Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland: The Truth!

It’s off to Maynooth University with yours truly next Tuesday, for an event titled ‘Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland’, which will be hosted by one Rob Kitchin of Blue House fame. I’m really looking forward to it, even if it’s the case that I’ll stuck between two of Ireland’s finest journalists (and equally fine novelists) in Gene Kerrigan and Niamh O’Connor, both of whom, it’s fair to say, have their fingers firmly on the erratic pulse of that intensive care patient known fondly to the world’s financial markets as Ireland, Inc. Meanwhile, I’m a guy who reviews books and movies for a living. I’ll be so far out of my depth I may wind up with a crippling case of the bends.
  I think it’ll be an interesting event, though. Last year, when DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS came out, one negative review more or less sneered at Irish crime writing on the basis that it feeds like a parasite off the misery of the country without offering any solutions to the mess. Which I thought was a bit rich, seeing as how a whole raft of politicians and economists are paid to come up with solutions to various economic messes, and fail miserably at every hand’s turn.
  Anyway, there are a number of Irish crime writers who are engaged with charting the woes of contemporary Ireland through their fiction, although there are as many again who haven’t the slightest interest in doing so. It’s all valid, I think. The most important thing any book can offer is an interesting story, well written. If a writer chooses to give that story an immediacy and urgency that derives from a timely investigation of the setting’s current ills and travails, then that can add another dimension. By the same token, agit-prop is no one’s idea of good art. So there’s a fine line to be negotiated.
  My current book, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, has a bit of fun with the notion of agit-prop, setting up a hospital as a metaphor for the country itself, with a demented hospital porter hell-bent on blowing it up in order to alert the nation to the dangers of depending too heavily on the kindness of strangers. My new book, SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which I’ve just finished, is also influenced by current events - I find it very difficult to ignore that kind of thing, simply because it would be unrealistic for characters not to be engaged on a daily basis with the wider context of how their lives are being lived, or - more accurately, perhaps - how they are forced to live their lives.
  The extract below is from SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, and comes when the main character, and narrator, the former private eye Harry Rigby, is conversing with a previously wealthy woman, Saoirse Hamilton, whose son, Finn, has committed suicide two days previously, due to his financial circumstances. Saoirse Hamilton, as you can imagine, is rather bitter, and keen to foist the blame for Finn’s death (and by extension Ireland’s woes) onto someone, anyone, other than herself:

  ‘This is an old country, Mr Rigby. There are passage tombs up on the hills of Carrowkeel and their stones gone mossy long before the pyramids were built. There were Greeks sailing into Sligo Bay when Berlin was still a fetid swamp in some godforsaken forest. Take a detour off our shiny new roads and you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth, because no Roman ever laid so much as a foundation brick on this island. Hibernia, they called it.’ A wry smile. ‘Winterland.’
  ‘Well, the roads run straight enough now.’
  ‘Indeed. Irish tyres hissing slick on the sweat of the German tax-payer, who will tell you that he has paid for every last yard of straight road built here in the last forty years. You know,’ she said, ‘there have always been those who turned their back on Brussels and Frankfurt, and not everyone who professes to ourselves alone is a Sticky or a Shinner. But I could never understand that. I quite liked the idea that Herr Fritz was spreading around his Marshall Plan largesse to buy himself some badly needed friends.’ She shrugged. Her voice gone dead and cold, as if she spoke from inside a tomb. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. Herr Shylock has returned demanding his pound of flesh, and it appears he is charging blood debt rates. Straight roads, certainly, and more suicides in the last year than died in traffic accidents.’
  ‘It won’t last,’ I said. ‘Nothing ever does.’
  A hard flash of perfect teeth. ‘My point entirely, Mr Rigby. I’m told that the latest from Frankfurt is that our German friends are quietly pleased that the Irish are not Greeks, that we take our medicine with a pat on the head. No strikes, no burning of the bondholders, or actual banks. Apparently they’re a little contemptuous, telling one another as they pass the latest Irish budget around the Reichstag for approval that we have been conditioned by eight hundred years of oppression to perfect that very Irish sleight of hand, to tug the forelock even as we hold out the begging bowl.
  ‘They are children, Mr Rigby, our German friends. Conditioned themselves, since Charlemagne, to believe want and need are the same instinct. Hardwired to blitzkrieg and overreach, to forget the long game, the hard lessons of harsh winters bogged down in foreign lands.’ Tremulous now. Not the first time she’d delivered this speech. ‘The Romans were no fools. Strangers come here to wither and die. Celt, Dane, Norman and English, they charged ashore waving their axes and swords and we gave up our blood and took the best they have, and when they sank into our bogs we burned them for heat and carved our stories from their smoke and words.’

  SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is due to be published in June, which is around about the time when the Irish people will be going to the polls to vote in a referendum on whether Ireland should change its constitution to allow for the EU’s new fiscal treaty pact to take effect here. Essentially, I think, the battle for Yes and No will be fought on the basis of how steaming mad the Irish people are at their loss of economic sovereignty at the hands of a German-dominated EU - which isn’t strictly true, by any means, and ignores the extent to which Ireland was culpable in its own downfall (SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is to a large extent a novel about the consequences of not taking responsibility for your actions).
  Contrary to the doomsayers, I believe the Yes vote will edge the referendum, this on the basis of ‘that very Irish sleight of hand, to tug the forelock even as we hold out the begging bowl’ - we’ll be offered a deal on the debt Ireland has been burdened with, and we’ll vote pragmatically, if not on behalf of ourselves, then on behalf of our children.
  But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes - ‘Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland’, Maynooth University, March 6th, 5pm. If you’re in the vicinity, we’d love to see you there …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander

HOPE: A TRAGEDY opens with Solomon Kugel hearing strange sounds in the attic of the farmhouse he and his wife have recently bought after moving from Brooklyn to the small, rural community of Stockton. Fearing that the scratching sounds he hears in the attic are mice, Kugel goes to investigate. Much to his surprise, he discovers that the ‘scratching’ is in fact typing, and that the typist is an elderly woman who lives in the attic. Rather more surprising is the fact that the elderly woman is Anne Frank, previously, and famously, thought to have perished in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, but who has instead spent her entire life hiding out in attics.
  Being Jewish, Kugel finds himself in a bind. The tattoo on her arm confirms that the woman is indeed a Holocaust survivor, even if she isn’t Anne Frank. Will Kugel be the man to be identified as the Jew who threw a survivor out of his house? And what if the woman really is Anne Frank?
  HOPE: A TRAGEDY has been compared to a wide variety of Jewish writers, including Philip Roth and Woody Allen, but for me the novel was very much in the same vein as Kurt Vonnegut’s work, and I mean that as the highest of compliments.
  Auslander very elegantly, and hilariously, presents the reader with an impossible scenario, that of a man discovering that Anne Frank is alive and well in his farmhouse attic, and working on a novel which she hopes will trump the thirty-two million sales of The Diary of Anne Frank.
  For some, such a scenario may prove too irreverent, especially as it’s the case that Auslander has his characters engage with the Holocaust, and the entirety of Jewish persecution, in a way that few writers would have the courage to do. Essentially, Auslander is questioning the sacred cow of Jewish suffering, and asking tough questions about a culture, and an industry, that has grown up around the unquestioning acceptance of the Jews’ right to claim that their suffering trumps all others’.
  It’s a very tough sell, especially as Auslander is writing in the comic style - although it’s fair to say, I think, that the humour is of a very black pitch. For example, the first chapter is something of a very short prologue, about a man suffocating to death in a house fire. Chapter Two then opens with: ‘Solomon Kugel was lying in bed, thinking about suffocating to death in a house fire, because he was an optimist … Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel’s greatest failing.’
  But Auslander is being quite clever, I think, in his subject matter. While some might object to the irreverent way in which he writes about the Holocaust, for example, Auslander never fails to provide the context of the Holocaust, and never shies away from portraying the horrors, the banality of the evil, the sheer scale of the industrialisation of the attempted murder of an entire race. In other words, Auslander gets to have it both ways, and he copes with the balance remarkably well.
  Kugel himself is a very likeable character, the classically ‘nebbish’ Jewish character who is riven with paranoia and anxiety, and who is too self-aware for his own good. Constantly second-guessing himself, his heart is in the right place - who wouldn’t, if offered the opportunity, give Anne Frank a place to live? - but this clashes with his more immediate responsibilities, to his wife and young son. He is, naturally, in therapy, although Kugel’s therapist, Dr Jove, is a rather bracing man who preaches against hope and optimism. ‘Give Up,’ says the sign in Dr Jove’s office, ‘You’ll Live Longer’.
  Around Kugel, Auslander has created a number of enthralling characters. Chief among them is Anne Frank herself, whom Auslander re-imagines as an elderly crone, shuffling around an attic as she types her never-ending novel. Anne has been poisoned against the human race, as you might imagine, given her experiences, and proves to be a fairly callous, uncaring tenant, one given to pronouncements on the Holocaust that should shrivel the soul. She is a malign, brooding presence in the Kugel attic, and one which drives a wedge between Kugel and his wife, Bree.
  Kugel’s mother is another fascinating character. Abandoned by her husband as a young woman, leaving her to rear Kugel and his sister Hannah alone, Mother is an embittered creature who has learned to foist all of her disappointments in life on the Nazis. She blames the ‘sons of bitches’ for everything, even though she was born and raised long after WWII, in relative comfort in Brooklyn. ‘Ever since the war,’ she mutters whenever something goes wrong, which leads those who don’t know her well to presume that she suffered badly during the Holocaust. For those who do know her, and particularly her family, they learn to accept her self-association with the Holocaust as one of her many quirks and foibles. From pg 107, when Kugel and Mother are talking about when it’s appropriate to tell a three-year-old boy about the Holocaust:

Reason rarely worked with Mother, so Kugel had appealed, as he often did, to her emotions. As destructive as her way of showing it may have been, Kugel believed she loved Jonah deeply, and genuinely cared, first and foremost, for his well-being.
  You’re going to scare him, Kugel said, looking deep into her eyes.
  Somebody has to, Mother replied.

  The novel is a classic novel-of-ideas, with Auslander freewheeling through a variety of concepts, exploring philosophies and putting his very idiosyncratic spin on them. For all the whimsical, irreverent humour, and its apparently ludicrous central concept, the novel has very serious things to say about the human condition, and humanity’s constant ability to generate hope and optimism despite all the evidence to the contrary. Strip away the jokes and Kugel’s self-flagellating mind-set and the story becomes a very bleak tale of the inevitability of death, and the extent to which hope is a self-deluding folly; and more, a dangerous folly, for there is no depth, the novel warns, to which humanity will not sink.
  The novel is also an exploration of the creative process, Anne Frank typing away in the Kugels’ attic being a metaphor, presumably, for Auslander’s struggle to write fiction, even as someone stalks the darkness outside, bent on burning down Kugel’s farmhouse. It is chock-a-block with literary references, from some very pointed and funny comments on Philip Roth’s superstar status in the literary establishment in New York, to throwaway mentions of Zelig, and Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, and a whole range of final utterings by famous people.
  HOPE: A TRAGEDY is a wonderful novel. The writing is wonderfully arch, the humour is brilliantly bleak, and it’s a book bursting with ideas, concepts and notions. It’s subversive, irreverent, scabrously funny and profound - in short, it represents for me everything a novel should be, raising far more questions than it provides answers for, and asking the reader to decide, in the end, if the writer is serious or not. I believe he is deadly serious about the philosophical notions in the book, and that there’s an incandescent anger about the Holocaust burning brightly between each and every line. - Declan Burke

