Smarter Than The Average Bears

It’s a pic-a-nic, Boo-Boo. If you do happen to be in the vicinity of the Electric Picnic this coming Saturday, September 4th, here’s a gentle reminder that the crème-de-la-crème of Irish crime writing (and one clot) will be yakking it up over at the Arts Council Literary Stage as part of the Mindfield offerings over the weekend. Yours truly is said clot, hosting a conversation between the inseparable Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes (above right) and Gene Kerrigan about the books that inspired them to take reading and writing seriously when they were kids, so expect more than one reference to Enid Blyton. As for your humble host, and given the way the writing career isn’t exactly working out as anticipated, I’m planning on breaking out my radical ‘trapped-in-a-box’ mime routine. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …
  The following weekend, Dun Laoghaire hosts the Mountains to Sea literary festival, and I’ll be front and centre at 12 noon on Saturday 11th for what promises to be an enthralling hour of conversation between Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville - providing, of course, the Dun Laoghaire folks provide an interpreter that allows our delicate Southern ears to decipher those beguiling Norn Iron accents. Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION is one of the finest thrillers I’ve read so far this year, and is even better than his many-splendoured debut, THE TWELVE, while McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE, which is published in November and offers a fictionalised version of a true crime that occurred in 1950’s Newry, is probably his best novel yet. All in all, a tantalising prospect.
  I’m also hoping to get along to see Kate Atkinson at the Mountains to Sea festival. I missed out on WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, but Atkinson’s recent release, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, is a tremendous piece of work. She’ll be in conversation with Mia Gallagher at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, the 11th, at the Pavilion Theatre …

Down These Green Streets …

… quite a few men and women must go, very few of whom are in any way mean. In fact, they’ve all been pretty generous in contributing to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY, a collection of essays, interviews and short fictions written by Irish crime writers about the sudden explosion in Irish crime writing (academics in a tizzy, right). Declaration of Interest: the collection has been put together by your humble host.
  As all three regular readers will be aware, this project has been simmering for some time now, but I had a meeting with an Irish publisher last Friday morning and it was finally given the green light. Contracts are in the process of being issued, so it’s probably polite not to name names until all is signed and sealed, but the wheels are in motion and GREEN STREETS should see a shelf near you by spring, 2011.
  As for the contributors, well, it’s a veritable Who’s Who of Irish crime writing. In alphabetical-ish order: John Banville, Alex Barclay, Colin Bateman, Ingrid Black, Gerard Brennan, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, John Connolly, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Tana French, Alan Glynn, Cora Harrison, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Brian McGilloway, Adrian McKinty, KT McCaffrey, Eoin McNamee, Cormac Millar, Andrew Nugent, Niamh O’Connor, Professor Ian Ross and Neville Thompson.
  You’ll appreciate that I’m biased, but having read all the submitted pieces, it’s a terrific collection. What’s most interesting about it, I think, is the sheer diversity of the writers and the subjects they chose to write about … a fascinating rattlebag, indeed. I’ll keep you posted on developments, naturally, and I’ll be nailing up a list of contents at some point in the near future …

I Love The Smell Of Paranoia In The Morning

Mulholland Books has been running some very interesting material over on its blog recently, and WINTERLAND author Alan Glynn pitched in this week with his take on ‘the Paranoid Style’, an excerpt from which runneth thusly:

It was never going to last that long. Golden ages rarely do. But for a while there in the 1970s, that’s what we had.
  Ten years after Richard Hofstadter coined the phrase “the paranoid style” (in a lecture he delivered just days before JFK was assassinated), the national traumas of Vietnam and Watergate were in full swing. Hofstadter’s point was that “they” weren’t out to get you at all — you really were being paranoid. But by the early ’70s, this paradigm had been shattered. The point now was that they really were out to get you, whether you knew it or not, and generally you didn’t until it was too late … Today, paranoia and conspiracy thrillers are dismissed as “voodoo histories” and pretty much seen as a debased form of entertainment.
  All of which might lead you to believe that things have changed for the better since the ’70s, that today’s government no longer spies on, or keeps things from, its citizens, that today’s corporations no longer put the profit motive before any moral consideration of their actions, or that Deep Throat’s exhortation in that underground parking garage all those years ago to “follow the money,” somehow, happily, doesn’t apply anymore. This, of course, would be to ignore the truth (undeniably out there), i.e., that since the ’70s there has been an utterly astonishing increase — exponential, Moore’s Law–like — in every form of electronic surveillance, in the influence, reach, and wealth of transnational corporations, and in the sinister privatization of the military-intelligence complex generally …

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  For an interview (‘The Dark Art of Paranoia’) I conducted with Alan Glynn for the Sunday Times earlier this year, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: JS Waters

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 GODFATHER. I loved the richness of the characters. It made you wish you were born Sicilian. I liked the diversity between and humanization of the ruthless.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Stephen Dedalus, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. I loved this book. Absolutely. James Joyce is why I wanted to be a writer.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Stephen King, Clive Barker, Charlie Huston and Snorri Sturlson. I love horror and violence. It allows me to appreciate the peace and calm of my life. I’m an absolute freak about Norse culture and society. The old Viking sagas are violent, contemporary and give us a glimpse into the politics of 9th century life and how similar that is to our current state in some ways.

Most satisfying writing moment?
The smell of the printed pages the first time I opened the box of my new novel. I have been writing for over sixteen years. I started with role-playing games and transitioned into film and screenwriting. But there is just something different about a novel. A commitment of time, energy and plot that is the marathon of storytelling.

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

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD [by Declan Hughes] would definitely be my top candidate.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is I need absolute peace and quiet to work. I miss time with my children when I’m really locked into a session. Distractions break my cycle and I either have to stop all together or miss out on all the fun my family has in my absence. But the best reward for me is to entertain people. I love the fact that something I created in my brain that poured through my soul and out the fingers moved someone. I have the best job in the world. I get to watch the world and comment on what I see. I get to create anything in my world and make it reality on paper.

The pitch for your next book is …?
The disavowed son of a fallen angel conspires to kill the Antichrist, finding redemption and his humanity along the way.

Who are you reading right now?
Stieg Larsson, Stephen King, Craig Larson and Henry Perez.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
WRITE. I can always find someone else to read to me. I would be miserable without my ability to tell stories. When I’m not writing, I’m talking. I’m always creating.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Violent, raw and entertaining.

JS Waters’ THE MODERN PRIMITIVES is published by Draeconis.

O Danny Boy, The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling …

As all three regular readers will be aware, I’ve been tipping away at a new novel for the past few weeks - or radically rewriting an old novel, to be precise about it. I was doing fine until about ten days ago, with nearly 20,000 words under my belt (all new, unfortunately, given that I’m supposed to be stripping back at 150,000-word m/s to something a little less unwieldy), when for some reason I decided to go back and start again. Worse, the new start has the unmistakable aura of the dreaded prologue.
  Anyway, I’m having trouble finding the right note, the exact tone of voice. Below I offer for your delectation my scrawlings to date, and please feel free to toss brickbats and barbed-wire my way - all feedback is welcome - and please feel free to comment anonymously if you prefer. Think of it as a book club of sorts, albeit with the novel in its embryonic phase. The working title, by the way, is DANNY BOY, which is in part a wee homage to a fellow Irish scribe.
  As for the pic above, it was taken from the northeast of a village called Loutro, on the south coast of Crete, where I spent a very enjoyable holiday seven or eight years ago. If there’s a more perfect place on the planet to set a novel, I don’t want to know about it, or at least not until I’ve worked my way through this one.
  Roll it there, Collette …


