Review Requests and Submissions

I’m delighted to be able to say that Crime Always Pays receives many review requests and author submissions. Unfortunately, Crime Always Pays is a not-for-profit labour of love, and it would be impossible for one person to read and review all the books I’m offered, as I work fulltime as a freelance journalist. The vast majority of reviews that appear on Crime Always Pays have been commissioned, and appear here with the appropriate credit and / or by-line.
  That said, as Crime Always Pays is intended as a resource for Irish crime writing, as well as promoting my own work, I am always happy to feature Irish crime authors, established and new, and particularly new. That includes writing from Irish-born authors, second- and third-generation Irish authors, and crime novels set in Ireland. It also applies to non-fiction, film and theatre.
  If you are an Irish crime author, or represent same, please feel free to get in touch with me at dbrodb(at)gmail(dot)com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Declan Burke is an author and freelance writer. He writes a monthly crime column for the Irish Times, and reviews fiction for a variety of other outlets, including RTE radio’s Arena programme, the Sunday Business Post, and the Sunday Independent. He is the editor of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY (Liberties Press).

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: William Ryan

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

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
It would be nice to have written the one I’m halfway through now.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Erast Fandorin from Boris Akunin’s pre-Revolutionary Russian series. Except ideally I’d have the novels moved to somewhere with nicer weather.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Hello Magazine – I sometimes get my hair cut unnecessarily if it has a good cover. I’m very worried about Cheryl – my hairdresser thinks they’re getting back together.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I knew THE HOLY THIEF was going to be published, I suppose. Even if I don’t really believe it still.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler, on the basis his mother was Irish and he spent at least a part of his youth in Dublin. They should name a street after him, or maybe they already have.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ronan Bennett’s ZUGZWANG – I’m not sure how they’d do the chess bits though.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Well, it’s not the worst profession in the world, but the copy-editing and proof-reading process for a novel can be a bit of a trial – after the tenth rereading, you sort of lose sight of what you liked about it in the first place. And every time you think you’ve finally put the stake into its heart, it comes back to life. A bit like a typewritten Terminator. The best thing is having a bit of a run.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Burly thirties Moscow detective uncovers nefarious shenanigans on a Soviet film set - think High Noon meets Fiddler on the Roof.

Who are you reading right now?
THE DOGS OF RIGA by Henning Mankell. I’m a bit hooked on Henning at the moment.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Well, you can’t write without reading, so I suppose it’d have to be to read. Also, if God appeared to me, I probably wouldn’t be allowed pointy things like pencils and pens, as well as being quite heavily medicated.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Quirky Soviet Noir

William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF is published by Mantle on May 7th.

THE DEVIL; and Mrs Jones

Maybe it’s the recession, but Irish PIs have been struck with a bad case of wanderlust. First Arlene Hunt’s Sarah Quigley goes walkabout in her latest novel, BLOOD MONEY, then Declan Hughes’s Ed Loy jumps a plane for LA in CITY OF LOST GIRLS. Now even Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor, a man as Galway as soft rain, wants out. To wit:

America - the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: but not for PI Jack Taylor, who’s just been refused entry. Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack. Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway. But when he’s called to investigate a student murder - connected to an elusive Mr K - he remembers the man from the airport. Is the stranger really is who he says he is? With the help of the Jameson, Jack struggles to make sense of it all. After several more murders and too many coincidental encounters, Jack believes he may have met his nemesis. But why has he been chosen? And could he really have taken on the devil himself?

  THE DEVIL isn’t published until May 13, but my copy came dropping slow through the letterbox yesterday, so that’s the Bank Holiday reading taken care of.
  Ironically, or serendipitously, Gerard O’Donovan’s debut THE PRIEST arrived on the same day. Now, Ireland has had its fair share of scandals relating to clerical abuse of children in recent times, so THE PRIEST may well be a timely offering when it hits the shelves on June 3rd. To wit:

HIS NAME IS THE PRIEST. HIS WEAPON IS A CRUCIFIX. HIS VICTIMS DON’T HAVE A PRAYER. A killer is stalking the dark streets of Dublin. Before each attack, he makes the sign of the cross; then he sends his victims to God. After a diplomat’s daughter is brutally assaulted and left for dead, her body branded with burns from a scalding-hot cross, the case falls to Detective Inspector Mike Mulcahy. Mulcahy is one tough cop, but this crime is beyond imagination -- and the Priest is a nemesis more evil and elusive than any Mulcahy has ever faced: an angel of death with a soul dark as hell. As a media frenzy erupts and the city reels in terror, Mulcahy and his new partner, Claire Brogan, must stop the Priest in his tracks before he can complete his divine mission of murder. Light your candles. Say your prayers. Confess your sins. The Priest is coming.

  Another serial killer stalking Irish streets? To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one serial killer at work in Ireland today, and yet recent / current / forthcoming novels from Stuart Neville, Declan Hughes, Niamh O’Connor, Kevin McCarthy, Rob Kitchin and now Gerard O’Donovan all feature serial killers. Do the authors know something we don’t? Is the sudden appearance of so many fictional serial killers some kind of implicit commentary on Ireland’s scary economic position and the fear that we’re being stalked by the evil, ruthless, shadowy bogeymen who gamble on the international markets? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …
  Meanwhile, I’ve come up with an idea for a new book. It’s about this serial killer, right, the cops dub her Mrs Jones, because she has a serious jones for offing male serial killers …

Lost Girls And Golden Boys

It’s long past time to declare a moratorium on the serial killer in crime fiction. Yes, the serial killer is our contemporary bogeyman, and a McGuffin for our most primeval fears, Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf relocated from forest to urban nightmare - but enough already. For one, you’re far more likely to become the victim of an inept politician running the Department of Health than you are to fall into the hands of a serial killer. For two, the killer created by Anthony Zuiker for DARK ORIGINS is so barkingly implausible as to render the serial killer sub-genre beyond parody and pastiche for at least a generation to come.
  Marilyn Stasio and Hallie Ephron, reviewing Declan Hughes’s THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS last weekend in the New York Times and the Boston Globe respectively, lamented the fact that Hughes has his private eye Ed Loy pursuing a serial killer in his latest outing. As it happens, I think Hughes has created one of the very few believable serial killers I’ve read about in recent times, a character who is not simply a two-dimensional cipher for evil but who is fascinating in his own right. That caveat aside, both ladies, along with Laura Wilson in The Guardian, were generous in their praise of THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS. To wit:

Declan Hughes isn’t just an other gruff voice in the barking crowd of noir crime writers. His characters have depth, his scenes have drama, and his sentences have grace.” - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

“No one writes crime fiction quite like Declan Hughes … The storytelling is lean but always with poetic force and attention paid to word choice and to the rhythm of the prose.” - Hallie Ephron, Boston Globe

“Irish writer Hughes’s fifth book is a welcome addition to a series which has given the tired private-eye sub-genre a much-needed shot in the arm … The plot is taut and pacy, the prose is gorgeous, and there are plenty of twists and turns: a page-turner and a treat.” - Laura Wilson, The Guardian

  For what they’re worth, my own three cents are that Hughes has raised the bar with THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, both for the PI novel in general and for Irish crime fiction in general. And given the year we had last year, that’s saying something.
  Meanwhile, and while we’re on the subject of raising the bar, belated congratulations to Stuart Neville, who last weekend won the LA Times Best Mystery / Thriller Novel of the Year for his debut, THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (aka THE TWELVE).
  By happy coincidence, Neville’s novel features a protagonist who is not just a serial killer who goes about the business of killing a baker’s dozen of victims with some aplomb, but a man who is a serial killer twice over - first as a paramilitary hitman, then as a guilt-ridden ex-paramilitary driven to clear his conscience - who nevertheless gains and holds the reader’s sympathy as he cuts a bloody swathe through post-Peace Process Northern Ireland. Which suggests, as does Declan Hughes’s contribution, that it’s not the serial killer sub-genre that’s moribund per se, it’s the lazy writers who depend too heavily, and too luridly, on what the serial killer does rather than who the serial killer is. It’s the difference, I think, between pointing up the grotesque in humanity rather than illuminating the humanity in the grotesque. And that makes for a world of difference.