SLAUGHTER’S HOUND: A Shaggy Dog Story

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that I haven’t posted anything here for the last three or four days, in large part because I’ve been struggling in the death throes of the latest book, which felt a lot like howling at the moon whilst wrestling a tank full of giant squid, naked. That’s me who was naked, not the squid. They were all wearing Kevlar.
  Anyway, it’s done now, for good or ill. Or pretty much done, because the book will go off to an editor, and the editor will pick up on all the glaring plot holes and the occasional damp tentacle draped across a page, not to mention (so why mention it?) the complete lack of anything approaching cohesive grammar and punctuation. So, yes, there will be changes to make, and commas to fiddle obsessively with, and no doubt the occasional stray tentacle will come in very useful for the purpose of self-flagellation.
  But to all intents and purposes, the book - SLAUGHTER’S HOUND - is done. And so am I. This has, by some distance, been the toughest book I’ve ever written. I think that that’s in part because I was writing against my previous / current offering, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is a tongue-in-cheek take on the crime novel, and wanted SLAUGHTER’S HOUND to be very much a straight crime novel; and while it’s nice to bounce around the genre and play games and have fun, there’s something very satisfying in playing the game straight and hard and clean. Not that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is very ‘clean’ - it’s a filthy, grimy slice of noir, or so I hope.
  The main reason it was a tough book to write, though, is that it’s the first book I’ve written since the light of my life, aka the Princess Lilyput, grew old enough to climb the stairs on her own and come tapping on the door of my lair and demand I come play with her. Which meant that most of the book was written between the hours of 5am and 7am, while Lily is still asleep, and before the day proper begins. It’s a lovely time to write, because there’s absolutely no danger that you’ll be disturbed by anything except the occasional (frequent) realisation of your own limitations, but that kind of schedule, when you’re also running a full-time freelance journalism schedule, just isn’t sustainable in the long run. Right now I feel blitzed to the bone, utterly exhausted, as if I’ve burnt the candle at both ends and taken a flamethrower to the middle. The prospect of sleeping in until 7am tomorrow morning is so delicious as to verge on sinful.
  There’s a slump coming, I know. The nervous energy (and buckets of coffee) that sustain me through the final, frenzied stages of a book requires payback, the mental equivalent of crawling into a cave and curling up in the foetal position, fingers stuffed in my ears. And there’s an emotional price too, if you’re in any way engaged emotionally with your characters - right now it feels as if I’ve been living for the last few weeks with one foot in reality and the other in the makey-uppy world, some kind of half-assed Atlas shouldering a sky of his own making. Yes, I know it’s only a detective novel, but that’s not really the point: if you’re committed to it, then it takes a certain amount of psychic energy to bring it into being and (koff) keep it real - and once it’s done and you step away, hoping the architecture is such that it stands alone without your support, then that can be a very draining experience.
  And then, of course, there’s the girding of the metaphorical loins to hear the offer for your work, and the kick in the metaphorical groin when you realise just how little all that effort is worth, in cash terms at least.
  It’s traditional at this point for me to announce that that’s it, I’ll never write another book again; but at this stage, who would I be kidding? Already there’s an asp’s nest stirring and hissing in the back of my head, the vague outlines of another story coming together.

So I’ll suck it all up, and get some sleep, and in a couple of months time I’ll slap myself around the chops and sit down at the desk again. For good or ill.
  Finally, and given that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is a sequel to my first book, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, I’m going to celebrate finishing the former by making the ebook of the latter available at the knock-down, recession-friendly price of $3.99 / £2.50 for the next 30 days. A private eye-of-sorts tale featuring ‘research consultant’ Harry Rigby, it was described on its publication as ‘the future of Irish crime fiction’ by no less an expert on the future of Irish crime fiction as Ken Bruen. For all the details and links, clickety-click here …

Do You Remember The Good Old Days Before The GHOST TOWN?

A fine old time was had last Wednesday night at the Hodges Figgis ‘Crime Night’, and very nice it was to meet with some familiar names, and put faces to said names. It was a tidy turn-out, too, and I sincerely hope that everyone who turned up enjoyed it as much as I did. Most enjoyable, perhaps, was the fact that the evening’s moderator, Professor Ian Campbell-Ross, declared yours truly the ‘senior member’ of a panel that included Arlene Hunt and Conor Brady, which was the first and very probably the last time I’ll be referred to as such in the presence of an ex-Irish Times editor.
  One person I didn’t get to speak with, unfortunately, was Michael Clifford, who was there on the night but who slipped away very quickly at the end. Which is a shame, because Michael Clifford is yet another Irish crime fiction debutant, with GHOST TOWN (Hachette Ireland) due in May. Herewith be the blurb elves:

A Dublin gangland king pin on the chase. A corrupt property mogul on the run. A hungry crime journalist determined to put his destroyed career back on track. And the return of the ‘Dancer’ - Joshua Molloy, small-time Dublin ex-con, recently out of prison, off the booze, determined to stay on the straight and narrow. When Molloy hires Noelle Higgins, a solicitor and boom-time wife with a crumbling personal life, to help find his young son, both are soon drawn into a web of treachery and violence, where Ireland’s criminal underworld and fallen elite fight it out to lay claim to what’s left from the crash: €3 million in cash, in a bag, buried somewhere in the depths of rural Ireland. From Dublin to Spain and finally a debris-strewn ghost estate in Kerry, GHOST TOWN is the fast-paced and tightly written debut thriller by leading Irish journalist and commentator Michael Clifford.

  Clifford is one of Ireland’s most respected journalists and commentators, currently writing for the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Times, and the author of some non-fiction books in the recent past: LOVE YOU TO DEATH: IRELAND’S WIFE KILLERS REVEALED and (as co-author) BERTIE AHERN AND THE DRUMCONDRA MAFIA and SCANDAL NATION. Mark it down on your calendar, folks - GHOST TOWN is a very intriguing prospect indeed …
  Incidentally, Clifford isn’t the only Irish writer to trade in ghost estates for his fiction, with Tana French and Rob Kitchin’s latest offerings also employing the abandoned developments literally and figuratively. “Speak,” as Hamlet might have said were he wandering around the desolate wastelands of suburban Ireland, “I am bound to hear …”

The Kindleness Of Strangers

I had a piece published in the Irish Times today on ebook pricing, which featured contributions from Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Allan Guthrie, Eoin Purcell and John Mooney. The gist, essentially, can be summed up by the pull-quote used for the piece, which runs as follows: “Isn’t it reasonable for readers to expect ‘deep discounts’ on ebooks, given that a publisher’s costs are comparatively lower than for a print edition of exactly the same book?” The answers, as you might expect, were many and varied, and in some cases quite surprising. For the full piece, clickety-click here …
  As it happens - and this may be a good omen - today was also the day that Liberties Press delivered a ‘deep discount’ on the ebook version of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is now retailing for $2.99 on Amazon.com, and (roughly, as I can’t see the pricing for ebooks on Amazon.uk) £2.50 on Amazon.uk.
  I’d suggested the price drop about three weeks ago, to coincide with the North American publication of AZC, but things being what they are, and everyone being so busy, it’s taken until now for the price reduction to kick in. Which is a pity, because it would’ve been nice to have AZC arrive in North America with a little wind in its sails - but hey, the important thing is that it’s now abroad on the high seas, as it were, and bound for ports unknown, heavily dependent on the (koff) kindleness of strangers …
  If I may be so bold (koff-koff) as to offer you the most recent reviews for said humble tome:

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

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

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

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

  The book is currently at # 240,091 on the US Kindle charts, and # 37,514 on the UK Kindle charts, and is currently working off a five-star average on eight reviews, so it’ll be interesting to see if the drop in price drives up the sales rate - or, put another (and more important) way, gives more people the opportunity of reading the book. Which would be very nice indeed. I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes …
  Oh, and while I have you - I’ll be appearing at the Hodges Figgis Crime Night tomorrow night, Wednesday, February 22nd, in the very fine company of Arlene Hunt (THE CHOSEN) and Conor Brady (A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS). If you’re around Dublin tomorrow evening, we’d love to see you there …

UPDATE: As of Wednesday afternoon, 4pm, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is currently # 20,885 on Amazon.com, and # 7,463 on Amazon.uk. Oh, and apparently the book is priced at £1.95 on Amazon.uk, and thanks for the tip-offs, chaps.

