yakking it up about breaking down the ‘ridiculous imaginary barrier’ between mystery fiction and literature. To wit: Q: Your novels have won critical acclaim, a broad public following, and a well-deserved sackful of awards. What would you still like to accomplish as a writer?For the full interview, clickety-click here …
A: “I don’t have a long-term plan. Actually, I still find it hard to think ahead even as far as the end of the book I’m working on-the idea of writing a whole book seems so ridiculously huge that I just focus on the next little section, or I’ll freak myself out. At the moment, I’m working on the fourth book (Scorcher Kennedy, who shows up in FAITHFUL PLACE, is the narrator this time) and my only goal as a writer is to get this one right!
“On a broader scale, though . . . I hope someday soon we’ll get to the point where “mystery” and “literature” are no longer seen as mutually exclusive. There have always been crime novels that are every bit as beautifully written and as thematically complex as the finest literary fiction, and there have always been literary novels shaped around a crime framework. But there are still a few people (apparently people who’ve never read, for example, the courtroom drama TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) who have real difficulty with the idea of things not fitting neatly under one label, so they still think of genre fiction and literature as utterly separate, unconnected and unconnectable. More and more crime writers are rebelling against that, and I’d love to be a small part of the force that finally crumbles that ridiculous imaginary barrier.”
Craig Sisterson over at Kiwi Crime was kind enough to point his 9mm at me (oo-er, missus), said 9mm being a quick-fire interview consisting of nine questions, one of which runneth thusly: CS: Of your books, which is your favourite, and why?For the rest, clickety-click here …
DB: “Now that’s a tough bloody question. It’s like asking which of your kids you love most. And the honest answer is that I love them all equally, and I’m including those that haven’t been published when I say ‘all’. EIGHTBALL was magic because it was my first, and I’ll never replicate that shining, incandescent moment when I first held the book - an actual book, written by me - in my hands. It happened on a street in Galway, and I believe I kind of blanked out for a few seconds. I’d waited a long, long time to see that book … THE BIG O I love because it was a co-published deal with Hag’s Head, I and my wife put our mortgage money where my mouth was by paying 50% of the costs, and it ended up a modest success, from a co-published little effort (880 copies in Ireland) that ended up getting a pretty decent deal in the States, and allowed me go to the States for a road-trip to promote it. BAD FOR GOOD (which is currently out under consideration) I love because it’s radically different to the previous books, and I’m still not sure where the voice came from, or where the notion of having a hospital porter blow up his hospital came from. But even the books that will never see the light of day, I love them too, because they’re me at my most me. Which is the main reason why I write, I think.”
Actually, it was only after I’d seen the piece published that the sheer audacity of that question struck me. Not that I might have a favourite among my books, but the fact that there books out there that are ‘my books’, and enough of them published - the bare minimum, as it happens - to allow me choose a favourite. Some days you forget how far you’ve come relative to where you began … If you had told me 20 years ago that I’d have one book published, let alone two, I’d probably have had you consigned to a home for the terminally bewildered.
It’s far too easy to get caught up in the bullshit that goes with writing - sales figures, publishing deals, not getting publishing deals, the near misses with commissioning editors who love your stuff but can’t get it past the bean-counters … All of which can be very frustrating, it’s true. Once in a while, though, it does no harm to lean back and glance up at the shelf where I’ve stacked the Irish crime fiction titles, and see ‘my books’ nestling in there (alphabetically, natch) amongst novels from proper good writers such as Colin Bateman, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles and John Connolly. I’ll probably never shed the notion that offerings are interlopers on that shelf, but hey, at least they’re there …
Subscribe to AustCrime
Live Help
Powered By: Crafty Syntax
Search
Sites Worth A Visit
Please take a moment to check out some related sites:
www.clandestine-books.com.au (Local author portal)
www.sistersincrime.org.au (Yeah the Sisters in Crime website is up and running!)
booko.com.au (Highly Recommended!)
Upcoming events
User login
Postcasts & Audios
Newsletter
Crimespace
Blog Catalogue
Who's online
There are currently 0 users and 14 guests online.