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL

Short-listed for the 2011 Irish Book Awards, and the winner of the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award at Crimefest, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (Liberties Press) is something of a novel novel, as the reviews below suggest. First, the blurb elves:

Who in the right mind would want to blow up a hospital?

“Close it down, blow it up - seriously, what’s the difference?”

Billy Karlsson needs to get real. Literally. A hospital porter with a sideline in euthanasia, Billy is a character trapped in the purgatory of an abandoned novel. Deranged by logic, driven beyond sanity, Billy makes his final stand: if killing old people won’t cut the mustard, the whole hospital will have to go up in flames.

Only his creator can stop him now, the author who abandoned Billy to his half-life limbo, in which Billy schemes to do whatever it takes to get himself published, or be damned …

Cover Quotes:

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny … Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” - John Banville

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

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL from Liberties Press

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL from Amazon UK

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL from Kindle US (& Ireland)

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOK on Kindle UK

The Good Word:

“Metafiction? Postmodern noir? These and other labels will be applied to Burke’s newest; any might be apt, but none is sufficient. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is largely a literary novel that draws on history, mythology, and literature … Noir fans may not care for this one, but lovers of literary fiction will find much to savour.” - Booklist

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is brilliant … a joy-ride through the history of Western culture … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL will stand comparison to the very best of Italo Calvino, Milan Kundera and Umberto Eco.” - Amazon review *****

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL starts a slow burn that ultimately builds to a literally explosive conclusion … Wickedly sharp, darkly humorous, uncommonly creative and brilliantly executed.” - Elizabeth A. White

“Stylistically removed from anything being attempted by his peers … [a] darkly hilarious amalgam of classic crime riffing (hep Elmore Leonard-isms and screwballing) and the dimension-warping reflections of Charlie Kaufman or Kurt Vonnegut. Like the latter’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL sees another Billy “come unstuck” in what is, frankly, a brilliant premise.” - Sunday Independent

“Among the many crime fiction references, it’s [Patricia] Highsmith that resonates most with ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (for me) … Declan Burke has cemented his central position in the current wave of neo-noir and contemporary crime fiction.” - Glenn Harper, International Noir

“Burke sprinkles his way-outside-the-box noir with quotes from Beckett, Bukowski, and other literary names as he explores the nature of writing and the descent of personal darkness. Those looking for a highly intellectual version of Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF will be most satisfied.” - Publishers Weekly


“Karlsson is a thrilling creation, up there with the Patrick Batemans of literature … a masterpiece of unsavoury reflection on history and Darwinism blended with a hefty dose of sociopathy, yet always leavened with pitch-black wit … To borrow from [Ken] Bruen's blurb, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is unlike anything else you’ll read this year: funny and disturbing, it also straddles a fine line between the absurd and the profound. It never forgets the conventions of crime fiction, while simultaneously subverting them. A triumph.” - Sunday Times

“Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cigarette paper … [a] sublimely crazy book.” - Stuart Neville

“Thus begins a fascinating hybrid of MISERY, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, and who knows what else … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL isn’t quite like anything else you’ve read, in any genre. It’s clever, intimate, passionate, and funny: altogether a wonderful achievement.” - Irish Times

“What is most refreshing … is its ambition. It is rare that a so-called genre book attempts to wrest free of its constraints and do something entirely different. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a genre-buster. Clever, funny, challenging, surreal, unexpected and entirely original.” - Irish Independent

“Declan Burke plunges into surreal realms in this exhilarating, cleverly wrought novel … Comparisons to Flann O’Brien’s AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS are obvious, yet Burke’s canny control of his novel means they’re positive ones.” - Sunday Business Post

“A new Irish absurd, the Blazing Saddles of crime fiction … The illogicality that surrounds us, the double speak and unthink, is very much the secret subject of this book … It’s a novel that is mentally stimulating, entertaining, fun, provocative, original and ambitious.” - Arena, RTE

“An ambitious, satisfying black comedy … subverting genres within the very loose framework of a crime thriller. So dark is the novel-within-a-novel premise that it makes Fight Club look like a Marx Brothers knockabout comedy.” - Evening Herald

“We’re into a self-conscious world of meta-fiction, somewhere between Muriel Sparks’ THE COMFORTERS, Bret Easton Ellis’ LUNAR PARK, and Flann O’Brien ... It’s a measure of Burke’s achievement in this funny and clever book that he can stand comparison to these three … the book is witty, philosophical and a page-turning crime thriller.” - The Dubliner

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is an absolutely wonderful read, start to finish. Declan Burke has penned the most original work of cross-genre fiction I’ve read in a long time. Literary, socially conscious, journalistically cynical … an absolute must-read.” - Charlie Stella

“Satire and high art meets screwball noir … ABSOLUTE ZEROCOOLtakes the crime genre and its many tropes and stereotypes and throws them out the window. It’s a genuinely unique tale.” - The View From the Blue House

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a fine example of comedic crime noir … this is an author you need to read.” - Mystery File

“My point is, there is increasing room for super-consciousness, post-rational literature -- particularly in our post-rational world -- along the lines of Woyzeck, Bertold Brecht, Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, and others. Most recently, Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. My kind of book. Maybe it could be called Gonzolit. Serious as the World Series, clean as Van Gogh’s ear surgery, worthy of our times.” - Malcolm Berry

“This isn’t crime for profit’s sake, with a little hipness thrown in; it’s depravity examining its navel … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is brilliant and baffling, enjoyable and vexing, funny and disturbing.” - One Bite At a Time

“This is not a ‘crime’ book in the normal sense of having a detective, a killer and an easy to follow plot. It is a stunningly beautiful and achingly funny work which probes the type of existential questions raised by works like NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Dostoyevsky, and works by Sartre, Camus (THE PLAGUE), Kafka, andIreland’s Beckett and Flann O’Brien.” - Amazon review (1) *****

“Burke writes with humour and wit, often sending up the crime genre itself. The reader’s tolerance will be tested with each new sadistic twist.” - Books Ireland

“The most twisted, unusual book I’ve ever read.” - Various Random Thoughts

“On its surface it crackles with wit, aphorisms, black one-liners, erudite literary allusions, popular culture references, and frequently surprising wordplay … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a literary novel and a darkly humorous work of philosophy. It easily falls into that sub-category of intellectual noir … Dante is well served here, all around.” - Little Known Gems