A Veritable Gale Of Gaels

How many crime novelists can one small country throw up? The flood of debutant Irish crime novels continues to swell, the latest coming courtesy of Mick Donnellan, whose EL NIÑO (Original Writing) hits the Atlantic seaboard at the end of February, when the novel gets its official launch in Galway. Quoth the blurb elves:

Charlie is a pick-pocket with a complicated past. He steals El Niño’s wallet, then falls in love with her. She’s wild, beautiful; intoxicating. He’s a recovering alcoholic and needs to stay away from the pubs. Their relationship takes flight and is full of passion and possibility. But soon Charlie’s demons come back to haunt him. P.J., a member of an old crime gang he used to work with, offers Charlie some work – a once-off robbery that seems well planned and very profitable. But it doesn’t turn out that way and one of the crew is arrested. P.J.’s boss is Kramer – a vicious thug that Charlie grew up with in his hometown of Ballinrobe. They’d gone their separate ways when Kramer began dealing cocaine and started a gang war that nearly cost Charlie his life. Now he’s back and he’s sure Charlie is talking to the police – an unforgivable crime in gangland. It seems there are no ‘outs’ and all the couple can do is try and escape, but fate seems to have other plans …

  EL NIÑO is set on the mean streets of Galway and Ballinrobe, and it remains to be seen how the Godfather, aka Ken Bruen, reacts to someone cutting in on his turf. As for the novel itself, well, you can clickety-click here for a sample if the spirit so moves you …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE BERLIN CROSSING by Kevin Brophy

THE BERLIN CROSSING opens with a short prologue set in 1962, as an East German soldier on duty on the Berlin Wall shoots dead a man who is trying to cross the no-man’s land into West Berlin. Oddly, the man appears to smile as he dies.
  The story then moves forward to Brandenburg in 1993. The Berlin Wall has fallen, and many of the former GDR’s citizens resent the way in which their history is being written by West Germans, or ‘Wessies’. Michael Ritter, an English language teacher and a published author of a collection of short stories, ‘Workers’ Dawn’, is informed that his teaching contract won’t be renewed, largely in part because Ritter was a former Party member in the GDR and is seen as politically suspect in the newly unified Germany. Ritter has long detested the Westernisation of the former East Germany, and particularly the crass commercialism that has colonised his country, and his sacking only confirms his prejudices. Shortly afterwards, Ritter’s mother dies, sending Ritter off on a search for a Pastor Bruck of Bad Saarow with her dying words, which suggest that Pastor Bruck will be able to shed some light on the identity of the father Ritter has never known. Michael’s quest sends us back in time to 1962, when the novel takes on some of the tropes of the classic Cold War spy novel.
  This, the middle section of the novel, is why THE BERLIN CROSSING is being pitched in certain quarters as a thriller of the Le Carré variety, but I think it will become quickly obvious to any fan of the classic spy thrillers that that’s not the kind of novel Brophy had in mind. Certainly, he seems more than happy to play with the tropes and conventions of the spy novel - the secret service ‘spooks’ in London recruiting unwilling spies via blackmail; the East Berlin setting; the secretive missions, false identities and ‘dead letter’ drops; the sense of claustrophobia and paranoia - but any fan of Le Carré, Ambler et al will be underwhelmed by THE BERLIN CROSSING as a spy novel.
  For one thing, only the middle section, or ‘book’, can be considered a spy thriller. Secondly, and despite Brophy’s ability to recreate both a relatively modern Germany and its Cold War counterpart in East Berlin, the story does lack that quality of under-the-skin paranoia and claustrophobia that the great thriller writers bring to their work. It’s also true that there’s a lack of plausibility about the events that transpire in East Germany that would be highly unusual among the best practitioners of the spy novel.
  By the same token, I did get the impression that Brophy was incorporating these tropes into a novel that has other fish to fry. THE BERLIN CROSSING is, I think, fundamentally a novel about identity, and an individual’s attempt to find his place in a ceaselessly changing world. This search for identity is bound up in a love story set against the Cold War backdrop; it’s fair to say, I think, that the romantic aspect of the novel is equally, if not more, important to Brophy as the spy novel aspect.
  Michael Ritter is a fascinating character for his take on the East German experience of the newly unified Germany in 1992. It’s far more common to read of former East Germans who were terrorised and tortured, physically and / or psychologically, during this period of Germany’s history. Ritter, however, is proudly East German; he defends the GDR’s reputation and the means used to protect the country against its aggressors. Moreover, he’s disgusted by the blatant inequality caused by the influx of capital into East Germany.
  Equally interesting is the minor character of Pastor Bruck, whose presence pervades the novel like no other character apart from Michael Ritter himself. As a confirmed socialist and patriotic East German, Michael is suspicious of religion as the opium of the masses when he first meets the Pastor in Bad Saarow:

He and his kind had won; his miserable stained glass was a symbol not of survival but of loss. I could feel the hate welling inside me, inside the regret, boiling over it, swallowing the regret, swallowing me. I hated this grey cleric, this grey stone building. (pg 45)

  Soon, however, Michael is grudgingly accepting the sacrifice Pastor Bruck has made on behalf of his own family (the pastor has had his back broken by the Stasi). Later, Michael comes to realise that it is the Pastor’s Christian instinct that allows him to help Roland to escape from the Stasi in East Berlin. While Michael doesn’t become a convert to religion, he does come to accept the parallels between the Christian philosophy and the all-for-one basic tenet of his cherished socialism.
  There’s also a neat dovetailing between the religious aspect to the novel and that of its form as a kind of spy novel, given that the spy novel is generally about peeling back layers of deceit to get at a fundamental truth. Twice Brophy cites Pontius Pilate before Christ, the first being in the words of Pastor Bruck:

‘The old question, Herr Ritter.’ The smile almost sorrowful. ‘What is truth?’ And two thousand years after Pilate, we still cannot answer it.’ (pg 51, italics Brophy’s)

  In the latter stages of the novel, Pilate’s enquiry after truth is again cited, which suggests that Brophy wants to emphasise this particular point.
  Ultimately, Kevin Brophy has delivered an intriguing novel about identity that is loosely swaddled in the trappings of the spy novel. - Declan Burke

The Killing Floor

Aifric Campbell’s two novels to date, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER and THE LOSS ADJUSTOR, have offered intriguing variations on the conventional crime novel, and her latest, ON THE FLOOR (Serpent’s Tail), sounds as if it continues in a similar vein. Quoth the blurb elves:

In the City, everything has a price. What’s yours? At the age of twenty-eight, Dubliner Geri Molloy has put her troubled past behind her to become a major player at Steiner’s investment bank in London, earning $850k a year doing business with a reclusive hedge fund manager in Hong Kong who, in return for his patronage, likes to ask her about Kant and watch while she eats exotic Asian delicacies. For five years Geri has had it all, but in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, her life starts to unravel. Abandoned by her corporate financier boyfriend, in the grip of a debilitating insomnia, and drinking far too much, Geri becomes entangled in a hostile takeover involving her boss, her client and her ex. With her career on the line as a consequence, and no one to turn to, she is close to losing it, in every sense. Taut and fast-paced, ON THE FLOOR is about making money and taking risks; it’s about getting away with it, and what happens when you’re no longer one step ahead; ultimately, though, it’s a reminder to never, ever underestimate the personal cost of success.