Chapter 1

Out to the balcony as dusk sifts in, the light whisked thicker by a billion wings. A full moon low over the eastern bluff. From up here you can only marvel at how swiftly, how visibly, the dark comes on. A fine black mist sheeting in. ‘Night falls so fast here,’ Berte tells the tourists, ‘you can almost hear the bump.’ Not that it falls. What I’ve noticed is that the dark rises, drifting up out of the earth to settle in strata like good stout. Down below the village curves out around the bay, the murk already blurring its lines and angles to that of a pearl necklace loosely strung. Yet the peaks above still glimmer along the ridge and a zinc horizon slices sky from sea. The Libyan Sea, the nameless sky. Too early yet for stars.
  Here I stand, I can do no other …
  It will be warm until long after midnight. The air hangs trapped in the steep bowl of the bay, hemmed in by the faint offshore breeze. Just pacing the balcony, the cigarette cupped in my palm, is enough to glaze my forehead with sweat and set my back a-prickle. Indistinct murmurs carry across the water from the village, beach in a swish of surf, wash on up the hill. The early diners gathering. Chairs scrape, a cork pops. Then a trill of laughter, the impatient chink of knife on plate, the hiss and spit of grilling fish. A whiff of kalamari wafts up on the breeze, roasting lamb speckled with oregano, the sharp bite of lemon. My mouth waters, and sure enough my stomach starts to grumble. To distract myself I rub the ball of my thumb on the crosshatched grip of the Colt and imagine his agony as he drags himself across the stony ground, through the coarse maquis, a dying animal with only one thought in mind.
  But of course, he won’t come alone.
  Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by …
  The Boop has this trick where she sneaks up from behind and ducks in between my legs, forcing her head through, her pudgy arms gripping my thighs. A tiny Samson about to haul on her pillars. This time, when she twists her head to look up, her wide blue eyes are solemn. ‘Smoking nasty, Dada,’ she says.
  There’s nothing like disappointing his child to flay a man’s heart.
  ‘It is, love,’ I say. ‘Tell Momma I’m giving up.’
  She forces herself all the way through my legs, stands before me with one hand on her hip, wags a finger. A two-foot tyrant. ‘I put you,’ she says, ‘on the thinking chair.’
  I flip the cigarette away and reach to ruffle her blonde hair, but she ducks away, pouting. ‘Won’t be long now, Bumbles,’ I say.
  All at once her face brightens, the chubby cheeks flushing, milk-teeth gleaming in that perfect smile. ‘Dada come in a liddle bit?’
  ‘Another liddle bit, Boop. Tell Momma that Dada is coming.’
  She flinches. The blue eyes cloud. ‘I not find Momma.’ Her lower lip trembles. ‘I missed her.’
  Lost her, she means. ‘I know, love, but we’ll find her. Dada will help.’
  The eyes widen again. She quivers with repressed hope. ‘Find Momma?’
  ‘Exactamundo, Boop. Can you say ‘exactamundo’?’
  ‘Zakamundo!’
  ‘Good girl. Kiss for Dada?’ I hunker down as she flattens her pink lips in a parody of a pucker, arms thrown wide as she giggles and launches herself against my chest, and I close my eyes and beg for just this once, to feel her again just one last time …
  Back inside, and despite the white-tiled floor, the whitewashed walls, the room has grown dim as a cave. A brief yellow glow when I open the fridge to take out the plastic bottle of orange juice, a tub of yoghurt with a pair laughing strawberries on the label. I bring them across to the bed. There’s no denying she’s a pretty girl. Brown eyes that are almost almond in shape, the irises flecked with hazel. In direct sunlight, when she smiles her crooked smile, the flecks are green.
  No flecks in the subterranean gloom. No smile tonight. Her nostrils flare as I perch on the bed, place the yoghurt and juice on the locker. I reach behind to the small of my back and slip the Colt from my waistband and hold it up until she nods. Then I tuck the gun away and take the balled sock from her mouth. She spits dry, works a sandpaper tongue across her lips. Eleven years old, perhaps a little older. These days it can be hard to tell.
  The juice first, tilting the bottle to her lips. She drinks greedily, sucking it down. While she gasps I dab the run-off from her chin with a corner of the sheet. Open the yoghurt, spoon it home. She’s ravenous.
  ‘There’s fruit,’ I say. ‘A banana, if you want it. Or an apple?’
  ‘Banana.’
  I fetch the banana, peel it back. She devours it in three bites. Then the rest of the juice. When I try to replace the gag she ducks her chin, then tosses her head from side to side. I wait for her to run out of steam. ‘Courtney,’ I say, ‘listen to me. Courtney?’
  ‘He’ll fucking kill you,’ she says, low and cold. ‘He’ll feed you to the fucking pigs. He’ll -’
  As gently as I can I grip her cheeks with thumb and finger, squeeze her mouth open. Poke the balled sock in. She chokes, tries to say something, then gags way back in her throat.
  ‘He’ll come for you, Courtney. Don’t doubt that. He’s on his way.’
  Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, although there’s no telling if they’re tears of rage or fear or self-pity. All three, probably.
  I put the banana skin and yoghurt carton in the bin, the empty juice. Sit at the desk, nudge the laptop out of sleep mode. Roll a smoke while it whines and whirrs, its lights flickering. When it settles down to a quiet hum, and the wi-fi light is showing a steady green, I open up Gmail.

Sam -
  I’m going to be ducking out for a while. The file comes attached, along with both transcripts. The story will need a polish, I only finished it this evening. Feel free to dice and slice as you see fit. I’ll be in touch.
  Cheers,
  Dan

  I click send, wait for the whoosh, then fold down the laptop’s lid. Glance across at Courtney. As hard as she’s fighting it, the red-limned eyelids are beginning to droop. Hardly surprising. She’s had as tough a day as she’s ever likely to have. Besides, the orange juice was laced with two crushed Dalmanes.
  ‘It’s okay to sleep, Courtney. He’s coming for you. Do you believe he’s coming?’
  She nods, sluggish.
  ‘Then sleep.’
  I wait, rolling cigarettes, watching until she drifts off.
  Out on the balcony it’s fully dark. By now the village is festooned with fairy lights, the bay burnished gold and shimmering with the rise and fall of the swell. From somewhere further up the hill comes the zizz-zizz of a lone cicada. The moon fully up and perfectly round. God’s mouth pursed in a disapproving moue.
  I slip free the Colt and angle my arm until the its blunt sight splits the moon.
  The hour of Doom is drawing near, and the moon is cleft in two …
  The house was built into the side of the hill. A sheer drop beneath of ten feet or so, then three, maybe four hundred yards of steep slope to the village below. Broken ground, fuzzed with maquis, you could hide a small regiment in its dips and hollows. Too brightly lit for a frontal assault, the path a silvery thread in the moonlight. Maybe when the time comes they’ll send him up that path, dragging his shattered leg behind him, decoy and sacrificial lamb. His daughter, unconscious on the bed, the staked goat that draws him on.
  As for themselves, they’ll come from the north, circling up out of the village to slip down from the black hills like the andartes of old. Shadows in velvet.
  No telling when they’ll come. The circling around will take hours, and they’ll wait until the tourists are tucked up in bed. But they will --
  There. A motorboat skimming out across the bay, arcing towards the eastern headland, its wake shattering the gold leaf into tiny shards. A little late in the evening for running errands, boys, for dumping sacks of rubbish beyond the pebble strand that lies to the east of the bay.
  They’ll beach near Hora Sfakion to cut off my retreat, come west along the trail, spread out across the hills. A two-hour hike at a steady march, three to four hours for a cautious advance, one leapfrogging the other, all the while half-expecting a bullet from the dark.
  Brave men, these Sphakians, and tough as heartwood, but crafty with it. Born to survive at any cost but dishonour. The old laws, and only the old laws, pertain here: hospitality, physics, vendetta. All else is no more than choice and personal taste.
  When the motorboat disappears around the point I go back to watching the village again. A pointless exercise, the blaze of light leaves the western headland, the hills beyond, black as pitch. If I had infra-red glasses I might see them drift away in ones and twos, out past the dock towards the ruined fortress, creeping up out of the alleyways into the gullies and ravines like so many cats on the prowl. The night’s hunt begun. Possessed of the stealthy patience of those who know that time and night are their allies, who know that any help I have called for will arrive too late, if it ever comes.
  This will be their one mistake.
  You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave. I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead …
  As crafty as they are, they presume I think as they do. That above all else any man holds sacred, the survival instinct reigns supreme.
  Were they Persians advancing at the Hot Gates, they could not be more wrong.
  ‘You come in a liddle bit, Dada.’
  ‘A liddle bit, Bumbles. Just another liddle bit now.’
  And so I smoke and wait for my killers, an ear cocked to the murmur from the village, the swushing surf, the zizz-zizzing cicadas, alert but not reacting to a loose stone kicked free above on the slopes, the tinkle-tankle of a stray and anxious goat, for when andartes come they come as black angels, in deathly silence, and like an old man worrying at his kombolói I count off the minutes caressing the Colt’s grip with my thumb, now and again allowing it wander across to the safety to ensure the snib is off.
  O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling …

© Declan Burke, 2010

  And now, Dear Reader, it’s over to you. The comment box is open for business …

The Digested Read: DON’T BLINK by James Patterson

Being the latest in the 300-word chuckle-fest digests, regurgitated by yours truly. This week: DON’T BLINK by James Patterson. To wit:

DON’T BLINK
by James Patterson and Some Typist

Chapter 1
OHMIGOD! I can’t believe the Janjaweed are trying to kill me in Darfur! Boom!!!

Chapter 2
Whew, that was a bit too close for a magazine journalist who once nearly won a Pulitzer. Back in boring old NY, now.

Chapter 19
FYI, my gorgeous editor and BFF Courtney is engaged to Richard, the richest man in NY. She’s blonde. He’s evil.

Chapter 24
Oh no! There I was having lunch in boring NY with a mysterious baseball player, and a Mafia lawyer gets his eyes gouged out at the next table!

Chapter 35
Lucky I had my tape recorder running, eh? Pulitzer prize, here I come!

Chapter 46
By the way, I’m in love with Courtney. Sob.

Chapter 49
Like, NO WAY! Someone killed the mysterious baseball player!

Chapter 58
Am I next?

Chapter 109
Police protection, Chief? I don’t need no stinkin’ police protection! I nearly won the Pulitzer once. The TRUTH will protect me!

Chapter 1002
CRASH! BANG!

Chapter 1003
WALLOP!!!

Chapter 1004
Sorry, just fell down the stairs a bit there.

Chapter 1309
OHMIGOD! I can’t believe Richard did the dirt on Courtney!

Chapter 1457
Did I mention my niece? The feisty blind 14-year-old? No? Well, she LOVES baseball. And she’s soooooooo brave. We could all learn a thing or two from --

Chapter 90210
Oh no! I’ve been kidnapped by dastardly Mafia types! Am I about to … DIE?!!

Chapter 200,001
Golly-gosh, that was a lucky escape.

Chapter 451,357
Jings! Someone blew up my car!!!

Chapter 1,000,004
Phew! Guess I’ll just amble on out to the ’burbs where my sister lives with my feisty blind 14-year-old niece. They’ll never find me there.

Chapter 1,000,005
Well, who’d a thunk it? Bad people. In the ’burbs. Run away!!!

Chapter 4,00,098
Oh well, back to NY. Courtney needs me to pick up the shattered pieces of her blonde heart.

Chapter 9,234,343
Boom! Kablooey! Rat-a-tat-a-tat!!!

Chapter 11,345983
Bish-bash-bosh. And, indeed, more bosh. The End.

The Digested Read, Digested: Blink and you’ll … Oh.

  This article first appeared in the Evening Herald.

Laughter Is The Yes Medicine

“Dr Livingstone, I presume?” “No, it’s Yes.” “Yes?” “Yes, Dr Yes.”
  From his Caribbean lair - which is built entirely on the foundations of recycled offshore accounts, apparently - comes the news that the Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman’s next offering will be titled DR YES, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

You don’t say no to Dr. Yes, the charismatic plastic surgeon on the fast track to fame and fortune. But when the wife of obscure and paranoid crime writer Augustine Wogan disappears shortly after entering his exclusive clinic, the Small Bookseller with No Name is persuaded to investigate. As fatherhood approaches, our intrepid hero is interested only in a quick buck and the chance to exploit a neglected writer, but he soon finds himself up to his neck in murder, make-up and madness – and face to face with the most gruesome serial killer since the last one.

  That tome hits the shelves on September 30th, and we’re already rubbing our grubby paws with glee. The official launch takes place in Waterstone’s in Dublin during the first week in October, apparently, with TAFKACB also performing a reading at Blanchardstown’s Draíocht theatre. When we have more details, you’ll be the first to know.
  Speaking of theatres, and the funny things that may well happen on the way to them, Bateman’s theatrical debut, ‘National Anthem’, will play at the Baby Grand Opera House during the Belfast Festival, which runs from October 15th to the 30th. For all the details, clickety-click here …

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

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 HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I find no guilt in reading anything at all.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Sniffing my first book.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Anything by John Connolly.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Anything by John Connolly.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Not having to get up early or wear a suit. The isolation.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Bonnie and Clyde meets WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

Who are you reading right now?
Justin Cronin.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Bloody hard work.

Peter Robinson’s BAD BOY is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Diamonds: Miffed They’re No Longer Ava McCarthy’s BFF

A couple of snippets that snuck in under the perennially malfunctioning CAP radar, kicking off with Morning Ireland’s TV interview with the ever radiant Ava McCarthy (right) last May, when THE COURIER, her second Harry Martinez thriller, hit the shelves. A wide-ranging chat it is, too, incorporating computer hackery, insider trading and the illicit diamond trade. To find out why Ava will never again buy a diamond, clickety-click here …
  I’ve also been disgracefully neglecting the latest Benjamin Black novel, ELEGY FOR APRIL, which also appeared a couple of months back. Happily, the good folk at Euro Crime are, as always, on the ball, with the gist of the review running thusly:

“The plotline follows similar themes to the previous books in the series: a toxic cocktail of families, sex, religion and hypocrisy, with a sprinkling of privilege and political influence thrown in for good measure. There is relatively little emphasis on Quirke’s day job in this book; the author concentrates his focus on Quirke’s struggle to remain on the wagon. The actual plotting is somewhat languid, eventually proceeding hastily to a dramatic denouement coming from a flash of intuition by Quirke. But with writing of this quality, quibbling about the pace of plotting feels somewhat churlish; ELEGY FOR APRIL is another slice of classy Emerald Noir.” - Laura Root

  Nice. Meanwhile, Dermot Bolger’s latest offering, NEW TOWN SOUL, which also appeared a few months ago, is a YA novel that’s not strictly crime fiction, but sounds like it blurs the lines between quite a few genres. To wit:

Imagine what it must feel like to be a doll within a doll, to lose your own identity and spend your life in darkness … Joey thought he’d done all the research on his new classmates before he met Shane and Geraldine. Shane is his new best friend, calm and cool with a personality for every occasion and a strange sense of recklessness about him. But why does Shane make Geraldine so uncomfortable? They’re both hiding something from Joey and the answer can only be found in the old house on Castledawson Avenue - Souls are snatched and gambles taken in this distinctly Irish supernatural novel set in Blackrock, Dublin. Based on the concept of changelings, Bolger’s first young adult novel is a thrilling gothic ghost story with a romantic subplot.

