Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THIEF by Maureen Gibbon

Suzanne, a thirty-something teacher, moves from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis to the north woods of Minnesota. The plan is to cut all ties from a failed relationship with her ex-boyfriend Richaux, and to give herself some time alone, and to swim in the lake beside the cabin she has rented from Merle.
  Lonely for company, Suzanne posts an ad in a Lonely Hearts section of the local newspaper. One of the respondents is Alpha Breville, a convict serving time in Stillwater Prison. When Suzanne asks about his crime, he tells her that he raped a woman. Suzanne responds by telling him that she was raped herself, when she was 16.
  “We were two sides of a coin,” she says. And so begins an unusually perverse relationship …
  THIEF is an emotionally complex novel. While it is told in the first person by a woman who has been the victim of a rape, Suzanne does not portray herself as a victim. In part that’s because the rape happened half a lifetime ago, and Suzanne has had many years to accommodate herself to the event and its consequences. The wound is no longer raw, the shock no longer fresh.
  For the most part, however, the emotional complexity is the result of who Suzanne is, and her way of looking at the world. Certainly, being raped at a young age has coloured her perception of the world in a particular way, and very possibly contributes to the fact that in her personal relationships, she actively seeks out danger, or at least the potential for danger, and that she is drawn to the kind of man whom her friends consider unsuitable.
  By the same token, Gibbon is at pains to point out that Suzanne was a strong-willed and assertive character before she was raped. She was sexually precocious, independent of thought, and grew up in an environment that taught her to value herself in terms of how others valued her sexually:

“So even if I was sixteen when Frank L---- raped me, I was a different sort of sixteen: not a virgin, in love with my own orgasms, already certain my main worth in the world was sexual … That’s what I mean when I say it was probably inevitable that some harm should come to me. At sixteen I so much wanted to be part of the adult world, I started pounding on the door. Not surprisingly, it let me in.”

  However, Gibbon does not make Suzanne’s rape an inevitable consequence of her sexual activity. In fact, she’s at pains to make the point that Suzanne’s rape was the consequence of her opening herself up emotionally to people, and that opening yourself up - given the environment she grew up in - almost inevitably meant doing so physically.
  In another writer’s hands, Suzanne’s experience might well have resulted in her becoming a closed-off character, unable or unwilling to develop any kind of relationships with men, and harbouring revenge fantasies. Suzanne, however, has an entirely healthy appetite for sex and intimacy, not as a defence mechanism, but as the physical manifestation of Suzanne’s fascination with the human condition. While her relationship with Breville the convicted rapist initially and understandably offers her the opportunity to vent her spleen about her own experience in particular, and against the concept of rape in general (“I wanted to use Breville,” Suzanne says and we start to wonder who the ‘thief’ of the title really is), it’s not long before she finds her curiosity about Breville - who he was when he raped at 19 years old, and who he is now, after his time spent in prison - comes to dominate their exchanges. Letters give way to prison visits, and soon Suzanne and Reville are engaged in a sexually charged relationship.
  THIEF has been criticised for the way in which Gibbon allows Suzanne, despite her experience, to move beyond that and develop a relationship with a rapist. That, however, is a very simplistic reading of the narrative. Gibbon does not set aside Suzanne’s rape; instead it remains a live issue throughout, and becomes a perverse kind of catalyst to a perverse kind of relationship. The novel is not a polemic nor a panacea; like all good novels, it offers up unique characters in a unique scenario, and sets in train a narrative that owes the reader nothing but the truth of its own logic.
  What gives THIEF a cutting edge, of course, is the fact that Gibbon herself was raped as a 16-year-old. Indeed, a piece written in the New York Times in 2006, in which she speaks of ‘my rapist’, suggests that at least certain parts of the novel are semi-autobiographical. That experience, of course, is not enough to give Gibbon a free pass to write whatever she likes about rape and its consequences, particularly if what she writes can seem to empathise with a rapist. Writing about Breville’s formative years, for example, Gibbon has this to say close to the novel’s conclusion:

“I kept thinking back to the day I met Breville, when he told me the love of his mother and father and grandfather weren’t enough to help him, and to the day he told me he lost his virginity to his molesting, twelve-year-old cousin. I now understood just how fully he’d told me the truth. Nothing could have counteracted the sexual abuse, the years of underage drinking, the petty thievery, or the violence and chaos he’d lived within. Breville had begun a certain course so early on that his life could only follow one path.
  “On the long drive home it became entirely clear to me that the surprising thing was not that Breville had raped someone when he was nineteen. The only surprise would have been if he had not become a rapist.”

  To suggest that a man can be driven down a life’s path that will inevitably lead to rape seems a dangerous thing to put into print, but again, it’s important to say that this is a novel, a work of fiction, and that Suzanne’s experience is unique to her.
  In fact, both Gibbon and Suzanne constantly defy expectations. Despite her rape, Suzanne maintains a healthy attitude towards sex, and the pages are littered with graphic descriptions of sex, masturbation and orgasms. As a writer, Gibbon is at ease with employing a coarse vernacular when it comes to describing sex, including the liberal use of f-words and c-bombs.
  There is also Suzanne’s unrepentant acknowledgement of her fascination with ‘unsuitable men’ - her ex-boyfriend, the dope-fiend Richaux; Breville the convicted rapist; Gabriel, the destitute and potentially dangerous cowboy she picks up after posting another ad in the Lonely Hearts pages.
  THIEF might well have been an easier read had Suzanne learned to shy away from such men after being raped. It would also have been far less infuriating, challenging and thought-provoking. Anyone who reads THIEF for a conventional narrative arc ending in predictable catharsis will be sorely disappointed.
  There is much more to THIEF than its central conceit, however. Gibbon writes with a quiet and understated assurance, rarely lurid in detail or flamboyant in description. Despite that, she is wonderfully adept and occasionally poetic in recreating Suzanne’s bucolic environment, particularly when describing the lake-side flora and fauna.
  The lake itself is virtually a character in its own right. Suzanne swims every day, and comes to know the lake in all its manifestations. There is more than a hint that her dedication to swimming, and particularly the joy of floating, has to do with the cleansing properties of the experience, and there are times when the lake takes on the quality of amniotic fluid. That said, however, Gibbon is too clear-eyed a writer to give in to the lure of easy metaphor. “It was like water in a dream,” she writes at one point, going on to say: “The water felt like silk on my hands. No - it felt like water.”
  There are caveats, of course, the main one being that the ‘cowboy’ character never really rings true. He is the counterpoint - or the potential counterpoint - to the incarcerated Breville, but apart from his aura of desolation, Suzanne never really explains her attraction to him, or why he should travel long distances to see her. “They were both ciphers,” Gibbon writes at one point about Breville and the cowboy, perhaps acknowledging that the cowboy is one of the few blatantly artificial constructions in a story that feels organically rooted in Suzanne’s unique experience of the world.
  That said, Gibbon also makes the same point about Breville: “But the relationship I had with Breville was made up only of words, talk, and letters, and that was what made it artificial and false …” she writes. Their relationship is, on one level, utterly artificial and incongruous. By the same token, any novel is ‘made up only of words, talk, and letters’, and a reader’s relationship with a novel as a form of temporary reality is as artificial and incongruous as any of the relationships explored here.
  Gibbon’s job, as a novelist, is to create a world so compelling as to allow we readers to immerse ourselves completely, regardless of whether or not we agree with the logic on which that world turns. In this she has succeeded brilliantly. - Declan Burke

  Maureen Gibbon’s THIEF is published by Atlantic Books.

