Toronto’s Lone Ranger; and OLD DOGS For A Hard Road

It’s over a year now since I read John McFetridge’s SWAP, the third in his oeuvre after the Toronto-set DIRTY SWEET and EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE. As with the previous two, SWAP sent me into a sweaty, teeth-grinding frenzy of green-eyed monsterdom, which is always a good sign. Ken Bruen likes it too. Quoth Ken’s blurb:

“SWAP is a stunning leap forward from an already fine author. This is John channelling Elmore Leonard at the height of his game and with dialogue Tarantino would kill for. A plot that moves like Pulp Fiction but with a nice Canadian slant that keeps it fresh and different. John’s creation of the African-American characters is like Sallis at his finest. With a wicked sense of humour that is irresistible, SWAP moves Canadian mystery right to the top.”

  SWAP is published today in Canada, although it won’t hit U.S. stores – as LET IT RIDE – until next February. For what it’s worth, and bearing in mind that yon McFetridge is a good mate of mine, my advice is not to wait: SWAP is as good as the noir novel gets.
  Meanwhile, and while we’re on the subject of Ken Bruen, I’m hearing a rumour that yet another of his novels, the Busted Flush TOWER collaboration with Reed Farrel Coleman, has been optioned for the big screen, this time by the team behind the Tom Cruise flick Valkyrie. Can anyone confirm?
  Meanwhile meanwhile, and while we’re on the subject of Busted Flush and bigging-up good mates, here’s the cover for Donna Moore’s forthcoming OLD DOGS. Is it just me, or is that cover a work of art?

A Lender Nor A Borrower Be

With all the reams dedicated to the pros and cons of Kindle, I’m sure someone else has covered this elsewhere, but if they have I haven’t come across it. Anyway, what I’m wondering is this: What’s going to happen to the borrowing and lending of books?
  As I understand it, you won’t be able – even if it were legal to do so – to zap your latest fave from one e-reader to another. And a lot of readers take great pleasure in not only recommending a new book, but also pressing it into the hands of family and friends with the breathless command to read it now, this very minute, lest the unfortunate ignorant should fall under a bus the following morning and die without knowing true joy.
  Personally, I want to staple such people’s eyes closed. But that’s just me. And lots of people love to lend and swap books, to the extent that there’s a thriving black market in swappable books out there.
  So what’ll happen if the e-readers ever tumble over the tipping point? You’ll hardly be in a position to lend your Kindle, will you? Kind of defeats the point of having one if you keep loaning it to people so they can read books on it. And what about second-hand bookstores? Will there be some electronic equivalent, whereby a Kindle user can download pre-loved books at a fraction of the Kindle price?
  I don’t have a Kindle, at least not yet, but if I do invest then the whole lending-borrowing thing won’t be an issue, because I hate lending books. In fact, I do it only on very rare occasions, with people I can trust, and those rare occasions are enough to remind me why I don’t lend books. Mainly, it’s because no one ever returns a borrowed book.
  There are subtle reasons for this. In some cases, the borrower starts to read the book, and doesn’t like it, and then can’t return it for fear of calling the lender’s taste into question. Or the opposite occurs, and the book is so terrific that the borrower simply can’t countenance the prospect of living without the book on his or her shelf. Or, worst of all, the book is so terrific that the borrower, without asking permission, lends it on to someone else, with rave reviews. And why wouldn’t they? If you don’t love the book enough to hoard it in the first place, why should you love it enough to want it back?
  No, as with money, the best thing with books is to be neither a lender nor a borrower. If you love books, truly love them, then you’ll end up losing good friends in the fall-out and end up like me, with so few friends that you end up blogging in a pathetic attempt to generate on-line relationships.
  And all that is without opening the can of worms as to why, when people are supposed to be your friends, and family, and know you better than you know yourself, etc., they insist on lending you books you wouldn’t read were they the only books left after a nuclear holocaust. And oh, the horror, the horror, of the book-shaped Christmas gift in its shiny wrapping …

He’ll Be Having A Go At The Lilies Next

He pee’d off the literary crew when, on accepting the Booker Prize for THE SEA, he announced that it was ‘nice to see a work of art win for a change’. Then he got stuck into crime writing – allegedly. Yesterday, in a fine interview with Fiona McCann in the Irish Times, John Banville had a go at the webnauts. To wit:

Banville is full of opinions: on art, on sport, on working life, on the internet. “Most of the stuff that people churn out on the internet is rubbish. People should learn a little bit of reticence and not imagine that they have things to say.”

  Funnily enough, I read the interview on the Irish Times’ website, in which John Banville is, as Fiona McCann points out, ‘full of opinions’ …
  The interview, of course, was marking the publication of the latest Banville novel, THE INFINITIES, which I read a couple of weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed. Told over the course of one day, as a family gathers about its dying pater familias, Adam Godley, the story is for the most part narrated by Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods – although, as Hermes points out, the gods being a rather protean lot, the first-person narrative duties do tend to switch about. The tale is a gently meandering one of mortal and immortal failings and foibles, and love stories, and minor infidelities, and quantum physics. The characters are fragmentary, deliberately so, as Hermes wafts in and out of their lives, with the story as a whole offering an incomplete mosaic of a family trapped in the amber of one day. The language, the prose style, is beautifully rendered, even if there are sentences and even whole paragraphs that billow like glass overblown – although it should be said that almost every line is shot through with sly and self-mocking humour. At the risk of displaying an unseemly lack of reticence, I’d say it’s Banville’s most engaging book for some time, an arched eyebrow of a comic novel that seems to appreciate its place in the grand scheme of things, which is, I think, because of its admittedly enjoyable angsty self-awareness, on the lower slopes of the empyrean rather than in the pantheon itself.

Roses Are Red, Dahlias Are Blue

“If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.” So spaketh Ray Chandler (right), who wasn’t overly enamoured, to put it mildly, by his experience of working as a screenwriter in La-La Land. Still, the movies are crackers, and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin is hosting a mini-festival of Chandler-related flicks in September, which kicks off with Farewell, My Lovely (1944) on September 5 and includes The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Marlowe, Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Long Goodbye and Double Indemnity.
  My favourite, I have to say (usually while ducking rotten fruit and eggs of a similar disposition), is The Long Goodbye, probably because if I was a private eye, I’d be closer in spirit to Elliott Gould’s Marlowe than Bogart’s, or even Dick Powell’s. But hey, imagine if Mitchum had played Marlowe thirty years earlier …
  Speaking of Sleepy Bob, I watched Out of the Past the other night, yet again – it’s almost 20 years since I wrote a college essay on Out of the Past as the quintessential, and damn near perfect, film noir. Maybe there’s more important noirs, tauter and darker noirs, more noir-ish noirs – but Out of the Past is noir in a nutshell, right down to its US title. Build My Gallows High is too melodramatic, regardless of what the novel was called.
  Anyway, here’s a quick take on The Long Goodbye’s transition from novel to movie:

“The realist in murder,” wrote Raymond Chandler (right) in 1950, “writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities . . . It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.” Originally a man of action in taut, streamlined plots in novels such as The Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Long Goodbye (1953) finds PI Philip Marlowe ruminating at length on the relevance of his attitude and philosophy. Plot had never been Chandler’s strength but in The Long Goodbye the plot becomes a rambling, shambolic paean to the tattered grandeur of a man out of time, whose idiosyncratic sense of morality has outlived its usefulness and relevance …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review - Mesrine: Killer Instinct / Public Enemy No. 1

Jacques Mesrine – it’s pronounced Meh-reen; you called him Mez-reen at your peril – was the French equivalent of Martin Cahill, aka The General. A Robin Hood-style folk-hero, Mesrine was essentially a bank robber during a career that lasted from the early ’60s until 1979, when he was allegedly executed in the Paris streets by a shadowy police unit.
  Being French, of course, Mesrine was considerably more flamboyant than Cahill. A master of disguise known alternatively as ‘the Man of a Hundred Faces’ and ‘Jacques Du Monde’ (Jacques Everyman), he actively courted the media. His ability to escape from maximum security prisons, in France and Canada, struck a chord with a nation that was struggling to escape from its perception of itself as it came to terms with the emerging truth of the dirty war in Algeria. (Mesrine himself served in Algeria in 1956, where it’s alleged that he was a member of a torture squad.)
  By pitching himself as an anti-establishment rebel in a series of high-profile media interviews with outlets such as Paris Match, Mesrine captured the French imagination at a time when France itself was experiencing the social and cultural unrest that would culminate in the protests and riots of the student revolution of Paris ’68.
  His signature trademark was the double-whammy stick-up: after robbing a bank, Mesrine would run to the next street and rob another, while the police floundered at the scene of the first.
  In thumbing his nose at the authorities in such a fashion, Mesrine garnered potent enemies among the police, the judiciary and the political establishment. Yet it was this flagrant contempt for the powers-that-be that secured him a cult hero status in France on a par with Che Guevara. All of which has contributed hugely to the critical and commercial success, in France, of the movies Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1.
  Directed by Jean-François Richet, the movies are superb thrillers that capture Mesrine’s charisma, devil-may-care attitude and cavalier spirit. Captured in Canada after a failed kidnapping, for example, Mesrine is asked on TV for a quote, and responds with “Long live Free Quebec!” In a microcosm, the moment sums up Mesrine’s appeal: media savvy, cheerfully defiant in the face of apparent defeat, a man of the people, a rebel with a cause for each of his hundred faces. With their free-wheeling style and irrepressible kinetic energy, not to mention their uncomplicated and largely uncritical celebration of his lifestyle, the films are garnering favourable comparisons with Mean Streets and Goodfellas, due in no small part to a terrific performance from Vincent Cassel in the role of the eponymous anti-hero.
  And yet the subtitle of Richet’s first movie, Killer Instinct, is an uncompromising one and should give pause for thought to those who would champion Mesrine’s freebooting adventures. Mesrine was a killer who boasted of 39 murders in total. That may well be a wildly exaggerated number, given that Mesrine makes the claim in an autobiography he published from prison in 1977, also titled Killer Instinct, and which he subsequently asserted he wrote to confuse the authorities in the lead-up to his latest trial, and because his public expected any book from Mesrine to contain a high body-count. And yet there’s no getting away from the fact that, his reputation for glamour, high living and wooing beautiful women notwithstanding, Mesrine’s capacity for murder remained undiminished during the course of his career.
  Richet’s movies are not the first time Mesrine’s exploits have been committed to celluloid, although André Génovès’s film from 1984, Mesrine, confines itself to the 18 months the outlaw spent on the run – after escaping in 1978 from the maximum security prison specially designed to keep him behind bars – with his then girlfriend, Sylvia Jeanjacquot, who was by his side when his car was riddled with bullets in Paris. The fact that Richet devotes two films to Mesrine’s exploits may seem excessive, but there are strong arguments in favour of his approach.
  The first is that Mesrine packed a hell of a lot of incident into his relatively short life. Bank robbery was only one string to the bow of a man who was equally happy robbing casinos and kidnapping for profit. He was also unusually loyal, given that he operated in a milieu in which the notion of ‘honour amongst thieves’ is virtually always revealed to be a myth. After escaping from a Canadian prison, for instance, Mesrine later returned with an accomplice, both heavily armed, in a failed bid to break out some of his old comrades. Later, on the loose after yet another escape, Mesrine telephoned his then girlfriend, who was still incarcerated. She had to plead with him not to come and rescue her, on the basis that she had only a short time left to serve on her sentence.
  Moreover, Mesrine had an incorrigible sense of theatre, and it’s impossible to fully dislike a man who can unlock his handcuffs in court and throw them in the face of a judge, and later bound from the dock to kidnap the judge whilst his trial is ongoing, escaping to the street with his hostage in tow and from there to freedom, yet again.
  All of which fits very neatly with the Mesrine mythology, in which Robin Hood meets John Dillinger and provides a very satisfying movie for fans of gritty, violent and entertaining thrillers.
  The second movie, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, is a different affair. Slower in pace, more thoughtful in its appraisal of Mesrine’s public persona, it covers a period in which the criminal becomes ever more politicised, until such time as he is stating that his robberies are actually politically motivated. He claims fraternity with international causes such as the Palestinian struggle and the Red Brigades, and seems to be trying to pass himself off as a French Carlos the Jackal. While it is entirely probably that Mesrine did business with a wide range of individuals and organisations, not least when it came to trading information and / or purchasing weaponry, the grandstanding comes across as poignantly quixotic attempt by a common criminal to give his prosaic actions some socio-political ballast.
  It’s as if Mesrine, acutely aware of the power of the media, eventually came to believe his own press, despite the fact that he was the one responsible for creating much of the mythology. What is particularly poignant, however, is that he seems to have come to believe that he had transcended the law and its minions, and that he would be judged, when the time came for final reckonings, by the court of public appeal.
  Of course, the success of Richet’s films suggests that the court of public appeal has come down very much in favour of Mesrine and his self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Meanwhile, that a career criminal and self-confessed killer is the cause celebre du jour with both the disenfranchised youth and the intellectual elite in France suggests that a new work-out routine is the least of Nicolas Sarkozy’s problems this summer.

  Mesrine: Killer Instinct is released on August 7th. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 is released on August 28th. This article first appeared in the Irish Examiner.