“The debt to Flann O'Brien is clear but unlike O’Brien’s coldly brilliant mindscapes, Burke’s creation has a heart as well as a brain.” - Amazon review (2) *****

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL sees Burke stretching the crime thriller genre until it snaps and then sewing it back together with some of the finest prose and funniest dialogue you’ll encounter this year. I can’t recommend this book enough. Destined to be a cult classic.” - Amazon Review (3) *****

“Dreamlike and invigorating, [AZC] combines surrealism with the best of noir fiction in an enthralling reminiscence of Flann O’Brien’s ATSWIM-TWO-BIRDS … Burke’s writing issharp, funny, and excruciatingly honest … a genuinely original and inventive novel … a clever, personal, and charming story.” - The Crime of It All

“Declan Burke has crafted an exciting, hilarious, thoughtful and moving story … I’ve read a lot of cracking novels this year but ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is my favourite. And it could well be yours, too.” - Mean Streets

“This is a bloody good thriller. It’s also funny, thought-provoking and very satisfying. Some reviews refer to it as possibly becoming a cult classic; I think it deserves to be more.” - Booksquawk

“A challenging, pleasing, provocative, wise-cracking read … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL contains more than enough material for a couple of thousand conventional novels.” - John J Gaynard

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

“A harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer’s personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel … Burke has outdone himself this time; it’s a hell of a read.” - Scott Philips

“Declan Burke has broken the mould with ABSOLUTE ZEROCOOL, which is actually very cool indeed. Funny, inventive and hugely entertaining crime fiction - I guarantee you’ll love it.” - Melissa Hill

“Stop waiting for Godot - he’s here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing about themselves and turns it on its ear, and then some. He gives it body and soul … an Irish soul.” - Reed Farrel Coleman

On Putting The Lie Into Belief

At the risk of straying into Peter Rozovsky territory, I’ve been mulling over a feature on how crime fiction is being used by writers in settings not traditionally considered hotbeds of crime fiction - Poland, Brazil, the Palestinian Territories, Nepal - in order to broach taboos about the political system in which their characters live. I’m also reading Donna Leon’s A QUESTION OF BELIEF, which is pretty stark at times when it comes to cynicism about the ruling elite. To wit:

“How many times had he heard the people use the phrase, ‘Governo Ladro’? And how many times had he agreed in silence that the government was a thief? But in the last few years, as though some previous sense of restraint or shame had been overcome, there had been less attempt on the part of their rulers to pretend that they were anything less than what they were.”

  And later, in a court room:

“After all, much of what was being said was lies, or at least evasions and interpretations. The business of law was not the discovery of truth, anyway, but the imposition of the power of the state upon its citizens.”

  Has anyone else come across similar kinds of statements of intent by crime authors recently, and preferably writers from territories you wouldn’t immediately associate with crime fiction? The floor is yours …

And JC Arose And Spoke To Many

Off with yours truly to the launch of John Connolly’s THE WHISPERERS last Wednesday evening, which was held in the very pleasant environs of the Gutter Bookshop in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Being a perverse kind of Dark Lord, JC refused to read from THE WHISPERERS (clickety-click here for the prologue), instead offering a snippet of his current project, which appears to be a follow-up to THE GATES, which is all sorts of good news. The snippet in question featured four of the seven dwarves (that’ll be the recession, then), some of whom were in mortal danger of being tossed due to their unnecessary aggressiveness, plus a boy-band, a crumbling castle and a pop video shoot, and suggests that the book will be a very funny one indeed.
  As always, JC was besieged by fans afterwards in an impromptu signing session; as always, and because the man seems incapable of signing a book without engaging in banter, the signing session took at least an hour. It’s hard to judge these things qualitatively, but from the sounds of it, JC was in even better form by the end of it all than he was at the start, and he was plenty lively at the start.
  (By the way - for those unfortunates still yet to escape from Direland, John Connolly features on The Late, Late Show tonight (Friday). If you miss it, the RTE iPlayer can be found here …)
  Meanwhile, lurking with intent in the vicinity were Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes, and Kevin McCarthy and Ed O’Loughlin. Bob Burke was there too, apparently, but I managed to miss him. Boo. Bob Johnstone, the owner of the Gutter Bookshop, seems to be a nice bloke, and we can only wish him well with the new venture. Opening a bookshop in these straitened times, in Ireland, is either a case of counter-intuitive genius or noble lunacy. Either way, Bob gets our vote. Apparently he gets the thumbs up from The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman too, for lo, Bateman is due to do an event at the Gutter Bookshop next month. When I know more, you’ll know more …
  In other updates - Kevin McCarthy publishes his debut, PEELER, next month, a potentially fascinating tale of a murder investigation set in Ireland in the 1920s, in which the IRA and the Black-and-Tans chase the same killer. It’s on my bookshelf and due a reading in the immediate future. Meanwhile, Ed O’Loughlin, who got himself a Booker long-list nomination for his debut, NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND, had the news that his second novel, a dystopian sci-fi, will be published next year. Nice. Elsewhere, Arlene Hunt’s latest, BLOOD MONEY, you should know all about, while Declan Hughes’ new offering, THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, is an absolutely tremendous read, even by his standards, and a whole new gear for one of the best crime writers around. Truly, it’s a terrific novel. Hughes fans are in for a real treat. He should be launching said tome next month too. Apparently there’s a review in Sunday’s New York Times …
  While outside for a crafty smoke, I also met Helen, who confessed - in public! - to having read THE BIG O. She also said very nice things about the Princess Lilyput, thus making herself a new friend for life, whether she wants one or not. I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  And as if all that wasn’t nice enough, the lovely Margaret Ward and the equally lovely people from Hodder Stoughton were good enough to promise me some tasty titles in the near future, one being the new Tana French, FAITHFUL PLACE, the other being David Mitchell’s eagerly anticipated THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET. Woot, etc.
  Finally, I decamped to the nearby Porterhouse in the company of Kevin McCarthy and Ed O’Loughlin for a very pleasant couple of hours chat about books ‘n’ suchlike over a few dry Pimms. Unfortunately, I was on the non-alcoholic Pimms, having been to the dentist on Tuesday in the throes of man-agony, there to discover I was suffering from an infection of an abscess. Picking up some super-strong antibiotics from the chemist (I’m immune to Penicillin, for some bizarre reason), the chemist warned me not to drink booze on top of the pills, which is something I usually do for the extra buzz, even if I hadn’t planned on drinking. ‘Of course I won’t,’ says I. ‘No,’ says she sternly, having caught a glint in my eye, ‘I’m serious - you’ll end up in hospital if you drink alcohol even two days after the course finishes.’ Now, staying off the booze shouldn’t be a huge problem, except my brother’s stag weekend takes place in Galway this weekend. And now I’m curious. Like, seriously - how strong can gum-healing antibiotics really be?
  There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

  Lately I have mostly been reading: THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS by Declan Hughes, 61 HOURS by Lee Child, and THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST by Philip Pullman.