On Rewrites, Pseudonyms And Deep-Fried Mars Bars

Mrs Wife is a scientist in the field of food health and safety. This suggests that we should be eating the right foods rather than the wrong foods, but the good news is that there’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. Cheeseburgers, whipped cream, a full Irish fry (with baked beans), deep-fried Mars bars - they’re all good. Except for the deep-fried Mars bars, obviously.
  Anyway, and according to Mrs Wife, the central issue when it comes to healthy eating is variety. Eat nothing but cheeseburgers, say, and you’ll end up a very sick puppy.
  I’m wondering if the same applies to books. If reading too much of the same kind of book doesn’t cause problems for the imagination’s digestive system. If reading too much crime fiction, say, doesn’t dull the taste-buds and cause all kinds of mental blockages. I mean, there’s nothing like a week without a good cheeseburger to whet the appetite for a good cheeseburger.
  I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction lately, some of it very good indeed, but in the normal run of things crime writing would account for about half or less of my reading. I’ll happily read most kinds of fiction, and ditto for travel writing, science, history, mythology and legend, religion and philosophy, and pretty much anything else that seems interesting and well written.
  Life’s too short for eating nothing but cheeseburgers, no matter how tasty they are.
  But here’s the thing. I like to write a bit too. And while I do like to write crime fiction, I like to write, or try to write, other kinds of fiction as well.
  I like William Goldman. Partly because some of his novels are brilliant (THE PRINCESS BRIDE, MARATHON MAN), but also because he wrote in so many different genres (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being one my favourite Westerns, and All the President’s Men being a superb thriller).
  I like John Connolly, too. THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is my favourite of his novels, in part because it’s terrific stuff, but also because of the gamble it represented in this day and age.
  If William Goldman were starting out now, would he get away with that kind of genre-hopping? Would Ray Bradbury be allowed to published the superb DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS?
  By the way my brain has started flashing lately, I reckon I’m gearing up for a rewrite of a novel that I’ve been writing on and off for the last eight years or so. It’s a bit of a mongrel, because it contains elements of WWII, Greek mythology, quantum physics and a good old-fashioned amnesia story. It’s a mess right now, and clocks in around 150k words, but hey, writing is really rewriting, no?
  I also reckon that the most important piece of rewriting I’ll do is on the name that goes on the front of the manuscript. For one, the name ‘Declan Burke’ hasn’t exactly sent the boys at Nielsen into a tizzy. For two, the very fact that I’ve published two crime novels means that I’m now, for better or worse (the latter, mostly), a crime writer, and even though the new story revolves around a crime, it’s not a crime novel. At least, I don’t think it is. Maybe I’m wrong.
  Anyway, any suggestions for a pseudonym? I’m thinking Stryker Ramoré.
  I’m off on holidays this week (I’m writing this post in advance) and no doubt, in the quieter moments, I’ll be thinking about the rewrite. Whether I can commit to it time-wise. If I’m quibbling about committing to it because I’m afraid I’m not good enough to write the book I want to write. If there’s any real point in investing all that time and energy when there’s a strong likelihood the book won’t be taken seriously regardless of how good I can make it, given that it was written by ‘Declan Burke’.
  Questions, questions …
  Anyway, I’m looking forward to the holiday. It’s been a rollercoaster six months, and I need the break, and the space and time it affords you to breathe out and sit back and recharge the batteries, and spend quality time with Mrs Wife and the Princess Lilyput. See you next week, folks …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sean Patrick Reardon

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 am by no means an aficionado of crime novels, but I would have liked to have written [Mario Puzo’s] THE GODFATHER.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Easy, Jay Gatsby.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Bret Easton Ellis. His sequel to LESS THAN ZERO just came out and I’m looking forward to seeing what happened to all the characters.

Most satisfying writing moment?
I was toiling away on the novel, participating and wasting a lot of time on writer’s forums and one day I purchased Stephen King’s ON WRITING. It was the best money I ever spent and from that moment on, I felt empowered, enthusiastic, and had hope that I might just be able to pull it off.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
At this stage of the game, I’m like a schoolboy trying to learn from the many talented Irish crime headmasters I have come to know and read lately. If I had to pick one that has really moved me, it would be RESURRECTION MAN by Eoin McNamee.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I really, really wish Guy Ritchie would take on Declan Burke’s THE BIG O.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Self-doubt and editing are the worst. The best thing by far is the sense of accomplishment. Even if no one ever reads my novel, I set a goal of trying to do it, put in the time and effort, and I’m really proud of myself.

The pitch for your next book is …?
When wealthy Russian mobsters contract L.A psychologist Joel Fischer to develop a device to manipulate minds, the DreemWeever exceeds all expectations. Everything is on track for delivery and a big payday, until two adventurous stoners steal his Dodge Challenger that, unknown to them, contains the DreemWeever in its trunk. Fischer and his crew have two days to get it back or he dies.

Who are you reading right now?
HARD MAN by Allan Guthrie, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS by Declan Burke, and WAKE UP DEAD by Roger Smith. All are excellent and all the crime authors I’m discovering of late make me feel like I did as a kid when I discovered a new band.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Reading. Since I was a child, reading has taken me to foreign lands, exposed me to different cultures, and introduced me to all sorts of interesting characters (real and imaginary). Plus, I could never write, if I didn’t read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Cinematic, Rock-n-Roll, Twisted.

Sean Patrick Reardon’s MINDJACKER is available via Smashwords.

There Will Be Fresh Blood

Waterstones’ ‘Fresh Blood’ campaign, currently in its second year, aims to showcase ‘some of the best new crime writers around’. The fact that one quarter of this year’s list is taken up by Irish writers is a sign of just how healthy 2009 was for Irish crime writing: step forward Alan Glynn (WINTERLAND), Gene Kerrigan (DARK TIMES IN THE CITY) and Stuart Neville (THE TWELVE, aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST).
  Unsurprisingly, all three novels finished in the top four (along with John Connolly’s THE LOVERS) in the inaugural ‘Crime Always Pays Irish Crime Novel of the Year’, with THE TWELVE topping the poll - no mean feat for a debut novel. Mind you, and as I said at the time, the fact that WINTERLAND was published in November worked against it, voting-wise, and I have no doubt it would have polled even better had it had a longer shelf-life.
  Anyway, the bottom line is that all three are terrific novels. Clickety-click here for a review of THE TWELVE, and here for a review of WINTERLAND, and here for DARK TIMES IN THE CITY. Or better still, go out and buy them, all three.
  Oh, and if anyone reading this has read any (or all) of the titles, don’t be shy about telling us what you thought about them. You know what to do …

The Fallacy Of Millions; Or, How Ledgers Have Become The Publishing Industry’s Preferred Reading

Laura Miller wrote a piece on e-publishing for Salon.com during the week, during the course of which she railed against those aspiring authors who are already celebrating the impending demise of the traditional ‘gatekeepers’ - agents, editors, publishers - of the publishing industry.
  The ‘gatekeepers’, she argues, perform an invaluable service to readers by filtering an occasional diamond from the vast numbers of manuscripts that constitute the ever growing slush pile. In abandoning the traditional publishing model and going straight to (electronic) print, she says, authors are simply exposing readers to the slush pile. The net effect of ‘civilian’ readers being so exposed, she says in a rather apocalyptic finale, is one of “crushing your spirit instead of refreshing it … How long before you decide to just give up?”
  As it happens, I broadly agree with Laura Miller on e-publishing. Any business conducted without some form of quality control won’t be in business for very long.
I did take exception, however, to one word in Miller’s piece, and it’s contained in the following excerpt:

“Digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that’s threatening the traditional industry,” a recent Wall Street Journal report proclaimed. “Self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.” To “circumvent” means, of course, to find a way around, and what’s waiting behind all those naysaying editors and agents, the self-publishing authors tell themselves, are millions of potential readers, who’ll simply love our books! The reign of the detested gatekeepers has ended! - Laura Miller

  That word, as you’ll probably have guessed given the title of this post, is ‘millions’.
  Before I started this blog, back in 2007, I knew no more than a handful of writers. At this point, I probably know hundreds. Some of them have had one book published, others are bestsellers.
  I also have friends who are aspiring writers. In fact, I met two of them on separate occasions during the last week, and while we talked about other stuff, as you do, just to be polite, the general thrust of the conversations centred on books and writing.
  The theme was largely one of frustration: not being able to find time to write (pesky children); not being able to find an agent; not being able to get our books published. The usual war stories. And then there’s the other frustrations: the idea that won’t behave itself and sit quietly on the page; the virtues, or otherwise, of excessive plotting; the words that come, okay, but like Yeats’ peace, dropping slow; the conflict between establishing a compelling pace while still maintaining quality on a word-by-word basis. And all the other issues of craft that tend to pop up when you’re spitballing over a cup of coffee.
  Here’s the thing, though: in all the years I’ve been listening to writers, publishing or aspiring, small, big or mid-list, I’ve never once heard the phrase, “I’d love to sell a million copies.” Neither, for that matter, have I ever heard a reader say, “I want to read a book written by a writer who’s sold a million copies.”
  Maybe I’m hanging out in the wrong coffee shops, but the writers I know talk about interesting ideas, about different ways of telling a story, about phrasing and style, about the use of language.
  Readers - and I’ll always be more of a reader than a writer - tend to talk about good books, interesting characters, moral dilemmas, beautiful writing.
  The industry, meanwhile, is at another table, very probably in another coffee shop, talking about bottom lines and sales figures and marketing and promotion and million-selling behemoths.
  I’m not naïve. I understand publishing’s economies of scale. And I do appreciate that we’re living through a global recession. But it seems to me that there’s an ever-widening disconnect between the publishing industry and the people - writers and readers - it depends upon.
  Good books are still being published, certainly, but there’s no getting away from the fact that the quality control ‘gatekeepers’ are these days more interested in maximising profits from the likes of Dan Brown, James Patterson and Stieg Larsson than they are in investing in novels and authors that are unlikely to sell a million copies per book.
  Yes, I understand that such writers finance a publisher’s speculative investment on an unknown writer. But the inexorable logic of the current model is that more and more funds must be pumped into the brands and franchises to keep the ledgers balanced, with the result that investment in aspiring, new and mid-list writers is drying up. If you don’t believe me, ask Charlie Williams.
  Rob Kitchin, himself an aspiring author, blogs about yours truly over at The View From the Blue House. In effect, he’s bemoaning the fact that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the sequel to THE BIG O, is only available via e-publishing. Which is nice, but Rob isn’t really writing about me. He’s writing about authors who are, as he says,

“ … marginalised by an industry that is increasingly seeking to de-risk their investment by judging authors and their works against a narrow set of criteria, rather than nurturing and supporting them. There are plenty of authors and bands who have worked away producing acclaimed work for years, perhaps not making mega-bucks but nonetheless not losing anyone money, before going stratospheric. If a condition of a writing career is immediate success then there is every danger of producing an entire generation of one book authors, killed off and demoralised before they’ve had chance to blossom into mature, successful writers with an established reader base. It’ll also work to reproduce a certain kind of formulaic writing and stifle creativity and risk-taking – think of Hollywood film making at the minute.”

  Laura Miller is correct to suggest that a lack of regulation, or quality control, is likely to bedevil the coming boom in e-publishing. By the same token, the evidence of bookstores - and certainly the bigger chains - suggests that when the publishing industry uses the phrase ‘quality control’, it’s control rather than quality that’s uppermost in their minds.
  If the industry is truly concerned about readers giving up on reading, then its big problem is not e-publishing. It’s the wall-to-wall bullshit lining bookstore shelves from New York to Sydney.
  Lashing out at scapegoats might temporarily deflect attention away from the fallacy at its core, but if the industry truly believes that stamping its feet on the little people represents progressive thinking, then we’re all - readers, writers and ‘gatekeepers’ alike - in bigger trouble than anyone imagined.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE USES OF PESSIMISM by Roger Scruton

Philosopher, journalist, novelist, political activist, Oxford professor: Roger Scruton is a man of many interests, most of which he invokes in his latest non-fiction treatise on the state of the world.
  Following on from his most recent offerings, ENGLAND: AN ELEGY (2006), CULTURE COUNTS: FAITH AND FEELING IN A WORLD BESIEGED (2007), and BEAUTY (2009), THE USES OF PESSIMISM is a polemic against the ‘unscrupulous optimists’ who propagate false hopes without considering the consequences of their unbridled optimism. Scruton sets out his stall in the preface: “I have no doubt that St Paul was right to recommend faith, hope and love (agape) as the virtues that order life to the greater good. I have no doubt too that hope, detached from faith and untempered by the evidence of history, is a dangerous asset, and one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions.”
  Citing the French Revolution, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia as examples, Scruton argues that offering a utopian ideal without factoring in a necessary dash of pessimism leads to untold suffering, not least because the idealists refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of their ideal, and the historical shortcomings of unfettered idealism in general. When Robespierre et al failed to deliver liberté, égalité et fraternité, for example, the response was not an examination of the revolution’s core beliefs to see where it had come up short, but the lopping off of those heads that dared to point out the failings.
  Warming to his theme, Scruton then points the finger at more contemporary manifestations of ‘false hope’. Modern educationalists, for example, are derided for fostering a culture in which individual excellence is considered divisive within a classroom. The EU project also gets it in the neck. Scruton draws parallels with the genocides and gulags that flowed from the Communist Revolution. “Of course,” he says in relation to the EU, “the goals are less ignoble and the results more benign. Nevertheless, there seem to be few if any ways in which mistakes can be rectified or the people who make decisions held accountable for the results of them. […] However foolish it may be for the European institutions to take charge of some matters best dealt with by the Member States, no power, once transferred, is ever recaptured. Ridiculous regulations can be duly laughed at from top to bottom of the Union; but the laughter rings hollow, since it meets with no response. A cavernous void lies at the heart of the European process, a void into which questions are constantly called out by the people, and from which no answer ever returns.”
  That ‘less ignoble’ and ‘more benign’ might suggest that the author has his tongue partly in his cheek, although Scruton, a Conservative socio-economic thinker, is never happier than when adapting Edmund Burke’s observations on the French Revolution to the latest example of anti-democratic utopianism. He makes some compelling arguments here, however, first setting forth his theme on the dangers of false hope, then outlining the means by which the ‘unscrupulous optimists’ tend to refute opposing arguments, or negate those arguing entirely (the perverse logic of which inevitably leads to the guillotine, the gulag or the concentration camp). The latter half of the book, and despite Scruton’s sober style, is a deliciously provocative deconstruction of perceived truths that have embedded themselves in Western civilisation, often to the detriment of the culture fostering them.
  Deliberate obfuscation emanating from academia; the ‘false expertise’ that constitutes theology; multiculturalism; the moral relativism that unpicks generations of practical wisdom; the Western liberal guilt that actively conspires in the rise of a radical Islamism that wishes for nothing more than the destruction of Western civilisation: all these, and more, are examined under the harsh light of Scruton’s Conservatism.
  The result is a challenging read, although Scruton, in his determination to ram home a point, occasionally overreaches himself. “To doubt the equivalence of gay sex and heterosexual marriage is to evince ‘homophobia’,” he writes, “the moral equivalent of the racism that led to Auschwitz. Likewise, public criticism of Islam and Islamists is a sign of ‘Islamophobia’, now a crime in Belgian law; and ‘hate speech’ laws are on the statute books of many European countries, making the mere discussion of issues that are of the greatest concern to our future into a crime.”
  Such statements are useful in that they alert the reader to the need to add a pinch of salt, along with Scruton’s prescription for a dash of useful cynicism, when reading THE USES OF PESSIMISM. That said, this is a bracingly enjoyable venting of Conservative spleen, not least because Scruton’s Canute-like stand against the prevailing tide of neo-liberal orthodoxy is very probably doomed to be ridiculed and marginalised by the very means he outlines himself. - Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Sunday Business Post.