  Meanwhile, friend of CAP and aspiring crime writer Darragh McManus has posted the first chapter of his magnum opus crime spoof COLD! STEEL! JUSTICE!!! to the web, suggesting that, if enough people are interested, he’ll post Chapter Two. Make it so, people …

Declan Hughes: Resistance Is Futile

As befits these recessionary times, Crime Always Pays has gone on a go-slow, paring back all output to a one-day week. But the news that Declan Hughes (right) has been nominated for yet another Shamus is more than enough to get yours truly back at the keyboard, given that this year’s nomination – full list here – is his third Shamus nom on the bounce: he won the debut section in 2007 for THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD, was back in harness in 2008 with THE COLOUR OF BLOOD, and has just been nominated for 2009 for THE PRICE OF BLOOD (winner to be announced at the Indiana Bouchercon, October 16th). Now, without having the patience or time to go through the history of the Shamus awards, I’m sure there have been other writers who have been nominated for three awards in a row – but for their first three novels?
  I know that the news itself is a little stale at this stage, given that the nominations were announced last week, but given that a high percentage of this blog’s readers are Irish, and there remains a resistance among Irish readers for Irish-set crime fiction, it’s certainly worth repeating – Declan Hughes is one of the best PI writers in the world.
  Quite why Irish readers are resistant to Irish-set crime fic is a story for another day, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of turn-out Hughes gets for his crime writing workshop next month, which kicks off the crime fiction element of the Books 2009 Festival (Dublin, September 12th). If there’s any justice in the world, they’ll need cattle-prods to keep the crowds at bay.
  In a not-unrelated digression, I was at the recent Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan, where I was ‘Who’s he?’ guy in a line-up of yours truly, Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway and Eoin McNamee. The conversation largely concerned itself with why literary fiction is generally considered superior to crime fiction, although what bugs me about those kind of conversations is the presumption that people only read one kind of story – crime or literary fiction, or sci-fi, or chick lit, or whatever you’re having yourself. I always feel a bit guilty at times like that, because I’m a complete magpie – I’ll read anything once it’s well written, or has a great plot, or terrific ideas. And if you can give me all three at the same time, I’ll come and be your Filipino house-boy for the rest of your life (I’m being rhetorical, McKinty).
  Anyway, the gig finished up with Dec Hughes reading a passage from his latest novel, the fifth Ed Loy, which Dec Hughes has very recently finished (the name escapes me now). When he was finished, Eoin McNamee said, ‘Well, that’s put to bed the idea that crime writers can’t write literary fiction.’ Or words to that effect.
  Perhaps it’s because Hughes takes for his inspiration Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and – particularly – Ross Macdonald that his prose has a lushly gorgeous style, and perhaps it’s that the PI of crime fiction – that eternally wounded romantic – lends itself to the kind of first-person monologue that allows the writer’s imagination to flourish. Either way – and this is for those resistant Irish readers – Declan Hughes is a wonderful writer. And all of the foregoing doesn’t even take into consideration his best novel, in my opinion his latest, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, which won’t even be nominated for a Shamus until this time next year.
  There’s a bandwagon leaving town, people. Its name is Declan Hughes. My advice to you is to be on it when it pulls out.

Move Along, Please, Nothing To See Here …

Apologies to all three regular readers, but Crime Always Pays is going off-line for the foreseeable future. The main reason is time, or the lack thereof, and the fact that yours truly, aka Some Chancer, Esq., has to choose between blogging and writing, and that’s a foregone conclusion. If any Irish writer wants to avail of the space here, and is prepared to upload their own news, reviews, updates etc., then he or she is more than welcome to do so – log-in passwords et al available on request. In the meantime, thanks a million to everyone who made the last couple of years such an enjoyable experience – you all know who you are.

UPDATE (Slight Return): Many thanks for all the kind words, folks, whether delivered by comment or privately – really, you’re being far too generous. I have a few regrets about parking the blog, not least of which is that it was a decent spot to let people know about new Irish crime writers – myself included, of course. On that score, the various blogs on the left-hand side, a goodly chunk of which are recent additions by new Irish writers, will continue to update. There’s also, although it hardly needs to be said, Gerard Brennan’s excellent Crime Scene Northern Ireland.
  I’ll miss it for myself too, and not just for self-promotion, which was always a vital component of the quid pro quo. Blogging has become like a stroll through the neighbourhood. Some days you’ll stop and chat with the neighbours, other days you’ll nod and go by. Either way, it’s always nice to know you have good neighbours.
  There have been some ideas put forward in the last day or so about how to keep the blog running with a minimum input from me, some of which have been interesting. And I repeat – if anyone fancies updating the blog themselves, with news and views, etc., then they’re more than welcome. Although, as I say, updating your own blog means that the news will pop up on the left-hand side of Crime Always Pays anyway.
  Now, the essence of successful blogging is regular and interesting content. Despite that, and given that I know I’ll miss it (or, more precisely, the people it puts me in contact with), and as a result of being prodded with a big stick by my good lady wife, I’m very tempted to blog on a reduced basis – perhaps, as Donna Moore suggested, once a week. That would allow me to post links to writers’ latest news and releases, etc., while also indulging in a little self-promotion, and also have some fun with whatever rant happens to be occupying me at the time. Business as usual, in other words, albeit on a weekly rather than daily basis. So long as it doesn’t impact on my new writing schedule, that would be ideal.
  I don’t kid myself that it would be blogging per se, but it would, crucially, allow me to stay in touch with people, and give people a reason to stay in touch with me. Given the loneliness of the long-distance writer, that’s not to be underestimated.
  Lastly, thanks again for all the big-ups. I guess there’s a few more than three regular readers after all …
  Cheers, Dec

When Johnny Met Ali

Ali Karim had an extensive interview with John Connolly over at the Rap Sheet recently, which makes for a terrific read, although they touched only briefly on JC’s forthcoming THE GATES (boo). To wit:

AK: So tell us more about THE GATES, which you’ve described as a young adult novel that “involves Satanism and quantum physics.” Will Charlie Parker make an appearance in that story?

JC: Hah! No, Parker doesn’t make an appearance in THE GATES. It’s actually very different from what I’ve done before. Well, there are probably slight echoes of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, but essentially THE GATES is a mischievous book. It’s about a small boy and his dog who discover that their new neighbours are Satanists who are trying to open the gates of Hell. The book is filled with odd little footnotes about science and history. It’s probably the lightest book I’ve written, and the most purely entertaining. Frankly, writing it was a blast.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mehmet Murat Somer

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?
Definitely the Ripley’s of Patricia Highsmith. If these are taken, I’ll go for the ANIMAL LOVER’S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Quite content as myself. Really. But if I must choose a name: Vautrin of Balzac.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Porn!

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I stop typing with a wide silly smile on my face!