The Dark Art of Paranoia

The publication of the paperback edition of Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND is as good an excuse as any to reprint the interview with him I had published in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times’ Culture section a couple of months ago. To wit:

It started on the late, late shows. While most boys in the early ’70s were trawling the late-night TV channels in the hope of glimpsing some illicit flesh, the teenage Alan Glynn was getting off on a more potent charge: paranoia.
  “I think that the stuff you ingest as a teenager is the stuff that sticks with you for life,” says Glynn. “When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the biggest influence was movies, and especially the conspiracy thrillers. What they call the ‘paranoid style’ in America – Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, and of course, the great Chinatown. There was a societal thing going on, they were examining the whole paranoia thing in American politics at the time, which seemed exotic to me when I was catching late-night movies on BBC2. It was exotic back then, but now we’ve got it. We’re all paranoid now.”
  ‘Follow the money,’ urged Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. Sage advice for those trying to understand why and how Ireland’s boom went bust; or it might be, were there any money left to follow.
  Written while the economy was still thriving, Glynn’s new novel, Winterland, nevertheless gets under the bricks and mortar of post-boom Ireland. Noel Rafferty is a consultant working on a building development on Dublin’s quays. His nephew, also Noel Rafferty, is a gangland hard man. When both men die on the same night, Gina Rafferty, sister and aunt to the men, suspects there is more to the deaths than mere coincidence. As Gina asks questions of those in authority, however, the novel broadens its remit to investigate the connections between blue-collar criminality and those who inhabit the white-collar worlds of politics and business, the latter with fortunes to lose if their building development fails.
  Is there a danger that there will be little new in Winterland, at least in terms of newspaper headlines, for contemporary readers?
  “There has been a tendency for people to say that this is a very prescient book,” he says. “But none of it was consciously written to be prescient. It’s not an economic polemic, or a political polemic, so the specifics of the story detail and how they run parallel to where we are now aren’t all that important.”
  Established as a paradigm by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the theme of linking street-level crime to those in positions of authority abusing their power is virtually axiomatic in crime fiction. Glynn, however, is interested in taking that paradigm onto another level (“I haven’t read a lot of it, really,” he says. “I’m not an expert on crime writing.”) In common with such recent Irish novels as Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome, Kevin Power’s Bad Day in Blackrock, or Gene Kerrigan’s Dark Times in the City, Winterland expands beyond crime and punishment to explore those junctures where the personal becomes the political. Fuelled by bad blood and paranoia, the novels investigate the nature of justice itself.
  “Gene Kerrigan is much more knowledgeable about the specifics of this, because of his career in journalism,” says Glynn. “And I think ‘crusade’ would too strong a word, but juxtaposing street crime with the kind of crime that happens in politics or business, I think that highlights on a moral level the question, ‘Where’s the difference?’ Not to be heavy-handed about it, but in Winterland, certain people get away with things in a way that people from a lower economic class wouldn’t get away with.”
  In person amiable and self-deprecating to a fault, Glynn is a far cry from the hard-bitten anti-heroes of ‘the paranoid style’, although he is every bit as single-minded when it comes to following his instincts. Born in Dublin in 1960, and educated locally, he decided very early in life that he had a vocation to write.
  “There was never anything else, ever, on the radar. I have a photograph of myself when I was about seven, sitting at a desk with a pen and a notebook. I only came across it recently, and I was amazed, but it’s completely consistent with what I remember as a kid.”
  He went to Trinity College to read English, where he met his wife Eithne, with whom he has two sons. He then spent five years in Verona teaching English, and then went to New York, returning to Ireland in 1992, when he took the decision to write full-time. His first novel, The Dark Fields, set in New York, was published in 2002.
  “It’s insane,” he says of the writing process, “it’s painfully, painstakingly slow. If I have to write a note to the milkman it’ll take me half-an-hour and three drafts. Not that it’ll be any better in the end, but that’s just the process I have to go through. And that’s a disadvantage in some respects.”
  The main disadvantage is that, as a father of two, and despite working as a full-time writer, Glynn has produced only two published novels in eight years. A third novel, The Paloma Stripe, was rejected in 2005.
  “The reason I was given basically boiled down to ‘likeability’, they had a ‘likeability’ issue with the main character. And that’s a very subjective thing.” It’s also an issue more relevant to commercial fiction, whereas Glynn’s ambitions are more literary. “Look at Humbert Humbert, you wouldn’t call him a likeable character. Or Macbeth.”
  With the publication of Winterland and a Neil Burger-helmed Hollywood adaptation of The Dark Fields due later this year, Glynn’s personal circumstances have hugely improved. His themes, however, remain the same.
  “It’s called Bloodland,” he says of his current work, “and it’s not a sequel to The Dark Fields, but it develops a minor character from that novel and turns on similar themes of power and corruption and the abuse of money and position. The character is an investment banker, and he’s involved in a series of companies which are involved in illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’m fascinated by this idea that the scramble for Africa, and the plunder of its natural resources, is as big or bigger today as it was when Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. Then it was ivory and rubber, and the exploitation was on a massive scale. Today it’s coltan, and other precious metals that are used in consumer products, like mobile phones and games consoles and that kind of stuff.”
  Again, the personal meets the political.
  “Well, absolutely. It’s about responsibility – taking responsibility or not taking responsibility, and the broad consequences individual actions can have throughout society.”
  Winterland’s abiding symbol is a tower being built in Dublin’s docklands, proposed to be Europe’s highest building if only those individuals with their hands on the levers of power can apply enough pressure in the right places. Such projects, whether flawed by engineering or overweening ambition, are now considered monuments or mausoleums to the boom years.
  “I was writing this when everything was fine, economically speaking,” says Glynn, “although in saying that, if you looked ahead you knew there had to be something coming down the tracks. People saying, ‘This time it’s different,’ and ‘The Irish model is different.’ We knew then that that was insane. But I was conscious even then that this flaw in the building could symbolise in some sense the hubris that existed, that there was an in-built, invisible fatal flaw in this whole economic boom. Originally the flaw was just a technical issue, an engineering problem, but it quickly became apparent that it was symbolic. I didn’t want to push that too heavily, or be heavy-handed about it, but it was there.
  “Now, in the context of the economic collapse, it makes more sense. It’s clearer to me now than it would have been then. The organic development of those kind of ideas … Sometimes it’s hard, because you’re not quite sure of where it’s bringing you. I think that’s a very important part of writing, to learn to go with that instinctual feel for an idea. You have to trust that.”
  ‘That all is not what it seems’ was once described by the great creative writing teacher John Gardner as the quintessential narrative hook, and it’s an instinctive philosophy that Glynn cleaves to as he gives voice to a distrust of authority that is by no means confined to Ireland.
  “It’s the only sane position to hold,” he says. “This whole idea that we’re being presented with what’s going on, but that behind that again there’s something else happening. Not to be a loopy conspiracy theorist, but just to voice the sense that there’s a disconnect. And we’ve had plenty of evidence of that over the last two decades that things simply were not as we were told they were.”

  This article first appeared in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times’ Culture section.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Andrew Gross

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 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Cookbooks and the obits.

Most satisfying writing moment?
First seeing my name atop the NYT bestseller list. (Though it followed James Patterson’s).