Foxing Clever

The Thought Fox - aka Faber editor Katherine Armstrong - posts a piece on her blog titled ‘In Praise of Emerald Noir’, in which she offers a list of the ‘25 best writers of Emerald Noir’. It’s a comprehensive list - so comprehensive, in fact, that it even includes yours truly - with proceedings kicking off thusly:

“I grew up in Northern Ireland in the eighties and nineties, which was probably not Judith Chalmers’ first point of call for Wish You Were Here but still, it was home. As most people will remember, Northern Ireland during that period was an interesting place to be if you were particularly keen on scaring yourself silly. The television most evenings would have talk of car bombs, murders, knee-cappings and other assorted terrorist activities. Going to school in Belfast every day on the train you became used to having to get a replacement bus service due to bomb scares. For anyone who wanted to skip class the various alphabetical groups bent on death and destruction could guarantee that no one would question your excuse for being late – there always seemed to be a bomb scare somewhere.
“Throughout the difficult years there were books that focused on the Troubles – you know the stuff – where an English spy from British Intelligence would invariably fall in love with a Catholic girl who would betray him to the IRA and he’d be executed. But there was a huge gap in the market for really good home grown crime fiction. Over the past twenty years or so there has been an emergence of what has become known as Emerald Noir. It’s gritty, it’s realistic, and contemporary Ireland – both north and south – is a whole lot better for it …”

  For the full list of 25 Irish crime writers, clickety-click here …
  Naturally, and given the nature of such things, even a list of 25 Irish crime writers is going to miss out on a few names that really should be in there. John Connolly doesn’t make the cut because he doesn’t set his novels in Ireland, but Armstrong’s roll-call of honour doesn’t include Julie Parsons, Paul Charles, Liam O’Flaherty, Garbhan Downey, Ava McCarthy, Peter Cunningham, Hugo Hamilton, Rory McCormac, Vincent McDonnell, Cora Harrison, or - shock, horror! - Twenty Major. On the upside, it’s nice to see that the list does include Eilís Dillon, Eugene McEldowney, Jim Lusby, Andrew Nugent and Vincent Banville, all of whom tend to get overlooked in discussions about Irish crime writing.
  Perhaps understandably, the list is also short on recent debutants, such as Niamh O’Connor, Kevin McCarthy, Gerard O’Donovan, Gerry O’Carroll and Rob Kitchin. There are also a number of mavericks who deserve a plug, like TS O’Rourke, John Kelly, Patrick McGinley and Seamus Smyth, all of whom were writing Irish crime fiction when it was neither popular or (even less) profitable.
  So there you have it. Any names that should be on that list, but aren’t? You know what to do …

The Loveliest Review In The World

Some reviews are good, some are bad, others are quirky. This review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS popped up on Smashwords over the weekend, and is without doubt the loveliest review I’ve ever had. To wit:

When I was a kid and it was too hot to play outside, I would talk my mother into giving me a quarter if I didn’t have one, and then I’d grab my bike and hightail it down to the drugstore.
  By the time I hit the railroad tracks I’d be sweating. But downtown they had big trees with lots of shade and the pedalling would be easier.
  I would walk into the drugstore and head down to the comic rack. I would get what I could get for my quarter and head back. Going back I would pedal harder, full of anticipation. Just before I got to the house, I’d make a quick stop at the gas station and get a soda (ok, I had an extra dime.)
  I’d get home, turn on the fan, open that soda, spend a little time looking at that glossy cover and then I’d turn to the first page.
  Man, life couldn’t get better than that.
  Well, this is better than that. Shake a couple of bucks out, grab a Coke and have yourself a nice afternoon in the shade. ***** - Francis Roderick

Kafka, Stalinism And Serial Killers: Yep, It’s The Irish Crime Novel

Yesterday I had the very rare joy of a Saturday afternoon all to myself, when I could have (a) toddled off to Dalkey to listen to Declan Hughes and John Connolly wax lyrical about ‘the 10 Crime Novels to Read Before You Die’, (b) watched a World Cup game in its entirety, or (c) got horizontal on the couch and cracked open Robert Fannin’s FALLING SLOWLY. I was very tempted to go for (a), but being a lazy bugger, and being all World Cupped out after England’s tragi-comic adventure against Algeria, I eventually opted for (c). A good choice, as it happens, and the early signs are promising in a Kafkaesque way. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, if anyone was at the Connolly / Hughes gig, and made a list of their 10 novels to read before you die, I’m all ears …
  Incidentally, Crime Watch hosted a John Connolly ‘9MM’ interview earlier this week; clickety-click here for more. And THE WHITE GALLOWS author Rob Kitchin also found himself staring down the same barrel: you can find his answers here.
  Staying with interviews, Sue Leonard recently quizzed William Ryan for the Irish Examiner, when William had this to say about the origins of his debut, THE HOLY THIEF:

“I’d read Isaac Babel’s short stories and was working on a screenplay of his life (Babel was executed in Russia’s reign of terror). I found that whole period in Russia fascinating.
  “I took a hero – Korolev, working with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, who is not the brightest. I threw him in this situation and waited to see what would happen. I’m interested in dictatorship; in how ordinary people behave in extraordinary situations.
  “You were required to give absolute loyalty in the Stalinist period. They were prepared to do bad things, believing that the end justified the means. Communism was a religion really. It offered paradise on earth and in the near future. The only way they could function was to believe, ‘This must mean something’.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Finally, TV3’s Morning Ireland programme hosted Gerard O’Donovan during the week, with Gerard offering insights into the whys and wherefores of his debut novel, THE PRIEST, and why he decided (with his tongue firmly stuck in cheek, presumably) to ‘put the crucifix back at the heart of Irish writing’. More seriously, the conversation then goes on to investigate the challenge of writing a credible crime novel in Ireland that features a serial killer, particularly as Ireland has never had - officially, at least - a bona fide serial killer.
  So: why hasn’t Ireland had its very own serial killer? Is it because we’re all too nice ‘n’ cuddly ‘n’ twinkly-eyed ‘n’ pleasantly drunk to bother? Or because there’s always been any number of ‘causes’ available to offer an umbrella of political respectability and sectarian motivation if you’re of a mind to snuff people out?
  For Gerard O’Donovan’s TV3 interview, clickety-click here …