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Whichever one is not in the blood ‘n’ gore genre.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
The one Steven Spielberg or Pedro Almodovar will direct.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst are: Sleeping less – my natural condition; spending more time with my laptop – not fun. And my recent habit of making additions, changes or twists according to reader requests. Best? No idea.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Working simultaneously on two: Completion of my Champagne Trilogy, after THE HOLDING AND THE CATWALK, with the grand finale THE BACKSTAGE. Every piece gets in order as like a jigsaw puzzle. And another Hop-Çiki-Yaya thriller, the 8th, where my sleuth, with his Audrey Hepburn alter-ego, finds a murder in her family past.

Who are you reading right now?
Right now? The questions on this Q&A! But nowadays I am going over again COUSINE BETTE of Balzac, and enjoying the grande-dame of modern Turkish literature Ayşe Kulin’s VEDA (THE FAREWELL).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God shouldn’t be so cruel. I’ll do my best to persuade.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Life is joy!

Mehmet Murat Somer’s THE GIGOLO MURDER is published by Serpent’s Tail.

Squeeze Over In The Bed – There’s Always Room For One More Version Of Hallelujah

Off with yours truly to the Flat Lake Festival today, for fun and rain-drenched frolics, if the view from the window is anything to by. I’ll be doing a crime fiction panel tomorrow with Declan Hughes and Brian McGilloway, hosted by Eoin McNamee, but my highlight of the weekend will very probably be the Jack L (right) gig, tonight at ten bells. If anyone’s around and fancies a scoop, I’ll be the one lurking down the back hollering requests for Jacky (“And if some day I should become / A singer with a Spanish bum …” etc.). If you’ve never heard of Jack L, incidentally, he’s possessed of the finest set of Irish pipes since Count John McCormack, and his album of Jacques Brel covers is on a par with Scott Walker’s. For a taster, the vid below is Jack L doing Commander Cohen’s Hallelujah, without some version of which a day is never fully right. Roll it there, Collette …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: ‘The Story Of Crime’ by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Ten titles comprise The Martin Beck Mysteries, published between 1965 and 1975 and co-authored by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
  The first six have been reissued (with fine cover designs by Gregg Kulick) by the aficionados of crime fiction at Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Press. This imprint also publishes Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, James M. Cain, Ross Macdonald, James Ellroy and Jim Thompson so you know where to go.
  These ten Martin Beck novels were influenced by Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series which started in 1956 – nine years before the first Beck Mystery. In MURDER AT THE SAVOY, the murderer mentions reading McBain’s TILL DEATH, so the authors were aware of McBain and acknowledging his role. The Beck Mysteries went deeper than the early McBain books through Beck’s greater interaction with the ensemble of police colleagues, through delineating Beck’s inner life and struggles in a more obvious and human way and through explicit social commentary (often scathing).
  The detailed plots and meticulous unravelling of clues meshed very well with the socialist dialectic of the Marxist authors and the narrative and integrity of the writing did not suffer. For example, in THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED, in reference to minor disturbances the previous summer of 1968:

“Instead they were handled by people who thought that Rhodesia was somewhere near Tasmania and that it is illegal to burn the American flag, but positively praiseworthy to blow your nose on the Vietnamese. These people thought that water cannons, rubber billy clubs and slobbering German shepherd dogs were superior aids when it came to creating contact with human beings …”

  The story never suffers from these polemics and even in MURDER AT THE SAVOY, which castigates big business, corruption and its fallout among ordinary citizens, the book is one of the most accomplished in the series - taut, rigorous and true.
  Henning Mankell, another Swede, is the natural inheritor of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s tradition. Mankell’s Inspector Wallander, an existential warrior battling crime and his own melancholia, closely resembles Beck.
  The Beck series used the Swedish weather to great effect - grey skies, rain, mist, sleet, snow, wind and hailstones and at the other extreme the scorching summers as a backdrop to the stories. The drab edifices of Stockholm’s public housing, the anonymous urban landscape, the ennui of the population and public servants, and the political and corporate corruption, is the milieu where Beck operates.
  The ten books are collectively known as The Story of Crime, comprising 300 chapters (30 chapters per book). They are all written with aplomb and honesty and set the standard for all police procedurals that followed. – Seamus Scanlon

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS on Crime Always Pays: In Which It All Gets Even More Self-Referential Than Usual

Rafe McGregor has been kind enough to post a review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the forthcoming opus from your humble host, which will be available at a Kindle near you in the very near future. The gist runs thusly:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is excellent, even better than THE BIG O. It has a great plot, cool characters, and there isn’t a single word wasted. This is really fine writing, masterful to the point where if I’d received the MS anonymously, I’d have assumed it came from one of the big bestsellers like Connelly, Crais, Rankin, or Child.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here ...
  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, for those of you who aren’t this blog’s three regular readers, is the sequel to THE BIG O, in which most of the characters from THE BIG O take off on a variety of trans-Europe road-trips, fetching up in the Greek islands for fun, frolics and the occasional Bellini. Join Karen, Ray, Madge, Doyle, Rossi, Sleeps, Frank, Melody and Sleeps for another screwball noir romp in which the money is just a McGuffin with extra cheese! Or, don’t!! You – yes, YOU! – decide.
  Rafe was also kind enough to descend into a mild form of existential angst over the fact that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS – as all three regular readers will be aware – was dropped by its intended publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I should say at this point that the decision wasn’t as simple as the book not being good enough to publish – it was all a bit complicated, actually – although my brand of existential angst, when I first heard the news, was fairly raw.
  But at this point, I’m pretty much okay with it. That’s partly because I’ve spent the last few days formatting the story for Kindle, which is also a good opportunity to give the story one last proof-edit, and I’m as happy as I’m likely to get that the story stands up. It’s not perfect by any means, and at this stage – which is probably the 14th or 15th time I’ve read it through – I’m wondering why anyone else would want to read it.
  On the basis that some people might want to read it, however, I’ve been every bit as diligent on the Kindle proof-edit as if it was for a conventional publishing. No reason I shouldn’t be, of course: when it comes down it, for yours truly, the story is sacred and everything else is just detail. Apart from the fact that most people don’t have access to Kindle – a rather relevant factor, it has to be said – the format is virtually irrelevant. It matters not a whit whether the book is published electronically, on paper between cardboard, uploaded to the web, or scratched onto papyrus. As with the sob story about the book being dropped by its publisher initially, nothing bar what people think of the story itself will have any lasting value.
  I’m hopeful that the Kindle publishing will lead to a more conventional publishing, not because, as Rafe suggests, there’s more money to be made that way – the writer’s royalties aren’t that different when you publish to Kindle – but because more people are likely read it, in 2009, as an ordinary book. But if that doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen, and I’ll be as proud of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, as a story, as if it had appeared as a conventional book.
  Meanwhile, and speaking of proper books, here’s a review by Garbhan Downey of Adrian McKinty’s FIFTY GRAND that’s worth checking out; and Ali Karim casts an eye over John Connolly’s THE LOVERS.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: 206 BONES by Kathy Reichs

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that a thriller heroine in possession of all the skills required to nail the bad guys must be in want of a sense of humour. Such heroines must be dourly effective if they are to compete in a man’s world of carnage and mayhem, especially as it’s generally men who are causing the mayhem, which is usually directed against women.
  So runs the popular perception, although Kathy Reichs’s series protagonist, the forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan, lends the lie to that canard. 206 BONES is Brennan’s 12th outing, in which she assists Det Andrew Ryan in linking a number of cases of murdered old women, all the while trying to uncover the source of the malicious rumours undermining her professional reputation. Set for the most part in a snow-blanketed Quebec, the story also finds Brennan in something of a romantic tizzy as she struggles with her better judgment to keep the quietly persistent Ryan, a former lover, at arm’s length …
  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Best. Book. Cover. Ever.