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: touring. Best: the commute. (Okay, fan mail! Actually, people checking in from my past who have read my books.)

The pitch for your next book is …?
A doctor looks into the suicide of his brother’s son, discovering it may not be a suicide after all, but the latest in a string of revenge killings for a youthful betrayal that took place forty years ago.

Who are you reading right now?
Stieg Larsson 2, HELTER SKELTER on Manson (for work), latest Linwood Barclay.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Hands down - I’d write.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Pace, reversals, heart.

Andrew Gross’s RECKLESS is published by William Morrow.

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

Pepper Smith has been kind enough to offer CAP two copies of her new novel, BLOOD MONEY, for the purposes of a competition giveaway. First, the blurb elves:

When Patty O’Donnell married her Irish sweetheart and moved from America to her husband’s small home town on the Irish seacoast, the most dangerous things she had to deal with were the half-ton racehorses in her father-in-law’s stables. But when she and her husband return from a late night out to find their house being searched, she discovers there are far worse things lurking in her bucolic surroundings than temperamental Thoroughbreds. The teenage son of a late family friend brings proof of a long forgotten debt owed by the O’Donnells, part of a cargo lost in a shipwreck over a century and a half ago. He wants the cargo salvaged, and quickly, so he can help his mother free herself from her abusive second husband. The O’Donnells are willing, but the search and salvage mission puts them square in the sights of modern-day pirates, who want the salvage for themselves. Suddenly, Patty finds herself hunted and in a fight for her life, where yielding to panic means a swift and ugly death.

  For Chapter One, clickety-click here. Meanwhile, to be in with a chance of winning a free copy of BLOOD MONEY, just answer the following question:

Which Irish author recently released a book entitled BLOOD MONEY? Was it:
  (a) Arlene Hunt;
  (b) Bertie Ahern;
  (c) The Board of Directors at Anglo-Irish Bank?

  Answers in the comment box, please, along with a contact email address (using (at) instead of @ to confound the spam monkeys), before noon on Monday, April 26th. Et bon chance, mes amis …

Lawks, ’Tis A Successful Irish RISING

The Irish Times’ commitment to reviewing Irish crime fiction continues apace, with Peter Cunningham’s review of Brian McGilloway’s THE RISING featuring on yesterday’s op-ed pages. Cunningham picked some holes in the novel, but the gist runneth thusly:

Devlin is a good cop with a clear sense of justice, a sharp brain and a big fist. When his personal life and the crimes he is investigating begin to merge, as we know they will, our sympathy and respect for him, never in doubt, become acute. The climax of this well-paced story is left dangling enticingly.
  Having just slogged through the Stieg Larsson trilogy, mostly with enjoyment, it was nonetheless something of a relief to come upon a police thriller which is told in a bare yet skilful way and which does not lurch every hundred pages or so into political history.
  Garda investigation and forensics techniques are well researched and written, but not bludgeoned home.
  McGilloway has a healthy respect for his readers’ intelligence.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Incidentally, Peter Cunningham is himself a purveyor of quality thrillers, such as THE TAOISEACH and WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US, so he knows of what he speaks. His latest offering, CAPITAL SINS, is due in mid-June, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Ireland, 2006. Financial hysteria grips the nation. No one can speak of anything but the price of property - it is impossible not to make money. Developers gorge on massive loans. Bankers, egged on by politicians, trample over each other in the stampede to lend more and more. Millionaires are created every day as the stock market soars and Ireland audaciously becomes one of the world’s wealthiest nations. But at the heart of this unholy multi-billion euro alliance between developers, politicians and bankers lies a hideous truth: the whole empire is built on sand. Two men face each other over the dark divide. One, Albert Barr, a developer, has everything to lose; the other, Lee Carew, a struggling journalist, suddenly realises that he has stumbled upon the story of a lifetime. And for the bankers, the developers and Ireland’s Celtic Tiger, time is rapidly running out. With devastating accuracy and savage humour, Peter Cunningham’s novel tells the story of the final year of the Celtic Tiger as it has never been told before.

  Nice. But will CAPITAL SINS measure up to Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND? Only time, that irrepressibly gossiping canary, will tell …

In Praise Of Bitterness And Begrudgery

A guy I know, let’s call him Reed Farrel Coleman, isn’t too impressed with the idea that I review books for a living. I don’t, as it happens, because very few people earn a living from reviewing books, but reviewing can be a nice way of occasionally topping up your meagre freelance income. Anyway, Reed’s point is that writers really shouldn’t sit in judgement on their colleagues. This misses the point for me - I don’t consider bad writers my colleagues, and I wouldn’t presume to consider good writers my colleagues either. In my head, I’m someone who has managed to get a couple of books published without getting tarred and feathered in the process. I’m not a writer, unfortunately, and as time goes by, it becomes less and less likely that I will become one.
  It did occur to me at some point during last weekend - no idea where the revelation came from, or what the catalyst was - that Reed might be right, given that I’ve grown terribly bitter about books in the last while. There’s two reasons for this, I think - one, I’ve been commissioned to review more and more books over the last year or so; and two, my own writing career (koff) fallen off a cliff. All of which, you’ll probably agree, is perfectly understandable, especially the bit about my own writing falling off a cliff, but it’s all a bit wearyingly predictable too.
  Today, reading Declan Hughes’ latest, THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, for the purposes of review, I came across this little snippet. Basically, an Irish Times journo, a failed scriptwriter, has railed against Jack Donovan, an Irish film director who has made it big in Hollywood, and one of Jack’s acolytes rails back thusly:

“And now he turns around and he has a go at everyone who has succeeded … And it’s not even for me, or Jack, he can’t really hurt us, it’s people starting out, people in the early stages, he’s on them like a ton of bricks, willing them to fail, like the worst kind of begrudger. You know, just once, I’d like to see someone nail the cunt, tell him the reason he’s like this has nothing to do with, what, critical judgement or artistic standards, no, it’s because deep down he knows he’s a failure, a fucking failure, he tried to be something and he failed, and rather than accept it, and own it, he just lashes out at anyone who stayed in the game.”

  Nicely put, that man. And isn’t ‘begrudgery’ a grand word?
  Here’s the thing, though - I can’t speak for the quality of Jack Donovan’s movies, given that Declan Hughes invented the guy and his films, but I can fully understand why a failed writer might get bitter, especially if he’s reading books all the way through - as he’s bound to do, when he’s being commissioned to review - that he’d rather toast marshmallows on, if he wasn’t afraid they’d poison the marshmallows. Because while there are far, far worse things in life than having to read a rubbish novel knowing you’re going to get paid for writing about it afterwards, it’s still a huge pain in the hoop to do so, knowing that there are so many good books out there that you’ll never get the time to read.
  Because that’s the flip side, I think, of being a failed writer - there are few readers as well positioned as a failed writer to truly appreciate a good book. And whereas a couple of years back I could have simply set aside a bad book after 10 pages or so, before I actually started gagging on my bile, these days I need to grind right through to the end, which is the equivalent of rubbing my own nose in dog-dirt. By the same token, reading a good book - and Declan Hughes’ CITY OF LOST GIRLS, happily enough for the purpose of this post, falls into this category - inspires the kind of envy that generally, and simply, goes, ‘Shit, I wish I was that good.’
  There’s a question in the regular Q&A that I run on Crime Always Pays which is for me the one that gives the most insight into a writer, or as much insight as can be gleaned from a 10-question Q&A. It’s the one about God appearing, and saying you can only read or write, and which will it be. For me, it’s a no-brainer - I’d read, because the books I want to read are better than anything I’m capable of writing. And, given that I’m a failed writer, Beckett’s dictum on failing and failing again better notwithstanding, the last thing I want to be reading is a book not fit to lace my own books’ shoelaces, if you’ll forgive the mangled metaphor.
  Which is to say that I am growing increasingly bitter about books, but about bad books specifically; and given that I’m a shallow bugger at the best of times, and that jealousy, envy and bitterness as so easily accessed, no one is more surprised than me to discover that I’m learning to appreciate a good book more and more as time goes by.
  There are, as Raymond Chandler said, only two kinds of books, good and bad. Leaving aside the money, anyone who isn’t embittered by what a bad book costs them in terms of reading time should probably stop reading and take up crochet instead.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Donna Moore