  Lately I have mostly been reading: THE USES OF PESSIMISM by Roger Scruton; THE WINGS OF THE SPHINX by Andrea Camilleri; TINKERS by Paul Harding; and THIEF by Maureen Gibbon.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tyler Dilts

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?
Probably one of my two all-time favourites - either Dashiell Hammett’s RED HARVEST or James Lee Burke’s HEAVEN’S PRISONERS. These two books had a greater influence on my own writing than just about anything else.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
This is a tricky question. I wouldn’t really want to be a character in most of my favoorite books because usually they suffer a great deal and very bad things tend to happen to them. I love Dave Robicheaux, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with him. So, definitely someone with a happy ending, or multiple happy endings. Spenser, maybe?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I teach English at a university, so I think most of my colleagues would consider almost everything I read a guilty pleasure. To name names, though, Stieg Larsson is probably my current favourite. I do read a lot of thrillers and graphic novels, but I don’t really feel the pleasure is guilty at all, because there’s so much high quality writing across just about every genre these days.

Most satisfying writing moment?
The first time I held a copy of A KING OF INFINITE SPACE in my hand.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s IN THE WOODS. It would have to be a European production, though, because I can’t imagine an American version staying true to the novel.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst is the sitting still. I think best when I’m moving. Walking is especially good. But when I sit still, my brain seems to slow down. The best is when a scene or a moment really comes together, especially after ten or eleven drafts.

The pitch for your next book is …?
In THE PAIN SCALE, as Danny Beckett recovers from the events in A KING OF INFINITE SPACE, he’s faced with the toughest case of his career - the murder of a young mother and her two children, which leads him into a tangled plot that involves him with adversaries ranging from Ukrainian killers to United States congressmen.

Who are you reading right now?
I just started Justin Cronin’s THE PASSAGE, and so far, it’s living up to the hype. And at the beginning of every summer, I start itching for the new James Lee Burke novel, so I can hardly wait for THE GLASS RAINBOW.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Reading. Just last week, I said to someone I wish I could quit my job and just read all the time. It’s been a bit longer since I’ve said that about writing.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
A former teacher and current friend of mine, Long Beach poet and fiction writer Gerry Locklin said A KING OF INFINITE SPACE had a “powerful personal intensity.” I’ve always liked that.

Tyler Dilts’ A KING OF INFINITE SPACE is published by AmazonEncore.

Origins: Ava McCarthy

Being the first in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. First up: Ava McCarthy (right), author of THE COURIER. To wit:

“Harry Martinez has been with me a long time. Actually, that’s not true - I only created her in 2004. But it feels like she’s always been here. The seeds of her character first sprouted while I researched an earlier novel. One of my characters was a small-time hacker (don’t ask me why), and the more I researched hacking, the more fascinated I became. I loved the whole idea of someone intruding on a system, creeping around like a burglar, covering their tracks, peeking at sensitive data. The concept fairly rippled with tension and danger, and suddenly, Harry Martinez sprang to life. I could picture exactly how she would be: an ace hacker; a forensics whiz; resourceful, independent, enduringly curious, and with just a touch of larceny in her soul. I can still remember the goose bumps I’d felt at my discovery: I’d created my own techno private eye.
  “People often ask me why I chose the boyish name Harry, and for a long time, I didn’t have an answer. Instinctively, I knew the name was right, but I couldn’t for the life of me explain why. One publisher even rejected THE INSIDER, the first book in the series, on the basis that he “couldn’t be doing with a girl called Harry.” I cursed him roundly, but I didn’t change her name. Obviously, on one level I wanted to convey tomboy characteristics: Harry is gutsy, resourceful, unsentimental and feisty. But why I felt a woman couldn’t exhibit these qualities while going by the name of Susan, I couldn’t quite rationalise. Until recently, that is, when someone mentioned that her daughter loved the girl called George from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. The rush of insight was like a cartoon light bulb in my head. I’d grown up on Enid Blyton; I’d admired George enormously. She was fiery and obstinate, loyal and brave. Her real name was Georgina, but she never answered to anything except George. Was she the first childhood role model for Harry? The subconscious weaves its fabric in unexpected patterns. Maybe I’m right after all, and Harry has been with me a long time.
  “The Harry Martinez books start from tiny ideas, random notions that happen to make me curious. Back in the day, I used to be a physicist, so I like to know how stuff works. THE INSIDER, for instance, began with a curiosity about insider trading. I researched the mechanics of it and by the time I’d understood the characters inhabiting that world, I knew I wanted to write a story around them. The second book in the series grew from a curiosity about diamonds. I looked under the hood, digging deep below surface clichés, and learned about the world of underground mines, expert diamond cutters and international diamantaires. And out of that world evolved the story of THE COURIER. For the third book, I’m sniffing around several trails, including scam artists and the Basques of northern Spain. Who knows where that will lead …
  “But that’s just the hammer and chisel side of things. Otherwise known as The Plot. While my conscious self hews out great chunks of action, my subconscious just keeps on weaving. Knit one, purl one. And as the story plaits together, a pattern of emotional nuances will emerge almost in spite of me, until finally it dawns on me what I’m really writing about. With THE INSIDER, for instance, I came to understand that apart from insider trading, I was writing about the relationship between an estranged father and daughter. In THE COURIER, my subconscious turned to the complexities of mothers and daughters, and the struggle for self-belief. In the third book in the series, I have recently realised that, apart from scam artists and the Basques of northern Spain, I’m exploring the whole notion of family and identity.
  “So while Harry came to life for me in a single, goose-bump moment, the inkling for a story doesn’t arrive all at once, and sometimes the hammer and chisel can even bend it out of shape along the way. But if I manage to hold onto the emotional vision by the end while staying true to Harry’s character, then I consider that a success.” - Ava McCarthy

  THE COURIER is published by Harper.

The Review From The Blue House

God bless the interweb. Back in the day, and in the normal run of things, THE BIG O (being a co-published title with no marketing budget behind it when it first appeared in 2007) might have picked up a few press reviews and then crawled away into a dark corner to die. Happily, and given the ever growing network of bloggers and webnauts that exists among readers and writers, reviews still occasionally pop up. The latest comes courtesy of Rob Kitchin, a fellow scribe who blogs at The View from the Blue House, with the gist running thusly:

“THE BIG O is a comic crime caper – think of Carl Hiassen strained though a noir filter. The story is broken into a succession of short scenes each written from the perspective of one of the six principle characters. The structure works to provide a nice, quick pace and enables Burke to flesh out the characterisation, where each person is slightly larger than life with certain foibles … The only thing that grated after a while was the use of coincidence, which was clearly deliberate but edged towards excessive … THE BIG O is a very enjoyable read and a comic crime caper that is genuinely comic.” ****