I know, I know, this one has been floating about recently, so you’ve very probably caught it somewhere else … but hell, leprechaun Nazis are always worth a repost. Ladeez ‘n’ Gennulmen, THE LITTLE PEOPLE by John Christopher …

Writing Advice # 2,017: In Which Captain Barbelo Nails It

The whole interview is worth catching, but the writing advice from Captain Joseph W. Barbelo’s – yon maverick genius behind BARBELO’S BLOOD – in his Q&A with Gerard Brennan at Crime Scene Norn Iron, is a piece of, well, maverick genius. To wit:

“The thing to remember is your book is already written, in its future, waiting for you to catch up with it. Do the legwork and you will.”

  There really isn’t a whole lot more you can add to that, is there?

Johnson And Boswell Ride Again

I’ll be writing a full-length review of John Connolly’s THE GATES closer to the publication date (October 1 in the UK), but for now suffice to say that it’s a terrific piece of work that put me in mind of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. That’s not a comparison I make lightly, as I’m one of those who thinks Douglas Adams was something of a genius in a minor key, but THE GATES has the same qualities: a beautifully wrought tone, a subversively funny take on the intricacies of science (in this case, sub-atomic physics), and a deceptively simple but utterly compelling story.
  In essence, young Samuel Johnson (with his loyal dachshund Boswell) takes on the might of Satan and Hell’s legions armed with little more than an irrepressible curiosity, a nascent sense of civic duty and a generous dollop of courage. At 40 years old I’m probably not the best judge in the world of this, but to me the secret of this particular success is that Connolly has tapped into the mind of a young boy of ‘perhaps eleven’ to give us the world as seen through Samuel’s eyes. It’s perhaps clichéd to say it, but in doing so the world is remade vividly in all its wonders, horrors and banalities.
  Samuel’s age and the way in which Connolly blends reality and mythology will very probably draw comparisons to THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, but – at the risk of offending teen wizard fans – this has more in common with the Harry Potter books in its apocalyptic battle between good and evil, albeit – and this is one of its major strengths – without the good guys having recourse to magic. Unless, of course, you consider the esoteric mysteries of quantum physics a kind of magic, which I do.
  Anyway, the bottom line is that THE GATES is a novel that should achieve the elusive crossover by appealing to both adults and children, and the whispers I’m hearing about a further two books in the series bode well (and will hopefully see the return of Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities). In the meantime, Chapter 1 can be found here …

Banville Vs Edwards: Peace Busts Out All Over, Unfortunately

Sad as it is to relate, folks, it seems that John Banville and Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) have run out of toys to throw out of the pram and are now doing a babes-in-arms gig. Just this morning a white-haired gentleman stepped out of a helicopter on the CAP Towers helipad brandishing the following missive:

“PEACE BREAKS OUT. Following a cordial private correspondence, John Banville and Ruth Dudley Edwards have kissed, made up and decommissioned their hurleys.”

  Boo, etc. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted …
  Meanwhile, the latest big-up for Cuddly Dudley’s latest opus, OMAGH: THE AFTERMATH comes courtesy of Suzanne Breen in the Sunday Tribune, with the gist running thusly:

“If ever you see cruelty, write it in the sky, and then people won’t stand for it,” an old Kerry woman once told Ruth Dudley Edwards’ brother. The author does so magnificently in her account of the Omagh bombing … Its portrayal of cruelty and suffering is relevant far beyond Ireland. It should be compulsory reading for everyone – terrorists and state forces – contemplating planting, or dropping, a bomb in conflict.”

  For more along those lines, clickety-click here …

Yes, We Have No Booker Prize

Peter Murphy has long been a friend of Crime Always Pays, and his debut novel, JOHN THE REVELATOR, is a very fine offering indeed. It put me in mind of Pat McCabe’s opus THE BUTCHER BOY when I was reading it, albeit with a tad less execution by pig-stickers.
  Anyway, JOHN THE REVELATOR is in the running for The Guardian’s innovative ‘Not the Booker Prize’ award, which will be given to the novel that should have been on the Booker longlist, and wasn’t, and you – yes, YOU! – can vote for it. Clickety-click here for all the details …
  Next week - Not the Orange Prize: In which you – yes, YOU! – get to vote for all those books that didn’t qualify for the Orange Prize because they were written by blokes …

Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: John Banville

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT – though I would have smartened up Dostoyevsky’s tin-eared prose style.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Adrian Leverkuhn, in Thomas Mann’s DOCTOR FAUSTUS: an utter monster but a supremely great artist. I would have worked at helping him to find his inner nice person. Ha.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t know, really. I find bad books hard to read.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Putting down the first notes for my new novel, which I did a few days ago. At this stage, all is possibility, conviction, confidence, happiness. In a year or two I’ll be wading through mud up to my armpits.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE THIRD POLICEMAN, Flann O’Brien.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ditto.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is never being able to get it just right, best is being able, occasionally, to get it not entirely wrong.

The pitch for your next book is …?
My next book will be another Benjamin, called ELEGY FOR APRIL. “Quirke on the trail of another dead girl, though the real cliff-hanging question is, Will he go back on the booze?”

Who are you reading right now?
LIBERTY, by Isaiah Berlin, FROM THE OTHER SHORE by Alexander Herzen, INSIDE THE SKY by William Langewiesche, and THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith. Utter pleasures, utterly guiltless.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d say, You don’t exist, so forget it.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Since I’m two-in-one I get six words, yes? Poetic, graceful, irresistible. Dour, dark, misanthropic. You decide which set fits JB and which BB. Or do a mix and match?

John Banville’s THE INFINITIES is published by Picador.

