Crime Always Pays

Brian McGilloway: “I’ve always loved writing and that in itself has been a compulsion for some time. I feel uneasy if I’m not writing or thinking about writing. My passion for crime fiction came first as a reader. I initially came to crime following my English degree, mistakenly thinking that crime fiction would be light in comparison with the literary texts I’d been studying. Then, as I read more and more crime fiction, I realised how wrong I had been.
  “The novels which appealed to me most strongly – by writers like James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, John Connolly – were those which contained not only compelling plots and strong central characters, but also a strong sense of place and, I suspect most importantly, a strong sense of humanity. As I wrote myself, I realised that the genre was one in which I could explore my own concerns and develop my own style.”

WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES is a rollicking black comedy set in the world of gardening and international politics. A US sponsored gardening competition in the little country village of Mountrose ends up throwing three governments into turmoil when it sparks a worldwide race to grow the world’s first blue rose. The Irish premier is forced to team up with semi-reformed gangsters to stop British and American politicians shanghaiing the Mountrose Prize and walking off with a billion-dollar patent. Bugging, burglary, sabotage, murder and sexual deceit – it’s all part of the rose-growing business. And the bad guys are even worse …

This year’s Listowel Writers’ Week, May 27- May 31st, included a very accomplished workshop on crime fiction run by Declan Hughes.   Declan traced the origin of crime fiction (noir version) from the writing of Dashiell Hammett (1896-1961) and Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) to Ross Macdonald (1915- 1983) and beyond. Macdonald is regarded as a near perfect stylist by many including Declan Hughes who lists him as his biggest influence. Other noir crime fiction authors discussed included Richard Stark, George V. Higgins and David Peace. Many other crime novelists were mentioned for various reasons including John Buchan, John Connolly, Elmore Leonard, Cornell Woolrich and Lawrence Block.
  We discussed the police procedural novel versus the PI novel, the criminal as the protagonist versus the orthodox police/PI investigator, point of view, research, whether back-stories are necessary, the concept of series versus one off novels, finding your authentic voice, sense of place and prologues.
  Declan, although a relatively recent arrival to writing crime fiction, has made a big impact to date with his Ed Loy series, winning a Shamus award for his first novel THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD and a 2009 Edgar nomination for THE PRICE OF BLOOD. THE COLOUR OF BLOOD is currently on the shortlist for the 2009 Crime Novel of the Year at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, July 23rd-26th. His current offering is ALL THE DEAD VOICES.
  Declan was an intense reader and analyst of crime fiction since his teens and this long term immersion shone through during the workshop. As an accomplished playwright, producer and director since he founded Rough Magic Theatre Company 20 years ago, perhaps his writing ability is not a surprise. This theatrical tradition may also explain his strong regard for dialogue in crime fiction which he demonstrated to us from selected readings of various authors.
  Apart from his knowledge and writing he has a more subtle skill which lies in hosting and directing a workshop – this involves the ability to build rapport with the participants, lead the discussion and impart knowledge. He listened closely to the crime writing exercises he assigned us (we read them aloud), provided direction and encouragement and did it with a great sense of humour.
  Many of the ideas from the workshop participants were innovative and arresting. The crime fiction plots they developed were well thought out and good enough to be commercial successes.
  Declan’s spontaneous high energy laughter and genuine interest in our attempts to shape our sometimes macabre stories convinced us all he was a natural born teacher. At the end of the workshop he was surrounded by almost every participant getting books signed – the ultimate accolade for any writer!
  Kudos are due to the fifteen workshop participants who are essential for the success of any workshop. Thanks also to the Listowel Writers’ Festival for including a crime fiction workshop along with the more traditional workshops on memoir, short stories, drama, the novel and song writing. The prose of Chandler and Hammett is now recognized as work of great literary merit (published by the Library of America for example). In time, other crime fiction writers will join that category.
  Special thanks also to Eilish Wren and her team for coordinating the workshop schedules. – Seamus Scanlon

Critical Mick says: THE RULE BOOK puts Rob Kitchin on the Irish Crime map. It’s gripping, gruesome, and a hell of a fun puzzle. It shows careful research (right down to the latitude and longitude of various points around Dublin’s Phoenix Park) and digs deep into an interesting character. I was kept guessing until the end, desperately hoping that this novel would not go the crappy Hollywood route. There is a town called Hollywood in Ireland, but this serial killer’s spree gives it a wide berth.

Cuban cop Mercado has a score to settle, on behalf of a deadbeat dad, a ‘traitor’ who skipped free from Castro’s control to set up a new life working illegally in Colorado. He settled in a ski resort popular with the Hollywood set, where the facade is maintained by the immigrant cleaners and labourers who work for below minimum wage while the local sheriff is bribed to turn a blind eye. Hernandez Sr’s dreams of fortune and freedom came to a swift end when he was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Sworn to avenge his death, Mercado has some obstacles to overcome - not least getting out of Cuba, where visas are as elusive as constant electricity. Segueing back and forth between heat-soaked Havana and the icy luxury of the mountainside resort, FIFTY GRAND is an audacious thriller from an acknowledged talent - and an incendiary debut for a new hero.

Is ‘Adrian McKinty’ almost an anagram for:
(a) Kinky Hadrian;
(b) Drincky Nadir;
(c) Dinky Radical;
(d) Where, Exactly, is the Dignity in All of This?

  CM: What’s next for you? There are rumours of a rather different kind of Jack Taylor novel, and of a memoir dated for release this year…
  KB: “The new Jack Taylor is finished and titled … THE DEVIL. And it deals with, yup, the supernatural. Scared the hell outta me. Not going down that road again.”

Something spooky this way comes. John Connolly made a name for himself as a writer who could skillfully blend crime fiction and the supernatural, and yet his most recent novels have seen the ghosts and demons exorcised to the point where his last offering, THE REAPERS, had no supernatural elements at all. However with THE LOVERS — Connolly’s tenth novel in as many years and described as “a visionary brand of neo-noir” — the demons are back with a vengeance.
  “Each book I write tends to be a reaction to the one that preceded it,” says Connolly. “As THE REAPERS had no supernatural elements, it seemed natural that The Lovers would spring the other way. But it’s also the case that the [Charlie] Parker novels are developing into a kind of saga, with a larger story running behind the individual novels. In the past, I’ve left it up to the reader to decide if the supernatural manifestations experienced by Parker are real or a product of his own psyche. In THE LOVERS, I decided it was time to come down on one side or the other. I know it will alienate some of the more conservative British and American critics who seem to have a big problem with writers who mix genres. Silly sods.”