  An advance copy of ON THE FLOOR arrived at CAP Towers yesterday, sending the ARC-reading elves into a frenzy of anticipation which barely stopped short of the book itself being flittered. Looks like I’ll have to run a lottery, to see who gets the privilege of dipping into it first. And there was you thinking CAP Towers was all about hammocks, Cuban cigars and high-balls once the sun crawls over the yardarm …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Lyndsay Faye

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 BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler. “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.” Stare at that sentence for two or three minutes and marvel at its perfection. That book is magical.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Dr. John H. Watson. I’d have spent my entire life watching someone be amazing.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t feel much in the way of guilt about my pleasures, truth be told. But I do collect atrociously written Sherlock Holmes pastiches, the more crack and unlikely Victorian celebrity cameos and bodice-ripping covers with floating deerstalker art the better. (Incidentally, I also collect excellent ones, but there’s no guilt whatsoever in that.)

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing my first novel. I was baffled by the fact I’d managed it for months. I’m still baffled by it, actually - I’ve never been involved in a single “creative writing” class, just a bunch of excellent courses on the classics, and editorial work like my university writing centre and campus literary magazine.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ooh, apologies to the classics. But IN THE WOODS by Tana French really hits my sweet spot. So gritty and atmospheric and human.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Is THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR by Gene Kerrigan a movie yet?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst aspect for me is the occasional emotional roller coaster that happens in total solitude. Does this work? Will it come together? What if it doesn’t? Where’s the whiskey? But when someone tells me they identified with a person or a moment I invented from thin air - that’s glorious.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Welcome to the sequel to THE GODS OF GOTHAM, winter of 1846, in which I do more terrible, terrible things to Timothy and Valentine Wilde.

Who are you reading right now?
Alex George’s THE GOOD AMERICAN - he’s a fellow Amy Einhorn author. It’s marvellous.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
What a heinous circumstance. Well, selfishly ... I think I’d read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Open, open, open. I’m all about character exposure, breaking people apart to see the nasty and beautiful and selfish and brave bits. The crimes are incidental for me, like nutcrackers or lobster scissors - they exist to get at the meat of the person I’m writing about.

Lyndsay Faye’s THE GODS OF GOTHAM is published by Headline Review.

The Second Life Of Reilly

Last year’s TABOO, from husband-and-wife writing partnership Casey Hill, dragged Irish crime fiction into the bright ‘n’ shiny CSI age, as their Quantico-trained investigator Reilly Steel arrived in Dublin to head up a brand new forensics office and hunt down a nefarious serial killer. A UK production team is currently beavering away to bring Reilly to a TV screen near you; in the meantime Casey Hill’s sophomore offering, TORN (Simon & Schuster), will be hitting the shelves in March. Quoth the blurb elves:

When an ex-cop is found frozen to death in a bath of ice at a disused meatpacking plant, the Dublin police conclude it may be one of the man’s past collars taking revenge. Shortly afterwards, a tabloid journalist is found drowned in his own septic tank, buried up to the neck in excrement. The reporter had many enemies, but why would someone go to such elaborate lengths to exact revenge? Both crime scenes are a forensic investigator’s worst nightmare. The locations and victims yield little in the way of usable evidence, and Reilly Steel quickly discovers that she may be dealing with a killer - or killers - who know all about crime scene investigation. The police are just as frustrated by the crimes’ impenetrable nature, and it’s only when a third murder occurs - equally graphic and elaborate in its execution - that the police and Reilly begin to wonder if the same person might be responsible. And they soon discover that this particular killer is using a very specific blueprint for his crimes. Who is the killer’s next victim? And what’s his endgame?

  Bodies packed in ice in meatpacking plants? Journos drowning in septic tanks full of excrement? Outsiders coming in to clear up our mess? Is TORN an extended metaphor for how ripped apart is Irish society in these straitened times? Or is it just good, clean serial-killing fun? YOU decide.

Survival Of The Figgis

I ended up nearly walking into a lamppost yesterday on Dawson Street, as I glanced into the front window of Hodges Figgis (right) and did a comedy double-take. It’s a rare but pleasurable experience to see one of your books in the front window of a bookshop, but it’s very weird indeed to see the cover of your book blown up to poster size. Anyway, said poster was part of a display in the Hodges Figgis window designed to promote ‘Crime Night!’, the details of which runneth thusly:

Crime Night! Hodges Figgis kindly invite you to a Crime Fiction Night taking place in our store on Dawson Street, Dublin 2, on the 22nd of February at 7.30pm. We have three well known Irish authors taking part: Declan Burke, Arlene Hunt and Conor Brady. The night promises to be an interesting one, with some extract readings and a questions-and-answers session based on what special qualities an Irish writer brings to the genre. Contact one of our Booksellers or our Secretary to book a free place to avoid disappointment.

  So there you have it. I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, Arlene from THE CHOSEN, and Conor Brady from his debut title, A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS. Will we come through the experience unscathed, fired in the kiln of public scrutiny? If you’re out and about in Dublin on the evening February 22nd, it’d be great to see you there.

Black’s Dark And Banville’s Light

I’m not sure exactly what’s happening with the cover for Benjamin Black’s forthcoming VENGEANCE (August, Henry Holt), or whether we’re looking at UK and US covers, but I know which one I prefer (right). Certainly the ‘bandstand’ cover conjures up the moody, atmospheric tone I associate with Black’s Quirke novels, which are set in 1950s Dublin; the other cover (below) is rather garish, and brings to mind the worst excesses of the kind of slash-‘n’-cash rubbish that seems to be growing increasingly prevalent in crime fiction these days. Or are said novels (or their lurid covers) merely a throwback to the gory, glory days of the pulp novel? YOU decide.
  Anyhoo, onto the story itself. VENGEANCE is the fifth in Black’s Quirke series, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

A bizarre suicide leads to a scandal and then still more blood, as one of our most brilliant crime novelists reveals a world where money and sex trump everything. It’s a fine day for a sail, and Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland’s most successful businessmen, takes his boat far out to sea. With him is his partner’s son—who becomes the sole witness when Delahaye produces a pistol, points it at his own chest, and fires. This mysterious death immediately engages the attention of Detective Inspector Hackett, who in turn calls upon the services of his sometime partner Quirke, consultant pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family. The stakes are high: Delahaye’s prominence in business circles means that Hackett and Quirke must proceed very carefully. Among others, they interview Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; and Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner. But then a second death occurs, this one even more shocking than the first, and quickly it becomes apparent that a terrible secret threatens to destroy the lives and reputations of several members of Dublin’s elite.

  Benjamin Black, as you very probably know, is the alter-ego of John Banville, who also has a novel published later this year. Interestingly - or not, depending on whether you’ve been following the on-off debate about how serious Banville is about writing his crime fiction - he suggested last year, in an interview with The Star’s Mark Egan, that Benjamin Black has influenced the way John Banville writes. To wit:

“Black was able to help Banville,” he says, explaining that the Banville novel he just completed, ANCIENT LIGHT, was improved by his crime fiction.
“Black has got used to doing plots and keeping all that balanced, and Banville has learned some of that from him,” he says.
In ANCIENT LIGHT, Banville revisits his novels ECLIPSE and SHROUD. Narrator Alexander Cleave thinks about the suicide of his daughter Cass and a sexual affair he had as a teenager with a friend’s mother in a small Irish town.

  Herewith be the blurb elves:

ANCIENT LIGHT is a stunning novel about youth and age, first love and the illusions of memory by one of the finest writers in the English language. An elderly actor remembers his first affair as a young teenage boy in a small town in 1950s Ireland -- the illicit meetings in a rundown cottage outside town; assignations in the back of his lover’s car on a rain-soaked afternoon. And with these memories comes something sharper and much darker -- the more recent recollection of the actor’s own daughter’s suicide only ten years earlier. In John Banville’s dazzling new book is the story of a life rendered brilliantly vivid -- the deluded nature of young love and the terrifying shock of grief. ANCIENT LIGHT is one of John Banville’s finest novels, both utterly pleasurable and devastatingly moving in the same moment.

  So there you have it. A Black novel AND a Banville novel in the same year? But Mr Publisher-type Ambassador, with these gifts you are surely spoiling us …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Margie Orford

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?
WOLVES EAT DOGS by Martin Cruz Smith.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Arkady Renko (goes with the above). But some days I feel more like Cruella deVille. I never want to be Bambi’s mother.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The Guardian.

Most satisfying writing moment?
My first royalty check.

The best South African crime novel is …?
THIRTEEN HOURS by Deon Meyer.

What South African crime novel would make a great movie?
THIRTEEN HOURS will be a great movie – it is in production right now. And I think BLOOD ROSE, my second novel, which is busy being cast right now, won’t be too shabby either. As one of the producers told me, with true producer tact: ‘We like your South African stuff – it’s like Wallander with good weather.’ Who could argue with that?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Few people think you actually do any work (the worst thing). Being able to nap at your desk (which is probably why people think you don’t work).

The pitch for your next book is …?
Isolde Wagner, a gifted but vulnerable young woman drops out of her life, leaving behind friends, family and career as a classical musician to join a reclusive sect. After she cuts all ties, her anxious mother asks Clare Hart to find her, to persuade her to make contact. But Clare is not sure if Isolde is alive or dead and whoever has had a hand in her vanishing does not want the truth revealed.

Who are you reading right now?
ALL ABOUT LOVE: ANATOMY OF AN UNRULY EMOTION by Lisa Appignanesi (there are very few crimes that don’t have their origin in love).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’ve taken God on before and I came out alright, so I think I would challenge him to an arm-wrestle. I win – I get to write AND read. He wins – well, I get to rewrite his book. There are a couple of bits I think could do with some tweaking.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
One reviewer said my writing induced ‘ball-crushing fear’ - I’m happy with that.

Margie Orford’s DADDY’S GIRL is published by Atlantic Books.

Nobody Move, This Is a Review: SARAH THORNHILL by Kate Grenville

SARAH THORNHILL is the third of a ‘loose trilogy’ of novels Kate Grenville has written about Australia’s colonial past, and the interaction between white - mainly British - settlers and the indigenous native Aboriginal people, although it can easily be read as a standalone novel.
  THE SECRET RIVER, Grenville’s fifth novel, was published in 2006. It concerned itself with a character called William Thornhill, a settler on the Hawkesbury River, investigating how Thornhill evolved from a deported convict to a respectable land-owner. William Thornhill is based in part on Kate Grenville’s great-great-great-grandfather. THE SECRET RIVER won a number of prizes, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
  Grenville subsequently published SEARCHING FOR THE SECRET RIVER, a non-fiction account of the research she did for THE SECRET RIVER, following that up with THE LIEUTENANT (2008). The second in the loose trilogy, it is set 30 years before THE SECRET RIVER, and details the relationship between a soldier and a young Aboriginal girl of the Gadigal tribe. The book is based on the notebooks of the historical figure Lieutenant William Dawes.
  SARAH THORNHILL (2011) follows on directly from THE SECRET RIVER. Sarah Thornhill is William Thornhill’s daughter, and is in part based on Grenville’s great-great-grandmother. Other characters in the novel, including Jack Langland and John Daunt, are also based on historical figures.
  Essentially, the story is a coming-of-age tale, with Sarah’s experience of her pioneer life shaped but by no means defined by her relationships with three men: her father, her lover and her husband. But while the story does concern itself with the vagaries of very different kinds of love, the ‘secret river’ of the first in the trilogy’s novels refers to the Aboriginal bloodline and history that has been carried down through the generations since Australia was first colonised, and Grenville is at pains to explore the fraught relationship between black and white in early Australia.
  Essentially, she is putting human faces on the colonial experience, and while her settler characters are for the most part very sympathetically drawn (apart from those guilty of class snobbery), there is no doubt that her true sympathies lie with the displaced and dispossessed natives.
  In terms of her style, Grenville (who has previously won a number of literary prizes, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for THE SECRET RIVER) has set herself something of a challenge in terms of allowing Sarah Thornhill narrate this story. Sarah is the daughter of a prosperous landowner, but is nonetheless uneducated in terms of a classical education. Despite this, Grenville gives Sarah a unique way of seeing the world, and allows her to express herself in an earthy kind of poetry. It’s a fine line to tread, but Grenville strikes a beautiful balance; Sarah is not so given to flowery utterances that we fail to believe in her, but her thought process is interesting enough, and so evocatively delivered, that she quickly becomes an enthralling character.
  Sarah’s pragmatism, meanwhile, is reflected in the descriptions of the Australian Outback. Grenville doesn’t neglect to mention the mud and the dust, the flies, the loneliness of its vastness, but neither does she fail to give its raw beauty its full due.
  All told, SARAH THORNHILL offers a unique voice telling a fascinating story against a turbulent and occasionally harrowing backdrop. Warmly recommended. - Declan Burke

A White Knight Rises

I don’t read an awful lot of historical crime fiction, but THE GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye (Headline Review) has persuaded me that I very probably should. A fascinating backdrop, neatly observed historical detail, an intriguing protagonist, and beautifully written, with the added bonus that many of the characters speak ‘flash’, aka the argot of New York’s criminal underworld: it’s a potent blend. Quoth the blurb elves:

August 1845 in New York: enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points ... After a fire decimates a swathe of lower Manhattan, and following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last forms an official Police Department. That same summer, the great potato famine hits Ireland. These events will change the city of New York for ever. Timothy Wilde hadn’t wanted to be a copper star. On the night of August 21st, on his way home from the Tombs defeated and disgusted, he is plotting his resignation, when a young girl who has escaped from a nearby brothel, crashes into him; she wears only a nightdress and is covered from head to toe in blood. Searching out the truth in the child’s wild stories, Timothy soon finds himself on the trail of a brutal killer, seemingly hell bent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment and threatening chaos in a city already in the midst of social upheaval. But his fight for justice could cost him the woman he loves, his brother and ultimately his life ...

  The book is published in March, and I’m not the only one who likes it: “THE GODS OF GOTHAM is a wonderful book. Lyndsay Faye’s command of historical detail is remarkable and her knowledge of human character even more so. I bought into this world in the opening pages and never once had the desire to leave. It’s a great read!” - Michael Connelly.
  So there you have it. Incidentally, the book reminded me very strongly of Dennis Lehane’s THE GIVEN DAY, but also Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND, particularly in terms of Tim Wilde’s fish-out-of-water quirks and foibles and Faye’s use of real historical figures, and Wilde’s pursuit of a killer pulling the political strings of sectarian hatred. All in all, it’s a hell of a book.

Claire For Take-Off

Claire McGowan publishes her debut novel THE FALL this week, with the official launch - according to William Ryan over at the Irish Crime Writing Facepage - taking place at 6pm on Wednesday evening (February 8th) at Goldsboro Books, 23 - 25 Cecil Court , London WC2N 4EZ. Herewith be the blurb elves:

Bad things never happen to Charlotte. She’s living the life she’s always wanted and about to marry wealthy banker, Dan. But Dan’s been hiding a secret, and the pressure is pushing him over the edge. After he’s arrested for the vicious killing of a nightclub owner, Charlotte’s future is shattered. Then she opens her door to Keisha, an angry and frustrated stranger with a story to tell. Convinced of Dan’s innocence, Charlotte must fight for him - even if it means destroying her perfect life. But what Keisha knows threatens everyone she loves, and puts her own life in danger. DC Matthew Hegarty is riding high on the success of Dan’s arrest. But he’s finding it difficult to ignore his growing doubts as well as the beautiful and vulnerable Charlotte. Can he really risk it all for what’s right? Three stories. One truth. They all need to brace themselves for the fall.

  Despite the fact that the novel is not, apparently, a story about how Mark E. Smith resorts to murder to get mainstream radio air-play, the early word on THE FALL is good - a certain Peter James, for one, is impressed: “One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while ... astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.” - Peter James
  Oh, and in case you were wondering: yes, as seems to be the case with virtually all the ladies of Irish crime fiction, she’s gorgeous too. How do we hate thee, Claire McGowan? Let us count the ways …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sarah Webb

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?
HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh. OK, it’s not your average crime novel, the spy is an eleven-year-old girl who lives in New York and spies on her neighbours, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time. There’s revenge, punishment, heartbreak and retribution. I’d highly recommend it to any reader, young or not so young.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
That’s a great question, Declan. In a lot of the books I adore, terrible things happen to the heroine - Alice, Rachel (in RACHEL’S HOLIDAY by Marian Keyes), Benny (CIRCLE OF FRIENDS by Maeve Binchy), Katniss (HUNGER GAMES), so I’ll say Posy in BALLET SHOES as I wanted to be a ballerina as a child. (Sorry, not very crime-y or kickass I know!)

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I spend a lot of time reading books for children and teenagers for work and enjoyment, so reading adult fiction is my guilty pleasure. I love good popular fiction by Marian Keyes or Katie Fforde. On the crime side, I used to be a huge Patricia Cornwell fan in the early days, and I’ve just started THE PLAYDATE by Louise Miller, a chilling psychological thriller about a child who goes missing which is excellent so far.

Most satisfying writing moment?
A good day at the desk, getting my 2,000 words done, that’s what I love. For me, that’s the real joy of a writing life.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT by Derek Landy. Yes, it’s fantasy-thriller-crime, yes, it has a skeleton detective, but it’s hilarious, clever and very entertaining. (If I had to pick a book for adults, it would be John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING, which unleashed the brilliant character that is Charlie Parker)

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

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - the doubt and the insecurity. You are only as good as your last book. Best - the licence to create, and the amazing people you meet - other writers, readers, booksellers, publishers.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Wanted: Two girls to time-share one amazing dress, guaranteed to change your life. All enquiries - ask inside. (And no, they don’t get murdered ‘inside’, it’s popular fiction!) Julia Schuster, floundering amidst family troubles and problem drinking; Arietty Pilgrim, lonely and insecure; Pandora Schuster, the sister from hell: can they ever be friends? THE SHOESTRING CLUB, one extraordinary dress, one life-altering friendship.

Who are you reading right now?
BLACK HEART BLUE, a remarkable book by Louisa Reid, part horror story, part mystery, part coming of age novel. It will be published in May and it’s utterly brilliant. And THE PLAYDATE (see above). I tend to have a couple of books on the go at the same time.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
They are so closely linked, but I’d have to say read. Life wouldn’t be worth living without reading every day, it keeps me sane.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Full of potential.

Sarah Webb’s THE SHOESTRING CLUB is published by Pan Macmillan.

A Warm, Warm Reception

The latest crime fiction column appeared in the Irish Times yesterday, featuring reviews of the latest titles from Elmore Leonard, Margie Orford, Ann Cleeves, Parker Bilal, Patricia Cornwell and Adrian McKinty. This being, ostensibly, an outlet for Irish crime writing, and THE COLD COLD GROUND being a terrific novel which has had a very warm reception to date, I’ll focus on the McKinty. To wit:

The Carrickfergus writer Adrian McKinty plunges into the dark heart of Northern Ireland’s Troubles in THE COLD COLD GROUND (£12.99, Serpent’s Tail), as Det Sgt Sean Duffy finds himself investigating a series of linked murders against the backdrop of the hunger strikes in the spring of 1981. The setting represents an extraordinarily tense scenario in itself, but the fact that Duffy is a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant RUC adds yet another fascinating twist to McKinty’s neatly crafted plot. Written in a terse style, the novel is a literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written THE COLD COLD GROUND. - Declan Burke

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  For those of you who have read THE COLD COLD GROUND, and fancy a dip into the work-in-progress of its sequel, clickety-click here …

First We Take Manorhamilton

Maybe it’s because my life is turning into one long senior moment, but I can’t remember too many Irish spy novels from recent times, although at a pinch, Eoin McNamee’s THE ULTRAS might qualify (McNamee also writes dedicated spy thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed, along with a series of kids’ spy stories). Meanwhile, back in the ’90s, Keith Baker published three spy titles, among them ENGRAM; and Philip Davidson published a series of very well received spy novels featuring MI5’s Harry Fielding. And then there is the enigma that is Joseph Hone, whose most recent offering, GOODBYE AGAIN, was published by Lilliput late last year.
  Anyway, there’s a new Irish spy thriller on the block, in the shape of Kevin Brophy’s THE BERLIN CROSSING (Headline Review), with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Secrets and spies, love and tragedy in Stasi East Germany. Brandenburg 1993: The Berlin Wall is down, the country is reunified and thirty-year-old school teacher Michael Ritter feels his life is falling apart. His wife has thrown him out, his new West German headmaster has fired him for being a socialist, former Party member and he is still clinging on to the wreckage of the state that shaped him. Disenfranchised and disenchanted, Michael heads home to care for his terminally ill mother. Before she dies, she urges him to seek out an evangelical priest, Pastor Bruck, who is the only one who knows the truth about his father. When Michael eventually tracks him down, he is taken on a journey of dark discoveries, one which will shatter his foundations, but ultimately bring him hope to rebuild them.

  The early word has been a little mixed, with the Sunday Times and the Irish Independent both suggesting that Brophy’s promise might be better served by a more focused second offering, but The Guardian quite liked it, in the process referencing (as did the Sunday Times and Irish Independent) John Le Carré. To wit:

“It may be technically flawed, but its humanity, attention to period detail and sheer guts will win you over. In the end, this is a story about reconciliation, not just between the former east and west, but between the lies of dogma and the real lives of others who turn out to be us.” - Kapka Kassabova

  So there you have it. The story, incidentally, moves from Berlin to London and on to Galway, although I’d have much preferred it had THE BERLIN CROSSING culminated in a shoot-out in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim, so that the title of this post might have made a little more sense. Oh well, you can’t have everything …

Hey Jo, Where You Goin’ With That Gun In Your Hand?

It’s turning into Ladies’ Week here at Crime Always Pays, and not before time, say I. Mick Halpin over at the Irish crime fiction Facebook page brings my attention to the fact that there’s a new Jo Birmingham novel on the way from Niamh O’Connor (right), her third, called TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT (Transworld Ireland). Quoth the blurb elves:

Behind the façade of Nun’s Cross, an exclusive gated development in South Dublin, lurks a dark secret. The body of one of its residents, Amanda Wells, is found in a shallow grave in the Dublin mountains, a plastic bag stuffed in her mouth. When her neighbour, Derek Carpenter, disappears, he becomes the prime suspect: he was questioned about the disappearance of his sister-in-law, Sarah, many years earlier. It seems like an open and shut case, but DI Jo Birmingham is not so sure, and she has her own personal reasons to prove Derek innocent: it was her husband Dan who had cleared Derek of Sarah’s disappearance. But when Jo starts digging, she unearths more than she bargained for, and her own fragile domestic peace comes under threat. And the one person who could help Jo crack the case, Derek’s wife Liz, is so desperate to protect her family that she is going out of her way to thwart all efforts to establish the truth. Can both women emerge unscathed?

  There’s a depressing familiarity to the phrase ‘body found in a shallow grave in the Dublin (or Wicklow) mountains’ these days, and it’ll be interesting to see what O’Connor - true crime editor with the Sunday World - carves from the stark facts and newspaper headlines. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT isn’t due until June, but it’s certainly one for your calendar …

Break Out The Bunting And Red Ribbons

It’s a good week for debut Irish crime writers. Claire McGowan (see Q&A below) launches her first novel today, in London, and news reaches us of yet another debutant, Louise Phillips (right), whose RED RIBBONS will be published in October by Hachette Ireland. Quoth the blurb elves:

A girl’s body is found in the Dublin mountains. The reasons behind the killing are unclear, as criminal psychologist Julie Pearson tries to unravel the mystery of Caroline Devine’s murder. Why were the girl’s hands and body placed the way they were in the grave? And why did the killer plait the 12-year-old’s hair with red ribbons after she died?
  Julie, in her mid-30s, is married to Declan Cassidy and has one son, Charlie. During the investigation, her life, both past and present becomes linked to the crime and the murderer in a way which has potentially devastating results.
  Suspect William Cronly, a private man, lives his life by routine, from how he brushes his teeth, to the time of day he pulls the window blinds up or down. William now lives in the city, but his original home ‘Cronly Lodge’ in Wexford, holds secrets which he needs to protect.
  The murder investigation spreads to Italy, as police link the current crime to the death 40 years previously of Silvia Vaccaro, a 12-year-old girl whose skeletal remains were discovered 30 years after her disappearance in Suvereto, Tuscany.
  Ellie Brady, is a long-term patient at St Michaels’ asylum, who was convicted of murdering her daughter Amy 15 years earlier. Through a relationship built up with her new psychiatrist, Dr Samuel Ebbs, she reveals events surrounding the death of her daughter, which not only establishes her innocence, but also a connection with the murder of schoolgirl Caroline.
  How are these characters linked? Will Ellie Brady finally be believed? And can Julie discover the truth behind the killing of Caroline before the murderer strikes again?

  “With overtones of Sophie Hannah and Tana French,’ says Hachette Ireland Editorial Director Ciara Doorley over at Inkwell.ie, “Louise is a supremely talented writer. She subconsciously creates parallels between her characters, and this really challenges the reader. Her writing is tense, atmospheric and we’re really excited to be launching a new voice in Irish crime.”
  Tana French and Sophie Hannah? Crikey. No pressure there, then …