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?
Tough choice. Does it really have to be one? Probably THE HOT ROCK by Donald Westlake. He was the master of the caper novel and I re-read that book every year. It’s a hoot. Alternatively, anything by Daniel Woodrell. He’s a genius.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Winnie The Pooh.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t feel guilty about ANY reading I do. I am frequently to be found in public toilets reading the graffiti. Wait, did that sound strange? Oh, too late. My guilty pleasure would be rubbish TV if I’m not feeling well. If I’m off work for more than three days I go on a Crap In The Attic spree and become an expert on the value of Victorian cake forks.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Loads, but one of the best was when world’s best agent Allan Guthrie called me and said “Donna, I know this is hard to believe, but someone wants to publish OLD DOGS ... Why are you crying?”

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Anything by Ken Bruen. Don’t make me choose.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Well, it seems that everything Ken Bruen ever wrote is being filmed (did you know he has a new film coming out in 2012? It’s called Shopping List and stars Baked Beans and Jameson), and I’m well chuffed about that. I’d really like to see THE BIG O being made into a film and I don’t care what you say about that.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - not having enough time to do it. Best - when someone tells me they have enjoyed something I’ve written. Makes me want to hug complete strangers. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that feeling. Unluckily for complete strangers.

The pitch for your next book is …?
I’m rubbish at pitches. I’m currently working on two books. One is further along than the other and is a caper about an elderly man who cons a conman. See, I told you I was rubbish at pitches.

Who are you reading right now?
Mark Timlin’s GUNS OF BRIXTON - a crime novel set in South London, with its roots in events in the 1960s. Good stuff.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I would say “God, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, but you’ve got to stop coming up with these ridiculous either/or questions. For lo, this is Heaven. I can read AND write. Now, toddle off and smite a politician or something.”

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I think I’ll go for a quote from my mum. “My daughter is weird, weird, weird.”

Donna Moore’s OLD DOGS is available now.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE SNOWMAN by Jo Nesbø

When snowmen begin to appear at the sites where women go missing, and subsequently turn up murdered, Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Police Force immediately makes the link between their deaths and a threatening letter he received some months earlier that referred to a snowman. Soon Harry and his squad – which includes Katrine Bratt, a new transfer from Bergen – have uncovered links to a host of other missing persons cases going back a number of decades, and they realise they might very well have Norway’s first documented case of a serial killer on their hands …
  THE SNOWMAN is the seventh Harry Hole story to be translated into English, following well-received titles such as THE REDBREAST, NEMESIS and THE DEVIL’S STAR.
  In many ways, Harry Hole is a compendium of crime fiction clichés. He’s a dysfunctional alcoholic with women trouble, a lone wolf who prefers to follow gut instinct rather than protocol. It’s hugely to Jo Nesbø’s credit that the whole package comes off more as a playful (albeit dark) homage to classic police detection than slavish imitation.
  It helps that Hole has a sandpaper-dry sense of humour, and that Hole is not only acutely aware of his failings, but also how they impact on those closest to him – namely, his ex-girlfriend Rakel, who is now dating a Doctor Mathias, and Rakel’s son, Harry’s ‘son’, Oleg.
  The fact that Harry is tracking a serial killer might seem on the face of it fairly predictable too – there appears to be far more serial killers in fiction than there are in reality. But The Snowman is not a plot-driven novel, even though its plot is complex and fast-paced. The real charm of the novel is Hole himself, and Jo Nesbø appears to be much more exercised by the idea of a character study than he is by the mechanics of the traditional who-dunnit. Hole is a complex character, whose battle with the bottle, his superiors, the Norwegian culture and – ultimately – his own self-loathing is a fascinating one.
  In fact, Nesbø writes so well that he blurs the line between literary fiction and what can be easily categorised as crime fiction. Clean, crisp and bleakly elegant, his writing is not unlike that of noir masters such as James M. Cain, while is ability to breathe life into all of his characters, even the most minor, is the trait of a true storyteller.
  He also manages to blend genres to a certain extent, introducing – via the serial killer pursuit – an element of horror that is persuasive because the evil it conveys has the banality of everyday life – snowmen, for example, take on a whole new meaning in the context of this novel. The fact that between 15% and 20% of children are born to ‘fathers’ who are not their biological fathers, which statistic plays into Hole’s investigation, is also a rather banal but potential horrifying fact, for male readers at least.
  It’s often the case that lone wolf protagonists such as Hole are written in the first-person, but Nesbø uses the third-person omniscient view. It’s here that the novel’s main flaw occurs, towards the end, as the pace accelerates towards the denouement and Nesbø – who has offered a number of potential suspects as the serial killer – digresses from the action in order to provide the reader with enough back-story to provide plausible motivation for the killer. This, naturally, slows the pace of the story, but it also breaks faith with the reader a little, as crucial snippets of back-story and character that go to create the psychological make-up of the killer are available to neither the reader nor Harry Hole during the preceding investigation.
  By the same token, and in the context of the novel overall, that’s a fairly minor criticism. It’s not often that you find yourself slowing down as you approach the end of a novel, the better to savour it; and it’s very rare that you do so when the novel is a crime thriller that is doing its best to drag you headlong to the finale. That Jo Nesbø manages to create a literally gut-churning level of excitement with his last 50 pages or so is no mean achievement, especially when this reader was deliberately slowing his reading down. THE SNOWMAN is first Nesbø novel I’ve read, but it proved more than enough to send me out in search of his back catalogue.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Pepper Smith

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

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I really don’t know. I like too many things to pick just one.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I wouldn’t, not even my own. I really liked Phil Rickman’s answer to this question, especially considering what crime writers tend to do to their characters.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I should feel guilty for reading? But ... but ...

Most satisfying writing moment?
Going back over difficult-to-write scenes and realizing you nailed them. Or the moment when that plot twist pops fully formed into your head and you know it’s going to change your story from something ordinary into something several notches above. "The End" carries only limited satisfaction for me, because it means I have to leave the world I’ve spent so much time in.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Since my entire exposure to any Irish crime fiction has been the Sister Fidelma series, I’m probably not best qualified to answer this question.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst--those days when you have to force yourself behind the keyboard. Best--Knowing that someone else gets what you’re written.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Patty O’Donnell becomes an unwilling pawn in a game of revenge between an Argentine ex-military officer and a man whose wife was among the disappeared in the Dirty War.

Who are you reading right now?
Currently reading COUNCIL OF THE CURSED by Peter Tremayne.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Ah, but how can you write without reading? God is not that unreasonable...

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Tight, visual, fast.

BLOOD MONEY by Pepper Smith is available now.

Shssssh, It’s John Connolly

THE WHISPERERS, as most sentient creatures in the known universe will be aware, is the latest John Connolly novel, and is due to be released - according to Amazon, at least - on May 13th. Mind you, such dates are often moveable feasts, and the earlier you can get your hands on the latest Connolly, the better. Happily, the Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar will be hosting the launch of THE WHISPERERS on April 21st, with the details running thusly:

Wednesday 21st April – 6.30pm until 8.30pm
Book Launch for THE WHISPERERS by John Connolly
Venue: The Gutter Bookshop

We’re thrilled that bestselling Irish crime writer John Connolly has chosen the Gutter Bookshop to launch ‘The Whisperers’, his new thriller featuring Charlie Parker. Do come along on the night to meet John and to get a copy of the novel personally signed - a treat indeed! If you can’t make it on the night but would like to reserve a signed copy, please drop us a line at the shop and we will arrange this for you. (Note - if you would like a personalised dedication we will require prepayment but are happy to organise this.)

  Meanwhile, the blurb elves have this to say:

Charlie Parker returns in the chilling new thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of THE LOVERS. The border between Maine and Canada is porous. Anything can be smuggled across it: drugs, cash, weapons, people. Now a group of disenchanted former soldiers has begun its own smuggling operation, and what is being moved is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge of the darkness in men’s hearts. But the soldiers’ actions have attracted the attention of the reclusive Herod, a man with a taste for the strange. And where Herod goes, so too does the shadowy figure that he calls the Captain. To defeat them, Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a man he fears more than any other, the killer known as the Collector …

  Incidentally, the Gutter Bookshop also hosted Arlene Hunt’s launch for BLOOD MONEY a couple of weeks back. Is the store set to become a hub for all things Irish crime fictional, and take on the role that the sadly lamented Murder Ink really should have? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …
  Finally, that Arts Lives documentary on John Connolly is available on RTE’s iPlayer until tomorrow, April 13th. Clickety-click here for more …

“Wolf Nipple Chips, Get ’Em While They’re Hot.”

Sometimes life is good. Sometimes it’s so good that you don’t need it to get any better. Last Tuesday night was one such night, given that I was sitting on the couch snaffling the last of my Easter eggs watching Barcelona’s Lionel Messi give a performance against the Mighty Arse that more or less defied superlatives. In my day I’ve been lucky enough to watch (not in the flesh, mind) the likes of Van Basten, Maradona, Bergkamp and Zidane, and seen all the clips of Pele, Best, Cruyff et al, and Messi - still only 22 - looks like he could well be the best of the lot, even though I’ll always have a soft spot for Van Basten, mainly for that goal against Russia in the 1988 Euro Championships.
  Anyway, midway through the second half, the phone rang. It was my old agent, who still has some rights on THE BIG O, letting me know that an Italian publisher has made an offer for said tome. Which is pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things - the advance wouldn’t be impressive even if it was in lire - but it was a pretty nice boost at the time, especially as I’m currently wallowing in the latest writing-related trough that besets us all once in a while.
  I have no idea when the book will be published in Italy, I’m presuming next year some time, if indeed the deal doesn’t fall through, but it’s nice to think that it’ll see a translation, and especially into Italian, and especially as I have a soft spot for that country. Hell, I might even wangle a long weekend there, to celebrate the launch. Most importantly, I suppose, the news sent me to the desk the following morning with a glimmer of hope that maybe someone will pick up my current offering, and desperately trying to ignore the sage advice that while you might be able to cope with the despair, it’s the hope that will kill you in the end.
  Times like those I like to turn to Isak Dinesen’s advice: “I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”
  Meantime, and if you’re wondering why an Italian publisher has - almost literally - spared no expense in securing the rights to THE BIG O, clickety-click here. It may not be as hot as Lionel Messi or wolf nipple chips, but it’s mine own humble thing, and I like it all over again.
  Failing that, check out what might well be the most audacious goal ever scored - and in a Euro Championship final, to boot. Roll it there, Collette …

  Recently I have been reading: DARK ORIGINS by Anthony Zuiker and Duane Swierczynski; BURYING THE BONES: PEARL BUCK IN CHINA by Hilary Spurling; BLOOD MONEY by Arlene Hunt; and OLD DOGS by Donna Moore.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray

I reviewed Paul Murray’s SKIPPY DIES for RTE’s Arena programme alongside Edel Coffey a couple of weeks back, working off the (koff) ‘notes’ below. I haven’t listened back to the show, but hopefully it was all a bit more comprehensible than the notes suggest - although if it was, the credit is all Edel’s. To wit:

Set in the fictional Seabrook boys’ boarding school in South County Dublin, Skippy Dies embraces a veritable host of characters in its 661 pages, including the Acting Principal Greg Costigan, history teacher Howard, school psychopath Carl, St Brigid’s girl Lori, temporary Geography teacher Aurelie and teenage drug dealer Barry. Its main characters, however, are Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster and his best friend Ruprecht, who is a teenage genius bent on validating the M-Theory of multiple universes. Skippy, on the other hand, just wants Lori fall in love with him …
  The title is something of a spoiler (!) here, given that Skippy dies in the prologue, during a doughnut eating contest with Ruprecht, with his last acting being to scrawl the name ‘Lori’ in jam on the floor. The novel then flashes back to explore how Skippy’s death came to pass.
  At 661 pages, Skippy Dies is a pretty long novel that trawls long and wide for its inspirations – anything from quantum physics to the war poetry of Robert Graves, teenage drug dealing, anorexia, adolescent infatuation, adult infidelity, the impact of religious orders on the spiritual and physical well-being of school pupils ... For the first 50 pages or so I thought it a little too clever-clever for its own good, and dreaded having to wade through another 600 pages. By the time I was finished, I would gladly have read another 600.
  Skippy, even though he is largely a passive character, is hugely endearing, a bright-eyed, intelligent chap who is massively vulnerable and finds himself abandoned by his family at a critical stage of his life. The overweight Ruprecht, more of a comic sidekick in the beginning, comes into his own as a compelling character – his obsessions with parallel universes and time travel, etc., are never jarring in one so young.
  There are some wonderfully malevolent characters too, particularly that of Greg Costigan, a man who will preserve the tradition and ethos of Seabrook College regardless of the cost, and who encapsulates the phrase ‘the banality of evil’.
  Murray is an elegant writer (Lori’s smile, for example, is described as “bright and strong, a kinder, warmer cousin of light”), a superb storyteller and plotter, and a very funny comic writer who had me laughing out loud on numerous occasions. Mario, the permanently horny teen friend of Skippy’s, is an hilarious comic creation.
  The novel comes in two formats, one the 661-page novel, the other in which the novel is chopped up into three distinct books. This, presumably, reflects the short attention span of readers today, but my advice is to go for the 661-page book, because it’s a very difficult novel to put down.
  All told, Skippy Dies is a hugely satisfying novel that blends comedy and tragedy in a story that is, despite the timeless themes, always relevant to the Ireland of today.