  And the verdict?

“NEW TOWN SOUL is taut, mysterious and gripping to the last word. Dermot Bolger gets under the skin of the teenage experience and explores the dark side of the teenage psyche. A beautifully crafted thriller.” - Eoin Colfer

  Thank you kindly, Mr Colfer sir.
  Finally, if you happen to feel peckish in the vicinity of Dalkey on September 2nd, Declan Hughes will hosting a special lunch at the Royal St George Yacht Club (there’s posh) that includes vittles and the appetite-whetting prospect of Squire Hughes giving it large from his latest offering, CITY OF LOST GIRLS. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Famous Last Words

I had a piece published recently in the Irish Examiner called ‘Famous Last Words’, the idea being that writers nominate their favourite last lines from a novel. Declan Hughes, Tana French, Val McDermid, Eoin Colfer and Adrian McKinty were among the contributors, and it went something like this …

Famous Last Words

It’s one of the most understated finales of any novel, and yet the last lines of To Kill a Mockingbird, delivered after Atticus Finch consoles his daughter Scout in the wake of the Boo Radley affair, have an enduringly quiet resonance. “He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
  To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s classic coming-of-age tale, we asked a number of authors to tell us their favourite last lines from a novel.


  “‘Murder doesn’t round out anyone’s life except maybe the murdered’s, and sometimes the murderer’s.’
  ‘That may be,’ Nora said, ‘but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory.’” - The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
  Declan Hughes, author of City of Lost Girls: “I like this because it sums up the complex, open-ended nature of the new type of crime fiction Dashiell Hammett was writing, where justice and order were not restored at the end.”


  “Poor Eric came home to see his brother, only to find (Zap! Pow! Dams burst! Bombs go off! Wasps fry: ttsss!) he’s got a sister.” - The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
  Niamh O’Connor, author of If I Never See You Again: “To the very last line, The Wasp Factory manages to just keep the surprises coming.”


  “Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that way.” - Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
  Adrian McKinty, author of Fifty Grand: “If the world were not a fallen place someone would help the blind man. And perhaps, eventually, someone will.”


  “ … I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like made and yes I said yes I will Yes.” - Ulysses by James Joyce
  Patrick McCabe, author of The Holy City: “With no contest, it’s Molly at the end of Ulysses. It makes a perfect circle of the narrative.”


  “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” - Middlemarch by George Eliot
  Ruth Dudley Edwards, author of Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing: “Middlemarch is the wisest novel I know, and its ending is a wonderful tribute to all those fine but forgotten people to whom the world has owed so much down the generations.”


  “I laid my cheek against his hand and breathed with him until the last breath. ‘You done good, kid,’ I whispered, when he was still at last.” - O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton
  Ava McCarthy, author of The Courier: “Snappy sound-bites are all very well, but they usually just deliver an intellectual impact. For me, the last line should capture the core emotional change that has occurred at the very heart of the story. An emotional ingredient is far more enduring.”


  “When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.” - Peter Pan by JM Barrie
  Eoin Colfer, author of And Another Thing: “This is a brilliant sentence at once romantic and cutting, which gets straight to the heart of how young people are and I think that was J.M Barrie’s gift; he understood children.”


  “I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I know longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.” The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
  Brian McGilloway, author of The Rising: “In a book about books and how we respond to them, where objects such as a Rose have become so symbolic that they lose all meaning, the final phrasing is beautiful.”


  “Are there any questions?” - The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  Val McDermid, author of The Fever of the Bone: “I like novels that leave space for my own imagination, and I like the confidence and wit of Atwood’s ending.”


  “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
  “On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.” - The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
  Ed O’Loughlin, author of Not Untrue & Not Unkind: “I love the way it aches.”


  “Enough.” - Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
  Aifric Campbell, author of The Loss Adjustor: “Updike closes his four volume ‘Rabbit’ masterpiece with one word, and with this masterful stroke, he captures the joy and pain and beauty that is at the heart of all endings for readers and writers alike: we cannot bear to say goodbye, but it is time to let go.”


  “My dearest, said Valentine, has the count not just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words - ‘wait’ and ‘hope’?” - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  William Ryan, author of The Holy Thief: “That last line is a neat encapsulation of the thousand odd pages that precede it, and a perfect finish to a book I love reading.”


  “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  Deborah Lawrenson, author of Songs of Blue and Gold: “It’s just magical.”


  “He told me what he was going to do when he won his money then I said it was time to go tracking in the mountains, so off we went, counting our footprints in the snow, him with his bony arse clicking and me with the tears streaming down my face.” - The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
  Tana French, author of Faithful Place: “This line captures everything that’s punch-in-the-gut powerful about the whole book - that expert mix of black humour, vortexing insanity and terrible sadness.”

  This feature first appeared in the Irish Examiner.

On Mammoths And Woolly Thinking

I was thinking of writing a post full of mock-bluster and bravado about the inclusion of a story of mine in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 (ed. Maxim Jakubowski), claiming that, all things considered (other than the fact that I’m not actually British, unless you’re talking about how the UK and Ireland together make up the British Isles), I’m perfectly entitled to consider myself on a par with very fine writers like Ian Rankin, Colin Bateman, Kate Atkinson, Simon Kernick, Louise Welsh, Andrew Taylor, et al.
  I’m not, of course. I’m long way off par with those writers, and many others in the compilation, and all false modesty aside, I’m not entitled to delude myself that I am either.
  That said, it’s a massive shot in the arm. Not a shot of confidence, but the far more dangerous speedball-style blend of hope and conviction. Because the story wasn’t written as a conventional crime story, and remains, to me at least, something of an oddity - and right now, I have a novel out on spec that wasn’t written as a conventional crime novel, and is something of an oddity. And not only that, but I’m currently in the early stages of rewriting a novel that wasn’t written as a crime novel, which looks as if it too will become - my best intentions of lashing it into genre straitjacket notwithstanding - something a little off-kilter.
  And while it’s a massive leap of faith to believe that the publication of one story will necessarily lead to the publication of a novel, or novels, the inclusion of my story in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 offers just enough hope to give me the courage of my convictions.
  They do say, of course, that it’s the hope that kills you in the end …
  Anyway, I’m off back to the writing. In the meantime, here’s the full rundown on THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 - and congrats, by the way, to fellow Irish Brits Gerard Brennan and The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman on their inclusion:

The must-have annual anthology for every crime fiction fan – the year’s top new British short stories selected by leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski. This great annual covers the full range of mystery fiction, from noir and hardboiled crime to ingenious puzzles and amateur sleuthing. Packed with top names such as: Ian Rankin (including a new Rebus), Alexander McCall Smith, David Hewson, Christopher Brookmyre, Simon Kernick, A.L. Kennedy, Louise Walsh, Kate Atkinson, Colin Bateman, Stuart McBride and Andrew Taylor. The full list of contributors is as follows: Sheila Quigley, Nigel Bird, Jay Stringer, Paul D. Brazill, Adrian Magson, Colin Bateman, Gerard Brennan, Matthew J. Elliott, Andrew Taylor, Lin Anderson, Christopher Brookmyre, Ray Banks, Declan Burke, Liza Cody, Simon Kernick, Stuart MacBride, Allan Guthrie, Ian Rankin (two stories, including a new Rebus), Nick Quantrill, Edward Marston, Nicholas Royle, Zoe Sharp, Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey, A.L. Kennedy, Roz Southey, Phil Lovesey, David Hewson, Amy Myers, Marilyn Todd, Peter Turnbull, Keith McCarthy, Alexander McCall Smith, Stephen Booth, Denise Mina, Mick Herron, Kate Atkinson and Louise Welsh.