  Obviously, it’s nice to know that Rob Kitchin liked - for the most part - the novel, and very generous he was too. What I liked about the review, though, is that few punches were pulled, when it would have been easier for Rob to gloss over what he didn’t like and simply emphasise what he did like (full disclosure: I’ve met Rob Kitchin once, and thought he was a nice bloke). He’s not the first to point out that the story of THE BIG O turns (gyrates) on an excessive use of coincidence; and whether that conceit was deliberately intended or not, readers are fully entitled to find it grating, irritating or simply unbelievable. They’re also fully entitled to call me on it.
  For what it’s worth, I think that that kind of robust critique is welcome and entirely healthy. It certainly beats having him gush about my book and me gush about his (Rob Kitchin has just published his second novel, THE WHITE GALLOWS), an all too common practice these days, and one that serves neither writer nor reader.
  On an altogether more rarefied level, the venerable Sarah Weinman recently blogged on a similar theme, when she mused aloud about ‘awards fatigue’. The gist of the piece was the proliferation of crime fiction awards (Anthonys, Barrys, McCavitys, Shamuses, Edgars, et al), the difficulty in differentiating one from another, and the overall worth (or otherwise) of having so many awards, all in the context of whether or not the awards are successful in raising the profile of the winning and nominated authors with an audience beyond that of crime fiction aficionados.
  Both EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O were nominated for awards, bless their cotton socks, so I’m in a position to say that, yes, it’s lovely just to be nominated. By the same token, and looking at the big picture, there appears to be a very real danger that crime writing, even with the very best of intentions, is creating a closed-loop feedback of mutual celebration. In a nutshell - and this is where Rob Kitchin comes in - when everything is good, nothing is good.
  Running parallel to the mutual celebration is the occasional statement from an author or critic from outside the crime fiction circle, which suggests that crime fiction isn’t as well written as it might be, or is too formulaic and predictable, or too simplistic in terms of form to reflect the complexity of the human condition. The reaction tends to be one of closed ranks, and dark mutterings about snobbery and prejudice, and reverse-snobbery accusations about ivory towers and self-indulgence.
  In one sense, that’s actually nice to see - it demonstrates the all-for-one and one-for-all nature of the crime fiction community. It’s failing, however, is that it’s a short-term view. All criticism is valid, and particularly when it offers opinions we’d rather not hear. We’re coming up hard now on the centenary anniversary of what I consider to be the birth of the modern crime novel - those collections of pulp short stories that would eventually crystallise into novels by Paul Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, et al - and yet the form, structure, intent and ambition of the crime novel has hardly changed in almost one hundred years. Content has changed to reflect contemporary concerns, certainly, but society, culture and civilisation have mutated in ways that would have been scarcely conceivable even to Jules Verne in his pomp.
  Is the proliferation of awards doing the crime novel any favours? Are we being honest enough with ourselves as to the enduring worth of crime fiction? Are we too stubbornly closing ourselves off to valid criticism that threatens (and apologies for the tortured metaphor) to prick the bubble of our closed-loop feedback?
  I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits.
  Oh, and I’d also like a week in the Greek islands, preferably paid for by some commercially suicidal publisher who wants to publish one of my novels.
  Any takers?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA by Isabel Allende

Slavery is an ugly concept that strikes to the very heart of the human experience. In this her 15th novel, Isabel Allende focuses on the impact of slavery on women and children in particular. As the daughter of a slave, her heroine Tété, who is known to her nearest and dearest as Zarité, is born into slavery. When French plantation owner Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue in 1770, he buys Tété to serve as his wife’s maid.
  The intertwined destinies of Tété and Valmorain form the narrative spine of ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA. It’s an epic tale set against a fertile historical backdrop, which incorporates the slaves’ revolution on Saint-Domingue, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Allende explores all strata of society, creating a panoply of characters that includes priests, doctors, prostitutes, buccaneers, soldiers, society madams, slave overseers and radicalising abolitionists. For all its grand sweep, however, the novel is an intensely personal tale of Tété’s struggle to survive, endure and finally escape the shackles of slavery.
  The story is told for the most part in a formal third-person narrative, but Allende blends the political and the personal by allowing Tété to occasionally step forward from the teeming dramatis personae and deliver first-person accounts.
  Allende’s vivid prose makes this an intoxicating read at times, whether she’s describing the lushly beautiful hinterland of Saint-Domingue (the island that would later be divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic) or the heartbreaking cruelty meted out to slaves on the merest whim of their owners. The tale itself, meanwhile, has a compelling quality as the relationship between Tété and Valmorain becomes intensely personal, and blood-lines blur as emancipation becomes a political reality.
  Most notable of all, however, is Allende’s barely restrained sense of moral outrage at the fate of the slaves who were doomed to work themselves to death on the sugarcane plantations of Saint-Domingue. While she refers for the most part only elliptically to the horrendous tortures and deaths perpetrated by the white masters, the complete physical, sexual and psychological control exerted over Tété makes for utterly depressing reading. Or would do, were it not for Tété’s unbreakable will and her unshakeable faith in her own worth.
  In preaching her gospel, however, Allende has a propensity for veering into a didactic mode that sits uneasily with the novel’s internal logic. Tété’s personal accounts offer a deeper understanding of the character’s motivations, for example, and are particularly heart-rending when she speaks of the children she has had by her master. However, it is never explained as to how a plantation slave garnered the education that might allow her write so persuasively, while the prose employed is too fluent to be convincing as an oral account.
  There are times, too, when Allende’s prose becomes unnecessarily fervid. Describing Tété’s forbidden dalliance with the revolutionary slave Gambo, for example, she writes:

“ … she swung astride him, ramming into herself that burning member she had so longed for, bending down to cover his face with kisses, lick his ears, caress him with her nipples, rock on his hips, squeeze him between her Amazon’s thighs, undulating like an eel on the sandy floor of the sea. They romped as if it were the first and the last time, inventing new steps in the ancient dance.”

  There is also a shallow quality to the characterisation of the minor players, who tend to be all good or all bad, depending on their emotional intelligence and their sensitivity, or otherwise, to the slaves’ plight. Valmorain, on the other hand, is a fascinating character precisely because he is neither good nor bad. Instead he is a weak and vain man who allows evil be done in his name, and one from whom - appropriately, given his historical context - a simplistic and reductive redemption is ultimately withheld.
  All told, however, ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA makes for an enthralling read, an unusually thought-provoking page-turner. While Allende makes deft use of contemporary allusions - the appalling poverty of what would one day become Haiti, some minor flooding in New Orleans - there is no doubting the relevance of the central thrust of her story, which is that slavery is no less a blight on humanity now than it was in the past. - Declan Burke

  This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post

Why Women Read Crime Fiction

I got a press release during the week - I don’t think it’s fair to mention the publisher, nor the writer it was plugging - that offered the following reasons as to why women are hooked on crime fiction:

1. Our relationship with the prospect of danger; from a young age women are primed to expect fear.

2. Escapism; pure enjoyment.

3. Anti-romance.

4. Possibility of learning survival tips to use if we’re kidnapped.

  All three regular readers of CAP might want to believe that I inserted # 4 just to make sure they were paying attention, but I’m afraid not: somebody, somewhere, believes women are so thick - or perhaps just the ones that read crime fiction? - that they read crime novels for survival advice.
  As for the other reasons: aren’t men primed from an early age to expect fear? Don’t they read for escapism and enjoyment? Aren’t men - historically, fatally - anti-romance?
  Honestly, folks, some days you wonder why you do it …

Roses Are Red, Orchids Are Blue …

The chandeliers at CAP Towers fairly jingled with delight this morning, after Eoin McNamee’s forthcoming ORCHID BLUE popped through the letterbox. Not only was I being treated to an advance-advance copy (the novel isn’t published until November), but I didn’t even know there was a McNamee novel forthcoming. Quoth the blurb elves:

January 1961, and the beaten, stabbed and strangled body of a nineteen year old Pearl Gambol is discovered, after a dance the previous night at the Newry Orange Hall. Returning from London to investigate the case, Detective Eddie McCrink soon suspects that their may be people wielding influence over affairs, and that the accused, the enigmatic Robert McGladdery, may struggle to get a fair hearing. Presiding over the case is Lord Justice Curran, a man who nine years previously had found his own family in the news, following the murder of his nineteen year old daughter, Patricia. In a spectacular return to the territory of his acclaimed, Booker long-listed THE BLUE TANGO, Eoin McNamee’s new novel explores and dissects this notorious murder case which led to the final hanging on Northern Irish soil.

