Bruen Up A Perfect Storm

Well, it was almost perfect – Sir Kenneth of Bruen didn’t exactly sweep the boards at the Alaska Bouchercon, but he gave them a damned good polishing. First he picked up the Barry Award for Best British Novel for Priest, then went one better by claiming the Shamus (again!) in the Private Eye Writers of America’s competition, for The Dramatist. Not content with that, he then scooped a Crime Spree Magazine gong for American Skin in the, erm, Best Ken Bruen Book of the Year Award. Not bad for a Galway lad, eh? And leaving aside the semi-mythical '2nd Shamus' win, the fact that Bruen won awards for separate titles would have been a marvellous achievement in itself, except for the fact that he was nominated – along with Jason Starr – in yet another category, Best Paperback Original in the Barrys, and for yet another title, Bust. Which makes it even more wonderful than marvellous, if such a thing is possible. The big question: could it have happened to a nicer guy? We think not … The bigger question: will the achievement warrant a mention in the Irish media? Again, sadly, we think not … Meanwhile, full details of winners and losers in all categories are available at The Rap Sheet.

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

Tana French’s In The Woods has been this year’s Irish publishing phenomenon, the ex-actress garnering a veritable rain-forest of big-up reviews on her way to pole-vaulting onto the New York Times best-seller list earlier this month. The good news is that In The Woods goes into mass market paperback release this week (jazzy new cover, right), and the better news is that Crime Always Pays – courtesy of the ever-lovely people at Hodder Headline Ireland – have three copies to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one, just tell us if the sequel to In The Woods will be called …

(a) The Similarity
(b) The Likeness
(c) The Virtually Indistinguishable Clone-Like Replication

Drop us a mail at the address in the top right of the blog, putting ‘Tana French competition’ in the subject line. And remember, people – if you’re not in, you can’t lose …

“Doctor? I Think We’ve Got A Heartbeat …”

Philip Davison remains one of Ireland’s unsung thriller writers, sadly, his latest being last year’s A Burnable Town, which got the “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene… thoroughly compelling,” treatment from The Independent, and a “Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit,” big-up from the Times Literary Supplement. You can download a taster chapter at the Irish Literary Revival, if you’re so inclined, but the better news is that you can download Davison’s immaculate debut The Book-Thief’s Heartbeat in its entirety courtesy of the ILR’s mission, aka ‘Out-of-print books, returned to the world.’ To resurrect a Heartbeat – how noble is that, eh? Think an entire battalion of Don Quixotes tilting at a world full of windmills and you’re halfway there … Oh, and did we mention that The Book-Thief's Heartbeat is currently selling on Amazon at £45 a pop?

The Unquiet One

Does any crime / mystery writer give better interview than John Connolly (right)? “I wish I had a way for you to see John Connolly talk and answer questions in person,” says Cameron Hughes over at Cinematic Happenings. “He is an extremely charismatic and charming man, full of energy and stories. He talks like he writes …” Yet again Connolly waxes lyrical on a wide range of topics, including Good vs Evil …

“I think there’s a very human evil, which is fundamentally selfish, and which leads to greater harm without, I think, the individual responsible realizing that that is going to be the case. It’s an absence of empathy, which is the single best definition of human evil that I’ve encountered, the unwillingness or inability (which are two separate things) to recognize that others feel pain the way that you do, and that therefore you have a responsibility not to cause pain of any kind, just as you would expect the same treatment from others. Is there a greater, deeper evil at the heart of the universe, from which our own generally inferior version is drawn, like water from a well? I don’t know. The books suggest that there may be. If one believes in God, then does one accept the existence of the opposite of God? I don’t feel any urge or responsibility to provide answers to those questions. It’s enough to raise them, and to consider them in the context of the books.”

… his reasons for setting his stories in America rather than Ireland …

“At the time that I began writing, there weren’t many Irish crime writers. It wasn’t really our genre, for all sorts of reasons. Equally, I was trying to escape my own literary heritage, which I felt was quite suffocating, and came with certain expectations about style and subject matter. It wasn’t a commercial decision to set a book in the US, but an emotional one, I think. Rather than import elements of American mystery fiction, which I loved, I thought it would be more interesting to apply a European sensibility to its conventions. I’m never going to write or think quite like an American. It’s impossible, but I hope that’s what makes my books a little different.”

… Genre vs Literature …

“As for genre and literature, the distinction is muddy. Genre is a relatively recent concept, and most literary fiction incorporates some genre elements too - a romance, for example, or a crime. The difference is that in genre fiction that element is the primary one, whereas in literary fiction it’s frequently a secondary, if crucial, one. I’m not a genre snob, and I’m interested in blending elements of disparate, if related, genres together to create new forms. In fact, the worst snobs I’ve encountered have been in the mystery area. There’s a conservative element that wants to see the genre frozen in aspic somewhere between the birth of the Marlowe novels and the death of Agatha Christie. Those people hate the use of the supernatural in particular, and I suppose they raise my hackles because, as a good liberal, I dislike people telling me that something isn’t permissible, at least in writing. It’s nonsense.”

… and much, much more, including very personal insights into both The Book of Lost Things and The Unquiet. The Unquiet? That’s putting it mildly …

This Little Piggy Went To Market …

Crumbs! No sooner do we stumble across Bob Burke and his inspired creation Harry Pigg – y’know the one, the little piggy who survived the Big Bad Wolf attack – than we discover The Third Pig Detective Agency has been already been signed up by The Friday Project as ‘Nursery rhyme noir’. Quoth Scott Pack of TFP:

“All of us at The Friday Project loved Bob’s book the moment we saw it. He is an extremely funny writer and Harry Pigg is a wonderful character who we hope to see for many more books to come. Imagine Hans Christian Andersen rewritten by Raymond Chandler.”

We’ll buy that for a dollar. Bob? What’s the skinny on The Third Pig Detective Agency, sir?

“It’s my first book and will be published by The Friday Project in Autumn 2008 (press release gubbins is here). Understandably, I’m still getting my head around it but I’m sure things will return to normal sometime in the next 10 years! About myself: I’m a Clareman who (for some awful transgression in a previous life) is living in Limerick. Currently working in IT, I will be finishing up end of September to give the writing a full-time shot (cuz if I don’t I'll always wonder “what if”).”