Twins’ TOWER

The early reviews for TOWER, the brothers-by-a-different-mother pairing of Ken Bruen-Reed Farrel Coleman for Busted Flush, are starting to filter through the ethersphere, with Gerard Brennan and Russel McLean off the mark in the recent days. To wit:

“There is a distinction in voice and style, but the writers make this work as a distinction in the characters’ inner dialogues and all-round make-up. The genius in this collaboration lies in the things that each writer hasn’t implicitly said, but that the reader is more than able to glean from the subtext and by cross-referencing the thoughts of the two protagonists.” – Gerard Brennan, Crime Scene Northern Ireland

“Collaborations are nothing new in the world of literature, but TOWER makes its mark in its compelling, two-tiered structure, its layered narrative and the way in which its authors complement and enhance each other. If you love punchy, layered and stylish crime fiction, then believe me when I say that you’re going to adore TOWER.” - Russel McLean, Crime Scene Scotland

  Lovely jubbly. Meanwhile, the Busted Flush blog is hosting an interview with that shy (but, unfortunately, a long way off retiring) cratur Allan Guthrie, who as editor had the unenviable task of harnessing the Bruen-Reed Coleman team. Clickety-click here for the inside juice …

UPDATE: And while we’re on the subject-ish of CSNI, Gerard Brennan has some No Alibis-related news about a James Ellroy appearance this coming November. Clickety-click here, etc.

The Other Clones Cyclone

There’s about five hundred reasons for getting along to the Clones Flat Lake Festival this coming weekend, given that it’s chock-a-block with events musical, literary and film-related – although I have to say that my favourite will very probably be the 30-second disco. Hard on the heels of that will be the crime writing panel, which will feature Brian McGilloway (right), Declan Hughes and Some Chancer, Esq., aka Your Humble Host, all under the watchful eye of Eoin McNamee, who will be asking some very easy questions that – given the panel takes place on Sunday, after the frolics and of The Night Before – we can only hope will require no answering at all.
  Those all important details: The Flat Lake Festival is co-hosted by Patrick McCabe and Kevin Allen, and will take place in Clones, Co. Monaghan, from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th of August. For more, clickety-click here …
  And while we’re on the topic of book-related jamborees, the Books 2009 Festival takes place from September 10th to 13th in Dublin’s fair city. The crime fic element alone is worth the price of admission: the line-up includes John Connolly, Sara Paretsky, The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Paul Williams, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Tom Rob Smith, Mandasue Heller, Stuart Neville, Alan Glynn, Ava McCarthy, Alex Barclay, Some Chancer, Esq., and – save the best ’til last – JOHN MCFETRIDGE! Who will, no doubt, be sporting a Montreal Bluestars basketball cap. Or something.
  Incidentally, John Banville will also be appearing at the festival, but as John Banville, to promote his new novel, THE INFINITIES. So there’s probably not much chance that he’ll bump into Ruth Dudley Edwards. Boo.
  For the running schedule, clickety-click here …

All Aboard The Brandwagon

Brandon Books delivered a rather tasty package late last week, which contained the latest offerings from Sam Millar and Paul Charles. First up, Sam Millar’s sequel to BLOODSTORM, which rejoices in the title THE DARK PLACE and is set in Northern Ireland:

Young homeless women and drug addicts are being abducted before being brutally mutilated and murdered and the city is held in a grip of unspeakable terror. The police are unable - or unwilling - to apprehend the elusive serial killer and corrupt politicians turn a seemingly blind eye to the catalogue of murders. But by abducting Katie, the young daughter of legendary private investigator Karl Kane, the killer has just made his first mistake - and one which may well be his last.

Nice. Incidentally, Sam recently carved himself a weblington out of cyberspace; drop on over and say hello …
  Paul Charles, meanwhile, is generally to be found writing about DI Christy Kennedy, who pounds the Camden Town beat over in London Town. FAMILY LIFE, the follow-up to THE DUST OF DEATH, is the second in the Inspector Starrett series, which is set in north Donegal, and precariously close to Brian McGilloway’s turf. To wit:

In ones and twos, the Sweeney clan arrive at Liam Sweeney’s farm on the outskirts of Ramelton, County Donegal, to celebrate Liam’s birthday. The banter and storytelling is great as they await the arrival of the single missing family member. But when Inspector Starrett arrives unexpectedly at the farm it becomes clear that all is not well. The body of a Sweeney family member has just been discovered in the courtyard of a waterfront warehouse in the nearby town and the circumstances are suspicious to say the least …

  Incidentally, if we take Donegal to be a part of Northern Ireland – which it is, culturally and geographically, if not politically – then the last couple of months have seen novels from Norn Iron crime writers such as – obviously – Millar and Charles, Garbhan Downey, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman and Stuart Neville. What is it, exactly, they’re putting in the water up there? And can I have some?

Hurls At Ten Paces In The Misty Russian Dawn: Cuddly Duddly Vs Benny Blanco, Round 4-Ish

Misquoted, traduced and wounded by the ricocheting fall-out from Banvillegate, Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) isn’t taking it lying down. Not content with having her say last week on Crime Always Pays – and let’s be honest, even I’m not content with having my say on CAP – she’s gone for the jugular courtesy of the Sunday Independent. To wit:

“I published my first crime novel in 1981 and was short-listed for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Best First Novel Award. Since then I’ve published another 10, I’ve performed at innumerable crime conventions and crime bookshops in Britain, Ireland and the US, I’ve been on the committee of the Crime Writers' Association, I love the good-natured, egalitarian crime-fiction world and have great friends among writers and readers.
  “I am, if anything, more proud of my Last Laugh Award than of the James Tait Black memorial prize for biography.
  “Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, John Banville published his first crime novel in 2006. At the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, which we both attended last month, he annoyed most of his audience, yet he had the brass neck to patronise me in The Guardian …”

  For the rest – and it does get a bit salty – clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Handful Of Reviews

A busy old weekend on the reviewing front, folks, with sundry big-ups popping into ye olde inbox. To wit:

“Adrian McKinty’s wonderful Dead Trilogy confirmed him as a master of modern noir, up there with Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy … FIFTY GRAND is a blast: a standalone effort which again showcases McKinty’s brutal lyricism as well as his sensitivity to the indignities of the immigrant experience … What matters is Mercado herself, the one-time winner (she tells us proudly) of the Dr Ernesto Guevara Young Poets’ prize. It’s a pleasure to be around someone so sharp and resourceful, noticing what she notices and feeling what she feels.” – John O’Connell, The Guardian

“Clearly influenced by Child and Joseph Finder, Black drives his hero into the tightest spots with a force and energy that jump off the page. He still has a little to learn when it comes to depth of character and pacing, but that won’t take long. Lock is clearly going to be around for a long time. With a spine-tingling finale that reminded me of Die Hard, this is a writer, and a hero, to watch.” – Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