  McNamee has carved out a tasty little niche for himself writing fictions based on true crimes (THE BLUE TANGO, RESURRECTION MAN, 12:23), and ORCHID BLUE is at base camp as we speak, testing its crampons and donning an oxygen mask in preparation for its fast-track assault on Mount TBR. Wish it bon chance, people: this is one that simply won’t wait …

Cassidy’s Boy

Yet another interesting debut to watch out for: Yvonne Cassidy’s THE OTHER BOY, which flashed across the CAP radar late last week. The early word is that it’s a literary psychological thriller, and the name ‘Tana French’ leaps to mind when perusing the blurb elves’ witterings below. To wit:

“‘You know that moment between sleep and waking? I read somewhere that the first thing that comes into your head is what you desire or fear the most. I don’t know if that’s fully right though because for years when I opened my eyes I used to think of Mark.’
  “I’m JP Whelan and I said that, the thing about Mark, to my shrink. He’s always trying to get me to talk about what happened all those years ago, when we were just kids.
  “I wasn’t always seeing a shrink, I wasn’t even always JP, I used to be John-Paul. Here’s where I’m supposed to tell you about all that, about my life with Katie and Abbey in London or before then, back in Dublin, with Dad, listening to the Beatles and how those were the only times I really felt safe.
  “But then I’d have to tell you about my brother Dessie and what happened with Mark.
  “But it doesn’t all fit into some neat little box, my story. I wish it did. So if you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself, because even now I’m not sure what the truth is.”

  Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot of hard work to me. “If you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself …”. You think James Patterson and Dan Brown got richer than Croesus by asking people to find stuff out for themselves? Eh? And it’s not like life isn’t busy enough without having to down tools during a book and go finding stuff out. Gah, grumble, rhubarb, etc. …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Gerard O’Donovan

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?
So many, from DOUBLE INDEMNITY to LA REQUIEM via the Ripley trilogy and Rebus series. Recently, Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE was enviably great.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Chili Palmer on a good day, Joe Pike on a bad one.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Tabloid reporters.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting published, especially by Sphere here and Scribner in the US.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Any of Brian McGilloway’s novels.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE PRIEST, but if that’s not allowed, Gene Kerrigan’s LITTLE CRIMINALS.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Effort / reward – and the tightrope between them.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Here, mister, do you want to buy a really cracking crime thriller ...

Who are you reading right now?
Michael Connolly (THE SCARECROW), Simon Lewis (BAD TRAFFIC) and Ruth Dudley Edwards (AFTERMATH).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, although I think God might have other issues to tackle me on first.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Roller… coaster… ride.

Gerard O’Donovan’s THE PRIEST is published by Sphere.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Brooklyn’s Finest (18s)

Three Brooklyn cops have very different careers: Eddie (Richard Gere), about to retire, no longer cares about doing the right thing; undercover drug agent Sal (Ethan Hawke) is bending the rules until they break; while Tango (Don Cheadle) is so far undercover that he’s beginning to forget who the good guys are.
  Antoine Fuqua’s sprawling tale is a mini-epic, with the three parallel narratives playing off one another and intersecting in a final, cataclysmic finale. It’s been quite a while since Fuqua’s Training Day (2001), which was his finest hour until now, but he brings a similar quality of intensity and gritty reality to this production.
  The film asks interesting moral questions of its protagonists. While the narrative is ostensibly about the war taking place either side of the thin blue line, in reality the story is more concerned with characters who are at war with themselves. To a large extent, the conflict in Brooklyn’s Finest is internalised, which is a difficult concept to portray convincingly on screen.
  All three leads put in fine performances, with Gere and Hawke surprisingly impressive after years of mediocre work. Richard Gere, in particular, turns in an eye-opening performance: overtly passive, given that his character is simply clock-watching until he can retire, Gere invests his deadpan role with a rare depth, particularly in the few scenes he shares with Eddie’s hooker-squeeze, Chantel (Shannon Kane), where Eddie’s sense of longing for something - anything - he can commit to is palpable.
  Also impressive is Ethan Hawke, whom we tend to associate with fey, sensitive characters. Fuqua - who previously worked with Hawke on Training Day - draws a compelling performance from the actor, who creates a character who is to be pitied and sympathised with despite his dirty dealings.
  The supporting cast plays an unusually strong part, with Wesley Snipes, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lili Taylor and Ellen Barkin all good value for money.
  The movie is arguably too long for its own good, but each separate strand works on its own merits, and it seems churlish to suggest that any of the triptych should be cut back. Fuqua combines a steady pace with dynamic editing to create a tension that seeps through all three stories. He also keeps the story rooted in the gritty, scuzzy details of life on the streets and invests proceedings with a degree of realism that is at times disturbing, all the while blending the cops’ domestic and professional lives, and the subtle ways in which the line between right and wrong can be blurred. - Declan Burke

What Fowl Beast, His Hour Come Round At Last …

Leaving aside the Artemis Fowl series for one moment, anyone who has read Eoin Colfer’s (right) HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS will know that he has a genuine affection for the tropes of crime fiction. The short story ‘Taking On P.J.’ in the Ken Bruen-edited DUBLIN NOIR further suggests that Colfer has the chops to write for an adult audience as well as a YA one. So the news - which comes via The Bookseller, although CAP first mentioned it way back in November 2007 - that Colfer is to publish an adult crime thriller is long overdue. To wit:

Headline has acquired Eoin Colfer’s first foray into adult fiction, a noir crime-thriller entitled PLUGGED, for publication next year. Marion Donaldson bought British Commonwealth rights for an undisclosed sum, in a deal conducted by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor. The deal was completed yesterday afternoon (9th June). The deal does not affect Colfer’s ongoing relationship with Penguin, which publishes his children’s books.
  Donaldson said: “[Writing for adults] was just something he decided to have a go at, and he has done it completely brilliantly. We were very keen right from the start, as everyone is such a huge fan of his children’s series Artemis Fowl. Obviously, this is intended for the adult market - there is a certain amount of violence in it - but you can still hear his voice in it, and people who have grown up on Artemis Fowl will be drawn to it. It’s very different [to his children’s books], but it has that tone.”
  PLUGGED is set in New York and New Jersey, and the main character is an Irish man “who lives just this side of the law but gets embroiled in things outside of the law”, Donaldson said.
  It will be a lead title for Headline next year, with a paperback to follow later in the year or 2012, she added. Although the deal is just for one book, Donaldson said the team “would hope he would write more”. She added: “We would love to see him continue with the character, although there is no commitment to write more books - we are just very excited to have one.”