“Downey employs a light-hearted and uncomplicated voice in the telling of this tale. Considering the intricacies of the plot, that’s probably a blessing. But what I found most intriguing is how he goes against a lot of the modern advice on writing crime fiction. He head-hops like a madman, sharing multiple character perspectives within paragraphs, and he has nothing against dialogue tagging or adverbs. These are the kind of things that would normally pull me out of the story and make me reach for my editing hat. But when Garbhan Downey does it, it’s okay. He’s that good.” – Gerard Brennan, CSNI

It seems to me that when it comes to the current crop of crime/thriller writers, there might just be a tendency to pen with a television series forefront in the author’s mind. Understandable, I guess, but writing in a way that is easily transferable to the small screen somehow detracts from the hardcopy novel itself.
  All the Dead Voices is a case in point. Declan Hughes' latest foray into investigation for his character, Ed Loy, is set in modern Dublin, but, haunted by ghosts of an IRA kind, it never really catches into the kind of fire one would hope, given the setting and all of its obvious intricacies.
  It’s a murky world of old meets new for Loy, but not quite murky enough for a seasoned reader. Looking into a 15-year-old cold case, which the newly established police cold case unit has dismissed as solved, Loy begins to unravel a not-so-tangled web of old grudges, scores and affiliations, all dog-eared by abundant locale and landmark topography.
  In many ways, Hughes has written a standard story, topically contrived, with sufficient “past” to perhaps interest those from that era, but unfortunately, not for those interested, but lacking adequate knowledge. This is what I meant when I referred to writing for serialisation on the giggle-box, where, a la Taggart, Rebus and every other small-screen crime-fighter, the plot is simple enough to retain short-term attention, but rarely over-complex.
  In the end, I would probably prefer watching the Ed Loy stories on television – so maybe Declan Hughes is right. Or maybe we are just saturated with crime fighters and their stereotypical foibles?

You’ve probably never heard of Cayla Kluver, but the 14-year-old American girl made history last week when her debut novel was published by Amazon.com. That’s ‘published’ by Amazon, not ‘sold’. That difference, between Amazon publishing and selling, is just one of the reasons the books industry is going through a revolution akin to Gutenberg inventing the printing press way back in 1439.
  As always, the main reason for the seismic tremors is new technology. Amazon’s Kindle arrived last year to great fanfare, when it was marketed as "an iPod for books", whereby a reader can download books electronically from Amazon and read them on the Kindle ‘e-reader’ (short for ‘electronic reader’), which does its best to imitate the authentic reading experience. The jury is still out as to how user-friendly the Kindle is, and -- given how pricey it is -- whether readers would be happy bringing it onto the beach or lugging it around at the bottom of a bag. But all electronic devices have their early teething problems, and the Kindle -- and its counterpart, the Sony Reader -- is long-range targeting a demographic that is just as comfortable with electronic devices -- mobile phones, iPods, laptops, et al -- as it is with traditional books.
  There’s good and bad news in this for readers and writers alike …

A rather silly detective story in the spirit of Jasper Fforde. Harry Pigg, the only surviving brother from the Big Bad Wolf attacks, has set up business as a private detective in Grimmtown, only things aren’t going too well. Down on his luck, with bills to pay and no clients in sight, the outlook is poor. But then in walks local businessman Aladdin who needs someone to help him track down an old lamp. What follows is a case of nursery rhyme noir. Funny, thrilling and always entertaining, Harry Pigg is an old breed of hero for a new generation. It’s as if Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney had walked into the middle of a bedtime story. A comedy caper for all ages. The first in a major new series.

SP: What sort of reaction have you been getting from other writers and publishers? I’m assuming a mixture of admiration and fear.
SF: “The response has been overwhelmingly positive from readers, writers, bookstore owners, publishing gurus, and even traditional publishers. Concord Free Press has been called a grand experiment in subversive altruism, the Robin Hood publishing model, and (our favourite) generosity-based publishing. We’re simply exploring new, innovative ways to think about books and connecting with readers, not trying to figure out what’s wrong with publishing. That’s beyond our scope.”

In the first Terminator movie he tried to extinguish all human life. Now, as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to make textbooks history in favour of digital formats.
  Schwarzenegger, trying to plug a budget hole of $24.3bn (£15bn), thinks he can make savings by getting rid of what he decries as expensive textbooks. The governor is serious about an idea that might make Gutenberg turn in his grave. He appeared in class yesterday to push an idea he set out in the San Jose Mercury News newspaper.
  “It’s nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators’ hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources.”

The recent Book Expo publishing industry convention held in New York accelerated the impression that the industry is rapidly embracing new technology. Many attendees remarked that e-books pervaded every discussion they had on the convention floor. “It has tipped,2 tweeted Todd Sattersten, president of Milwaukee-based 800-CEO-Read, an influential online source of business books. “Buckle in for the ride.”
  Indeed, the last few weeks have seen a flurry of announcements across the book-to-technology spectrum. Amazon (AMZN) informed users of a small-but-meaningful tweak to the Kindle that now allows users to export their reading notes. Google (GOOG) revealed its own e-book distribution system, publishers launched book-specific iPhone apps in the United Kingdom, and computer makers unveiled new ways to incorporate e-ink technology into highly portable but robust computing devices [ … ]
  So with all of this fast-paced activity, are we hurtling into a brave new reading world where authors deal directly with their readers and keep more of the profits? Not yet. For all of the publishers’ fumbling with e-books, they retain one important advantage highlighted by all of this activity. There’s a blizzard of standards out there that only a big company can manage. Without an established standard, size matters in the supply chain. Publishers have it; authors don’t.

Michael Connelly: a brief introduction.
Professor Ian Ross of Trinity College, Dublin: an in-depth introduction on the history of the crime narrative in general, and Irish crime writing in particular.
John Connolly: the Irish Gothic novel as a precursor to the crime novel.
Ruth Dudley Edwards: the proto-crime novels of Liam O’Flaherty.
Alan Glynn: literary crime narratives, from Flann O’Brien to John Banville.
Paul Charles: crime and punishment in Camden Town, London.
John Banville: interview on the crime narratives of John Banville and Benjamin Black.
Declan Hughes: the influence of American culture on Irish crime writing.
Gene Kerrigan: Irish crime fiction and its relationship with real crime.
Arlene Hunt: the urban-rural divide in Irish crime writing.
Colin Bateman: ‘Divorcing Jack’, and comedy crime writing in ‘Troubles’ Belfast.
Adrian McKinty: an account of Northern Ireland crime writing, 1940s-1990s.
Gerard Brennan: an account of post-‘Troubles’ crime narratives in Northern Ireland.
Alex Barclay: a short story.
Brian McGilloway: crossing the line – borders in Irish crime narratives.
Tara Brady (film critic): crime narratives in Irish cinema.
KT McCaffrey: crime narratives in Irish theatre.
Ken Bruen: a short story / movie in three acts.
Cormac Millar: the forerunners of the current crime-writing generation.
Neville Thompson: an odyssey through the mean streets.
Niamh O’Connor: true crime writing and journalism.
Eoin McNamee: the Puritan soul and Irish noir.
Tana French: interview on crime fiction and the post-Celtic Tiger Irish identity.
Cora Harrison: setting and history in the Irish crime narrative.
Declan Burke: lost classics of Irish crime fiction.

