Nobody Move, This Is A Review: FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s fourth novel centres on the Berglund family, who live in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the novel opens. Married couple Patty and Walter are sterling examples of post-Baby Boomer America, liberal in thought and deed, environmentally friendly, thriving in the self-renovated old home and rearing their children, Joey and Jessica, with hands-on parenting.
  A third character, Richard, proves the undoing of their idealistic lifestyle. Walter’s former college roommate, Richard is a musician who initially caught Patty’s eye in college. Despite his selfish ways, particularly in terms of his many relationships, Richard is drawn to boring old Walter in a chalk-and-cheese relationship. As Richard’s fame grows, and her children grow up to achieve independence, Patty finds herself more and more unable to quiet her lustful thoughts for Richard.
  The fourth main character is Joey, who is something of a parallel character to Richard, given that he is attractive, self-sufficient, and sexually advanced from a young age. As the millennium turns, and the Bush administration comes to power when Joey goes to college, Joey confirms his rejection of his parents’ values by becoming an entrepreneurial Republican who makes a decision to benefit financially from the Iraq invasion.
  Jonathan Franzen has a very deft touch when it comes to establishing character, and the most fascinating character in FREEDOM is Patty, which is somewhat surprising, given that she begins the novel as an apparently passive suburban mother-of-two who is content to be a stay-at-home mother. Naturally, given that this state of affairs wouldn’t lend itself to any great conflict or tension, Patty’s character quickly becomes more proactive - or perhaps passive-aggressive is a better way to describe it.
  One of the most enjoyable aspects of FREEDOM is the Autobiography of Patty Berglund, which Patty writes at her therapist’s suggestion. Here Franzen delves deeply into Patty’s psyche, or far more deeply than he does any other character in the novel, even though he uses a curiously distancing third-person technique for the strands of the novel that comprise Patty’s autobiography, which amounts to a confession of her betrayal of her husband, Walter. This distancing technique (‘The autobiographer wonders if one reason why Joyce’s voice always trembles is from struggling so hard all her life to not sound like Brooklyn.’) should be off-putting, but in fact it’s a compelling aspect to the story, because the reader is automatically put on notice that Patty is using this tone in order to distance herself from her actions, which are (presumably) so traumatising that she can’t bring herself to write them in the first-person.
  Franzen’s other main characters are less interesting, however. Walter, despite his ability to reconfigure his life and become a conflicted conservationist, is something of a cliché despite Franzen’s best efforts. His relationship with the ardent young conservationist Lalitha, for example, which comes to dominate the latter half of Walter’s narrative, resembles the feverish fantasy of the older man, the conscious and knowing echoes of ‘Lolita’ in Lalitha’s name notwithstanding. Perhaps it’s the fact that Franzen has written the besotted, beautiful, intelligent Lalitha as too perfect a cipher for Walter’s mid-life crisis, but a cipher she is, and no less a cliché in her own right than if Walter had simply renounced his conservationism instead of his marriage, and gone out and bought a bright red Ferrari.
  The third corner of the love triangle, the reluctant rock star Richard, is a more subtly drawn character than Walter, but again he’s something of a male fantasy figure. Irresistible to women, Richard is a gifted musician with a magnetic appeal to women and men alike. Despite his rock star ambitions, however, which generally involve a hefty dose of self-indulgent ego, Richard is unusually self-aware, and is also unusually gentle and sensitive. When the young Patty more or less throws herself at Richard during a road-trip, Richard gently steers her back towards Walter, despite the fact that Patty and Walter aren’t an item at this point. Later, when Richard finally achieves the success he has craved all along, albeit in as a kind of cult hero who becomes successful almost by default, he performs an about-face, unable or unwilling to deal with the pressures of fame. It’s to Franzen’s credit that he doesn’t impose a kind of rock star martyrdom a la Kurt Cobain on Richard, but the fact that Richard abandons his career to go roofing houses and patios is so faux-humble that it negates any authenticity Richard has built up to this point.
  Arguably the most interesting character in the novel is Walter and Patty’s son, Joey. Indulged as a child (whereas his sister Jessica is kept on a tighter rein), Joey grows up to reject his parents’ liberal middle-class values, and as a young man makes a valiant attempt to financially benefit from the war in Iraq. Here, at least, we have conflict made manifest, and Joey’s internal monologues, in which he debates the merits or otherwise of conforming to expectations, particularly in terms of his commitment (or otherwise) to his childhood sweetheart Connie, have a ring of authenticity that is all too often lacking elsewhere.
  It’s entirely possible, given that title, and the fact that a number of characters appear to be variations on cliché, that we’re being invited to read the novel ironically. That Franzen wants us to snigger at his emotionally stunted suburban creatures, who bumble along wrapped up in their kitchen-sink drama, only occasionally raising their gaze from their spot-lit navels to take cognizance of what has been a fairly dramatic decade in American history. If that’s the case, it’s a very strained and thin kind of irony, and one which fails to skewer its suburban heartland.
  The novel is very much concerned with themes that spring from the ‘personal-is-political’. Walter’s compromises on the environment, for example, mirror the compromises he makes in his personal relationships. Joey’s decision to embrace the free-market philosophy of Republicanism equates with his rejection of his parents’ Clinton-era liberalism.
  Very similar in tone and themes (and even title) to Milan Kundera’s THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, Franzen’s FREEDOM details the personal struggle to live and thrive according to a particular philosophy in the messy confusion that is day-to-day existence. The underlying theme appears to be one of a plea for compromise, whether that’s in the personal, domestic, political or artistic fields. That might well be a fair comment to make on an American political system that has grown hugely fractured ever since George Bush jnr ascended to the White House, and has intensified even more with Barack Obama’s presidency, but a novel that preaches common sense values such as the need for compromise is never going to be the most exciting of reads, particularly as the novel as a narrative form thrives on conflict.
  It’s true that, while there is plenty of conflict in FREEDOM, most of it is internalised, in that most of the conflict is generated by people who are in conflict with themselves, with values that have grown outdated or are no longer useful, or practical. This provides Franzen with plenty of material for extended internal monologues, of which Patty’s autobiography is an example, but it does little to enhance the pace and momentum of the overall story.
  That Franzen, hailed as a great American novelist, should write a story that is essentially so small in terms of its scale, despite the fact that American has been through 9/11, two wars, an economic meltdown, is something of a major disappointment. Adam Haslett’s UNION ATLANTIC, which was published earlier this year and covered much of the same territory as FREEDOM, is a much more mature and provocative novel.
  Overall, FREEDOM is a solid novel that is competently written (although Franzen displays little flair for ambitious language), but one that is far from compelling. Written by a debutant, it would suggest promise - although, if written by a debutant, it would have been heavily edited down from its rather extensive 562 pages. As a novel from the man hailed as the Great American Novelist, however, FREEDOM is something of a disappointment, drab in places, self-indulgent in others, and only fitfully fascinating. - Declan Burke

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tony Bailie

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 SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. Although not strictly a crime writer, Bolaño was hugely influenced by the genre. This large, sprawling novel follows the lives of two South American poets from the perspective of a whole range of narrators who drift in and out of their lives. It starts off in Mexico in the 1970s and follows its central characters to Europe, The Middle East and Africa. The diverse narrative voices can be a bit disconcerting and they often focus on their own stories and barely mention the main protagonists. It demands that the reader work and almost become a detective, trying to sift through the testimonies and piece together the movements of the two poets.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Pepe Carvalho, who appears in a series of novels by the late Spanish novelist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Carvalho lives in Barcelona [a decided advantage when you are sitting in Co Down on a rain-sodden November morning], enjoys gourmet cooking, fine wine, becomes involved with cases that are never that difficult to solve and seems to get laid a lot without trying too hard.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I've a soft spot for science fiction but only now and again ... Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius novels [not the sword and sorcery stuff], Robert A Heinlein and a bit of Philip K Dick. It is interesting how their speculation about a multiverse, which they first aired in the 1960s, now seems to be gaining credibility with modern science.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Five thousand words in a night-long session which just flowed and became the basis of my short story The Druids’ Dance, published in the anthology REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, which was published earlier this year. Usually I write in spurts and splice the results together. Although I don’t regard myself as a crime writer as such, REQUIEMS was an opportunity to experiment in the genre and to meet and be published alongside some of the best crime writers on the Irish scene at present.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
REDEMPTION by Francis Stuart. Set in late 1940s, it tells the story of an Irishman who spent the war years in Germany and who returns to Ireland, which had remained neutral. It strips back the shallow moral values of quiet rural Irish town for which the war was just a rumour and which are exposed when a girl, of easy virtue, is murdered. It is told from the point of view someone who witnessed the total breakdown of human civilization in war-ravaged Europe. Stuart remains a sore point with many people in Ireland because of his war-time activities in Nazi Germany, but that doesn’t devalue his novels, which often confront easy assumptions about right and wrong.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
A story by Gerard Brennan called Hard Rock which first appeared on the ThugLit website, and which is due to appear in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME next year, would make an excellent movie, although possibly with a triple-x rating. My first novel, THE LOST CHORD, told the story of a debauched Irish rock star who ‘disappeared’ and the persistent rumours that he was still alive. However, the characters who appear in Gerard’s story make my characters seem like members of Westlife … it was the most depraved, disgusting and sick piece of writing I have ever read. Fair play to him.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The widespread recognition, the constant offers of film deals, publishers and agents battering at my door offering huge sums of money for my next novel … it can be both a curse and blessing.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Part adventure story, part psychological thriller and part new-age philosophy, ECOPUNKS is an environmental parable for the 21st century.

Who are you reading right now?
A biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn by the English novelist DM Thomas. Solzhenitsyn fought for the USSR during the Second World War but was arrested for criticising Stalin and sentenced to eight years hard labour in a gulag and then exiled to Kazakhstan when he was released, where he nearly died from cancer. He used his experiences as the basis of his novels and reportage but fell foul of the Soviet regime in the 1970s and was exiled to the West, where he rounded on the lack of integrity of Western governments who thought he would be a literary battering ram to attack communism with. A truly epic life.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read ... It would be a relief, in some ways.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Gnarled, tortured prose. It’s not really, but I just liked the sound of that … better than ‘can’t really spell’.

ECOPUNKS by Tony Bailie is published by Lagan Press.

The Irish Book Awards: DARK TIMES Never Seemed So Good

A ray of light in these dark times: Gene Kerrigan’s DARK TIMES IN THE CITY deservedly won Best Crime Novel at the Irish Book Awards last night. The shortlist was, as I’ve mentioned before, missing such luminaries as John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt and Alan Glynn, but then last year was a very strong year indeed for Irish crime writing, and the very strong shortlist did include Tana French, Declan Hughes, Alex Barclay, Stuart Neville and Jane Casey. All of which should give Gene an extra fillip as he plonks his award on the mantelpiece. Mind you, Gene being an unusually modest man, there’s every chance said gong will be put away out of sight, lest anyone remark upon it and force Gene to admit that, yes, he’s actually a very fine writer indeed. Hearty congratulations to the man, and commiserations to all the runners-up …
  I reviewed DARK TIMES almost two years ago now, and had this, among other things, to say:

“Cruelly authentic, the novel refuses the simplistic pieties of either the genre’s form or society’s wishful thinking. DARK TIMES IN THE CITY is a very fine crime novel, but it’s also one of the very few novels of any stripe to hold up a mirror to the dark heart of modern Ireland’s boom-and-bust.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, by which I mean my own little world, it’s been a busy, funny and often odd week or so. Yesterday, my former agent, who still holds some of the European rights to THE BIG O, rang to say that the contracts for the Italian version of said tome had arrived, and was I available to sign on the dotted line? Erm, yes, please. The money involved, of course, would hardly stretch to cover some decent lattes and a plate of spag bol, but at this stage, money is not the point. It’ll be fantastic to see THE BIG O in Italian, especially as I have a particular fondness for the country, and it also means that I’ll have been translated into three languages, as EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was published in Holland some years ago, under the title SPEEDBALL. The third language I’ve been translated into, as any of my editors will attest, is English.
  So that was nice. If you have any Italian friends who might enjoy a crime-comedy romp featuring a one-eyed Siberian wolf called Anna, feel free to give them a heads-up.
  Meanwhile, Paul D. Brazill did me proud with a review of the sequel to THE BIG O over at his interweb lair, aka You Would Say That, Wouldn’t You? To wit:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is the follow up to Burke’s splendid THE BIG O and it almost actually IS that oxymoron ‘a screwball noir’. There’s a LOT going on, and it does take a bit to get used to the frantic pace, but it’s a satisfying read that still makes you want more. CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: A SCREWBALL NOIR is a cracking, fast paced, clever and very droll road movie with a top drawer cast - especially Sleeps!” - Paul D. Brazill

  Which, again, is very nice, and thank you kindly, sir. Funnily enough, Sleeps is probably my favourite character from CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, and at one point I was even thinking of calling the book SLEEPS THE HERO. Sadly, for everyone already fumbling for their credit cards in their rush to secure a copy, the book is only available as an e-book, or as a download to your PC, and will set you back a whopping $1.99. If you’re still determined to read it, however, all the details can be found here …
  Finally - and this may cause Ms Witch to prick up her ears, if no one else - I had something of an unusual request last week. In essence, it was from a publisher of children’s books, wondering if I’d like to meet to discuss the possibility of my writing a book for young adults. Now, writing a book for kids has been something that’s been flickering on the very edge of my radar ever since the Princess Lilyput arrived, but I’ve never spent any time thinking seriously about it. Right now, I can’t think of anything else. The idea I hatched has gone forward for consideration, but already I think that I’m going to write the story no matter what the decision is, because I’m entirely enthralled by it. For one thing, it’ll be a massive challenge to write a whole novel without recourse to foul language; for another, it’ll be an equally massive challenge to try to write something that will capture a young reader’s imagination. I have no faith in my ability to achieve either, but I like the idea of trying. Plus, given the rate at which I tend to write and get published, two-year-old Lily should be just the right age to identify with the 13-year-old heroine when the book finally appears. Or, as is far more likely, sneer at it with a carefully honed teenage disaffection …

The North Will Rise Again, Again

Apologies to all Three Regular Readers for the intemperate outburst regarding Irish politics yesterday, a post I had to take down on the basis that it was attracting all kinds of bizarre comments, most of them even more radical in terms of visiting violence on Irish politicians than my own. Normal service is hereby resumed …
  I’ve mentioned Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE on these pages more than once in the last few weeks, but it really is a terrific read. If you don’t believe me, check out John Burnside’s review in The Guardian last week. The gist runneth thusly:

“Northern Ireland, 1961. The body of a young woman, stripped naked, brutally beaten, stabbed and finally strangled, is discovered in a stubble field after a dance at Newry Orange Hall. Though the police have nothing to go on other than the most circumstantial evidence, the whole town agrees that the killer is a young bodybuilder and ne'er-do-well named Robert McGladdery …
“It is this sense of how the defining moments come to be agreed – of how they are essentially defined by the ruling class – that illuminates ORCHID BLUE, so that what begins as a crime thriller gradually builds not only into a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art.” - John Burnside

  Nice. Meanwhile, I was delighted to see Stuart Neville’s very fine COLLUSION reviewed by Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times at the weekend, although it has to be said, it was less of a review and more of a synopsis. To wit:

The violence in Stuart Neville’s novels about Northern Ireland is about as nasty as it gets in noir crime fiction. But while the bloodshed in Neville’s first novel, THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, was viewed from the perspective of a professional killer named Gerry Fegan, in COLLUSION (Soho, $25), a law enforcement officer is drawn into the brutality, which only adds to the sense of despair. Detective Inspector Jack Lennon, a Belfast policeman with an unsavory past, has a chance to redeem himself by coddling an informant with intelligence on local gangsters doing business with a Lithuanian mob. But in the process Lennon learns of more serious criminal collusion involving “the cops, the Brits, the Irish government, the party” — not to mention the mob bosses.
  This corruption can be traced all the way back to the Troubles and to one particular bloodbath that made fugitives of Lennon’s estranged lover and daughter. In his frantic efforts to find them, the detective turns to Fegan, the assassin, who is his only hope of finding out why that old atrocity is being revisited. What he doesn’t hold out any hope for is an end to the cycle of violence — not in Northern Ireland, where even today, in the midst of peace, organized crime is relentlessly intruding. - Marilyn Stasio

  Now, I’m sure Stuart Neville isn’t exactly complaining, but I was left scratching my head as to the point of a ‘review’ like that. Maybe I’m being obtuse, but if I hadn’t read the novel, I’d be no wiser as to if it was actually any good, and if so, why. Which is the point, is it not, of a review?

The Digested Read: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas

Yep, it’s that time of the week again. Herewith be the latest in an increasingly improbable line of Digested Reads, aka the Book du Jour in 300 words. This week: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas. To wit:

“No-no-no-no-no!” Young Hugo was a bludger. Got caught lbw, everyone saw it, he was out. But he wouldn’t let go the bat. “No-no-no-no-no!” he screamed. So Harry cracked him a right bloody rippah.
  “That’s child abuse, mate!”
  “Nah, it’s just a slap.”
  “I’ll give you a slap.”
  “Don’t tie me kangaroo down, mate.”
  Hector threw a few more tinnies on the barbie.

  So then, like, the cops got involved and Harry got arrested and a trial date was set and some people thought the kid deserved a slap and some people didn’t and some people said whether or not he deserved it wasn’t the point and some other people said the point was there was no point, and so on.

  Meantime, Hector the Greek wasn’t happy married to Aisha the Indian and Harry was Hector’s brother, the bloody gallah, and Hugo’s parents were hippies, the flaming drongos, and Richie the student was coming out of the closet and isn’t Australia such a wonderfully rounded multicultural country when people aren’t slapping other people’s kids?
  “Yeah but, right, see, if the hippies had slapped Hugo when they should have instead of smoking all those joss sticks, Harry wouldn’t have had to stick his billabong in, would he?”
  “Hmmm, maybe you have a point.”
  “Yes. Except the point is there isn’t any point, isn’t it?”
  “I take your point.”

  So, like, anyway, Hector’s father thinks Harry did the right thing, but he’s Greek, so what would he know? Besides, wouldn’t the world be a better place if Hector’s mother was nicer to Aisha? Hey, maybe then Hector wouldn’t have ended up screwing Aisha’s friend.
  “I say slap ’em all, let God sort ’em out.”
  “You may have a point there.”
  “I’ll take that point and ram it up your wazoo, mate!”
  “Touché, sir.”

  So, like, anyway, multiculturalism: looks good on paper, but it ain’t worth a flaming XXXX if you can’t throw it on the barbie.

  The End.

  The Digested Read, in one line: “What’s that, Skip? A mouthy kid got slapped? Rippah!”

  This article first appeared in the Evening Herald.

Torture-Porn: Yay Or Nay?

In a comment on one of the posts below, Richard L paraphrases Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo in saying that ‘Literature, both the writing and the reading of it, makes men more humanely compassionate.’ And women too, you’d imagine, particularly as women account for the majority of fiction readers these days, and at least half of fiction writers.
  On the same day Richard L left his comment, I received a review copy of a book that had the strap-line, ‘TAKEN, TRAPPED, TORTURED’. Written by Chevy Stevens, the novel comes complete with a raves from Kathy Reichs and Karin Slaughter, and tells the story of ‘Annie Sullivan’s abduction, her year in captivity and the chilling aftermath’.
  Now, I do appreciate that writers set up their serial killers / torturers / sex fiends et al as straw men, to be burned to the ground in a vigilante narrative that, presumably, offers readers a sense that justice (natural or otherwise) prevails against the evil that men do.
  I have no idea of how subtly or otherwise Chevy Smith handles the torture of Annie Sullivan in STILL MISSING, and I won’t be finding out, because I have zero interest in reading novels that are predicated on violence against women. That Chevy Smith is a woman writing about violence against women is neither here nor there. I’m just not interested.
  It’s not that I have my head buried in the sand. I know that such things happen in the real world. In Ireland, in the last few days alone, we’ve had some desperately tragic news that included the smothering of a toddler and the stabbing to death of an infant. So I do understand, unfortunately, the evil that men do, and as often as not to women and children.
  Reading about such depravity in the newspaper is one thing, however. Reading about it in a novel that is packaged as entertainment is another thing entirely. Neither Karin Slaughter’s rave (‘Will have you spellbound from the first page’) nor Kathy Reichs’ (‘Fast-paced and utterly absorbing’) suggest that Stevens has written a novel railing against violence done to women; their appreciation of the story is bound up in Stevens’ ability to entertain.
  Maybe I’m a little squeamish about such things these days because I have a baby girl of my own, and because - being a man - I’m all too aware of how deviant men can be. In fact, in my first novel, I have a scene in which a woman is tortured by having her fingers broken one by one. In my second novel, a female character is beaten, has her leg broken, and an eye gouged out with a fork, and the fact that Anna is a Siberian wolf is neither here nor there. Neither novel, on the other hand, could be described as torture-porn. As it happens, one of the main reasons I wrote the second novel was to find out how convincing (or otherwise) a crime novel could be with an absolute minimum of violence employed. In the first instance, when fingers are broken, I did my best to minimise the lurid aspect of it, and the finger-breaking lasts for less than a page.
  That said, I’ve never had any interest in reading books or watching movies in which a defenceless woman is physically or sexually brutalised by a man, or men. Torture-porn, I believe the phrase is, and regardless of how total and deserved the eventual revenge scenario proves to be, the experience (when I’ve had to sit through such a movie for review purposes, say) leaves me feeling dirty and degraded. Not because I’ve identified with the victim, necessarily, but because I belong to a society and civilisation that obviously believes that making a profit out of suffering is a good idea.
  There are good novels to be written about the brutalisation of women, and I’m sure they’ve already been written. A novel, for example, that dealt with the experience of a Muslim woman lashed into unconsciousness, or even stoned to death, for adultery real or imagined. Or the experience of a woman enduring the banal evil of marital rape. Or - and not to belabour the broader Muslim community unnecessarily - the experience of a woman targeted for an honour killing, because she refused to participate in an arranged marriage, or wear certain kinds of clothing. Or the story of a six-year-old girl who had acid thrown in her face for daring to go to school.
  These kinds of stories, I’d imagine, providing they’re well written, could hardly achieve any other impact than to make men and women more compassionate, as Richard L suggests is the point of writing and reading books.
  Of course, it’s possible to argue that the torture-porn sub-genre is making the point that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the women of so-called ‘civilised societies’ are no less vulnerable to an underlying fear of women that manifests itself in male violence, brutality and perversion. If that is the case, then it’s arguably a valid point to make.
  By the same token, there’s an equally valid question to be asked about the kind of novels that incorporate torture-porn into page-turning entertainments, and it’s this: What, apart from financial profit, is the ultimate point of the torture-porn novel?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mike Dennis

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 would have to say STREET 8 by Douglas Fairbairn. It’s a sadly-overlooked noir classic from 1977. It’s told from the point of view of a car salesman in Miami as he watches his hometown transform itself into a Latin city. The Cubans are there to stay, but who can be trusted? Like most noir protagonists, he soon finds himself embroiled in circumstances that have careened completely out of control. I lived in Key West, my adopted hometown, for many years, and I quickly learned about this great book. Every Florida crime author since 1977 has been influenced by it in one way or another. Fairbairn himself, incidentally, wrote very few novels before his death a few years ago. STREET 8 was his best.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Don Corleone. He really had it all, didn’t he? A close family who loved and respected him, power, money, a real sense of accomplishment in his life. Sure, he was shot, but remember, it was business, not personal. Besides, he recovered and went on into a pleasant retirement surrounded by his loved ones.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I have most of the Out Of The Gutter magazines. Have you ever read them? A lot of them are wa-a-a-ay over the top, but where else can you find something like that? They’re kind of refreshing, in a perverse sort of way.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Without a doubt, it occurred when I finished my newest novel, MAN-SLAUGHTER. The ending was a most unusual one, hard (for me) to pull off properly, but I feel like I nailed it.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Well, if I told you I’ve never read an Irish crime novel, will this interview end right here?

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

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
For me, the worst thing is looking at that damned blank screen when I’m starting a new novel. I don’t use an outline, so I just let my characters tell the story for me. They have to tell it, because I can’t make up stories. Honestly. I’ve tried sitting there, concocting a tale, and nothing comes out. It’s only when I get an opening line, a sense of place, and a central character to work with that the story gets told. But waiting for those things to appear is unquestionably the worst, most aggravating part about being a writer. The best part is when they finally do appear, and the novel takes flight. Then all I have to do is write it down.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s called THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA and the description goes something like this: A young woman is brutally murdered in the back of a Key West nightclub. Robbie, the club’s owner, and Elena, the victim’s sister, believe that a local strip club operator is to blame. However, they soon learn that larger, far more sinister forces are behind the killing, and they become ensnared in a deadly race to a safe deposit box in Las Vegas, whose contents hold the key to decades-old secrets and threaten national security.

Who are you reading right now?
Gil Brewer’s novel, THE BRAT. Brewer was one of the best at creating hopelessly-doomed noir characters. And he usually did it the same way every time out. Ordinary Joe has chance encounter with sizzling chick, gets roped in, pays dearly in the end. For some reason, though, you never feel like you’re reading a formula novel when you’re reading Brewer.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Find a new religion.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Circumstances, choices, consequences. That really just about sums up the human condition, doesn’t it?

Mike Dennis’ THE TAKE is available now.

How Readers Write

Ex-journalist and aspiring author Alix Christie (not pictured, right) asks an interesting question over at More Intelligent Life: “What makes any of us think that we have something to say that others need to read?”
  My first reaction is to say that it’s probably not any one thing. For me it’s a combination of misplaced encouragement at a formative age, a love of words in their best order, and some kind of benign malfunction at the synaptic level that has fused ego, super-ego and id into a single psychic apparatus. That’s not to say that I’m sick, exactly, although it’s hardly healthy to be walking around with multiple conversations in your head. Still, so long as I keep taking the tablets, aka getting at least a little bit of writing done every day, then all should be well.
  But back to Alix Christie’s question, and what’s interesting about it, I think, is that she asks about what people need to read, rather than what they want to read. Is there a difference?
  There’s a big difference between needing and wanting. In fact, it’s often the case that the more you need something, the less you want it.
  A lot of people need to read, and I’m one of them. I’ve only recently become aware, for example, that I should be somehow ashamed that I brought ten books away with me on my / our honeymoon. I mean, it was a three-week honeymoon (not pictured, above). And one of the weeks was spent in the Maldives, where, once you’ve stared for an hour at the picture-perfect view, and gone for a snorkel, and had a White Russian at the dock-side bar, there isn’t an awful lot else to do that doesn’t involve White Russians.
  Again, I digress. People need to read, certainly, but that’s no guarantee they’ll have a need to read anything specific, let alone something specific written by you or me. So long as it’s halfway decent, I’m happy enough to have my need to read satisfied by almost any kind of reading. Whenever I get to indulge the luxury of reading a book I actively want to read, and it’s as good as I’d hoped, then that’s a whole different issue, and very probably an experience with the quality of magic that inspires the need to read in the first place.
  Maybe it’s realising that I’ll always be more of a reader than a writer that’s had me noticing recently that a lot of writing-related blogs, this one included, tend to use the word ‘readers’ quite a bit. I don’t like it. The implication is that there are two camps, writers and readers, when the truth is that any writer worth his or her salt is first and foremost a reader, and will read far more on a bad reading day than a good writer ever wrote on his best writing day. Meanwhile, and at the risk of sounding even more whimsical than usual, I honestly believe that the writer only ever writes, at most, half the story. The other half is written in the reader’s mind. A writer cannot supply horror, joy, hunger, pain. He can hint at it, suggest it, whisper it or shout it, but even the best are just telegraph operators who set the reader’s synapses tingling. I think that that’s one of the reasons people love a good book so much, the fact that it brings the best out of them, literally.
  Anyway, I’m just going to go ahead and dispense with the word ‘readers’, and just use ‘people’ instead. Because, in an ideal world, the words ‘people’ and ‘readers’ would be synonymous.
  Finally, I’m curious: I need to read, but I’m not overly fussed about what I read, so long as it’s good. Do other people have a particular need when they read? Can your want only be satisfied by a specific need being met? Also - what’s the last book you read that really hit the spot?

“They Think It’s All Rovers … It Is Now!”

Not a bad season at all for the Bit o’ Red, then. Sligo Rovers beat Shamrock Rovers to win the FAI Cup yesterday on penalties, admittedly, but apart from the first 15 minutes they were the better side, and fully deserved the win. What made it particularly sweet was that they came back after last year’s heartbreak (1-0 up in the final with about six minutes to go, only to lose 1-2), and that they won it playing attractive, flowing passing football, as they have done all season under manager Paul Cook - a Liverpool lad, as if it needs to be said. Also, beating Shams in the final - sweet as a nut.
  All told, the Real Rovers nabbed two trophies this year, doing the Cup double, and finished third in the League, thus qualifying for European football next year. All of which is just a tad improbable, given Sligo Rovers’ fairly limited resources, but there you go, it just goes to show what can be achieved when you’re not prepared to settle for how things are supposed to be. Oh, and did I mention that ’keeper Ciaran Kelly - who’s actually the club’s second-string ’keeper, behind the injured Richard Brush - saved four spot-kicks during the penalty shoot-out? Yes, that’s four saved penalties. I don’t know if it’s a world record, exactly, but it’s pretty impressive in any context.
  I’m going to go ahead and take Rovers’ win yesterday, and their season in general, as a good omen. The redraft of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS went off last Thursday, and (tenuous link ahoy) it’s set in Sligo, and yours truly is constrained by limited resources (time, talent, etc.) when it comes to writing. So you never know …
  I didn’t get to the game, by the way. A combination of a slipped disc and a 40th birthday celebration in Sligo (mine and my sister’s, respectively) meant that I wound up watching the game from the comfort of my couch, coaching Lily to shout, “Play up, Sligo!”. When I got home from Sligo, however, there was an email / reader’s report on THE BABY KILLERS waiting for me. I won’t say who it’s from just yet, as I haven’t had the chance to ask his permission, but the gist of it runs thusly:

“If you took Palahniuk’s FIGHT CLUB, Ellis’ AMERICAN PSYCHO and King’s SECRET GARDEN, SECRET WINDOW, combined them with Burke’s mastery of dialogue, character and the human condition, then removed the gratuitous violence, the end result would be Burke’s latest and most impressive novel to date, THE BABY KILLERS. An excellent read that continually ratchets up the intrigue and suspense factors as it builds toward the tremendous finale, while at the same time providing an intense, no-holds-barred, behind-the-scenes introspection into the psyche of the writer and his process.”

  Which is very nice indeed, and may in itself be some kind of omen. Who knows? If you’d told me yesterday morning that Rovers would win the Cup on penalties, saving four spot-kicks in the process, I’d have laughed you out of the building.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: SUNSET PARK by Paul Auster

SUNSET PARK centres on Miles, a 28-year-old college drop-out who lives in Florida ‘trashing out’ foreclosed properties. Thoughtful and meditative, Miles photographs items from the house his crew ‘trashes out’, as opposed to stealing them, as the rest of the crew does. When Miles meets Pilar, a 17-year-old High School student, his ascetic life changes. They’re relationship is consenting, a meeting of minds, but it is also illegal under Florida law. Blackmailed by Pilar’s sister, Miles leaves Florida for New York, planning to live in the squat his friend Bing Nathan maintains in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Once Pilar turns 18, the pair can be reunited. So runs Miles’ plan, but as Miles knows only too well, fate has a way of intervening in the best laid plans of mice and men.
  Running parallel to Miles’ story are a number of narratives. Miles has abandoned his family in the wake of a tragedy in which is stepbrother died, and for which Miles blames himself, but Miles’ father, Morris, has been keeping tabs on Miles throughout the years via the updates he receives from Bing Nathan. The owner of a small publishing house, Morris is going through an upheaval of his own, as his marriage to his second wife, Willa, appears to have hit the rocks due to a one-off infidelity by Morris. Meanwhile, the economic climate is crushing down hard on his publishing business, leaving Morris, though determined to continue, fearful for his future.
  Miles’ mother, Mary-Lee, a Hollywood actress, is another major character. Aging now, she has learned to play character roles, and has come to New York to play Winnie in a production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. Mary-Lee abandoned both Morris and Miles shortly after her son was born, leaving New York for LA in the hope of building an acting career.
  A number of minor characters populate the squat at Sunset Park. Apart from Bing Nathan, a ‘bear’ of a man who runs a quirky business repairing old typewriters and old-fashioned technology, and has a sideline as a jazz musician, there is Alice and Ellen, both of whom have artistic ambitions.
  SUNSET PARK is a hugely enjoyable meditation on love, absence and loss. While Auster addresses big themes, however, he does so in a way that is modest and subtle, allowing the characters to grow by increments until they have wormed their way into the reader’s consciousness. There are few grand gestures here.
  The novel touches on many recurring themes in Auster’s fiction. While the meta-fiction aspects for which he is famous are largely absent, the novel is strongest when exploring the father-son relationship between Morris and Miles. While Auster tends to write more often about absent fathers, here it’s the son who is absent from his family’s life, having exiled himself after accidentally contributing to the death of his stepbrother, Bobby, as a teenager.
  Miles is a fascinating character, and has the ascetic qualities Auster tends to repeat in his male protagonists. Miles lives very sparely, with few indulgences or personal belongings. He is disgusted, for example, when Pilar’s older sister attempts to blackmail him in the hope that Miles will steal objects from the houses he trashes out:

“ … and even if it was all to a good purpose, he couldn’t help feeling revolted by her avidity, her inexhaustible craving for those ugly, stupid things.”

  By the same token, Miles is a little too ascetic, a little too much the strong, silent hero for the reader to take him entirely seriously. According to Bing Nathan,

“ … Miles seemed different from everyone else, to possess some magnetic, animal force that changed the atmosphere whenever he walked into a room. Was it the power of his silences that made him attact so much attention, the mysterious, closed-in nature of his personality that turned him into a kind of mirror for others to project themselves onto, the eerie sense that he was there and not there at the same time?”

  You can only presume that Auster is mocking himself, or Miles, or both, with a depiction of a contemporary character such as that, as if Miles has walked into Brooklyn straight off the set of the cowboy movie Shane.
  That said, Auster devotes quite a bit of the novel to legendary baseball players - Miles and his father bond over the game of baseball - and mostly baseball pitchers, those men who stand on the mound on their own, the gunslingers who hurl their fastballs and dictate the narrative of the game.
  It’s not necessarily an exercise in nostalgia for a better time, for a cleaner cut hero, however. Most of the baseball players Miles is drawn to are defined by their luck. For the most part, they are defined by bad luck, by accidents or bad plays that subsequently defined their careers, but he also references players who are known for their good luck, such as Lucky Lohrke, who cheated death three times before dying peacefully at the age of 85. Here Auster is invoking blind fate, the extent to which the tiniest details can blow up into catastrophic consequences. Such is the case, certainly, with the finale of the novel.
  Auster also frequently cites the movie, The Best Years of Our Lives, a film made in the wake of WWII to illustrate the difficulty that GIs had in returning to a non-combat life. The title is an ironic one, especially as the ‘best years’ of the title refers to the killing fields of WWII Europe, or the Pacific theatre of war. Again and again, too often perhaps, he has various characters reference the movie, and the baseball heroes, to illustrate the vast gulf between reality and our perception of it.
  Morris is the most fascinating character in the novel for me, a man old enough to have acquired wisdom but still young enough to put it to good use. There’s a real tang of authenticity when it comes to Morris’ character that seems absent when Auster is writing about Miles, and particularly in terms of Morris’ relationships with his wife, his ex-wife and his friends, most of whom are in the publishing business. The scene in which Miles and his father are finally reunited after seven years is arguably the finest in the novel, when neither, despite their best intentions, can rise to the occasion. It’s not very dramatic, certainly, but it’s heartbreaking in its poignancy, in the inability of both men to reach beyond their limited capacity for emotional engagement.
  Mary-Lee, too, is a well drawn character, both self-centred but sympathetic, and Auster has terrific fun with her playing the role of Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days. Mary-Lee’s tragedy, in fact, appears to be that she cannot stop performing; even when she is reunited with Miles after so many years apart, she finds herself wondering how he is evaluating her, as if he were an audience like any other. Again, this has the ring of authenticity, and represents a perversely touching moment.
  Quietly told, without recourse to Auster’s usual brand of literary pyrotechnics such as meta-fiction or inter-textual fun and games, SUNSET PARK is a real grower of a novel. Set in a contemporary America that in which ordinary people are suffering badly due to the economic downturn, it offers a pleasing sense of cautious optimism that, when the chips are down, people still can turn to one another for assistance, be it financial, social or emotional help. The ending is downbeat and somewhat fatalistic, certainly, given Miles’ predicament, but Auster does a fine job of contextualising that predicament, framing it with understated grace notes of hope and expectation. - Declan Burke

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Don Bruns

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 would have loved to have written GET SHORTY by Elmore Leonard. The right amount of humor, quirky characters and a story that really works.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald’s character, would be a great role. A former marine, pro football player, now retired with a 52-foot houseboat and a Rolls Royce converted to a pickup truck. What’s not to like about this guy’s life?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I’m not sure I read for guilty pleasure. I very rarely read anything that doesn’t help me with something I’m working on. If I’m writing a thriller, I’m reading thrillers. If I’m writing a comedic mystery, I’m reading comedy. It’s not to steal themes or ideas ... it’s simply to stay in the mood.

Most satisfying writing moment?
In my Stuff series, Skip Moore is a practical young man who tries to keep his friend James out of trouble. James is more of a playboy with a huge sense of adventure. I was talking to a librarian several years ago who said, “I dated James. I married Skip.” I knew I’d made an emotional connection and that’s a good feeling.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
MYSTERY MAN by Colin Bateman. Very funny book about a guy who owns a bookshop specializing in crime in Belfast.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I would think with the proper adaptation, anything by John Connolly would make a good movie.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Bad reviews are probably the worst thing about being an author. After you’ve received starred reviews, then someone slams the book.

The pitch for your next book is …
My pitch for the next book? DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. Two 24-year P.I.s investigate a carnival whose rides have literally gone off the tracks, killing and injuring customers. Throw in a fun house that is not fun at all, a frightening ride called the Dragon Tail and a midget named Winston Pugh who owns a petting zoo and a big English sheep dog named Garcia, (Winnie Pugh’s Petting Zoo), and you have a recipe for chaos.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading David Morrell, a book called SCAVENGER. Really well done.

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

Don Bruns’ DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF is available now.

Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

Après le deluge, c’est moi. Or words to that effect. The immediate aftermath of writing a book is always a weird time, a period of twitchiness and sensory overload and an indefinable feel of gaping loss. There’s relief too, of course, but you’re still running on adrenaline in a vacuum, synapses firing like a Catherine Wheel, and yet you’ve nowhere to invest all the excess creative energy. The idea of starting something new is stomach churning, given that you feel physically drained, and that’s even presuming you’ve a new idea worth kicking around. Better writers than I have suggested in the past that this can be a good time to write short stories, and in that way siphon off the excess mental energy in brief spurts, but - as the man says - if I was able to write short stories, why would I bother writing novels in the first place?
  Anyway, the latest redraft is finished. Hallelujah, etc. For those of CAP’s three regular readers who have been paying attention, it was a redraft of the story that started out under the rather unwieldy title of THE ROOMINGHOUSE MADRIGALS, then became A GONZO NOIR, moved on to BAD FOR GOOD, and is currently rejoicing in the not-likely-to-see-the-light-of-day title of THE BABY KILLERS. For those of you who have already read it in a previous draft form, the new draft contains roughly 10% new material, most of which was included to root the characters in what passes for my reality, and which - hopefully - makes the story just a smidge more bonkers than it already was. Which, given that the publishing industry grows more conservative by the day, is the literary equivalent of shooting myself in the foot. But what else can you do? Join the grey, homogenous ranks churning out grey, homogenous facsimiles of one another? Invent a particularly gruesome and / or fiendishly clever psychopathic killer? Wedge the latest dull-but-worthy Inspector Plod into a sub-genre already splitting at the seams with dull worthiness? Contrive a new variation on the superhuman sub-Bond thriller? Foist, God preserve us all, yet another tarnished knight of the private eye variety onto an unsuspecting - oh, hold on, I’ve already done that.
  No, it’s foot-shooting for me, and a permanent limp as I wander the publishing roads less travelled, and a metaphor mangled to within an inch of its life. But I digress.
  I finished the redraft on Thursday morning, and sent it off, and I’ve been mooning around ever since, or at least during those chunks of time I’d previously allotted to writing. What to do, what to do? I’ve some other novels I could be redrafting, and half-finished novels I could be finishing, and half-started novels I could be working on, but I’ve promised myself I won’t write another word of fiction until the New Year at least, as life tends to get a little frantic for a freelance journalist in the run-up to Christmas.
  Plus, knowing that the story is out there, and being read by people who have the wherewithal to put it on a shelf at some point in the future, has a paralysing effect. It’s like some kind of venom that blocks the synaptic impulse from reaching the fingertips. A very weird feeling, and hence the twitchiness.
  By the way, those few of you who have been paying attention will remember that my plan, when last outlined, involved self-publishing BAD FOR GOOD / A GONZO NOIR / THE BABY KILLERS for charidee. Well, there’s been a development since then, and a rather intriguing one, and while self-publishing remains an option, it’s not the only one. More of which anon.
  Meanwhile, I’m still waking at 5am ready to write, fully charged, utterly drained, bedevilled with ideas and frustrated for the want of a blank page to transform their glittering brilliance into toxic sludge, a process I like to describe as ‘the first draft’. It’ll pass, I know, it always does, and soon enough all that energy will subside back into the pit from whence it came, there to transmogrify itself and emerge as an entirely different beast, hopefully as a beast brandishing a pair of Gatling guns pointed squarely at my feet.
  For now it’s time to put my nose to grindstone, and put the hours into work that actually pays. Hell, maybe I’ll even be able to get back to waking at 6.30am.
  Finally, and for your delectation, I offer the new start to the book, with all brickbats and barbed-wire bouquets welcome, as always. To wit:

1.

This man at the foot of my bed is too sharply dressed to be anything but a lawyer or a pimp. He is reading, intently, which leads me to believe he is more likely a pimp, as these days lawyers are more usually to be found writing novels than reading them.
  His navy suit, a three-piece over a pink shirt with a white collar and navy tie, is the only splash of colour in a room that is otherwise entirely white. White walls, white tiles on the floor. The window blinds, bedside locker, sheets, wainscoting, the door, all white.
  As it is a manuscript of a novel the man is reading, the page facing me is white.
  His eyes flicker up to meet mine. They narrow when he realises I have come awake, and a well trimmed eyebrow arches. Brown eyes, flecked with hazel, and not without warmth. He holds my gaze for a moment or two. ‘You’re some man for one man,’ he says.
  When I do not speak, he puts the manuscript down and settles himself comfortably in the straight-backed chair, folds his arms. ‘The best we can hope for is criminal damage,’ he says, ‘and that’s claiming insanity. We’ll start out full-blown, work our way down to temporary, you could be out in five years. But that’s your best case scenario.’
  He waits. The only sound is the faint hum of the a/c.
  ‘Worst case,’ he says, and his tone has not changed, ‘they’ll pull out the big guns, offences against the State, terrorism, the works. I mean, there’s no specific law against blowing up hospitals, but let’s just say they’ve plenty of wiggle room to play with.’
  Again he waits.
  His tone still patient, reasonable, he says, ‘Between you and me, you’re public enemy number one, and right now I’m the only friend you have. So we can do this with you playing dumb if you want, some kind of silent protest, it can only help with the insanity plea. But if you want my advice, which is why I’m here, then I suggest you start talking. To me, at least. There’s only the two of us, no one’s taking notes, there’s no recorder running, it’s all off the record. I’m here, I’m listening.
  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what d’you say?’
  A man cannot live tilted away from the world. The world will not permit it. Gravity will have its way.
  He must live straight, upright, or not at all.
  I reach for the pen and pad on the bedside locker and scribble a question. The man comes to the bed, takes the pad.
  ‘What day is it?’ he says. ‘It’s Monday. Monday,’ he checks his watch, ‘four-thirteen pm.’
  I beckon for the pad, and scrawl, Tomorrow.
  A wry grin. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘It’s all about the Tuesdays, isn’t it?’
  There is nothing I can add to this. It would appear that all effort has come to naught.
  My line for today comes courtesy of Samuel Beckett: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
  I close my eyes.

© Declan Burke 2010

Fly Concord For Free

I had a piece published in the Irish Times yesterday on the Concord Free Press, which is currently publishing Scott Phillips’ rather excellent RUT. The opening ran a lot like this:

The best things in life are free books. That’s the philosophy of the US-based Concord Free Press, which publishes books and gives them away.
  “GIVE + TAKE, my fourth novel, inspired the whole idea,” says Stona Fitch of CFP. “It’s about a jazz pianist who steals diamonds and BMWs and gives away the money - in short, a modern retelling of the Robin Hood fable. But it’s also about the limits of generosity and the slippery nature of value. When the book ran into classic delay at a major New York publishing house, I decided to start the Concord Free Press and give it the book away, asking only that readers give some money to a charity they believed in or someone in need.”
  The CFP publishing model - which they have dubbed ‘generosity-based publishing’ - is overseen by an Advisory Board of writers that includes Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Megan Abbott and Gregory Maguire, among others. “It’s important to point out that we’re a group of writers that publishes books,” says Stona, “not a publisher only. We’ve just seized control of the machinery of publishing and put it to work in a new way.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Tortuga Bound

It’s not often we feature theatre here on Crime Always Pays, but Jason Wells’ MEN OF TORTUGA looks to be an interesting prospect. To wit:

In the executive suite of an unnamed American Corporation, three power brokers scheme with a weapons specialist to eliminate the opposition in Jason Wells’ dark comedy of negotiation, conspiracy and assassination. Maxwell, a hero of the old guard, volunteers to sacrifice himself for the plan. But when Maxwell takes the young idealist Fletcher under his wing, his long-dormant conscience begins to reawaken. As the scheme spins into disarray, the plotters descend into suspicion, bloodlust and infighting, while Fletcher is drawn, inexorably, into the lion’s den …

  Variety liked it:

“Jason Wells isn’t giving everything away in his captivating new play Men of Tortuga … Wells tells a story of corporate greed, power, surveillance and the secrecy that increasingly pervades our daily lives … The play pulses with energy …” - Variety

  The production comes courtesy of PurpleHeart Theatre Company in association with the Focus Theatre, and is directed by John O’Brien. It opens on Thursday, November 11th at the Focus Theatre in Temple Bar, Dublin, and all the booking details are available here …

300,000 Not Out

Trumpets please, maestro … At some point yesterday, round about 6pm Irish time, ye olde Crime Always Pays blogge passed the 300,000 mark for page impressions. Which isn’t particularly impressive, considering that CAP has been on the go since April 2007, when it was the sole marketing tool available to a broke but enthusiastic writer, but still, it’s not often we get to parp our trumpets around here, so 300,000 is as good a reason as any, especially - as all Three Regular Readers will be aware - ye blogge only has three regular readers.
  Kidding aside, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who come here on a regular basis, be that daily, weekly or monthly, and especially those of you who make the effort to leave a comment or two, on the rare occasion when the post is interesting enough to merit a comment or two. It goes without saying, although I’ll say it anyway, that this whole endeavour would be a complete waste of time without the likes of you looking for some way to completely waste your time.
  Upward and onward, then, to the next 300,000 page impressions. And hey, who knows - maybe I’ll even have another book to blog about when we reach the magical half-million mark. Stranger things have happened at sea, as they say …

The Republic Of Books

Given the straitened circumstances publishing is going through these days, setting up a new imprint is either an act of blind folly or hopelessly romantic optimism. That said, Irish publisher Maverick House appears to be a very tightly run ship, with the steadying hand of Jean Harrington on the tiller, and one that has defied the odds over the last number of years. So I can only imagine that, while there’s bound to be an element of romantic optimism behind their new venture, Book Republic, it’s very probably underpinned by some very pragmatic projections.
  Anyhoo, Book Republic has its official launch this week, at 1.30pm on Wednesday at the Mansion House, Dublin, and here at CAP Towers we fervently wish all involved bon voyage and a fair wind following. The first Book Republic offering, Dan Harvey’s PEACE ENFORCERS, was published in September, with an excerpt running thusly:

Darfur, Western Sudan, 2003

It was pitch black; the sun had not yet risen. The clattering of hooves went unheard by the village inhabitants, still fast asleep in their beds. They were happily unaware they were about to be violently awoken to a nightmare, propelled from tranquillity to turmoil in a split second. A turbulence of torture and torment was about to be unleashed by the marauding militiamen, riding hard through the rocks and scrubland over the arid, red sands of the Sahel region of Darfur. Murder, mutilation and rape ensued. The sounds of gunshots and the screams and shrieks of terror-stricken women and children filled the early morning air. It was a cacophony of chaos, a maelstrom of madness, and it wasn’t over yet.

  For the rest of the extract, clickety-click here …

On Beating Publishers With A Big Stick; and Ken Bruen’s Movies

First off, let me apologise for the erratic posting that the Three Regular Readers might have noticed here at CAP for the last while. The reasons why are positive, given that I’m swamped right now (yours truly in full-on nervous breakdown mode, right) with actual paying work, which is not something I’ll be complaining about any time in the near future, particularly as Ireland might do well to simply turn itself into one vast begging cap before the IMF finally decides to do the right thing. The other reason is that I’ve been beavering away at a redraft of A GONZO NOIR, aka BAD FOR GOOD, which I should have finished in the next week or so, all things being equal and a fair wind following, etc.
  Incidentally, if there are any bloggers and / or reviewers out there who fancy receiving a Word doc copy of said tome, which may or may not be labouring under the title of THE BABY KILLERS by the time it reaches you, I’d be delighted to provide a RARC (Ridiculously Advanced Review Copy). Please drop me a line at the usual address ...
  Once the redraft is completed, I’ll be turning my attention to other matters, including beating some unfortunate print-on-demand publisher with a big stick until it uncles and agrees to a reasonable price, and sundry other issues. All going well, following wind, etc., I’m hoping a print book version of A GONZO NOIR / BAD FOR GOOD / THE BABY KILLERS will see a shelf near you by April or May. I’m also planning to release it as an e-book, for all you e-reader fans out there. No, please, form an orderly queue, etc. …
  Meantime, and because I’ve been so busy, I’m way behind the curve with the trailers for the two forthcoming movies based on Ken Bruen novels, which hit the interweb last week. The first, LONDON BOULEVARD, starring Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley, will be released on November 26th, if my information is correct, although I’m giving no one any guarantees on that one. Roll it there, Collette …

  The second movie, BLITZ, starring Jason Statham, is scheduled for a 2011 release, although I can’t be any more precise than that. Collette? In your own time, ma’am …

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

Being a shorter-than-usual version of the ‘Crime Beat’ round-up in the Irish Times, due to circumstances that were largely beyond my control, not that my control is ever all that controlled. Anyhoo, herewith be the truncated column:

German author Andrea Maria Schenkel’s BUNKER (Quercus, £12.99) is a chilling tale of a woman’s abduction and incarceration. What makes the tale so compelling is that Schenkel isn’t content to simply ratchet up the tension with a conventional will-she-escape tale. Instead, Schenkel offers parallel narratives, from captor and abductor, both delivered for the most part in internal monologues, interspersing both with a third-person account of a nameless victim arriving to an emergency ward on the point of death. It’s a clever and wholly believable strategy, as Schenkel delves into both characters’ memories to excavate a complex and interlocking labyrinth of motive and guilt.
  Henning Mankell’s DANIEL (Harvill Secker, £12.99) is another unusual crime novel. Set in 1875, it follows entomologist Hans Bengler to the Kalahari Desert, where he ‘adopts’ a young native, the sole survivor of a massacre. Naming the boy Daniel, Bengler takes him back to Sweden, where the child’s inability to adjust to his new surroundings eventually results in tragedy. A psychological study of alienation and its consequences, Mankell’s tale lacks the pace, punch and body count of his more conventional crime tales, and may disappoint fans of the traditional mystery / thriller genre. Furthermore, the character of Daniel never fully rings true: a sullen naïf when the plot suits, he is nonetheless phenomenally successful at mastering the Swedish language and gives voice to implausibly profound yearnings in one so young.
  Val McDermid also ploughs something of a new furrow with her latest novel, TRICK OF THE DARK (Little, Brown, £18.99). Renowned for her gory murders, McDermid offers a more genteel story than usual when disgraced clinical psychologist Charlie Flint is asked by her former Oxford tutor to discreetly investigate the suspicious circumstances of the death of her son-in-law on the day of his wedding. McDermid, too, employs a neat narrative conceit in allowing the chief suspect for the man’s death to offer a first-person account of events by way of a memoir she is writing, although aficionados of the genre, expecting twists and turns, might deduce that too much is being pinned on one suspect. That said, McDermid writes a fluid, compelling novel of manners underpinned by a believable mystery plot, and Charlie Flint is a fascinating addition to the canon of intrepid female investigators.
  Meanwhile, the rather-less-than-intrepid Mystery Man returns in the third of Colin Bateman’s new series of novels, DR YES (Headline, £14.99). The nameless hero, who owns the Belfast crime fiction bookstore No Alibis, is reluctantly dragged into yet another caffeine-fuelled adventure when legendary Northern Irish crime novelist Augustine Wogan commits suicide after alleging that a famous plastic surgeon - the eponymous villain - has murdered his wife. Bateman delights in undermining the crime tropes, making his ‘hero’ a cowardly neurotic who detects his way through the mostly self-inspired mayhem by taking his cues from the classics of the genre. Here Mystery Man meets - but fails to recognise - his first bona fide femme fatale in Pearl Knecklass, crime fiction fan and receptionist to Dr Yes, who may or may not be party to the real-or-imagined murder. Written with obvious affection for the genre, yet always ready to pounce on its clichés (Dr Yes fillets the current craze for serial murderers), the Mystery Man novels are page-turning whodunits with the bonus of a slyly subversive commentary on the contemporary crime novel.

  This review first appeared in the Irish Times.