“I for one am a big fan of the police procedural as a genre, and [Rob] Kitchin gives us an excellent version [in THE RULE BOOK], emphasizing not the lurid crimes committed by the serial killer but the sometimes plodding pursuit of the killer in the detectives' meticulous methodology … Kitchin’s skill in maintaining that pace as well as the naturalism of the characters and setting is quite impressive in a first novel.” – Glenn Harper, International Noir

“Neville is the kind of fierce new voice that the thriller genre cries out for. His prose is sharp and deadly, his characters never less than complex. And for all THE TWELVE could easily have been a simple drama of revenge, a kind of Death Wish with an Irish accent, it feels somehow deeper and any answers you think have been offered are tempered with further questions. This is a thinking man’s thriller, as philosophical as it is visceral, and a novel I urge you to out and read.” – Russel McLean, Crime Scene Scotland

“THE TWELVE is a tough, uncompromising thriller, technically very well paced and solidly constructed in the best, tragic, noir fiction tradition, though possibly not one for the faint-hearted.” – Mike Ripley, Euro Crime

“Ruth Dudley Edwards, a fundraiser for the families, gives an insider’s account of the campaign, starting with the harrowing details of the blast. First responders tell of the difficulties of identifying headless bodies and of limbs lying in the street amid the debris. Blood ran from the doors of buses pressed into service as ambulances — the injured screaming at every speed bump on the way to the hospital. She hints at the drinking, the marriage break-ups and the suicide attempts that were the ripple effect of the atrocity. The victims squabble and at times come close to buckling under the strain as they move forward towards a court showdown that most experts predicted they would lose.” – Liam Clarke, The Sunday Times

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Peter Leonard

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 FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE by George V. Higgins. It’s a masterpiece.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Sherlock Holmes.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
PEOPLE magazine and STAR. I want to know what the beautiful people are
doing.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Selling my first novel, QUIVER. My agent called and said, “Are you sitting
down?” And then delivered the good news.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen. Ken’s a great writer, dark and funny.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE GUARDS. I think it’s in the works.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is cheap shots by critics. You can spend a year writing a novel and
have it trashed in fifty words or less. The best thing is the satisfaction
you get developing characters, making them come alive and making them talk,
putting them in a story and seeing what happens.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Two American students steal a taxi in Rome. They are subsequently arrested
and sent to Rebibbia Prison where they cross paths with members of Mafia
gang.

Who are you reading right now?
Doug Stanton, HORSE SOLDIERS.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Five years ago I would have said read. But now I’m compelled to write.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Character-driven, entertaining.

Peter Leonard’s TRUST ME is published by Faber and Faber

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: That Kindle Cover In Full!

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, as all three regular readers will probably have forgotten by now, is the sequel to THE BIG O, and is currently in the process of being uploaded to Kindle. When it finally gets there, it’ll be wearing the cover above …
  Yes, I know that a lot of people felt / feel it’s an Agatha Christie-type cosy cover, but there was something about the soft-furnishings-glimpsed-through-barred-window that appealed. Also, I like the colours – it whispers ‘Mediterranean’ to me, and very seductively too. Maybe it’s all the pillows. As to whether it sums up the story inside, or will hypnotise potential readers into buying it, I really don’t know. And care less, to be perfectly frank about it.
  Anyway, the man responsible for the design is JT Lindroos of The Outfit, and thank you kindly, sir. As for everyone else who took the time to comment, thanks a million for the feedback, I do appreciate it.
  Now all I have to do is format the blummin’ story properly, and we’re off and running.
  In the meantime, here’s how CRIME ALWAYS PAYS opens up, with a chapter that’s a whopping 279 words long …

Sleeps

It was bad enough Rossi raving how genius isn’t supposed to be perfect, it’s not that kind of gig, but then the vet started carping about Sleeps’ pride and joy, the .22, nickel-plated, pearl grip, enough to stop a man and put him down but not your actual lethal unless you were unlucky. And right now, empty.
  Sleeps waggled it in the vet’s general direction. ‘Less talk,’ he said, ‘more angel of mercy. How’s that ear coming?’
  Not good and not fast, Rossi ducking around like Sugar Ray in a bouncy castle. Still in shock, bofto on the wowee pills, with these delusions of grandeur, he was Tony Montana or maybe Tony Manero, Sleeps couldn’t say for sure.
  It didn’t help there was no actual ear. The wolf had tore it clean off, along with enough skin to top a sizeable tom-tom. Plus the vet was using catgut and what looked to Sleeps like a needle he’d last seen on the Discovery Channel stuck horizontal through a cannibal’s nose.
  In the end Sleeps stepped in and stuck his forefinger in the wound, stirred it around. Rossi screeched once, high-pitched, then keeled over.
  ‘I’ll be wanting,’ Sleeps said, wiping his finger on Rossi’s pants, ‘a bag of horse tranks. And whatever gun you use for putting down the animals.’
  The vet shook his head. ‘We don’t use those anymore, they’re not humane.’
  ‘Humane? You’re a vet, man.’
  ‘We treat them like children,’ the vet said, ‘not animals.’
  ‘Nice theory.’ Sleeps scratched the cattle-prod off his mental list, gestured at Rossi with the .22. ‘But what if they’re a little of both?’

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: James McCreet

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?
James Ellroy’s THE COLD SIX THOUSAND. The man is just a genius. The scale and complexity of his books is a superhuman feat.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond – no hesitation. He is in many ways a classic fantasy figure for a writer: solitary, self-sufficient, dogged, independent, happy to enjoy luxuries on the expense account, and occasionally homicidal.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
For years I read the American pulp spy thrillers by ‘Nick Carter’ – pure schlock full of sex, violence and weaponry. I picked up a few old copies recently and again enjoyed their no-nonsense break-neck narratives tremendously.

Most satisfying writing moment?
My forthcoming book (July 2010) is absolutely crammed with them (particularly the opening 500 words), but the best piece of writing is always the one I do tomorrow …

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Much as I am tempted to make something up, I’ll be honest and say I have virtually no knowledge of Irish crime novels. I have a copy of Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS by the bed and, having met the man last weekend, I am looking forward to reading it.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Sorry – no idea.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best – feeling that each day I write is a day of my life I haven’t wasted. Worst – having to make a choice between visiting the world in my head and the world with my wife in it.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Top secret, but utterly unprecedented.