“Holding the book in my hand wasn’t the earth-shattering, life-altering, choirs-of-angels-sing-while-the-world-is-bathed-in-white-light moment I thought it might have been two years ago. Don’t get me wrong, it's a truly wonderful feeling, but ever since bagging my agent, the journey to this stage has been a long series of victories, and the occasional defeat. There wasn’t one definable moment where I crossed the threshold between hope and actuality. Rather it has been a steady climb to this place where I can call myself an honest-to-God published author.”

At the inquest they reckoned Finn punched down through the Audi’s boot from nine floors up. The boot concertina’d, puncturing the petrol tank. Shearing metal sparked.
  Ka-boom …
  The explosion blasted out the Audi’s windows. Mine too, front and back, jolting the cab off its front wheels. The airbag absorbed most of the flying glass but it punched me in the chest so hard it damn near broke ribs.
  My fault, of course. I wasn’t tensed up expecting a guy to plummet nine floors into an Audi’s petrol tank. I was just sitting there smoking and tapping the steering-wheel to ABC, When Smokey Sings. Wondering if it wasn’t too late to swing around by the Cellars for a late one, maybe a game of pool.
  Then, ka-boomski, I was semi-conscious, pain grating down my left side. Maybe I even blacked out. The heat got me moving, reaching around the deflating airbag to turn the key in the ignition, rolling the cab back until it was out of range. Then I squeezed out from behind the airbag and staggered to the Audi.
  The heat was fierce but I was still half-dazed, so I dived in and grabbed his ankles. One of his moccasins slipped off as he came free and at first I thought I’d ripped him in half. Then I thought he’d dropped a dwarf on the Audi. Strange the things you think about when you’re trying not to think at all.
  I dragged him away from the flames. That left a trail of blood and frying flesh stuck to the tarmac. The sickly-sweet stench of burning pork set my guts heaving. Then I realised why he seemed so short.
  The impact had driven his head and shoulders back up into his torso. If you looked closely enough there was still some stump of what had once been his neck, but the head had smashed like pulpy melon.
  I rang it in while the Audi’s metalwork glowed a dull red and globs of grey matter shrivelled and spat …

  © Declan Burke, 2009

The Upsides:
One less manuscript in the bulging manuscript drawer;
An opportunity to explore a new medium;
Increased word-of-mouth (theoretically);
Increased profile in the industry (even marginally);
The possibility of a traditional publisher picking up the book for traditional publication and – theoretically – an actual money-shaped advance;
People reading the book, and giving feedback (hopefully);
It’d be another caper.

The Downsides
There isn’t a lot of money to be earned;
Your potential readership is limited to Kindle owners;
Erm, that’s about it, really.

Google appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market. In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signalled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device …
  Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go,” he said.
  He said that Google would allow publishers to set retail prices. Amazon lets publishers set wholesale prices and then sets its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover — typically around $13 or $14.

“The truth was that creative writers were more qualified to explain humanity than psychiatrists and philosophers. This was what Levi the chemist had eventually realised, that he would have to resort to fiction and poetry to communicate the horror of Auschwitz. The psychologists and psychoanalysts who had staked out their territorial claim knew no more than the great novelists …” – Aifric Campbell, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER

The New Daughter, the first movie to be made from my work, is nearing completion. Last week, John Travis, the movie’s very talented screenwriter, saw it for the first time in a small screening room, or at least saw 98 per cent of it, as the last fine-tuning is still being done.
  John, who is a harsh judge of his own work, emerged hugely enthused. I’m sure that he won’t mind some of his comments being reproduced here:

“It’s an adult, very well acted and directed, beautifully shot movie with a real sense of dread the whole way through ... In fact, it’s almost a little Spanish.” … Or “… maybe it’s like David Cronenberg directed it. It’s kind of like A History of Violence, but with monsters instead mobsters ...”

“BAD FOR GOOD is a harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel about an evil hospital orderly and his even more evil twin orderly. Burke has outdone himself this time; it’s a hell of a read.” – Scott Philips, author of THE ICE HARVEST

Twice the Harsh have tried to destroy time, and twice Owen and the Resisters have banded together to stop them. In CITY OF TIME, Owen killed the Harsh king, and now the Harsh are hungry for revenge. Their massive fleet is ready to set sail on the sea of time and hunt down the wily Navigator. In this third and final adventure, the Navigator and his friends use every last ounce of bravery and endurance to fight the toughest battle ever. As Owen searches for a solution, he travels through time to meet his father and grandfather, and discovers that the mysterious Frost Child holds the key to the power of the Harsh.

“Sean Black writes like a punch in the gut. Funny, tough, and furiously paced, LOCK DOWN explodes off the page.” – Jesse Kellerman

“A thrilling debut that locks you in and loads up the tension.” – Simon Kernick

It may be Christmas in New York, but for ex-soldier turned elite bodyguard Ryan Lock it’s business as usual: his mission is to protect one of America’s most ruthless businessmen. A bloody shoot-out - suddenly gunshots ring out. People run for cover. Innocent people are mown down. Amid the chaos, Lock’s hunt for the killers turns into an explosive game of cat and mouse. A deadly secret - Lock’s search for the truth takes him from the rooftops of a New York skyscraper to a heavily fortified warehouse on the Hudson where he confronts one of the world’s most dangerous women. As the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year’s Eve, all routes into and out of Manhattan are sealed, and Lock realizes that not only is his own life in terrible danger but so are the lives of millions of others ...

