Friday, March 21, 2008

Funky Friday’s Freaky-Deak

It’s Friday, it’s funky, to wit: Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Beyond Borders is kind enough to get in touch to mention that In Reference To Murder is currently mentioning a rather unusual Irish crime fiction project. Quoth IRTM: “The show, written by Irish director and playwright Paul Walker, portrays the seedy underside of 1950s Dublin, when double-talking politicians professed piety but entertained prostitutes on the side. The play was first performed in the bathrooms at a large public park (St. Stephen’s Green), as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival, then later staged as part of the Edinburgh Fringe, where it won the Fringe First Award, and went on a mini-tour of England, playing to sold-out bathrooms in Brighton and Nottingham.” Hmmmm … As Peter says, ‘What I wonder is where the theatre-goers go if they have to use the john during intermission?’ … From the sublime to the ridiculous: “The BGS English Department, in association with the Parents’ Association, is to produce a compilation of new writing inspired and influenced by the work of ex-pupil and famous author, [(The Artist Formerly Known As)] Colin Bateman.” Gawd help us all … Sublime or ridiculous? YOU decide – there’s an excerpt from Benny Blanco’s THE SILVER SWAN available here, along with a video in which Benny holds forth about why he writes crime fiction, although we couldn’t get it to work … Now this is definitely sublime: Gerald So is kicking off a crime fiction poetry blog, with Sir Kenneth of Bruen among the contributors … The Book Witch has a very nice piece on the sadly missed Siobhan Dowd (right) over at her interweb yokeybus, while Carousel has an equally nice piece on the importance of The Siobhan Dowd Trust … Over at Crime Scene Norn Iron, Gerard Brennan has a review of the little-known THE LOST CHORD by Tony Bailie … Not content with wowing the cheeky tyke demographic in Scarborough last week, Derek Landy’s gone and done it again in Doncaster: “Thousands of Doncaster schoolkids voted in the town’s most popular ever book awards and Harry Potter and Alex Rider didn’t even make the shortlist. The winner – by a landslide according to the organisers – was Skulduggery Pleasant by Irish author Derek Landy.” To celebrate, CAP herewith posts a video of Derek waxing lyrical about Skulduggery in an interview with Book Love’s Jano Rohleder at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. Roll it there, Collette …

1 comment:

  1. Colin - The bad news is that the elves are EVERYWHERE, and the worse news is that they're a batch we had Eoin Colfer knock off for us, so they can, y'know, time-travel and move between dimensions and whatnot. The good news, for you, is that they're a lazy shower of buggers, so they probably haven't read your new novel yet, the one set in No Alibis that traduces a certain literary Irish author dabbling in crime fiction. Probably. Cheers, Dec

    ReplyDelete

Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.