Well said, sir, and the Crime Always Pays elves wish you fair wind and Godspeed …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 23: Declan Burke

Editor’s note: Over the last six months, Declan Burke, Irish author of the novel The Big O (Hag’s Head Press), has grilled crime writers from both sides of the Atlantic for his animated blog, Crime Always Pays. Since, as the old saying goes, “turnabout is fair play,” we decided it was time that Burke took a big gulp of his own medicine. So we put the very same queries to him that he’s been nailing other authors on for all this time. He was glad to play along, acknowledging, “You got me, bang to rights.” – J. Kingston Pierce, The Rap Sheet

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. “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.” Life-changing moments are few and far between, and it’s even rarer that you appreciate them as such at the time. Reading the first paragraph of The Big Sleep was one of those moments; I honestly did know that nothing would ever be the same again. I rate Chandler as Hemingway with a sense of humor. If I can sneak in a second, it’d be any of Elmore Leonard’s novels, preferably Get Shorty. Hell, why not sneak in a third? Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. And Alistair McLean’s When Eight Bells Toll. Is that five? No? OK, The Wild Life of Sailor and Lula, by Barry Gifford.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
It’s not so much “who” as “what”--I love classic kids’ novels. My favorite novel of all time, actually, my Desert Island novel, would have to be--appropriately enough--Peter Pan. It’s a work of genius, written by a man at the very peak of his powers. The whimsical tone is perfectly pitched and disguises what is quite often a dark and profound story. I also love Treasure Island, Watership Down, and The Wind in the Willows. My wife and I are expecting our first baby next spring, and already I’m all a-quiver with excitement at the prospect of re-reading all those stories out loud in the years to come. I’ve got quite a mini-library of kids’ classics just waiting to go.
Most satisfying writing moment?
I’d written a couple of drafts of my first novel, Eightball Boogie [2003], which is about a private eye operating in Ireland’s northwest, when I first stumbled across Ken Bruen’s The Guards. I was devastated--not only had this Bruen bloke got there first, with the kind of story I couldn’t imagine anyone else trying, he’d done it with the kind of style I couldn’t even dream of pulling off. Fast-forward about three years, when Lilliput [Press] have agreed to publish Eightball Boogie, and I’ve just finished another of the Jack Taylor series. I put it down wondering what Ken Bruen might make of Eightball, if he ever read it, and two days later Lilliput forwarded me the blurb Ken had written for it, in which he declared me “the future of Irish crime fiction.” I thought my head would explode. Sadly it didn’t, and it’s been all downhill since then.
The best Irish crime novel is ...?
I’m going to offer a few options, if I may. Patrick McCabe might flinch if described as a crime writer, but his novel The Butcher Boy is a fabulous story very much in the mold of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. Similarly, I don’t know if John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things qualifies as a crime novel, but it’s a stunning piece of work, a virtuoso example of what John Gardner once called the “vivid, continuous dream” of fiction. The best this year, so far, I think, is a tie between Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome and Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands; and Adrian McKinty’s Dead I May Well Be took Irish crime fiction onto another level a couple of years back (even though McKinty, the thieving Norn Iron bugger, stole a title I’d intended using for myself). I think the softest spot in my heart in terms of Irish crime fiction, though, is Quinn, by Seamus Smyth, which was way too far ahead of its time when it was first published. Someone should pick up it again, it’s in the same league as Paul Cain’s Fast One. Does Charles Ardai read The Rap Sheet?
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’d LOVE to see Jack Taylor up on the big screen, I think he’d be on a par with my favorite movie private eye, Elliott Gould playing Marlowe in The Long Goodbye. The Book of Lost Things will make a great movie, it was signed up earlier this year, as will Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant. I’d love to see someone with a flair for lateral thinking take on Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, and ditto for John Banville’s The Untouchable. For a classic private-eye movie, though, a producer could do a hell of a lot worse than take a look at Vincent Banville’s canon of work, and preferably [1995’s] Death the Pale Rider.
Worst/best thing about being a writer?
There’s no worst thing about being a writer--the only problem I have is finding a few hours every day, which isn’t easy when you’re a freelance writer. Other than that, it’s all jam. It’s fantastic, of course, when someone tells you they like your book, that they’ll be telling their friends and family. But by a mile the best thing about writing is the physical process of putting one word in front of the other, and watching a story come alive, seeing characters flesh out before your eyes. Being honest, I started out as a teenager wanting to be a writer, because I thought it had to be the best job ever (I still feel that way). A few years later, I narrowed that ambition down to having one book published. Now that I have two books out there, I don’t want to be a writer as much as I want to write. If God was to appear tomorrow and offer me three hours writing a day for the rest of my life, with the kicker being that none of it would ever see a bookshelf, I’d gladly take him up on it.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
It’s very possible his publishers believed a crime-reading audience wouldn’t buy anything by “John Banville,” given that Banville’s novels aren’t overly endowed with pace, plot, and action. Two-thirds of the way through The Book of Evidence, in which the narrator is on the run after committing a murder, Banville has him say: “The least I had expected from the enormities of which I was guilty was that they would change my life ... that there would be a constant succession of heart-stopping events, of alarms and sudden frights and hairsbreadth escapes.” There isn’t, sadly--Banville’s too austere for such frippery, although he’s not above mocking the reader who might expect it. Mind you, I’m very probably wrong--as Declan Hughes pointed out recently, Banville is an admirer of Donald Westlake, so it’s possible he’s paying homage, and not only to Westlake but to Kingsley Amis, Cecil Day Lewis, et al.
The pitch for your next novel is ...?
Jack’s got nothing to lose. Honey’s got it all to live for. A pregnant woman, a dying man, a stolen gun ... and the placid Greek islands lying out there in the sun, just ripe for the picking.
Who are you reading right now?
Right now it’s David Goodis’ The Wounded and the Slain, courtesy of Hard Case Crime, and Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ, by Henri Daniel-Rops. I’ve just finished Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin (bit of a Hard Case Crime kick going on at the moment) and Allan Guthrie’s Two-Way Split, both of which were brilliant. In the TBR pile is Tana French’s In the Woods, Ross Macdonald’s The Moving Target, Nick Stone’s King of Swords, Declan Hughes’ The Colour of Blood, Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls, and Peter Rabe’s The Out Is Death. Oh, and Colin Bateman’s I Predict a Riot. Bateman is a riot. He never disappoints.
The three best words to describe your own writing are ...?
Emperor’s. New. Clothes.

Declan Burke’s The Big O fits all wonky table-legs or your money back, guaranteed.

Brought To Book: Michael Haskins on Dead I Well May Be

"DEAD I WELL MAY BE is the first in Adrian McKinty’s trilogy about transplanted Irishman Michael Forsythe. To escape the Troubles in Belfast, Forsythe finds his way to New York City and its surrounding boroughs. Still young in years, but old in life’s hard experiences, Forsythe finds survival in the Irish underworld of New York not much different from life in Belfast. McKinty’s raw and gritty writing captures the seediness of New York’s ghetto streets and the struggling mixture of diverse people as well as any writer has done today. Forsythe’s youthful plunge into love as a safe haven from the weariness of daily survival is so well written that the surprise ending sneaks up without warning. Along the way, Forsythe cultivates a credo for himself based on loyalty to friends and love for a woman, so strong that his overcoming a series of excruciating experiences is believable; maybe because we would all like to think, under the same circumstances, we would be as faithful to our beliefs. McKinty’s take on what he sees and writes about in America brings a refreshing look at the backside of the country, because it avoids the high-tech tricks that are used today to move a story along. McKinty does this the old-fashioned way, by making us uncomfortable with what we know is the truth."

Michael Haskins’ CHASIN’ THE WIND will be published in spring 2008

On A Clare Day You Can See Forever

Here at Crime Always Pays, we’re particularly fond of Cora Harrison (right). Maybe it’s because her new novel, My Lady Judge, is set in the Burren in the beautiful County Clare, and we have fond memories of a childhood holiday spent in the Burren, when we leapt from one haystack onto another and only got semi-impaled on a buried pitchfork. Ah, those were the days. Or maybe it’s just because the rather lovely Ms Harrison is rather lovely, and lovely people are becoming a rarity these days. More importantly, Sarah Weinman seems to like Cora Harrison too, if her review in the Baltimore Sun is anything to go by:

“This enchanting historical mystery was first released in the United Kingdom last spring to rave reviews, which will only be echoed here. Harrison, a veteran novelist for children, steps into the adult realm with a confident voice, a strong heroine in the form of the eponymous Mara and an unusual-for-mystery realm in the form of an enclosed medieval kingdom off the coast of Ireland. The bloodthirsty justice administered by the barbaric English doesn’t apply as Mara educates her young charges in more civil applications of the law. That is, until her trusted assistant Colman disappears and is later found dead on the top of a mountain, and the kingdom’s seeming indifference reveals the victim’s duplicitous nature and the community’s web of secrets. Mara – who at 36 is both a grandmother and the object of romantic intentions – sifts through truth and lies with a combination of feminine intuition and well-reasoned deduction. The old-fashioned appeal of Harrison’s prose opens up a new world while harkening back to the way writers like Ellis Peters fashioned their historical mysteries.”

Very nice indeed, especially as it comes hard on the heels of the rather lovely Ms Harrison being nominated a ‘notable’ September release by the American Booksellers Association. Feel free to jump aboard, people – there’s a rather lovely bandwagon leaving these here parts …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 546: Neville Thompson

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?
Has to be THE CAVEMAN by David Dawes Green. I love it. I love the whole description of the caveman and the madness of what goes on in his head and then the reality that its not that mad after all. I was disappointed with his next book THE JUROR but CAVEMAN was pure pleasure.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I love Irvine Welsh, and although his last few novels are crap I still go out and buy everything he does. For guilty pleasures PORNO is hard to beat. I laughed out loud at the stuff he came up with in that. TRAINSPOTTING is a read over and over again book and it never loses its appeal. FILTH (apart from the snake bit at the end) is very clever and possibly the most hateable lead character ever.
Most satisfying writing moment?
For me it is always the latest project, when you get excited about where the story is going and you just stay up writing for hours. Nothing beats it ... well, some things do but you know what I mean. I like writing stuff that will catch the audience out. There’s a guy called Hippo and another called Fing in my latest book and I loved writing them.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Haven’t a clue, was THE CRYING GAME a novel? Is it crime? If it is, then that. Irvine Welsh is living here now, isn’t he? If that’s the case, FILTH!
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I should have read all these first, shouldn’t I? THE CRYING GAME! I always thought my own JACKIE LOVES JOHNSER was a model to be made into a film but the only ones who wanted it were foreign. It’s due to be made into a French film this year.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best is doing what you want to do as a job. Worst is every fucker you meet telling you should write his story.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Fat guy from Dublin goes to Thailand and falls in love with a prostitute ...
Who are you reading right now?
Reading a book on how to make a micro-budget film ’cause I want to make a film of a script I wrote and no one will touch it with a barge pole ’cause it’s politically incorrect.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Modern, funny, real.

Neville Thompson’s A Simple Twist of Fate is available now.

The Embiggened O: Karma-Karma-Karma Chameleon

Following on from last week’s karma-tastic Embiggened O post, in which we outlined our reasons for persecuting award-winning writers to big-up our humble offering THE BIG O, Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year winner Allan Guthrie has been gracious enough to offer his opinion, to wit:

“It’s hard to praise THE BIG O highly enough. Excellent writing, great characters, superb storytelling – all played out at a ferocious tempo. By turns it’s dark, funny, moving, brutal, tender and twisted. A book that makes one hell of an impact. More Declan Burke please.”

Which is lovelier than a trumpet break from Forever Changes-era Love. A caveat, however: the sharper-eyed observers among you might have noticed that the Crime Always Pays reviewing elves have recently swooned about Guthrie’s TWO-WAY SPLIT, so much so that Guthrie was moved to plug the review on his interweb page thingy. So – is the above plug a simple case of mutual appreciation from a shit-hot award-winning writer with nothing to gain from lending a fan-boy blogger a hand, or a sordid example of the cynical you-scratch-my-back blurbing that plagues the industry today? YOU decide!

Gone To Iraq And Ruin

“IT WAS THE PERFECT KILLING GROUND. As the rounds slammed into my Toyota I knew that the ambush site was chosen with precision and deadly cunning. The insurgents had waited until all our security vehicles had stopped around the stranded front five trucks before they then unleashed their main weapon -- a Russian-made PK heavy machine gun set up on the roof of a two-storey building to our left. The instant that machine-gun opened up, it began to cut our convoy to pieces. We were now taking heavy fire from three sides.
The civilian drivers were either dead or dying. I can only guess but there must have been 50 or 60 insurgents surrounding our convoy and their fire was withering.
I was trying to return aimed fire -- but it was hard because I’d been shot in the right elbow. By now, my fatigues were covered in blood which was pouring from my elbow wound and from my bare arms which had been shredded as I combat-crawled along the glass-covered roadway …”

Sounds like an extract from a Jack Higgins novel, but Padraig O’Keefe’s Hidden Soldier is the real deal – Corkman O’Keefe served with the French Foreign Legion in a variety of hot-spots around the world, including Cambodia and Sarajevo, before heading to Iraq as a ‘security specialist’, where the attack described above happened. Headlined ‘There is nothing like the loneliness of realising that you’re the only one left alive on the battlefield’, the Irish Independent has a nice splash on Hidden Soldier, which is published by the O’Brien Press.

Unaccustomed As They Are To Public Speaking …

Brandon Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary in some style, mainly by dragging its writers out of their dank little cells and thrusting them blinking into the limelight, and if you’re around Dublin city centre on Thursday 27th you could do a lot worse than toddle along to Waterstones on Dawson Street, where Sam Millar (right) and Paul Charles will be yakking it up in a chat, reading and Q&A session. Paul’s plugging The Dust of Death, the first of a new series set in Donegal which is published this month, and there’s a pretty decent chance Sam’ll offer a taster from his forthcoming Bloodstorm, to be published in December. Full-ish details of the tour runneth thusly:

27th September in Waterstones Dublin
29th September in Hughes & Hughes, Stephens Green, Dublin
30th September in Easons, Belfast
1st October in Waterstones, Belfast
11 October in Hughes & Hughes, Dundalk

Just be gentle with them, folks – these are shy and sensitive creatures, liable to leap back into the undergrowth at a single harsh word or prolonged stare …

Death, Where Is Thy Sting? Oh, There It Is

Michael Collins’s The Death of A Writer – aka The Secret Life of Robert E. Pendleton – gets a paperback reprint in the US this month, hardly surprising given the stack of big-ups it’s received to date. “Michael Collins tears into literary academe with great comic gusto,” reckoned Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times, although Publishers Weekly was a tad more circumspect, to wit: “The philosophical and literary digressions may annoy some readers, but all should appreciate the fully-realized characters, lyrical place descriptions and dark, circuitous plot.” As for Mr and Mrs Kirkus, they could hardly restrain themselves: “Mystery, tragedy and farce converge in this engaging novel of considerable psychological depth … The suspense makes this a page-turner until the climax, as Collins’s plot combines academic satire, philosophical speculation and tragedy.” Hurrah! Sorry, folks, we’re kind of busy this week, so you’ll have to insert your own ‘Death, where is thy sting? It’s in the tale’ gag here …

The Best Things In Life Are Free ... Books

Slide, the latest collaboration between Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, is published this week by Hard Case Crime, and to celebrate Crime Always Pays is diving head-first into a vat of Pimms. Before we slip into the Speedos, however, there’s the matter of the free copies being given away by Hard Case Crime, one of which could be yours if you just answer a simple question, to wit:

What is the name of the first Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaboration?

To be in with a chance of winning a copy, just email us the answer at the address in the top right of this blog, with ‘Bruen / Starr competition’ in the subject line, before noon on September 25. Meanwhile, here’s a sample chapter to get you onto Slide’s slippery slope …

This Week We’re Reading … The Vengeful Virgin and The Wounded and The Slain

“I knew I’d never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.” We’re having a bit of a Hard Case Crime binge this week, folks – first up is Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin, first published in 1958 and a cracker in the mould of Brewer’s patented amour fou, in which TV salesman-on-the-make Jack hooks up with Shirley, a 17-year-old chafing with frustration at having to take care of her rich, bedridden stepfather (“She looked hot enough to catch fire, but too lazy to do anything but just lie there and smoke.”). Delivered in Brewer’s precise, deadpan tone, the best laid plans of vengeful virgins and men quickly spiral out of control as one murder leads to another and Jack finds himself split between the allure of a vast pile of cash and the psychotic charms of a woman who should really be entered under the dictionary definition of ‘all or nothing’. Cain meets Jim Thompson, reckoned Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, and we’re not here to argue. Meanwhile, David Goodis, he of the novel-length suicide notes, sets The Wounded and The Slain (1955) in Jamaica, where James and Cora Bevan have gone in an attempt to rescue their marriage, a shell just hollow enough to accommodate alcoholism, self-loathing, simmering sexual dissatisfaction and bleak thoughts of ending it all. Naturally, Goodis avoids the palm-fringed beaches and sultry sunsets, dragging his characters into the slums of Kingston and face-to-face with their worst nightmares. “He did it to himself. He brought it on by slow degrees and then faster degrees and finally it blew up in his face and knocked him for a loop. For many loops. For endless loops. To send him sailing far away to some dizzy, goofy place where every day is Halloween.” You like your noir dark and psychologically twisted? The Wounded and The Slain is a black, bloody corkscrew.

Landy: Of Hope And Glory

Yet more good news for Derek Landy, folks. According to The Bookseller, Skulduggery Pleasant has been chosen as a contender in a one-off Richard and Judy children’s books special, to be aired on October 28th as part of Channel 4’s literacy season. Nominated in the third of the ‘Early’, ‘Developing’, ‘Confident’ and ‘Fluent’ reading sections, and with two winners to be announced from each section, the broadcast should see Skulduggery Pleasant go huge in the UK, where the Richard and Judy Show has become arguably the most important opinion-former. The full list of nominees is available at Beattie’s Book Blog. Meanwhile, Landy will be putting in an appearance at the Children's Book Festival, which takes place in County Clare from October 3rd-26th. To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson on Treasure Island: “If this don’t fetch the kids, they’ve gone rotten since I knew ’em.”

Baa Humbug

Much as we hate to be territorial about Irish crime writing – it is, after all, a pretty broad church – Leonie Swann is testing our limits. Is it because she’s a German author who sets her novel, Three Bags Full, in the fictional Irish village of Glennkill? No. Is it because she’s much more successful at what she does than us, and has garnered a glowing review from Carl Hiassen? Well, only in part. But mainly we’re peeved because Leonie has added to the growing menagerie of cat-and-dog detectives with a rather outrageous twist, to wit:

“On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared for the sheep, reading them a plethora of books every night. The daily exposure to literature has made them far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George’s killer.”

Like, sheep? C’mon, people ... “It’s rather as if Agatha Christie had re-written The Wind in the Willows, and I ended by loving it,” says Jane Jakeman in The Independent. That whirring sound you hear? Yep, it’s Dashiell Hammett perning in his eternal gyre …

The Neville Will Find Work For Idle Hands To Do

One of the hardest working men in Irish crime fiction, Neville Thompson (right) has more fingers in more pies than yon Sweeney Todd - writer, editor, playwright, enabler of aspiring scribes and much more, all the details of which are here on his shiny new interweb thingy. Most pertinently, Neville has a new novel on the way, A Simple Twist of Fate, to wit:

“When I went to Thailand on holliers I couldn’t get over the amount of prostitutes and the age at which they started into it. I loved the country but hated that. I also wanted to pay homage to a film I seen years ago, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and I took the name of the book from the song on Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. That song tells the story of a fella falling in love with a prostitute and my book has elements of that too. It’s the latest and there is always a certain feeling of pride about your latest work but I love this book. It’s a move away from my normal but not too far removed.”

Neville? Colour us intrigued already. Keep us posted, sir …

We Come Not To Bury Julius, But To Praise Him

I THINK I HEARD THE SHOT.
It was a cold afternoon at the end of October, and I was in my chair reading by the wood stove in my cabin. In these woods many men roam with guns, mostly in the stretches away from where people live, and their shots spray like pepper across the sky, especially on the first day of the rifle hunting season when people from Fort Kent and smaller towns bring long guns in their trucks up this way to hunt deer and bear …

If you haven’t yet got your grubby mitts on Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome, we urge you to do so with all due haste. In essence it’s a tale about a man who picks up his gun to avenge the death of his dog, but what makes it special is the voice, a hauntingly compelling tone that verges on the hypnotic, delivered by a character who is the antithesis of that old crime fiction staple, the unreliable narrator. For a shorthand reference, you could do worse than try to imagine Jim Thompson dabbling in the dark arts of literary fiction. If that’s not seductive enough, try a few sample chapters and immerse yourself in the workings of a unique mind …

Four Legs Good, Two Opinions Bad

You’ll probably have picked up on Steve Wasserman’s cover story for the latest Columbia Journalism Review already. If you haven’t, you really should – we haven’t read anything quite as funny since the last Carl Hiassen novel. Kicking off with a lament for the decline in book reviewing in newspapers, Wasserman – editor of the Los Angeles Times Review from 1996 to 2005 – soon gets into his stride with a broadside against the lumpen bloggetariat who dare to infringe on the territory of serious critics, to wit:

“What Sarvas is reluctant to concede but is too intelligent to deny is what Richard Schickel, the film critic for Time magazine, eloquently affirmed in a blunt riposte, published in the Los Angeles Times in May, to the “hairy-chested populism” promoted by the boosters of blogging: “Criticism—and its humble cousin, reviewing—is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author’s (or filmmaker’s or painter’s) entire body of work, among other qualities.” Sure, two, three, many opinions, but let’s all acknowledge a truth as simple as it is obvious: Not all opinions are equal.”

Pardon us while we vomit copiously into our pointy hat with the big fat D on the front. And now that we’re all out of bile, let’s just suggest (quietly, so Steve doesn’t get offended) that criticism and reviewing aren’t cousins, they’re Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The difference? People tend to steer clear of Tweedledum because he takes himself and life a wee bit too seriously, and isn’t much fun. Tweedledee, on the other hand, simply offers his opinion and isn’t going to sulk if he thinks you won’t order your life according to his rules. Because Tweedledee, along with most people, understands that if a writer needs an official interpreter wasting half a rainforest to explain what his or her book is trying to say, then said writer should think very seriously about taking a refresher course in Eng Lit 101. Tweedledee also thinks democracy and freedom of speech is a good thing. Sure, he can be a bit odd like that. But we like him.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 397: JT Ellison

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?
Honestly, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The story both frightened and comforted, and the pov blew me away. It was one of those books where you close the covers and THINK. I LOVE that. And I liked the idea that Heaven is what you make it. Fascinating concept.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Diana Gabaldon, J.K. Rowling, Lionel Shriver, and stories from my past, like Jean Auel, Madeleine L’Engle, and Daphne du Maurier. Now isn’t that funny, I’ve just realized the entire list is comprised of women. I wonder what that means. Oh, nearly forgot – Lolita. Nabokov’s like a symphony to me.
Most satisfying writing moment?
It’s funny, as a debut author, you keep having these moments you think can’t be topped. First it’s meeting a hero, getting an agent, getting a deal, your name mentioned online, finishing the second book, the first panel, the first time you see your book, the first time it’s online for pre-sale ... I could go on and on. But the best so far, by far, was seeing it listed on my local library website. I wasn’t expecting to get picked up because I’m paperback, and a librarian from another county told me she never orders paperbacks. To find the unexpected, I think that becomes the most exciting moment of all.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I am woefully under read in Irish crime fiction. Of course, I’m woefully under read in all crime fiction, I think. So this is a thus far … I have to go with John Connolly’s Every Dead Thing. As a debut novel, it’s timeless, and the writing was inspirational to me. Now, as I’m broadening my horizons, I’ve become a fan of Ken Bruen ...
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again, I’ll refer back to Connolly. I think capturing Charlie Parker onscreen could be difficult, but if done well, quite intriguing.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
I haven’t found a worst thing. I love this. I love being able to say I’m a writer, and know deep in my heart I’m pursuing my dream. I feel inordinately lucky to have the opportunity to communicate with strangers. The best thing? Finishing the first draft of a manuscript. Suddenly, you’re not writing a book, you’re revising. And the pressure is off.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Has the Snow White serial killer, dormant for twenty years, resurfaced, or is there a copycat working Nashville? It’s called 14.
Who are you reading right now?
M.J. Rose, The Reincarnationist, Jason Pinter The Mark, a biography of Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour, Eightball Boogie and a few paperbacks. I tend to jump around when I’m working on my own stuff, there never seems to be enough hours in the day to read everything I want. My to-be-read pile is ridiculous, and constantly growing.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Tight, taut and intense.

JT Ellison’s All The Pretty Girls is published on November 1.

The Embiggened O: Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You

Things ain’t easy here at the coalface of independent publishing, folks. Mind you, some days are better than others. One such good day was when a US house got in touch to say they were keen on publishing The Big O. Now, being keen is one thing, crossing the line and actually offering contracts is another. And while they’re happy enough with the fact that The Big O has received decent reviews to date, they’re concerned it mightn’t translate to the US. Which is fair enough. So they asked if there was any way we could get some best-selling / well known / award-winning American authors to big up the book. Not a problem, says we, except for one tiny detail – in common with most people, we’ve never met a single best-selling / well known / award-winning American author. But hell, what’s the point in the interweb if you can’t persecute famous authors via their websites and blogs and ask them if they’d mind having a read of your book and – providing they liked it – say as much in print, right? So we drew up a list (checking it twice, for naughty rather than nice), and got busy persecuting. The result? Not the restraining order we were expecting, no sirree (and ma’am). No indeed – every single last author we got in touch with said yes, here’s my address, send the book. Now, from our limited experience of blogging over the last few months, we already knew the crime writing and reading community is generous above and beyond the call of duty. But for every single person we got in touch with to say yes? That’s simply incredible. So incredible – naïve as it might sound to say it aloud – that we quickly realised their collective reaction is actually more important to us now than whether or not the US house decide to publish the book. Because the world can live without one more book published, and God knows the shelves are already jam-packed, but you can’t buy decency, generosity of spirit and a willingness to lend a hand. God bless you, one and all. Meanwhile, the first author to get back to us was Jason Starr (left), who was kind enough to pitch in his two cents thusly:

“Declan Burke’s The Big O has everything you want in a crime novel: machinegun dialogue, unforgettable characters, and a wicked plot. Think George V. Higgins in Ireland on speed.”

Is it really necessary to say our cup runneth over like we’re Oliver Twist standing under Niagara Falls? Yes indeed, Momma never told us there’d be days like these …

The Monday Review

The late, lamented Siobhan Dowd may be gone but she is by no means forgotten. “Dowd’s prose is simple, yet masterful, and her sense of humour jumps off the page. The tension is kept high throughout the story and the reader is left guessing until the very last … A must-read for fans of the traditional mystery genre!” reckon the folks at the MS Readathon of The London Eye Mystery … “Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony is a good story. Artemis is redeemed, but still a saucy adolescent who is just feeling the effects of puberty. He’s also learning about senses of humour … I enjoyed the Lost Colony before bed, by the pool and on the bus,” says Miss Kate of Eoin Colfer’s latest … Yet more big-ups for Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant, this time from Joon Scribble at Live Journal: “The story breezes through and while danger is afoot, it’s never high enough to make you feel actually worried. But it’s a nice, fast read and I grew to like the characters enough so that even if I didn’t get too involved in their actual story, I did want to read about them.” … Delving into Crime Spree’s back issues, Judy Clemens is impressed by Andrew Nugent’s Second Burial, to wit:“(T)his beautifully written book … Nugent’s knowledge of the African community in Ireland is written into this book in an interesting and engrossing way, and by the end of the book I felt I learned something completely new … I am so glad to have discovered Nugent – to me a new author – and will certainly be looking up more of his work.” … The Irish Emigrant makes Ingrid Black’s The Judas Heart its Book of the Week, concluding: “As with all rewarding crime stories, this is a book that requires concentration to keep abreast of the twists and turns of the plot, twists and turns which reflect the distorted thinking of a number of the characters. The third in a series featuring agent Saxon, it manages to keep the suspense alive until the very last pages.” … The inevitable John Connolly review is a Crime Spree magazine double-whammy. In Issue 14, Ruth Jordan declares that, “The Book of Lost Things is a wonderful moment in literature. It’s not a mystery. It’s a fairytale for adults. And children. Every sentence wraps its heart around anyone who loves words. The protagonist himself loves words and therefore has an open imagination. The writer? He’s operating upon another level.” Pat Frovarp takes up the baton in Issue 15, to wit: “David’s experience in this monster-filled other-world is brought to life by Connolly’s unique imagination as it carries the reader along a wickedly clever path that will keep you turning the pages. The Book of Lost Things is certainly a departure for Mr. Connolly, but a story so entrancing that one ought not to pass it by.” We couldn’t agree more … “Christine Falls, despite an ultimately less-than-believable resolution, is a delight in itself, and it’s also a promising experiment. The book fuels the best kind of suspense, not just about Quirke’s future adventures but about the effects of the crafty Benjamin Black on John Banville’s art,” says Gideon Lewis-Kraus at The Slate … “I read until my eyes ached, rested a bit and went back to finish this amazing book. Michael Collins lays the American lifestyle out there for our examination in a “can’t put it down” tale that most of us can relate to,” says Nancy, via Powell’s Books, of Death of a Writer, aka The Secret Life of Robert E. Pendleton … Back to Crime Spree magazine, and a major hup-ya from Jon Jordan for Adrian McKinty in Issue 18, to wit: “Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. This third in the trilogy, The Bloomsday Dead, should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging, this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better, a true star of crime fiction.” Finally, a timely boost for Cora Harrison in the week in which My Lady Judge is published in the US, delivered by Dave Biemann of Mystery One Bookstore: “Cora Harrison writes with an easy grace. The relationships between her characters reminds one, very much, of Ellis Peters and her Brother Cadfael … Fans of the traditional mystery, Irish history, off-stage violence, subtle romance and a well paced and plotted read should thoroughly enjoy My Lady Judge.” The Judge judged, eh? Oooh, the humanity, etc.