Go Nord, Young Man

I had one of those pieces on ‘Nordic Writers Wot Aren’t Stieg Larsson’ published in the Sunday Independent last week, which featured contributions from Jan Costin Wagner, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Hakan Nesser. It went a lot like this:

The Thrillers Who Came In From the Cold

With the second movie of the ‘Millennium Trilogy’ coming at the end of August, a Hollywood remake of the first movie starring Daniel Craig and (rumour has it) Scarlett Johansson already in the works, and the discovery of a fourth Blomkvist-Salander novel on his computer, it’s fair to say that the publishing phenomenon that is Stieg Larsson has some way yet to run.
  Aficionados of the genre, however, are aware that Scandinavian crime writing has much more to offer than Stieg Larsson. The Sweden-set ‘Martin Beck’ series of novels written by husband-and-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered a milestone in the evolution of the realist crime novel, while Henning Mankell is a household name, particularly for his Kurt Wallander novels.
  A whole new generation of Scandinavian crime writers have emerged in the last decade, however. While the sub-genre has its roots in Sweden, the crime novel is now indigenous to Norway and Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Writers such as Karin Fossum, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Jø Nesbo, Jan Costin Wagner, Karin Alvtegen, Håkan Nesser, KO Dahl, Camilla Lackberg, Leif Davidson, Arnaldur Indridason and Gunnar Staalesen are hugely popular not only at home, but increasingly so abroad too.
  The conventional theory has it that the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 had a seismic impact on the Swedish psyche, one consequence of which was an explosion in crime writing. Given the seriousness of the catalytic event, the crime novels were taken seriously by the Swedish literati, resulting in an ever-increasing quality of writing and criticism.
  Swedish author Håkan Nesser, on the other hand, takes an irreverent approach to the question of why there has been such a boom in Scandinavian crime writing.
  “When I’m in my most optimistic mood I tend to answer, ‘It’s due to the fact that we are such damned good writers,’” he says. “Right now we probably have the world’s largest number of good crime writers per capita, but please be aware of that we also have the world’s largest number of bad crime writers!
  “There is no such thing as a ‘Swedish way’ of writing a crime story,” he continues. “We are all different. The only thing we have in common is that we write in Swedish. Any reader who reads a book by Stieg Larsson, a book by Karin Alvtegen and a book by myself will realise this immediately. We all have different styles, different plots, different aims and agendas.”
  German author Jan Costin Wagner, who sets his novels in Finland, agrees. “Basically I think that every author has to find their own language,” he says, “their own key topics, characters and ways of approaching a story. And, of course, not each Scandinavian crime novel is a good one. But apart from that, I think that many Scandinavian crime writers understand how important it is to be serious and committed to their story and their characters.”
  Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir believes that Iceland offers a unique setting for the crime novel.
  “Iceland, with its 300,000 inhabitants, is a whole lot smaller population-wise than most countries,” she says. “As a result, the atmosphere here is still quite similar to that of a small town, despite our attempts at becoming cosmopolitan. This allows for complex interactions and ties between characters that differ greatly from those one expects in stories that take place in a big city. Another ingredient of the social fabric that differentiates us from other western countries is an unusually high belief in the occult and the supernatural, which adds an element that would probably strike a false note in crime stories based elsewhere.
  “Also,” she continues, “old secrets, vendettas and misdeeds might lie dormant here but they are never fully forgotten - or forgiven. When the social aspects just described are coupled with the smorgasbord of eerie scenery my geologically active country has to offer, Iceland thankfully has the makings of a wonderful backdrop for good, fun and creepy murders.”
  While Sigurdardottir highlights the physical and social aspects of her settings, Wagner identifies a more psychological appeal.
  “I don’t feel committed to a ‘school of writing’,” he says, “because I want to stay committed to my own inner movement: that is most important for everything I write. I feel close to the Scandinavian crime writing because Scandinavians quite often stay focussed on the inner, maybe hidden, life of a story and a character. I like novels which surprise the reader by finding their way beyond cliché. I like the silent moments, the words that are hidden behind the lines; I also like the silent showdown and not so much the bombastic one, which is based on a kind of formal, expected resolution.”
  The idea that the modern Scandinavian crime novel offers a blend of social realism and a more introspective take on the traditional crime narrative is echoed by Håkan Nesser.
  “Ingmar Bergman is a cineastic icon around the world,” he says, “and for most people a Bergman character is the true essence of a Swede: gloomy, depressive, suicidal, tragic, silent and deeply, fundamentally unhappy. But interesting, somehow.
  “I like to think that the above is not an accurate description of our national character,” he says, “but in all clichés there is an element of truth. And actually – though I find it a little hard to acknowledge – such stereotypes might be good material for characters in a crime story: morose men and women who can store grudges inside themselves for half of a lifetime, and then one day take desperate but calculated action like a bolt out of the blue.” - Declan Burke

  Håkan Nesser’s THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE is published by Mantle.
  Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s ASHES TO DUST is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
  Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE is published by Harvill Secker.

  This article first appeared in the Sunday Independent.

  Incidentally, I finished Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE last night, and it’s a terrific piece of work. Highly recommended.

Smarter Than The Average Alec

“Surely there are Italian policeman who are not obsessed with their stomachs?” I wrote that line, which appears in the post / column below, on the basis that virtually every fictional Italian policeman I’ve come across in the past appears to have a food fetish, to the point where it’s ripe for parody. Is it a trope unique - Anthony Bourdain notwithstanding - to Italian crime fiction? I tend to skip over the various menus, cooking instructions and food porn descriptions on the basis that food is a fuel for me - I like it when it’s tasty, I don’t mind when it’s not.
  Anyway, shortly after writing that column, I read Conor Fitzgerald’s THE DOGS OF ROME, which features the Rome-based Chief Inspector Alec Blume. The good news is that Blume is not a foodie - at one point he even snacks on dry breakfast cereal - and the better news is that THE DOGS OF ROME is an unusually assured debut. It’s a gripping police procedural that manages to illustrate meticulous nature of an investigation and the complexity of the politics of Italian policing without ever getting bogged down in detail, while Blume himself is something of a rara avis, being possessed of a melancholic Scandinavian disposition despite the Rome setting.
  Fitzgerald is an Irish writer, albeit one long domiciled in Italy, while Blume himself is an American who has most of his life in Italy. The combination gives both men an insider’s eye for detail and an emotional distance from their subject matter, and the result, written in a style that is both taut and elegant, is a very fine debut indeed.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ Crime Beat Round-Up

The latest of yours truly’s crime fiction review columns appeared in the Irish Times yesterday, featuring Stuart Neville, Tana French, Alan Furst, Karin Fossum, Ruth Rendell and James Patterson, among others. To wit:

Lennon Takes the Lead

In the context of Northern Ireland, ‘collusion’ is an ugly word denoting state-sponsored murder during the Troubles. In COLLUSION (Harvill Secker, £12.99, pb), Stuart Neville takes pains to illustrate the extent to which collusion ‘worked all ways, all directions’, and continues do so in the murky world of covert operations. Belfast Detective Inspector Jack Lennon, a minor character from Neville’s debut THE TWELVE, takes the lead here as he investigates the fall-out from the slaughter that accrued when ex-paramilitary Gerry Fegan went on the rampage. The novel has the page-turning quality of Neville’s debut, which recently won the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller of the Year, but it’s Neville’s clear-eyed appraisal of the real-politik of the post-Ceasefire Northern Ireland that gives it real heft.
  In FAITHFUL PLACE (Hachette Books Ireland, £12.99, pb), Tana French also gives prominence to a minor character from a previous novel. Undercover cop Frank Mackey appeared in both IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS, but here he is the narrator, sucked back into his former life when the corpse of the girl he’d once planned to elope with to England is discovered on his old stomping ground, Faithful Place in inner city Dublin. As always, French is as exercised by the psychology of criminality as she is by the investigation of the mystery, and the result is a gripping, literate thriller laced with black humour.
  The latest in her Inspector Sejer series, Karin Fossum’s BAD INTENTIONS (Harvill Secker, £11.99, pb) is another novel that trades heavily in the psychology of the criminal mind. Fossum sets up a scenario in which no actual crime is committed when a young man steps off a boat into a lake, to subsequently drown, but explores instead the morality of those who were with him as they finesse the details to their own advantage. Tautly told in a crisp translation from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund, the story is a riveting exploration of the consequences of crime, a whydunit rather than the traditional whodunit.
  Two aging brothers are murdered within hours of one another in RIVER OF SHADOWS (MacLehose Press, £18.99, pb), the debut from Italian author Valerio Varesi. Commissario Soneri investigates against an atmospheric backdrop of a wintry northern Italy, as the Po floods its banks. The plot neatly explores the ramifications of the Italy’s internal Fascist-Communist struggle during WWII, and Joseph Farrell’s translation is appropriately poetic, but Soneri himself is rather less fascinating, being yet another in a long line of urbane, sybaritic Italian detectives. Surely there are Italian policeman who are not obsessed with their stomachs?
  Equally atmospheric is Alan Furst’s SPIES OF THE BALKANS (W&N, £18.99, hb), the 11th in his ‘Night Soldiers’ novels, which are set in Eastern Europe prior to and during WWII. Set in Salonika in 1940, undercover policeman Costa Zannis awaits the inevitable invasion of Greece by Italian forces, and finds himself drawn into establishing an underground railway for Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. The literary style belies a deftly paced plot in an old-fashioned spy thriller more reminiscent of John Le Carré and Graham Greene than Ian Fleming. Highly recommended.
  Jeff Lindsay’s DEXTER IS DELICIOUS (Orion, £12.99, hb) is the fifth in his series about a homicidal Florida psychopath who harnesses his urges and only kills for the good of society. The twist here is that Dexter, who can barely describe himself as human, has his entire life overthrown when his wife gives birth to a baby daughter. Struggling to deal with emotions for the first time, Dexter has to deal with the appearance of his equally homicidal brother, all the while helping to investigate what appears to be a cannibalism spree. Lashings of gallows humour help to sugar the pill, but even though the tale moves swiftly towards its climax, it’s difficult to ignore the nagging thought that Dexter might well have outlived his novelty.
  DON’T BLINK (Century, £18.99, hb) is the latest offering from James Patterson, co-written with Howard Roughan. Magazine journalist Nick Daniels is plunged into peril when he goes to interview a former baseball player at a New York restaurant, only to witness the Mafia lawyer at the next table get his eyes gouged out. The usual Patterson tropes of very short chapters and cliff-hanger endings help to move the action along at a furious pace, but the characters couldn’t have been more crudely drawn had Patterson and Roughan used crayons and cardboard. The story somehow manages to be utterly implausible and entirely predictable, and has all the literary merit of a laundry list. If you’re in the mood for a migraine, this is the book for you.
  Ruth Rendell is one of the few authors who can claim to be as prolific as the James Patterson factory, although, despite publishing her first novel in 1964, she has yet to learn how to pander to her readers. TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS (Hutchinson, £18.99, hb) features a host of characters, all of whom live in or near the flats of Lichfield House in north London, most of whom have their lives impacted by a number of crimes that occur in the locality, ranging in seriousness from identity theft to marijuana farming to murder. It’s by no means a conventional crime novel; in fact, it’s much more a social novel that incorporates criminal activity. That the tale succeeds brilliantly on both levels is due to Rendell’s telling eye for detail when it comes to characterisation, a quietly elegant style, an acerbic take on modern Britain and an irrepressible delight in storytelling that results in a novel bursting at the seams with ideas, narrative digressions and twists and turns that are as heartbreaking as they are unexpected. In a nutshell, a wonderfully satisfying novel. - Declan Burke

  This article first appeared in The Irish Times

The Digested Read: BLOOD’S A ROVER by James Ellroy

Following on from the runaway success of last week’s Digested Read chortle-fest, herewith be another. To wit:

The Digested Read: BLOOD’S A ROVER by James Ellroy

Dig it, hepcats: bad men on the rise. Tricky Dick, Edgar J Vamp.
  Check it now:
  RIP MLK. Sayonara Bobby the K. Kuba’s gone, KIA. Hey, is that Mickey Mobster looking south to the Dom Rep? Factor in some Papa Doc rebop. Voodoo dogz howl at the moon and the moon she swoooooooon.
  Kut to: kinky karnival for the good guyz. Ticker-tape for Wayne Tedrow, Dwight Holly. Feds ‘n’ foes both sides of the line.
  Tell it like it is.
  Dig that Mormon KKK vibe.
  Factor in Don Crutchfield. Peeper, doper, small-time lech. Hopped on the lewd nude and her foxy afro. Be he me?
  Cherchez la femme, mofo.
  Scarfing acid, riding the wave. Get wise, dogz: the wave, she ride you.
  Throwdown guns - check. Truck full of coke - check. Head hipped on jazz - check. Heart hopped on jizz - check.
  Check in, check out.
  Kut to: the Brothers rocking the Black Power hour. The revolution reverb. Spooks, mooks and soul-power crooks. Go Panthers! Infiltrate, annihil-hate.
  Hate is good. Hate is whole. See it, feel it, taste it, eat it, be it.
  Say, there’s Sal Mineo. Scuzzy Hollywood vibe. Rat Pack ratz and fat Vegas catz. Say a prayer for Mom’s apple pie.
  Tell it like it is.
  Be kool. Spritz some jive. Hustle the muscle. See America hex itself, re-hex, de-hex.
  Redz under the bedz. Redz in the bedz. Kick their Kommie keisters all the way back to Moskow.
  Green emeralds. Black ops. White cops. Blue-eyed boys and green-eyed girls. Read it and wipe.
  Shoot-’em, loot-’em, dilute-’em. Brute force is truth force. They got the guns but we got the honeys.
  Demokkkracy my lily-white ass.
  Tell it like it is.

  The Digested Read, Digested: Here be monsters. O, America!

  James Ellroy’s BLOOD’S A ROVER is published by Windmill Books.

On Bill Badger, And Other Favourite Bukes

A couple of dates for your crime fic diaries, folks. On September 4th, Irish crime writing takes to the stage at the Electric Picnic, when Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt and Gene Kerrigan assemble to talk about the business of books and writing, with yours truly standing by to make sure they all colour inside the lines. The idea of the gig is to talk to crime writers about books in general, and not just crime writing, with each of the authors offering a couple of examples of the novels that first inspired them to start reading and writing … although there’s every chance, of course, that they will be crime novels.
  The first book I can remember having a profound impact on me was about a guy called Bill Badger, he was an actual badger who lived on a barge moored on a canal … I can’t remember anything about the story, I was only about four at the time, but it was pretty riveting stuff.
  (Holy Moly, I’ve just discovered that there were nine Bill Badger books! Right, that’s Lily’s bedtime reading sorted for the next couple of months.)
  Anyway, I’ll also be asking the trio about Irish crime novels that they think deserve rehabilitating, or possibly republishing, in light of the recent explosion of Irish crime fiction. Some suggestions I’ll be making: Seamus Smyth’s QUINN; John Kelly’s THE POLLING OF THE DEAD; TS O’Rourke’s DEATH CALL; Hugo Hamilton’s SAD BASTARD; and Vincent Banville’s DEATH THE PALE RIDER.
  Elsewhere, Dun Laoghaire’s Mountains to the Sea literary festival runs from September 7th to 12th, and boasts a small but perfectly formed crime contingent, with Kate Atkinson in conversation with HELLFIRE author Mia Gallagher on Saturday the 11th. I read Atkinson’s latest, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG last week, and it’s terrific stuff. The gig I’ll be getting along to, though, is the fascinating pair-up of Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville (noon, Saturday the 11th), gnarled veteran and callow lieutenant, respectively, of Norn Iron letters. I read McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE last month, and it’s probably his finest novel yet; while Neville’s latest, COLLUSION, is a superior offering to his very fine debut, THE TWELVE. All in all, should be a cracking afternoon. For all the Mountains to the Sea details, clickety-click here …
  Finally, for those of you scratching the itch to write a novel of your own, the Author Rights Agency, under the aegis of Svetlana Pironko and Kevin Stevens, is offering a 26-week course in ‘The Making of a Novel’, which comes complete with an individual assessment from the course directors on your work. The fee - brace yourself, Bridget - is €2,000, but course contributors include Ken Bruen, Siobhan Parkinson, Catherine Dunne and Marita Conlon-McKenna. Do bear in mind that your humble host has absolutely no connection with said course, and is simply doing a mate a favour by giving it a shout-out. All the details can be found here …
  I am reminded, though, every time I hear about writing courses, about the (hopefully apocryphal) story about the tutor who stood up on the very first night of a writing course to address his students.
  “Who here really wants to write?” he said.
  A full show of hands.
  “Who’s willing to get up at five in the morning to write?” he said.
  Maybe half the hands go up.
  “Who’s willing to slough off all their friends and most of their family in order to write?” he said.
  Five or six hands go up.
  “Who’d be willing to let their mother die in order to be able to write about it afterwards?” the tutor said.
  One hand goes up.
  “Okay,” says the tutor. “So why the fuck aren’t you at home, writing?”

On Writing For Fun, And Other Lunacies

Maybe it’s just me, but a chart of this writer’s writing life would probably look a lot like a seismograph during a quake hitting 7.2 on the Richter Scale, or a polygraph attached to Janet Evanovich during an interrogation during which she was asked if she really believed - like, seriously now - that four of her novels were worth an advance of fifty million dollars, or thereabouts.
(What bugs me about the Evanovich demand for $50 million advance - I’ve never read any of her novels, so I’m in no position to say if she’s worth it, although it’s fair to say that you’d need thumbscrews to truly convince me - is that if she’d only asked for $49 million, there’d still have been a spare million left over to divide up between a thousand or so other writers, giving them not necessarily a living wage but the hope that some day, they might just be able to earn a crust from this gig. And you’d have to imagine that, out of that thousand, at least one would be able to come up with something a little fresher than a tired reworking of a raddled old post-feminist parody. But I digress.)
  Anyway, that seismograph chart - the life of a struggling wannabe writer is one of rapid and violent ups and downs, and far more downs than ups. That goes with the territory, puts fire in your belly, and if nothing else, gives you an overwhelming desire to succeed even if it’s just to prove the bastards wrong.
  The last week or so has been pretty much typical. A little birdie whispers the very bad news that one of the best Irish crime writers has had his / her American contract cancelled for lack of sales. Shameful stuff, totally unexpected and utterly depressing, given that he / she is a terrific writer who is never less than entertaining and also pretty illuminating about the world we live in right now.
  That’s the biz, I suppose.
  For me personally, it’s been a decent week. I got a green-ish light on a project I’ve been working on for about two years, of which more anon. I also heard that there are two US publishers taking a good long squint at BAD FOR GOOD, and that initial reactions have been very positive. Not that that amounts to a molehill of beans, in real terms, but still, it’s good to know that someone out there is reading it, and liking it.
  I’ve also been doing quite a bit of writing, largely because I joined a ‘writing group’ last month. Four people, decent skins all, coming together to pool resources and give one another a helping hand over the various humps and hillocks that get in the way of putting words on paper. We all have our own agendas, and we’re all at different stages of the publishing game, which will be very healthy, I think. For my own part, my needs are threefold. One, that said decent skins apply shoe leather to my skinny white ass and get me writing again; two, that that process will help me rewrite a novel currently labouring under the weight of its 149,000 words into something more taut, elegant and accessible; and three, that I can get back to writing the way I used to write in the good old days before I ever got published, and start telling stories just for the fun of it.
  That might sound a little naïve, but during the last two years or so, I’ve started at least five different novels, investing anything between 10,000 and 30,000 words in each. Every time I came grinding to a halt, worn down by the constant process of second-guessing the industry, particularly the bean counters to whom most editors have to answer these days, worrying if what I was doing was commercial (very probably), or commercial enough (hard to say), or if I wouldn’t be more profitably employed shouting down a well (very probably).
  Fun. Not a word you hear very often when people talk about writing in particular and the publishing industry in general. But it’s why I started writing, way back when, those halcyon days when the process of putting words in their best order was enjoyable for its own sake. A very serious kind of fun, of course, given that writing is a serious business, whether or not the business takes you seriously. But fun.
  My little girl arrived home yesterday from crèche with a paper folder full of drawings and doodles and paintings and sparkly stuff, my favourite of which you can see above. Bright, colourful, bold, fun. Was Lily worried about what anyone thought about her picture when she was painting? Hardly, given that she’s only two years-and-a-bit old. Had she any idea that when her silly old sentimental Dad saw it, his heart would feel like it might explode? Probably not. Did she just get stuck in and splash the paint around and do the best job that fun would allow? I’d imagine so. Will anyone ever pay for it? Not that I’d ever sell it, but no.
  The ‘writing group’ met for the first time last month, and the plan is that we assemble in mid-September with 2,000 words each to show for our efforts this month. The good news there is that I’ve already racked up 15,000 words in the last three weeks, although the bad news - given that I’m supposed to be rewriting the damn thing - is that said 15,000 words are all brand new and freshly minted. Mind you, the process of writing that section has allowed me to identify not only a massive, glaring flaw in the novel, but also how to rectify it. I’d say that that 15,000 words will save me about 40,000 by the time I get into the heart of the story.
  Anyway, good news / bad news. This week it’s mostly good, and high-ho for upward and onward, at least until next week, when I’ll very probably plummet off the precipice again.
  The main thing, though, is that it’s all good, that I’ve started to rediscover that sense of fun again. Maybe, given the fact that none of my previous offerings have overly taxed the boys ‘n’ gals at Nielsen, I’ll have to send out the redrafted novel under a pseudonym, as I’ve discussed before. And maybe (very probably) it’ll never see the light of day, because I’m already a beaten docket as a published writer at the age of 41.
  And so what? What I get from writing - fun, joy, self-worth, all the good stuff you tend to forget about after too long at the coal-face - is far too precious to entrust to the publishing industry, or at least the publishing industry in its current, ultra-conservative incarnation. As the quote from Isak Dinesen I’ve tacked to my PC monitor says, “I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”

  Lately I have been mostly reading: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay; COLLUSION by Stuart Neville; FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French; RIVER OF SHADOWS by Valerio Varesi; DON’T BLINK by James Patterson; TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS by Ruth Rendell, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson, and THE DOGS OF ROME by Conor Fitzgerald.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay

Jeff Lindsay is the bestselling author of five ‘Dexter’ novels: DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (2004), DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER (2005), DEXTER IN THE DARK (2007), DEXTER BY DESIGN (2009) and DEXTER IS DELICIOUS (2010). The novels are set in contemporary Florida.
  The first Dexter novel, DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, wasn’t just a popular success, it was also nominated for a ‘Best First Novel’ Edgar. It was subsequently dropped from the category, however, when it was discovered that Jeff Lindsay had previously published novels under a different name.
  The character of Dexter is an intriguing one. He is a broadly sympathetic sociopath, and can be read as a linear descendant of both Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Robert Harris’s Hannibal Lecter.
  Where Dexter differs from these characters is in the way he harnesses his homicidal impulses in order to kill only those particularly vile criminals who are a threat to society. In effect, and while works a day job as a forensic technician for the Miami Police Department specialising in blood traces, his true calling is as a vigilante who believes himself to be reinforcing the thin blue line.
  Dexter was taught at an early age to control and channel his homicidal instincts by his father, Harry, who was himself a Miami cop. Dexter operates to a strictly observed ‘Code’ of ethics, according to which he only ever kills other killers.
  The novels are told in the first person. The tone is jaunty, with Dexter acutely aware of his failings, and also of how incongruous his nature is. The first-person narrative allows for plenty of asides to the reader, and lashings of morbidly black humour. The pace is swift, with short, snappy chapters maintaining the momentum.
  He is married to Rita, who has two young children (Astor and Cody) from a previous relationship. Rita is oblivious to Dexter’s true nature. Her children, however, share his dark secret and his instincts.
  The current novel, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS, offers a number of twists on the standard Dexter story. The story opens with the birth of Dexter’s child, Lily Anne, which has the effect of ‘humanising’ him to a degree that he previously considered impossible (Dexter frequently refers to himself as ‘inhuman’). The novel also introduces Dexter’s long-lost brother, Brian, who appears to have a malign interest in Cody and Astor.
  The narrative thrust of the story has Dexter helping his foster-sister, Detective Sgt Deborah Morgan, investigate a series of gruesome murders perpetrated by a group of Miami-based cannibals.
  Lindsay treads a very fine line in the Dexter novels. Readers respond well to the fact that Dexter privately cuts through a lot of red tape and the usual boring detail of police procedural work in order to render a very crude form of natural justice.
  By the same token, Dexter himself works for the Miami Police Department, and is publicly bound by a more conventional expression of law and order. It is also to his credit that, as the novels have progressed, Dexter has become more aware of his own failings.
  What is interesting about the Dexter novels is that they present the reader with a moral conundrum. The anti-heroes in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Robert Harris and Jim Thompson, for example, are sympathetically drawn, but it’s always clear that they are not intended to be read as forces for good.
  Dexter, on the other hand, is a serial killer, yet Lindsay wants the reader to accept that Dexter is a positive character, and that the world is enhanced by his acting on his murderous impulses, regardless of how refined and sophisticated he has rendered those impulses. For all the jaunty humour and self-deprecating asides, this conceit never fully works for me.
  I also had issues with the extent to which Dexter, a crime scene technician, was free to accompany Detective Sgt Morgan as she sped around Miami investigating the case of the feasting cannibals. Dexter spends far more time out of his office than in it, with no superior asking questions about his absences, and while Lindsay makes great play of the adversarial relationship between Dexter and Morgan, and the extent to which she bullies him into going along with her whims (she detests her new partner, for example, and prefers Dexter’s company and insights), the frequency of such trips make the story increasingly implausible.
  That said, Lindsay is not aiming for gritty realism here. The Dexter novels (and the spin-off TV series) have far more in common with CSI Miami than The Wire, say. The novels are intended, you’d have to assume, as wish-fulfilment hokum, and for the most part they fulfil their remit.
  Dexter’s black humour begins to grate after a while, particularly in terms of his self-deprecating references to his weaknesses when compared with the stronger women in his life, and especially as we know that he is capable of tremendous savagery. Humour is a very personal thing, of course, but I did find that it detracted from the character rather than added to him.
  Much more interesting is Lindsay’s take on Dexter’s extended family, even if very few of the characters are linked to Dexter by flesh and blood. The latest arrival, Lily Anne, is the exception.
  His father, Harry, was an adoptive father; he has a foster-sister, Sgt Deborah Morgan; his ‘children’ previous to Lily Anne are Cody and Astor, Rita’s son and daughter from a previous relationship. His brother, Brian, turns up in the new novel, after a long period of estrangement.
  Other than Lily Anne, Brian is Dexter’s “only biological relative, as far as I knew, although considering the little I had uncovered about our round-heeled mother, anything was possible.”
  While this extended, complex family offers the promise of some insights into the nature of the contemporary fracturing of the traditional nuclear family unit, Lindsay does very little to develop it. His frequent declarations of love for his new baby sound heartfelt at first, although they do become rather banal through repetition.
  More significantly, perhaps, the construction of the novel - the swift pace, the short chapters, the jocular tone - are not conducive to Lindsay exploring any theme or subject in any great depth. This is as true of Dexter’s own psychological complexities as it is of his complicated family.
  All told, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is a fun, breezy read that demands too little, given the seriousness of its subject matter, of the reader. For a more profound take on the mind of a psychopathic killer, read Patricia Highsmith or Jim Thompson instead. - Declan Burke

  Jeff Lindsay’s DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is published by Orion

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Conor Fitzgerald

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?
DAS FRÄULEIN VON SCUDERI, or MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It is not the best detective work ever written, but it is the first. It would be nice to be the inventor of the genre.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
As a child, I adored the Just William books, all of which I read in Cabinteely library. William lived in a closed, safe and comfortable English country garden world that I wanted to step into. Of course, I now feel that would be a twee and hellish place to spend my adult life. So, if I am really allowed to be any fictional persona from any book, and be accorded his or her concomitant strengths and defects, I suppose I’d go for the character known as ‘God’ in the Old Testament.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Popular science books. I find everything a read in them utterly fascinating, though I am too stupid to retain any of the information they impart. But even though I learn nothing from them whatsoever, I always feel enormously reassured and comforted to be reminded of the presence of those highly intelligent people thinking about complex and intricate matters that are quite beyond me. Good science writers are like antibodies to the viral ignorance of politicians, sociologists, psychologists, economists and literary theorists. The pleasure is a guilty one, because these books form no part of the long and often boring reading list I need to get through for research purposes.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing ‘Chapter 1’. I tend to be feel a bit disappointed with most of what follows.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
What I consider the best piece of music, art, literature, TV or food changes from hour to hour. That said, I have enormous respect for THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE by John Banville, which surely counts as a crime novel. I think it marked the beginning of a new type of modern, urban and sophisticated movement in Irish literature, which is continuing to develop today.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Cormac Millar’s THE GROUNDS has all the right ingredients. I find that many good movies, including HBO TV series, force characters to operate in constructed and constricted spaces, which Millar does in his book. That said, I find there is much to the truism that bad books make great moves and great books make bad movies, so perhaps there is some lousy Irish crime novel out there that I will never read but is destined to become a classic movie.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The luxury of working from home is offset by having to live at your place of work. It’s like spending your whole life with that guilty Sunday-night-and-I haven’t-even- started-my homework-and-here-I am-watching-TV feeling from school. That, and abject penury.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Commissioner Blume investigates the death of an Irish forger whose false masters hang in major galleries worldwide. Based on a true story.

Who are you reading right now?
Camen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff: THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: EIGHT CENTURIES OF FINANCIAL FOLLY.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. When I read, I rewrite in my head, or imagine writing responses, or I plot out where I think the book is going. So reading encompasses writing. Also, we read for the comfort of knowing we are not alone, but we write for fear that we are. As for God appearing, cf. question 2.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Place, character, mortality.

Conor Fitzgerald’s THE DOGS OF ROME is published by Bloomsbury Publishing.