Boylan Point

It’s curtains for KT McCaffrey, folks. Or - dum-dum-DUM! - is it? “The latest of the excellent series featuring Dublin journalist Emma Boylan,” was how the Irish Independent’s Myles McWeeney described KT McCaffrey’s previous outing, THE CAT TRAP, and he may well find himself using the same phrase again one of these days. For lo! KT launches NO CURTAIN CALL on this coming Friday, April 9th, at the Central Hotel on Exchequer Street in Dublin, with special guest Betty Ann Norton doing the honours. All, as if it needs to be said, are welcome, and if anyone cuts up rough on the door, just tell them Crime Always Pays sent you. The gig kicks off at 6.30pm. Quoth the blurb elves:

When the naked, blood-encrusted body of a well-known property developer is discovered on a graveyard slab, the media frenzy surrounding the story is overwhelming. Investigative journalist Emma Boylan is assigned to the case but she soon discovers that she will be playing second fiddle to a rival male reporter, much to her displeasure. Peeved at being sidelined, Emma embarks on a line of inquiry that leads her deep into the dark side of London's West End. Dead bodies continue to turn up amid the most elaborate theatrical settings imaginable. Undeterred, she probes further into disturbing deeds that have been a long time hidden. Now she must peel away layer after layer of deception until events collide and spiral into a terrifying, spectacular climax …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Phil Rickman

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 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Or maybe THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE. Or even LAMBS IN THE SMOKE.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I wouldn’t. That’s like asking which writer I’d want to have moving me around. Creepy. Forget it.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t go for all this guilty pleasures stuff . Like, am I supposed to feel guilty about enjoying Joanna Trollope because I’m not a woman?

Most satisfying writing moment?
The End. Isn’t it always?

The best Irish crime novel is …?
To be honest, I haven’t read enough of them to make a valid assessment. Does John Connolly count, even though his books aren’t set in Ireland?

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Probably won’t happen. Last time I spoke to John Connolly he said he wouldn’t let those Hollywood bastards anywhere near his characters.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The fact that people never believe you when you say a fairly successful crime writer earns nearly as much as a middle-ranking cop.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Ritual murder ... the SAS ... Good Friday.

Who are you reading right now?
James Lee Burke. When you’re writing, it’s always better to read someone inspirational in the hope some of it rubs off.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. Because I also need to Eat.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dialogue you hear.

THE BONES OF AVALON by Phil Rickman is published by Corvus.

The Lone Ranger and Toronto

Canada is justifiably lauded for many things, but gritty urban noir isn’t one of them. Unless, of course, you’re one of the cognoscenti who’s read John McFetridge’s (pictured right, in classic ‘having cake and eating it’ mode) ‘Dirty Sweet’ (2006) and ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’ (2007). Pared-down tales of Toronto’s dark underbelly, the novels have been favourably compared with Elmore Leonard’s Detroit-set stories for their smartly observed characters, sharp dialogue, and a willingness to go beyond simplistic characterisations to explore the complex nature of crime and criminality.
  His latest offering was published last year in Canada as ‘Swap’, but arrives in the US bearing the title ‘Let It Ride’. It’s his best novel yet, a distillation of the elements that made the previous novels such compelling reading, and yet it’s a complex story of interwoven motivations that virtually defies a synopsis. John? Can you tell us what it’s all about in fifty words or less?
  “My publisher would love it if I could,” he laughs. “It’s about how relationships change over time, how the balance of power shifts ... It’s about an ex-marine who comes to Toronto from Detroit to set up a supply line for drugs from a guy he met in Afghanistan who’s now a member of a biker gang. And he meets a woman who’s robbing spas and wants to rob the bikers. And there are cops ...”
  Before John McFetridge, Toronto revelled in the name of ‘Toronto the Good’. Is it true that he’s personally responsible for the steep rise in Toronto crime statistics? Is it even safe to visit Toronto these days?
  “Yes, this is true, the only crime in Toronto is in books, otherwise it really is New York run by the Swiss. No crime, clean streets, all the people friendly all the time. Honestly, though, almost everything that happens in my books has its roots in something that actually happened here, from the closed-down brewery being used as a giant grow-op to the eight bikers killed in one night, to the highest ranking narcotics officers on the Toronto police being arrested for drug dealing.”
  As in all good crime writing, McFetridge’s tales explore how conventional notions of street-level criminality impacts on all strata of society, a pervasive poison that goes right to the top of the power structure. Is there a moral dimension to writing that kind of fiction? Or is crime fiction purely an entertainment that reflects the world we live in?
  “If it accurately reflects the world we live in,” he says, “then I think that’s the moral dimension. I try to show the circumstances that allow the criminals to operate, the ways that they justify criminal behaviour to themselves as being just business, and the internal politics and the restrictions on the police that make it difficult to catch these guys. Any conclusions are up to the reader.”
  McFetridge gets compared to Elmore Leonard quite a lot. Does that ever get boring?
  “It’s certainly not boring yet, though he must be getting tired of the number of writers being compared to him. I think it’s a style of writing that’s almost a genre of its own by now. I think of it starting with Hemingway and short stories like ‘The Killers’ and ‘Fifty Grand’ and then maybe it split into crime and literary with Elmore Leonard, and everyone who gets compared to him in the crime camp, and people like Richard Ford and Raymond Carver in the literary camp.”
  Are there any writers who make him you bite his fingers with envy?
  “Lots. So many. And the great thing is there are more all the time, every year more writers come out with debut books that are so good.”
  That said, McFetridge is of the opinion that there should be more good writers getting published every year.
  “I know of a few very good writers,” he says, “who’ve had a number of books published, who are having trouble finding a publisher for their new work. More and more I see any book that falls outside the easy description, that’s difficult to categorize or take risks - all the things that literature should do - having trouble finding a publisher. I can understand the employees of the publishing companies having bosses to answer to who have shareholders to answer to, so the drive becomes the most amount of profit in the shortest time above all else, but that mentality isn’t really the roots of publishing.”
  To that end, McFetridge has recently taken the radical step of setting up a writers’ co-operative organisation.
  “The idea is a kind of novelists version of the original United Artists,” he says, “a company run by the artists. Democracy sounds like a great idea but it’s messy and hard to work on a day-to-day basis, but I’d like to try. If the co-op members are all people who love books and who love literature and that’s their main priority, then I think it’s possible they could do great things. I’m not suggesting it be a non-profit organization (at least not on purpose) but that the drive for the most amount of profit possible not be the main decision making factor all the time.”
  It’s a fascinating concept, especially given the technological advances of recent years, which should in theory make it a lot easier for writers to connect with readers while minimising the number of middle-men involved in the process. For more info, clickety-click here ...
  Meanwhile, do yourself a favour and check out John McFetridge’s superb ‘Let It Ride’. If its quality is anything to go by, Toronto’s Lone Ranger won’t be riding away into the sunset any time soon.

  This article was first published in Crimespree Magazine.