The key to understanding these attitudes is surely to realise that abuse was not a failure of the system. It was the system. Terror was both the point of these institutions and their standard operating procedure. Their function in Irish society was to impose social control, particularly on the poor, by acting as a threat. Without the horror of an institution like Letterfrack, it could not fulfil that function. Within the institutions, terror was systematic and deliberate. It was a methodology handed down through “successive generations of [Christian] Brothers, priests and nuns”.
  There is a nightmarish quality to this systemic malice, reminiscent of authoritarian regimes. We read of children “flogged, kicked . . . scalded, burned and held under water”. We read of deliberate psychological torment inflicted through humiliation, expressions of contempt and the practice of incorrectly telling children that their parents were dead …

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” – John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of THE SEA

IT IS “disturbing and disappointing” that the Department of Education has cut the school book grant to schools and libraries in a move that will “limit young people’s access to books”, the chairwoman of Children’s Books Ireland has said.
  Jane O’Hanlon was speaking at the announcement yesterday of the winners of the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Awards.
  She described the department’s move as “retrogressive”, said it would “impact heavily on already overstretched schools and libraries”, and called for the decision to be reconsidered.
  Yesterday’s ceremony in Dublin marked the 19th year of the Children’s Book Awards.
  The top award for 2009 – the Bisto Book of the Year – went to the late Siobhan Dowd for BOG CHILD. The award was accepted by her sister Oona Emerson.
  Dowd died in August 2007 at the age of 47 after a long illness.
  The €10,000 prize money will be donated to the Siobhan Dowd Trust, which she established to help disadvantaged children improve their reading skills.
  BOG CHILD is about a boy, Fergus, who while digging turf finds the body of a child in the bog.

  Rafe: “What project are you currently working on?”
  Adrian: “I’m working on a Young Adult novel provisionally called DARK ENERGY about a skateboard punk kid who moves to Colorado Springs.”
  Rafe: “Your crime fiction is clearly aimed at an adult audience, so I was surprised to see that you also write YA. Can you tell me about your work in this genre and how you came to it?”
  Adrian: “I had an idea for an initial novel about an emotionally damaged child who comes to Islandmagee (an area in Ireland very close to my heart) that I knew wasn’t appropriate as a crime novel so I wrote it as a YA and the one book eventually became three. The new YA however is a crime novel. It’s about a serial killer in a small town in Colorado, I’m calling it a YA noir. God alone knows if there’s a market for something like that, but that’s the story and I’m just telling it.”

“Stop waiting for Godot – he’s here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing themselves and turns it on its ear and then some. He gives it body and soul … an Irish soul. If you want to think while you’re being entertained, read this book.” – Reed Farrel Coleman, two-time Shamus Award-winning author of EMPTY EVER AFTER

“In this era of formulaic, pre-fab, test-marketed, focus-grouped, pre-packaged, no-risk sequels, remakes and the same-old same-old all over again, A GONZO NOIR is shockingly original and completely entertaining. Post-modern crime fiction at its very best.” – John McFetridge, author of EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

  Eschewing linguistic pyrotechnics, Connelly writes as McEvoy would, as a responsible journalist recording facts rather than a hack bent on exploiting vulnerable people for the sake of a headline. It’s a fine line for a thriller writer to walk, but Connelly pulls it off with aplomb.
  Where there is authorial intrusion is in Connelly’s account of the worm’s-eye view of the evisceration of American journalism.
  Clearly appalled at the ongoing downsizing of newspapers, and the resultant shrinkage in quality journalism, Connelly puts his words into the mouth of the cynical McEvoy: “Like the paper and ink newspaper itself, my time was over. It was about the internet now. It was about hourly uploads to online editions and blogs. It was about television tie-ins and Twitter updates. It was about filing stories on your phone rather than using it to call rewrite. The morning paper might as well have been called the Daily Afterthought.”

“What happens when the voices in a writer’s head come to life? In Declan Burke’s funny and intelligent A GONZO NOIR we find out. Burke has written a deep, lyrical and moving crime novel about the difficulty of writing a crime novel. Dangerous fictional creations and real people and fictionalised real people battle for a writer’s soul in an intoxicating and exciting novel of which the master himself, Flann O’Brien, would be proud.” – Adrian McKinty, author of FIFTY GRAND.

On that part of the street, at this hour of the evening, only the pub was still open for business. Near the middle of a row of shops, between the flower shop and the hairdressers, it offered the street a welcoming glow on a chilly winter’s night. There were two entrance doors, one to the bar and one to the lounge. The windows were small, high on the wall and barred. The pub front was recently painted off-white. The blue neon decoration high on the wall was a bog standard outline of a parrot. The pub was called the Blue Parrot. It was owned and managed by a man named Novak.
  This was a neighbourhood place and most of the younger set travelled into the city centre or favoured local pubs that featured entertainment. Novak didn’t believe in pub quizzes, pub bands, comedy nights or DJs. He just sold drink and provided a venue for companionship.
  On the other side of the street, it was all terraced houses with well-tended front gardens. They were of a standard municipal design that was duplicated throughout the Glencara estate and across similar council-built estates throughout Dublin -- Finglas, Cabra West, Drimnagh, Crumlin, Ballyfermot. Small and narrow, most of the houses now bristled with extensions. Many had colourful cladding or fanciful embellishments -- columns flanking the front door or tiled canopies overhanging the windows.
  From the far end of the street a motorbike made its way towards the pub. Traffic was light here, far from the main routes through the estate, but the motorbike was taking its time, easing gently over the speed bumps installed to discourage joyriders.
The passenger was first to dismount at the pub. He took something from a saddlebag. At the entrance to the lounge he paused and gestured to the driver to hurry up.

To paraphrase Cole Porter, in olden days a glimpse of stocking might have been considered shocking, but now, quite frankly, almost anything goes. I say ‘almost’ because, of course, Porter was wrong to conclude that there were no longer any limits on behaviour, although we can forgive him because he was less interested in making an irrefutable statement than in fitting words to a good tune. It’s probably asking a lot to expect him to be more than broadly socially and philosophically accurate as well.
  Boundaries and limits - legal, moral, national, aesthetic, sexual, racial, and physical - still exist, but it is a facet of the modern (or even post-modern) world that they are being challenged at an ever accelerating rate. But those challenges are not entirely negative in their connotations; rather, they can be seen as an effort to establish the nature and extent of those limitations. Thus, acts of transgression should not be viewed as destructive by nature. To approach them in this way is to misunderstand them, for their relationship to the society that gives rise to them is far more complex than might at first appear.
  The word ‘transgression’ enters the English language for the first time in the 16th century, but it comes weighted with negative spiritual meaning. Perhaps the first great act of transgression is the decision by Adam and Eve to eat forbidden fruit, thereby violating their pact with God. Yet with this act comes a certain liberation, albeit at considerable cost. Admittedly, the Church fathers did not see it in this way, and so transgression becomes associated with evil, with St John telling us that ‘Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God’ (2 John 9).
(It is worth noting, in passing, that Eve bears the primary burden for disobeying God’s will, and subsequently tempting her partner. Here, the seeds are sown for an abiding distrust of women, and the demonic associations that came to be made with feminine qualities. Thus it was that the female body, by the time of the Renaissance, was the subject of constant surveillance, and was regarded as, in a way, grotesque. It was a body which potentially exceeded any boundary or limit, and was thus regarded as transgressive by its very nature. Something of this sense of the threat posed by the feminine mystique survives in the femmes fatales of film noir, who are, in their way, all descendants of the lady Eve.)
  As time progresses, though, some of those earlier spiritual connotations fall away, and ‘to transgress’ becomes more general in its meaning, covering any kind of deviation from the norm, as well as non-physical acts of aggression against the person. Finally, it begins to refer to the crossing of boundaries, whether moral, legal, or, indeed, artistic and aesthetic, which is where we should perhaps locate it for the purposes of this volume.
  In fact, creative and artistic endeavours provide an apt proving ground for notions of transgression. As the writer bell hooks puts it: ‘Art, and most especially painting, was for me a realm where every imposed boundary could be transgressed.’
  The use of the word ‘imposed’ raises an interesting question. Are constraints entirely imposed from the outside? If we transgress, do we do so purely against some external authority, whether human or divine? I would argue that we do not, that there is a personal element in our responses to moral imperatives, an element of subjectivity that brings with it a desire to transgress, even a necessity to do so. Societies find a way to channel and express this desire: mythologies are one such channel, acts of mockery another, or what Bakhtin described as ‘the laughter of the carnival’. Such laughter is collective, universal, and ambivalent, but it is not destructive, and here is where our relationship with the notion of transgression becomes really interesting.
Transgression is both an act of affirmation and denial. It recognizes the existence of a certain limitations or boundaries, even as it seeks to overstep those marks. In fact, it requires the continued existence of such boundaries for its effect. If the act of transgression shatters the boundary entirely, then what is left? As St Paul put it, ‘Where no law is, there is no transgression’ (Romans 4:15).
  Transgression is not the same as disorder. It does not invite chaos. Even Georges Bataille, the 20th-century writer whose work is perhaps most closely associated with the notion of the transgressive, for whom erotic transgression was the archetype, the sine qua non, of all transgression (albeit linked, by violence, to death), understood the necessity of suspending, rather than removing, sexual constraints. A taboo might be violated, but not terminated. ‘The sacred world’, wrote Bataille, ‘depends on limited acts of transgression.’
  One might argue, then, that transgression is not in itself necessarily subversive. It seeks to question boundaries and limitations, not destroy them. It is not an overt challenge to the status quo; it is instead an interrogation, a questioning. In that sense, it is complicit in that which it critiques, but it is not blindly accepting of it. Instead, it recognizes that every limitation contains within it the possibility of its own fracture. The instruction to obey carries with it the potential for disobedience. In cultural terms, it prevents stagnation by forcing us constantly to reassess the rules governing our society, while at the same time reaffirming the necessity of those rules. It may lead to a reordering, but not to the absence of order at all.
  Still, the tension between what may be perceived by one side as legitimate questioning that may possibly lead to change, or even just a different perspective, and by another as a threat to the established order, goes some way towards explaining why the relationship between art and the law is so fractious. It’s worth recalling the furore that initially greeted Howard Brenton’s play The Romans in Britain when it was staged by the National Theatre in London in 1980. Intended, in part, as a commentary on the situation in Northern Ireland at the time, it included a scene of homosexual rape that led a ‘moral guardian’, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, to take a private prosecution against the play’s director for procuring an act of gross indecency. (Mrs Whitehouse declined to view the play herself, fearing corruption of her soul. Sir Horace Cutler, by contrast, who was a board member of the National Theatre, walked out in disgust, informing a journalist that his wife had been forced to “cover her head” during the scene in question, although nobody seemed entirely sure how, precisely, her concealment was achieved.) The trial was eventually halted with both sides claiming victory: the Attorney General was said to have ended the case because it was not in the public interest to proceed, but the judge did rule that the Sexual Offences Act could be applied to events on a stage, and to simulated acts of indecency.
  When the play was revived in 2007, critics reflected nostalgically on the earlier controversy, but no comparable outcry greeted the revival. Time, and the emergence of an even more permissive society, perhaps both played their parts in this, but there was also, I think, a recognition that the law had no further role to play in this discussion.
  The law is rarely successful in its attempts to police art. The tension between law and art is too great. A moralist will argue that art has no special privilege, and art that transgresses against, for example, the laws of decency should be punished. Artists, according to the moralist, have no right to greater licence than any other section of the population. Artists, generally, beg to differ.
  The nature of transgression in art, as in life, is intensely problematical. It has been argued that one of the roles of art is to conquer taboos, which brings with it the assumption that such taboo-breaking is always good, and anyone who objects to it is automatically narrow-minded, misguided, and guilty of oppressing the artistic imagination. Yet not all restrictions are necessarily bad in themselves, just as not every act of transgression is worthy of note simply by the fact of its existence. Bad art does not enlarge the imagination, and an artist or writer who creates it is open to censure. Offensive and transgressive are not the same thing. Similarly, finding a piece of art objectionable is a perfectly valid critical response to it; seeking to suppress it on that basis is not.
  Yet transgression in art is not limited to questions of moral or sexual license, although the subject is most frequently raised in public in such contexts. Literature is subject to certain constraints, some physical and material, others related to the nature of the form. Can we not look at Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and say that, in its questioning of the received notions of storytelling and its steadfast refusal to abide by what was expected of the novel in the middle of the eighteenth century, it is a profoundly transgressive work, a post-modern novel before there was any ‘modern’ to be ‘post’ about? Or what of B.S. Johnson’s 1969 novel The Unfortunates, which was published in a box containing 27 separate chapters, one of which was marked first, one last, with 25 others that could be shuffled around as the reader wished? It is experimental, certainly, but is it not also transgressive in its attempt to overcome the limitations on the formal structure of a printed work? In other words, for the writer, as for any artist, transgression may not merely be a matter of subject, but of form. The transgressive abhors that which is self-enclosed, and rejoices in openness. It rejects the notion of purity, and instead revels in mongrelization. It is the art of the hybrid, of broken things.
  More recently, there was the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, first published in 1988, which led to a fatwa, a sentence of death, being declared on Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini because of the novel’s perceived slighting of Islam (and arguably Islam continues to be the single most significant cultural, religious, and social boundary that artists may transgress, even at peril of their lives). Looking back, what is fascinating about the Rushdie controversy is the variety of responses it provoked from Rushdie’s fellow authors. Their support for him was far from universal, with Roald Dahl and John le Carré being among the loudest of the dissenting voices. Clearly, it seemed, transgression was not something to be defended on principle, even by one’s own peers.
  There is one significant act of transgression that I have deliberately left until the end of this introduction, precisely because it is so relevant to some of the authors that follow, and that is crime. A number of the contributors to this volume are best known as mystery writers, but there are some difficulties in presenting crime as a purely transgressive action. In part, this is because the definition of an act as ‘criminal’ is a matter of law, but at the same time it is difficult to deny the element of choice involved in the commission of certain crimes, or the fascination, even appeal, that criminal behaviour may hold for us. A crime of passion is not necessarily transgressive, even if one might take the view that it breaches the taboo of unjustly taking a human life, because it lacks control, or perhaps planning and intent. It is born out of a rush of blood, an excess of feeling. Similarly, a starving woman who steals a loaf of bread could be considered to have done so out of necessity in a moment of weakness governed by blind appetite, not will.
  But those criminals who chooses to kill, to steal, to break, who, in the words of J. Katz in Seductions of Crime (1988), ‘take pride in a defiant reputation as ‘bad’’, are of a different breed, and their actions resonate with us precisely because they are a dark shadow of the desire that lies within each of us to breach, however occasionally, the constraints imposed upon our behaviour, and glimpse for a moment the possibility of the infinite. To quote Katz again: ‘Perhaps in the end, what we find so repulsive about studying the reality of crime . . . is the piercing reflection we catch when we steady our glance at these evil men.’
  There may be stories in this collection that you find difficult to like, or of which you may actively disapprove. There will be stories that may remind you of your own past acts, and stories dealing with acts that you believe you could never commit. Yet each of them touches upon the basic human urge to transgress, and in this you will find a certain sense of commonality, however uncomfortable it may be. Remember, after all, the words of Terence, which were inscribed upon the ceiling of the great essayist Montaigne: ‘I am a man: nothing human is foreign to me.’

(The Artist Formerly Known as Colin) Bateman
Alex Barclay
Adrian McKinty
John Connolly
Arlene Hunt
Declan Hughes
Tana French
Brian McGilloway
Ken Bruen
Ava McCarthy
Gene Kerrigan

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern proposes to insert a new section into the Defamation Bill, stating: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”
  “Blasphemous matter” is defined as matter “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.” […]
  Labour spokesman on justice Pat Rabbitte is proposing an amendment to this section which would reduce the maximum fine to €1,000 and exclude from the definition of blasphemy any matter that had any literary, artistic, social or academic merit.

April in the Wicklow mountains and a young woman is found dead, seemingly sacrificed. Accompanying her body is Chapter One of ‘The Rule Book’ – a self-help guide for prospective serial killers. The case is assigned to the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and headed up by Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy. Since the recent death of his wife, McEvoy is a shadow of his former self – two stones lighter with a wardrobe of ill fitting suits, struggling to quit the cigarettes that killed his wife, and still getting used to being a single parent. Less than twenty four hours later a second murder is committed. Self-claiming the title ‘The Raven’, the killer starts to taunt the police and the media. When the third body is discovered it is clear that The Raven intends to slaughter one victim each day until ‘The Rule Book’ is published in full. With the pressure from his superiors, the press, and politicians rising, McEvoy stumbles after a killer that is seemingly several steps ahead. Is ‘The Rule Book’ as definitive as The Raven claims?

“A GONZO NOIR is unlike anything else you’ll read this year … Laugh-out-loud funny … This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone … a feat of extraordinary alchemy.” – Ken Bruen, Author of AMERICAN SKIN

“The test of any great novel should be its verisimilitude, and Kerrigan is the one Irish writer in recent years who has come closest to re-creating the underbelly of Irish society. There are no speeches here about the scourge of new money and development. There are no cranes and flash cars symbolising a world embracing greed heartily to its nouveau riche bosom. Instead he gives us a tight, grim microcosm; and a brutal, vivid, and unforgiving authenticity made all the more convincing because of his consistent effort to strive for realism. Kerrigan prefers to pare things down to the bone with writing that is disciplined and infused with real moral awareness and honesty. It’s also an unnerving read in which the realism takes on an extra resonance. When Mackendrick threatens to kill the members of someone’s family you can’t help but think about recent gangland murders. It further heightens the almost disgusting ordinariness of the people Kerrigan writes about. More than any other book of its kind in recent memory, this is a book that asks hard questions about how a supposedly civil society has facilitated the growth of a sub-culture which is allowed to play by its own rules. There has been a huge surge in the number of successful Irish thriller writers in the past few years; each in their own way has tried to address this question, but no one has addressed in it as brave, forceful, and articulate a manner as Kerrigan.”

“Practices that have been normal in the book industry for years are becoming unsustainable … This is where digital technology, such as the EBM [‘Espresso Machine’] and electronic devices, including the Sony Reader, comes in. Printing thousands of books that sit in warehouses or on booksellers’ shelves, only to be pulped, is unsustainable. But remember the long tail: there may be a demand, albeit “niche”, for these texts. It makes sense to create digital files that can be downloaded or printed according to demand.”

“A misleading idea has arisen, however, that writers generally can earn enough money to do nothing else. The idea is ignorant of history, of TS Eliot keeping himself comfortable on academic stipends and a publishing house directorship, of Angus Wilson superintending the reading room at the British Museum. It may be that we have it because authorship is now so visible, with the author turned into a small celebrity. But we can all be authors now and publish ourselves on the web. What you might call the moral and aesthetic case for writing - to think, imagine and describe and then communicate the result to an audience - can be satisfied online. It just doesn’t make any money. The age of the gifted amateur is surely about to return.”

On the August bank holiday Monday in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a holiday boat trip in Co Sligo. The IRA bomb that exploded in the boat killed his grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his identical twin brother Nicholas and a local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through but also writing an intensely personal book of human triumph over tragedy. Taking place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, FROM A CLEAR BLUE SKY gives a compelling insight into that period of Irish history. Although it is unflinching in its detail, this is a book about reconciliation that asks searching questions about why human beings inflict misery on others, and suggests how we can learn to forgive, to heal and to move on. FROM A CLEAR BLUE SKY will be published by Hutchinson to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the atrocity on 27th August.

TRIGGER CITY by Sean Chercover (Wm. Morrow)
WHERE MEMORIES LIE by Deborah Crombie (Wm. Morrow)
THE DYING BREED (UK)/ THE PRICE OF BLOOD (US) by Declan Hughes (John Murray/ Wm. Morrow)
THE DRAINING LAKE by Arnaldur Indridason (Minotaur)
CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
THE CRUELEST MONTH by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
THE FAULT TREE by Louise Ure (Minotaur)

“We’re going through something of a golden age of Irish fiction at the moment, with the likes of Gene Kerrigan, Declan Hughes and the peerless Ken Bruen. And you can comfortably add Declan Burke to that list. The Sligo native has been producing great crime fiction for the last few years and you could do a lot worse than checking out THE BIG O, which has even garnered Burke comparisons to Elmore Leonard.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I am really enjoying your book. It is so funny and well written. I’m currently on 227 and will be sorry to see the story end in another 53 pages. I will be looking for your next book!”

“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction – what MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged … It’s as if Flann O’Brien wrote a mystery novel and laced it with speed, smarts and stupendous assurance.” – Ken Bruen

“Both a crime novel and a portrait of contemporary Ireland caught at a moment of profound change, WINTERLAND seems set to mark Alan Glynn as the first literary chronicler of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Timely, topical, and thrilling, this is Ireland as it truly is.” – John Connolly

“A thrilling novel of suspense from a new prose master.” – Adrian McKinty

“WINTERLAND is crime fiction of the highest order – smart, vivid, meticulously crafted, and highly entertaining. Alan Glynn has written a flat-out classic.” – Jason Starr

“WINTERLAND is a powerhouse of a novel whose pacy, character-driven narrative scrutinises Ireland’s underbelly, offering new meaning to the notion of corruption in high places. Glynn’s grasp of the big picture is as immaculate as his attention to detail. This is an exceptional and original crime novel, convincing at every level.” – Allan Guthrie

In the vein of films such as Michael Clayton and Syriana, WINTERLAND is a fast-paced, literary thriller set in contemporary Dublin. The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night—one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels.
  Devastated by her loss, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger—because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it. Told repeatedly that she should stop asking questions, Gina becomes more determined than ever to find out the truth, to establish a connection between the two deaths—but in doing so she embarks on a path that will push certain powerful people to their limits ...

“Young homeless women and drug addicts are being abducted before being brutally mutilated and murdered, and a city is held in grip of unspeakable terror. The cops are unable – or unwilling – to apprehend the elusive killer, and corrupt politicians turn a seemingly blind and almost approving eye to the catalogue of murders. The perpetrator is cunning, wealthy and influential. More importantly, he has never once made a mistake in his grisly calling – until now. By abducting Katie, the young daughter of legendary private investigator, Karl Kane, the killer has just made his first mistake, which could well turn out to be his last.”

Taking its title from a Hemingway short story, Adrian McKinty’s FIFTY GRAND opens in Cuba before moving on, via Mexico, to Colorado, as a Cuban cop, Hernandez, goes illegally undercover in the US to investigate her father’s death. The Hemingway homage is a brave one, inviting ridicule and accusations of hubris, but McKinty has long been purveying a blend of muscular lyricism in which collide the brutalities of the crime novel and a knowing, self-effacing literary style.
  His sixth novel for adults (he also writes the ‘Lighthouse’ series for children), FIFTY GRAND offers a challenging conceit, which is to put the tough, spare rhythms associated with classic hard-boiled novels (think Hemingway himself, James Ellroy, James Cain) into the mind of a first-person female protagonist. The result is an incendiary, adrenalin-fuelled thriller, but one that also functions as a blackly hilarious social satire of the skewed values of pre-Obama America, as Hernandez, in the role of exploited illegal immigrant, infiltrates the glitzy world of Colorado’s ski-resort set, cleaning up the mess left behind by Hollywood‘s jet-set.
  Most successful of all, however, is McKinty’s ability to slip inside Hernandez’s skin. The undercover Hernandez is thrown back on her own resources as she investigates her father’s death and brings those responsible to a very particular kind of justice, without recourse to conventional resources. As vulnerable as she is tough, as scared as she is determined, as fragile as she is lethal, she makes for a highly unusual, creepily authentic and utterly compelling anti-heroine.

“What does poetry have to do with crime?” asks Patrick Shawn Bagley in his thoughtful introduction to THE LINEUP 2, the second anthology of poems on crime edited by Gerald So. Poetry brings stillness and clarity to thought and vision, a precise bearing on the random chaos of everyday life, of which crime is an ever-present. The poems of this collection belong for the most part in that all-too-brief pause between the lurid headlines of journalism and the dramatic reconstructions of fiction, lines that wriggle their way into the crawl-space in our minds that lies between judgement, prejudice and consequence. If poetry is about anything, is about poignant, haunting truth. In ‘Visiting Hours, State Pen’, Amy McLennan writes:

“Her lipstick
fresh, she unpins a nametag
(an all-night market),
from her blouse.”

… and your heart breaks, or should. “Crime,” wrote W.R. Burnett, “is but a left-handed form of human endeavour.” Crime fiction poetry might well be a left-handed endeavour, but boy, that Southie can punch a hole in your heart.

“I was so surprised at the frequency of the F-word that I began counting from page 168. From that point there were 55 sightings. Whatever about what real people do or do not say, with such glorious resources of vituperation available to us – especially in Irish – why repeat so obsessively these Anglo-Saxon grunts?”

“Crime fiction has taken off in Ireland over the past few years with a number of our best writers winning awards and making an impact on the international scene. If anything marks out the movement it’s the sheer diversity of sub-genres, from PI novels to police procedurals, by way of political satire and screwball comedy. And that’s not including John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series which is absent here only because it is set in the USA. Many of the recent group of Irish crime writers (myself included) cite Connolly as the inspiration that got them writing. As an introduction to this recent growth and range in the genre, here are 10 of my favourites from the past decade.”

“I have pretty much decided to treat fiction writing the way I did before I started making a living at it (appropriate, since I no longer am), which is to just do it for my own amusement, if it gets published and I get a little check once in a while so much the better.”

Who says flower growing is for pansies …?
  A gardening competition in a little country village ends up throwing three governments into turmoil when it sparks an international race to grow the world’s first blue rose.
  Irish premier John Blake is forced to team up with semi-reformed gangsters Harry Hurley and Vic McCormack to stop British and American politicians shanghaiing the Mountrose Prize and walking off with a billion-dollar patent.
  Bugging, burglary, sabotage, murder and sexual deceit – it’s all part of the rose growing business. And the bad guys are even worse …

TIME AND TIDE

BEST SHORT STORY
Between the Dark and the Daylight (Ellery Queen Magazine) by Tom Piccirilli
Last Island South (Ellery Queen Magazine) by John C. Boland
The Edge of Seventeen (The Darker Mask) by Alexandra Sokoloff
The Point Guard (Killer Year Anthology) by Jason Pinter
Time of the Green (Killer Year Anthology) by Ken Bruen

Ray Winstone, David Thewlis and Anna Friel are set to join Keira Knightley and Colin Farrell in ‘London Boulevard.’ William Monahan directs the crime drama this summer in London, with financing coming from Graham King’s GK Films. Drama revolves around a freshly paroled London criminal who becomes involved with a reclusive young actress. Winstone will play a former crime boss. Thewlis will play the reclusive actress’ agoraphobic business manager, while Friel will portray the criminal’s sister.

“Kerrigan, no slouch, is alert to the possibilities of the thriller form. This is a novel that uses a beautifully spun crime narrative to say something interesting about Ireland in the here and now. (It’s strikingly up to date: Kerrigan has, I think, written the first Irish novel that manages to take account of the global financial crisis – doubly impressive when you remember that most Irish writers haven’t even caught up with the boom years yet.)”

After finishing THE LOVERS, I worked flat out on THE GATES. It was a labour of love. I so wanted to write it, and I didn’t care if it was going to be picked up or not. Oh, it would have hurt a bit if it had been rejected by my publishers, but I wouldn’t have regretted a moment of the time that I spent writing it. I was able to let my imagination run riot, while at the same time retaining a thread of pure science. At times, it felt like a bit of a balancing act, and I’ve asked the physics department of my old university to check the science to make sure I haven’t mangled some very complicated stuff too much, but I hope that the enthusiasm behind it is communicated to those who read it. We’ll see.
  So THE GATES is a book that combines quantum physics and, well, Satanism, I suppose …

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new category in the 2009 awards, the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award. Crime fiction ranks among the most vibrant genres in contemporary Irish publishing and the new award, adopted by one of our key media partners, Ireland AM, represents an exciting new addition to the Irish Book Awards.

“Irish crime writer McKinty delivers an intelligent novel of suspense about cultural identity … in trademark fashion, McKinty winds up his provocative tale with a violent and memorable final act.”

“This a storming debut thriller with a central character who is a clear-eyed, non-sentimental soul sister of Val McDermid’s Kate Brannigan or Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski. In Harry Martinez, the writer has a strong, attractive and super-smart central character who is ripe for another adventure.”

The past is never far behind. Ed Loy has made some changes. He has moved into an apartment in Dublin’s city centre, leaving behind his family home: he wants to break free of the ghosts of his own past, to live in the teeming present. But if that’s what he wants for his own life, it’s not always what his clients will permit: the baggage they bring with him propel him relentlessly into past. The police are working along similar lines with their new Cold Case unit. Looking back over a fifteen-year-old murder, they are satisfied by their original findings - but not so Loy. He has been hired by the victim’s daughter to investigate the suspects ignored by the first investigation: a rich property developer, an ex-IRA man and Loy’s own nemesis, George Halligan. But Loy has to watch his back: in the murky world into which he has fallen, he can’t tell which threats come from the IRA and which from the police protecting their old case. Can Loy persuade his longstanding friend DI Dave Donnelly to help solve the Fogarty case, or does he have to rely on the murderous George Halligan? Does it all go back to the IRA? Are the men who gave the commands now respectable citizens? In his toughest case yet, Ed Loy delves into the dirty side of life in the New Ireland, where progress comes at a price and no one is free of their past.

“One last pertinent thought on what might well be the most important issue the crime fiction industry will have to face in the immediate future. To wit: has anyone else noticed Shy Al Guthrie’s (right) eyelashes? Like kitten’s whiskers, they are. Enough to make a Grand Vizier kick a hole in his stained-glass harem window.”

“Scottish writer Guthrie’s prose is a series of short, sharp shocks, reeking of the visceral brutality of the toughest contemporary noir …”

“Allan Guthrie’s SLAMMER succeeds in brilliantly turning the genre on its head in a book as inventive and groundbreaking as it is magnificently written … With SLAMMER, Guthrie has written a superb novel that will leave you thinking hard about life for a long time afterwards, and there’s not much higher praise than that.”

THERE are as many ways to earn cash dishonestly as to make an honest living. Fraud is now an international industry, with a shadowy underworld network where everything from songbirds and garlic, to designer goods and medicines are faked and sold on.
  THE FRAUDSTERS details the proliferation of con tricks, old and new, being deployed every day by an army of these hard-working criminals. It tells how con artists come in all shapes and sizes – the scammers who stick to their flimsy stories, no matter what, the white collar grafters who like to think that nobody gets hurt when they hoodwink a financial institution, and then there are the psychopaths who are cold-blooded about their victims. They will pretend to be your friend, a respected banker, or even a lover, to win the trust they plan to violate.
  For some the lure of illicit money is more potent than doing a day’s work. Dillon reveals how identify theft works, the dangers of joining pyramid schemes and how charlatans, pretending to be successful business people, exploit loopholes in tax regulations to live the lifestyle of the super-rich. He describes how billions have been stolen by highly-organised gangs of swindlers, who sell unlikely tales through internet chat rooms and forums, and how arrogance, greed, gullibility and insecurity combine to make some people easy prey for the con artists.
  THE FRAUDSTERS tells the stories of these modern day criminals and their victims.

Life highlights to date:

1. Lily May Burke is born on the 26th of March, 2008.
2. Mrs Grand Vizier makes a mockery of her reputation for being an astute observer of the human condition by marrying your humble host, April 2006.
3. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE published, April 2003.
4. THE BIG O published in the U.S., September 2008.
5. Winning the All-Ireland Minor (B) Hurling Final at Croke Park for Sligo, versus Tyrone, in 1987.
6. Graduating from junior to senior at Sligo Library at the age of 11, a full year before I was legally entitled to, and a full year after beginning petition to achieve same, 1980.
7. Wexford beat Limerick to win the All-Ireland Hurling Final, 1996.
8. Liverpool beat AC Milan 3-3 to win the European Cup (aka Champions League) for the fifth time, 2005.
9. Touching down in the Greek islands for the first time, 1991.
10. Making it to 40.

“I’m a crime fan and understand why so many literary detectives are divorced, heavy-drinking mavericks. But I liked the idea of Devlin being different, happily married, not a drinker and that he would try to do his job properly. Also, at the time I wrote it, my wife was heavily pregnant with our first child. I was trying to balance work and a young family and thought it would be interesting to have Devlin doing the same. His mission is as a policeman making his immediate area safe for his own family.”

Ava’s unorthodox approach to writing knocks JK Rowling’s tale of writing her first novel in a café into a cocked hat: “I was determined not to impact on family life, so I used to get up really early in the morning, drive into work and sit outside my office for two hours in the car with the laptop on my knees and the heater blowing.
  “The car is a super place to work. There’s no fridge, no kettle, no housework ... you just focus. For book two, I’ve been trying to work in the house, but I find myself being drawn to the car. The neighbours think I’m mad.”

MYSTERY MAN, Bateman;*
TOWER, Ken Bruen / Reed Farrel Coleman;
THE LOVERS, John Connolly;
WINTERLAND, John Glynn;
ALL THE DEAD VOICES, Declan Hughes;
DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, Gene Kerrigan;*
BLEED A RIVER DEEP, Brian McGilloway;*
FIFTY GRAND, Adrian McKinty;*
THE TWELVE, Stuart Neville;