  All of which is fine and dandi-o for Eoin Colfer, but that’s yet another quality name to be added to the seams-bursting list of top Irish crime novelists. Think of the fan club meetings, people! Much more of this and we might have to use an open-air phone-box next year …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jeff Andrus

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

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I am John Tracer. But somehow he stays the same while I just keep getting older.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
It more like, Who do I look at for guilty pleasure? The short list includes Jenna Jameson, the little blonde who mixes paint at Ace Hardware and an extraordinary Eucharistic minister at St. George’s.

Most satisfying writing moment?
In the western Proud Men, Charlton Heston said a line in which I used a cousin’s name, a throwaway for me, but Chuck spoke with such chilling conviction about the man’s rapacious appetite for other people’s land, I had to call my cousin and apologize before the piece aired. Of course, I wasn’t really sorry at all.

The best Irish crime novel is…?
I can’t speak about Irish crime fiction, but I think Ireland’s most eloquent alcoholic bomb-maker was Brendan Behan. I particularly admire BORSTAL BOY and CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
MALIBU PALMS. The narrator is a drunk, and the author happens to be the grandson of a bronc buster named Harney. When my mother was growing up, she was told never to tell anyone she was Irish. Being half-Mexican was OK. Boy, have times changed.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
My folks thought I was going to be a physician when I grew up. When they finally realized that I meant to be a writer, they took it as a sure sign that I would turn out to be a drunk and homosexual. They got half of it right.

The pitch for your next book is…?
The Shroud of Turin is a priceless Christian relic that means absolutely nothing to Harv Weisman, a secular New York cop who immigrated to Israel to work for Mossad as a way of avenging the murder of his wife and children by terrorists. Harv is skeptical about the power of any faith until The Shroud is stolen and used to blackmail the land of his fathers.

Who are you reading right now?
THE KOREAN WAR: PUSAN TO CHOSIN: AN ORAL HISTORY by Donald Knox.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God always stays in character. He wouldn’t do that.

The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
“...whimsical, lurid, offbeat.” - The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1996.

Jeff Andrus’ MALIBU PLAINS is published by Booksurge Publishing.

Laugh? I Nearly Emigrated

Colin Bateman (right) was kind enough to give me a very generous plug last week, in a piece he wrote for the Guardian’s Book Blog, in which he claimed that comic crime fiction is a ‘new and challenging’ way of dealing with what can often be moribund clichés in the crime writing genre. Peter Rozovsky picked up the ball and ran with it over at Detectives Beyond Borders, where the conversation became a debate about the use and abuse of gratuitous violence in crime novels, and particularly against women.
  There’s no doubt that employing comedy in crime fiction is a high-wire act. Crime is a very serious business, in more ways than one; violence, rape, torture and murder are not matters to be taken lightly. My big problem, as a writer, is that I love the crime novel form, and that I find it very difficult to write without trying to be funny. I have tried to write stories that are serious in tone, but I get bored very quickly, and find myself repressing the instinct to poke fun at the foibles of the characters, their ambitions and hubris. That puts me in an awkward position, not least because a good friend of mine died violently many years ago, and it goes against the grain to underplay the consequences of violence of any kind.
  My first novel, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, was an attempt to write an homage-of-sorts to the novels of Raymond Chandler - in other words, the novel was serious in its intent, but its protagonist, Harry Rigby, was prone to comic quips and asides to the reader. As best as I can remember without rereading it, the story contains two murders, both of which, I hope, receive their full due in terms of their consequences. The story also contains occasional outbreaks of non-lethal violence, most of which is perpetrated against Rigby, and again, I tried to do justice to the reality of my own experience of physical violence - that it is brutal and nasty, and as psychologically unsettling as it is physically debilitating. That said, Rigby at one point ships a bullet in his gut and - after a brief period of recuperation - goes merrily on his way. Plausible? Definitely not, according to a number of reviewers. By the same token, none of the violence is gratuitous, nor is it excessively detailed or gruesome.
  By the time I came to write my second novel, THE BIG O, I was a little worn out by the forensically detailed emphasis on violence and murder in the novels I was reading, and particularly burnt out by those authors who were gleefully celebrating the extent to which their novels were plumbing the depths of human depravity. The form I decided on was a homage-of-sorts to Elmore Leonard, with a nod to Barry Gifford, but I also set myself the challenge of writing a crime novel that contained no murders at all, and the bare minimum of violence. Apart from self-inflicted harm, the novel contains two actual episodes of violence: a dog has its eye removed with a fork, and a man - one of the bad guys - gets shot in the knee. By the standards of the kill-count in the crime novel today, that’s positively quaint.
  The comedy aspect was a bit more challenging. Many reviewers commented on the number of coincidences in the novel: some were willing to play along with the conceit, others found it a bit wearying. My intent, for what it’s worth, was to write a comic crime novel according to the classical definition of comedy - i.e., in classical Greek drama, tragedy is considered to be undeveloped comedy. In the context of the novel, a group of characters scheme and plot towards the finale, growing increasingly desperate to achieve their aims even as fate - in the form of those coincidences - becomes a noose around their necks. I suppose the general idea was that of ‘Men plan and gods laugh’ - either way, the concept was one of poking fun at the illusion of human control over our actions and their consequences in what is essentially a blind and pitiless universe.
  My third novel, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which is currently out under consideration, is an attempt to get at a different kind of comedy. Again, it’s a crime narrative, in which a hospital porter deranged by logic decides to blow up the hospital where he works, in order to illustrate how all civilisations (in this case, Western civilisation) are undone from within rather than destroyed by external forces. The humour is decidedly darker than previously; the protagonist, Karlsson, allows for no limits on his imagination when it comes to inventing ingenious ways to persecute his superiors. But the form, too, is an attempt to move away from the traditional crime novel narrative. It’s a meta-fiction, in which failed writer Declan Burke finds his own person, and that of his family, under attack by his deranged creation, Karlsson. The idea is to fold back the violence writers propagate onto the writer himself, and to have Declan Burke live with the consequences of his wilful depravity. Whether the conceit works is up to others to decide, but for now I’m happy that the story is at least an attempt to come to terms with the responsibility a crime writer bears in terms of the ways in which he or she employs violence in their novels.
  Anyway, that’s my two cents on the comic crime novel. I should point out, by the way, that my own experience of writing and publishing comic crime novels has been that while readers tend to like them as a change of pace from more serious fare, they’re not generally taken all that seriously by the industry’s mainstream, either by publishers or readers. That may well be because of the way I’ve written those particular novels, or because people don’t as a rule take comedy seriously. I’d imagine it’s very probably a combination of both. Bateman, whose debut novel DIVORCING JACK poked fun at warring paramilitaries and won the Betty Trask prize, and whose THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL recently won The Last Laugh award at CrimeFest, is one of the few exceptions. And that’s a shame, I think. Writers of serious crime novels who overdose on gratuitous violence and torture porn are no more realistic in terms of the truth of crime than comedy writers who exaggerate the tropes and blend genres. The funniest novel I’ve read so far this year has been Anthony Zuiker’s DARK ORIGINS, a laughably bad tale of an anally-obsessed serial killer mastermind, at the conclusion of which I had the overwhelming desire to take a shower. At the very least the comedy writers, bless their cotton socks, are serious about making you laugh.