Yet More Independent Publishing, Sort Of

The Irish Independent has launched yet another of in its series of free books, this one focusing on 20 contemporary female Irish writers. First down the road less travelled is Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest, to which the Indo’s legion of blurb elves addressed themselves thusly:

Edna O’Brien’s novel In the Forest tells the dark story of a beautiful young woman and her little son who live in a cottage on the edge of a forest in rural Ireland and are murdered by a deranged killer who has become obsessed with her. The book is based on the true story of Imelda Riney and her son Liam, who were murdered by Brendan O’Donnell in Co Clare in 1994. The mentally disturbed O’Donnell went on to kill local priest Fr Joe Walshe. When the book was first published in 2002 it caused a lot of controversy and O’Brien was accused of exploiting the grief of the families involved. But if the novel makes use of a real life event, it does so for a valid artistic reason. This book is a brilliant exploration of exactly how such a horror -- and others that have happened since then -- can come to pass. It takes us deep into the mind of the killer and makes us feel the unspeakable terror of the victims. It is told in a calm and factual way, but in language of such intensity that the reader feels part of what is happening. It is at once terrifying and spell-binding to read.

All of which leads us to wonder when the Indo will get around to a series of contemporary Irish crime novels. Our humble suggestion runs, in no particular order and excluding novels currently in the first flush of publication, thusly:

1. Quinn by Seamus Smyth
2. The Guards by Ken Bruen
3. Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty
4. The Dead by Ingrid Black
5. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
6. The Polling of the Dead by John Kelly
7. Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan
8. Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman
9. The Guilty Heart by Julie Parsons
10. Bogmail by Patrick McGinley
11. Death the Pale Rider by Vincent Banville
12. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
13. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
14. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
15. The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore
16. Revenge by KT McCaffrey
17. The Assassin by Liam O’Flaherty
18. Resurrection Man by Eoin McNamee
19. Death Call by TS O’Rourke
20. A Carra King by John Brady

Anyone you think we might have left out? As always, canvassing will immediately qualify …

It’s All McNamee, Me, Me With Him

It’s an oldie but a goodie – we really couldn’t resist this snippet from an interview the Belfast Telegraph conducted with Eoin McNamee (right) a couple of weeks back, to wit:

Q: Are you quite a dark person and difficult to live with when you’re writing?
A: “I draw things very close to me when I write and often emerge blinking into the sunlight. I don’t think I’m difficult to live with but I’ve been told I get quite intense. I remember noticing my six-year-old crawling past the table where I was working, with his leg bent oddly and pushing one foot. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was playing at being a piece of rubbish so he wouldn’t disturb me. I think I took the next month off after that.”

Seriously – we still don’t know whether to laugh or cry …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of ‘Weekend Ho!’ Interweb Baloohaha

Greetings and salutations to muso-head, glamarama media babe and all-round good elf Sinead Gleeson (right), back on the interweb from blogging’s equivalent of maternity leave at the award-winning The Sigla Blog … huzzah! And felicitations too to Rhian over at It’s A Crime! (Or A Mystery!), back in the blogging saddle (the 'bladdle'?) after way too long away. Nice to have you back, ma’am. Please don’t go away again … Would you get away with murder? Try the quiz over at Quiz Galaxy, which the pesky elves discovered when they were slacking off and perusing The Rap Sheet instead of slaving in the dungeon … Kelli Stanley, who recently stood up to the best that the Crime Always Pays’ interrogation elves could throw at her, has Convivium, a short story in her unique Roman Noir style, available over at the very fine Hard Luck Stories … The Childrens' Books Ireland website had a major overhaul last week; drop by and say hello ... Staying with kids’ books, why not drop by The Third Pig Detective Agency, where Harry Pigg – y’know, the little piggie who was smart enough to build his house out of bricks – is snuffling for truffles on the mean streets of fairytale-land. The elves are bigging him up Irish-style, in the vain hope he’ll one day get around to investigating their abduction and incarceration in the Crime Always Pays palace. Aye, and pigs will … oh. Erm, forget that - here's a sample chapter from Bob Burke (aka Mr Pigg) instead ... Finally, to mark the occasion of the UK release of 3:10 to Yuma, we just felt like an Elmore Leonard fix – check out the first part of World Class Detroiters, wherein Dutch gets interviewed, does a reading, and humbly avoids acknowledging he’s the Greatest Living Writer on the Planet. “When Leonard releases a new book, it’s like Christmas morning.” Amen, brother …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 697: Charles Kelly

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?
Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis, re-issued in connection with the Michael Caine movie as Get Carter. “Hard-boiled” doesn’t even begin to tell the story. The main character is tough to the bone, the dialogue is chillingly understated, and the bleak atmosphere is perfectly rendered. It’s been called the best thriller ever written, and I agree.
What do you read for guilty pleasures?
My guiltiest pleasure read last year was Men’s Adventure Magazines, a history of men’s adventure magazines in post-war America. It mostly consists of covers and illustrations from the ultra-lurid mags that I used to inhale as a boy: sweating adventurers being attacked by locusts as big-breasted women in skimpy, often torn, garments swoon nearby; gutsy American soldiers gunning down Nazis while big-breasted women in skimpy, often torn, garments swoon nearby; blood-covered pirates repelling boarders while big-breasted … (well, you know).
Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting an e-mail on my PDA saying J.T. Lindroos at Point Blank Press would accept my novel Pay Here for publication. This after writing six novels, having three of them agented, and having none of them sell. I love the Point Blank Press writers – Ray Banks, Allan Guthrie, Duane Swierczynski, and all the others – and it was humbling and thrilling to know I would be joining that select group. Second-most satisfying moment: Walking into The Poisoned Pen Mystery Bookstore in my hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, and seeing a big, lovely display of about 20 hardcovers of Pay Here.
The best Irish crime novel is. . .?
It’s hard to beat The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen. But I’m also a big fan of Dublin by Sean Moncrieff. Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman is also great fun.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Dublin would suit the big screen just fine. It’s got action, drugs and intrigue. Colin Farrell could play the lead, but he would have to develop a pot belly. Don’t know if he’s willing to do that.
Worst/best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is waiting for years (sometimes many years) for the pay-off (the emotional pay-off, that is. Where’s the money in this game?). The best thing is the process, just going into the trance of writing and solving the storytelling problems. Christ, it’s fun!
The pitch for your next novel is. . .?
Old murders die hard. No one knows that better than crime reporter Michael Callan, who’s out to pin one on a friend.
Who are you reading right now?
Jason Starr, Ray Banks and Gil Brewer. Jason was up after me at my recent book signing at The Poisoned Pen, so I got him to sign his latest, The Follower. I’m reading that one and gobbling it up like candy, as I do with all of his books. I’m also reading Ray Banks’ Donkey Punch. Hard-nosed doesn’t get any better. The Vengeful Virgin by the late Gil Brewer is the selection for September to be read by our Hard-Boiled Discussion Group at the Poisoned Pen. Sexual obsession: love it.
The three best words to describe your own writing are. . ?
Too. Damn. Punchy.

Charles Kelly’s Pay Here is available at all good bookstores.

That Ken Bruen, He’s No Oil Paint … Oh.

So there the elves were, merrily surfing the interweb for elf-porn, and lo! What did they stumble across? None other than Ken Bruen, immortalised in oils on KT McCaffrey’s new interweb page thingy. Quite where Sir Kenneth of Bruen found the time to pose for the portrait is beyond us – according to the rat-face fink canaries in the aviary out back of Crime Always Pays Towers, he’s currently finishing two books to deadline. As in, simultaneously. One with the right hand, apparently, the other with the left … Seriously, though, we fully understand the rush – after all, Ken’s only published Cross and Ammunition already this year, with Slide to come next month. Word around the aviary is, he’s scheduled in some well- deserved breathing time for next Easter … Meanwhile, if you need a quick catch-up to see what Bruen novels you missed out on when you blinked last week, check out Ali Karim’s appreciation over at Shotsmag.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Two-Way Split by Allan Guthrie

“The holdall sat on the bed like an ugly brown bag of conscience.” Fans of classic crime writing will get a kick or five out of Two-Way Split, and we’re talking classic: Allan Guthrie’s multi-character exploration of Edinburgh’s underbelly marries the spare, laconic prose of James M. Cain with the psychological grotesqueries of Jim Thompson at his most lurid. And yet this is by no means a period piece. Guthrie’s unhurried, deadpan style is timeless even as it evokes the changing face of modern Edinburgh, as seen through the eyes of the novel’s most sympathetic character, Pearce – although sympathetic is a relative term, given that Pearce has been recently released from prison after serving a ten-stretch for premeditated murder. The most delicious aspect of the tale is its refusal to indulge in the sturm und drang of hyperbolic gore, despite being couched in the narrative of a revenge fantasy. Instead, and while it fairly bristles with the frisson of potential violence at every turn, Guthrie cranks up the tension notch by notch by the simple expedient of having his characters grow ever more quietly desperate as the pages turn. The result is a gut-knotting finale that unfurls with the inevitability of all great tragedy and the best nasty sex – it’ll leave you devastated, hollowed out, aching to cry and craving more. – Declan Burke

As He Sows, So Shall He Reap

John Connolly always gives his readers full value for money, and not only when they buy his books. His blog offers a rare and fascinating insight into the process of writing, particularly during the creative phase, when Connolly himself isn’t entirely sure of how an unpolished story will turn out. Brave stuff, especially from a best-seller who has nothing to gain from allowing readers a peek behind the curtains. At the moment he’s talking about next year’s The Reapers, to wit:

“Still, at least The Reapers now has a beginning, a middle, and an end that, to be honest, was a little surprising to me. Then again, that’s one of the pleasures of not planning the novels down to the last detail: in the process of writing them themes begin to emerge, so that what might have begun life as an aside in the first chapter becomes, by the end, the basis for the book’s defining moment. Maybe I’m a little more optimistic about the novel than I was earlier in the year. As this draft has proceeded the book, I think, has become more interesting. What began life as a light novel has assumed darker overtones. It will be an odd read, I suspect. I remember a British critic once commenting on Angel and Louis to the effect that she believed I found them funnier than they actually were. In fact, I’ve always been ambivalent about them, and that ambivalence finds its fullest expression in The Reapers. It becomes clear that they, along with Parker, the Fulcis, and Jackie Garner, are damaged individuals, and anyone who enters their sphere of influence believing otherwise is deluded. And so, as the book develops, their banter becomes a kind of denial of reality, a means of distancing themselves from the damage that they inflict upon others.”

The Reapers, due next May and still officially untitled, can be pre-ordered here …

The Day The Music Was Massacred

Hodder Headline Ireland publish The Miami Showband Massacre this week, the events of an infamous episode during the Troubles narrated by survivor and ex-band member Steve Travers (right), and the blurb elves have been grinding their quills down to stumps thusly:

In the early hours of 31 July 1975, The Miami Showband was stopped at a military checkpoint. As they were held at gunpoint outside their WV minibus, a bomb that – unknown to the band members – was being loaded on to their bus exploded prematurely destroying the bus and catapulting the band members into a nearby field. As Stephen Travers lay seriously wounded in the field he listened to the cries of his friends as they were mercilessly gunned down and the steps of the gunmen getting closer … Here is his story. What is it like to survive such an atrocity? To live when those around you die? Now Stephen Travers remembers the highs and lows of being in one of the most successful showbands of the 1970s and how it all ended in a terrifying moment. In a moving and honest quest for truth and reconciliation, he tries to come to terms with what happened as he looks for the answers as to why his friends were killed. Stephen wants to understand but will he find the answers when he meets the men responsible for the massacre face to face?