Who are you reading right now?
Philip Hoare’s LEVIATHAN. I’ve just re-read MOBY-DICK and can’t get enough of whales at the moment. I’m considering writing a sea epic of my own in a few years.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Easy – I’d write. By writing, I get the best of both worlds. And anyway, the pressures of writing novels while working full time means I pretty much made that decision a couple of years ago.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Entertaining, surprising, compelling

James McCreet’s THE INCENDIARY’S TRAIL is published by Macmillan

Book Reviewing 101: Don’t Mention The War (#7)

There are bad reviewers, atrocious reviewers, and then there are reviewers who should be strapped to the mast and flogged with a cat o’ nine tails woven from their own entrails. Consider Geoffrey Vine’s (‘Dunedin journalist and Presbyterian minister’) take on Declan Hughes’ ALL THE DEAD VOICES at the Otago Daily Times:

“All three seem to have links with warring factions of the IRA and Loy discovers there are matching factions within the police and security forces, all just as much at war, as the collection of wounds Loy accumulates testify.
  “Most of us outside Ireland may wonder why it is so necessary to again rake over the coals of an awful civil war.
  “Both the fact (that Hughes has written a book which alternately glorifies the Troubles and condemns them) and the fiction (the book’s plot) stir up tensions we might think best left alone.”

  A couple of things need to be said here. First off, “Don’t mention the war” is a Basil Fawlty joke, not an acceptable argument in a book review. Secondly, dissident Republicans murdered two people in Ireland shortly before the publication of ALL THE DEAD VOICES, which at the very least suggests that Declan Hughes is not the only man in Ireland capable of ‘stirring up tensions’ amongst Irish paramilitaries. Thirdly, I’ve just bore a small hole in my skull scratching my head at how Vine managed to take from the novel the notion that Hughes was ‘glorifying’ the Troubles, when one of the main themes of the novel is the extent to which former murderous paramilitaries have infiltrated modern Irish business and political life.
  Yes, yes, I know it’s the Otago Daily Times, and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much. But at the very least Declan Hughes is entitled to have his book reviewed by someone who can understand basic English. Like here, for instance ...
  As for Geoff’s abhorrence of stirring up tensions – God help him if anyone gives him a copy of Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE to review …

Three Chords And The Ruth

But lo! There’s more ... Yon Ruth Dudley Edwards is a versatile minx, and no mistake. Last year, Cuddly Dudley won the Last Laugh Award at Crimefest, for her comedy crime caper MURDERING AMERICANS. A couple of weeks back she published the true crime opus AFTERMATH: THE OMAGH BOMBING, which concerns itself with the families’ search for justice in the wake of the single most devastating atrocity in the long and bitter history of the Troubles. If the early word is anything to go by, the Crimefest award won’t be her last. To wit:

“It is a remarkable and moving story, told in masterly fashion by Ruth Dudley Edwards. Her narrative grips from the start. It is as compelling as a thriller and displays the sympathetic imagination of a great novel … This is an extraordinary and uplifting story of how a group of ordinary people managed to get the justice they sought. It is beautifully told.” – Allan Massie, The Scotsman

“THIS VITAL, powerful book tells a story of loss, resilience and terrorism … It rightly concentrates on victims, and on properly remembering the lives destroyed by terrorist atrocity. But it also recounts a remarkable story of victims’ resilience and vindication, and deserves to be very widely read.” – Richard English, Irish Times

  For more, clickety-click here …

John Banville Vs The World # 1,017: Ruth Dudley Edwards Steps In

Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) gets in touch to see if I’d be interesting in hosting her version of events in Banvillegate (See what I did there? It was John Banville, right, at Harrogate, and … oh. Okay). Erm, Ruth? Yes, please. To wit:

“Tony Benn never opens his mouth without switching on his tape-recorder, and after this business with John Banville, who represented me as saying the precise opposite of what I believe, I fear he is wise. At the risk of being balls-achingly tedious, my historian’s instincts make me want to set the record straight.
  “Banville got up the noses of the Harrogate audience by – no doubt unwittingly – giving the impression that he was rather embarrassed by his Benjamin Black persona. It’s is hard not to bristle when you hear that because Banville agonises over every sentence that he does well to write 100 words a day, but Black merrily bashes out 2,000.
  “Being an out-and-proud crime writer myself, who misses no opportunity to assail those who disparage the genre, I displayed my irritation when moderating the Emerald Noir panel the following morning by asking Declan Hughes whether he thought Banville was denying that he felt he was slumming it, although he really believed he was. Dec, being more streetwise than me, refused to get involved in this fight.
  “In the Daily Telegraph on 28 July, Jake Kerridge got the wrong end of the stick by saying: ‘The writer Ruth Dudley Edwards commented at one event that “he may insist he’s not slumming it, but he’s slumming it.’ On the Guardian books blog this turned into: ‘”He’s slumming it,”’ author Ruth Dudley Edwards said the following day. “He says he isn’t, but he is.”’ Which in Banville’s Guardian article on 1 August - which was trailed on the front of the Review section as ‘’John Banville: ‘I’m not “slumming it” as a crime writer’ - became ‘Another blogger did a survey among attendees [of the event where he and Reginald Hill were interviewed by Mark Lawson]. One of them, Ruth Dudley Edwards, a good writer who should have known better, allowed herself to be quoted as saying that I was slumming it as Benjamin Black. The inevitable implication of this is that Dudley Edwards considers crime writers to be slum dwellers.’ He then proceeded to defend crime writing against me and people like me.
  “Mind you, if he’d stayed for Emerald Noir he wouldn’t have got this wrong. And if he’d looked at my website, he’d have found some impassioned defences of crime writing. But, hey, as Reg Hill wrote when I moaned to him about this: ‘There’s nothing like a good misunderstanding for promoting misunderstanding among people.’” - Ruth Dudley Edwards

  At the risk of getting splinters up my fundament, I genuinely think what’s happening here is a misunderstanding. Mind you, I’ve no problem with a good old-fashioned literary spat, either, especially when crime writers are pretty much universally nice people. I mean, seriously, crime writing festivals can get a bit Stepford at times, no?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: HAUNTED HEART: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF STEPHEN KING by Lisa Rojak

STEPHEN KING – known to family and friends as Steve – made his name and fortune in the 1970s writing horror novels such as CARRIE, THE SHINING and SALEM’S LOT, and went on to establish himself as one of the best-selling authors of all time.
  Film adaptations of his work – including The Shining, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile – are among some of the most popular movies of the last 30 years.
  Sales have declined as he has begun to produce more self- consciously literary works in the latter part of his career, during which King has triumphed over addiction and also survived a near- fatal car accident. The man himself though is well, mellow and living happily ever after.
  The problem with Lisa Rogak’s rather short biography (not counting notes and index, it amounts to 243 pages) is that the broad strokes of his life are known to even the most casual of Stephen King observers.
  Given that the author was hugely prolific for most of his career, in some years publishing anything between four and six titles, not counting paperback and assorted editions, there are many times when Rogak finds herself simply outlining a list of his achievements for a particular period, in the process skimming along the surface of King’s story.
  The biography is unauthorised, an issue that Rogak makes light of in her introduction, claiming that an authorised biography is a good cure for insomnia …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …