Off to Belfast today with yours truly, for the Norn Iron launch of BOOKS TO DIE FOR, John Connolly’s THE WRATH OF ANGELS, and mine own SLAUGHTER’S HOUND. It should be a cracking evening. If you’re likely to be in the vicinity this evening, we’d love to see you. The details run thusly:
Thursday, August 30 at 6:30 p.m. Belfast, Northern Ireland Belfast launch of THE WRATH OF ANGELS, BOOKS TO DIE FOR, and SLAUGHTER’S HOUND by Declan Burke The Ulster Museum Botanic Gardens, Belfast Tickets Available from No Alibis Bookstore—free event! 44 (0) 28 9031 9601 Email: david@noalibis.com
Meanwhile, over at the Book Witch’s lair, Madame Witch has been casting her critical eye over said tome, BTDF. To wit:
“Declan Burke and John Connolly have worked on a real must-have book for crime lovers and others who are thinking of entering the world of crime. They, and over a hundred of their crime writing peers, have got together to write essays – admirably short ones, at that – on the ‘greatest mystery novels ever written’ and it is wonderful beyond words. “The contents pages read like a Who’s Who, and I have been dipping in and out, trying to decide whether to pick essays about people I like, or by people I like, or about books I know and love. Or just go for the odd ones where I’ve never heard of either the novelist or the essay writing fan.”
Ms Witch, we thank you kindly. I do hope we have the pleasure of your company in Manchester next month … Finally, over at Shotsmag, the lovely Ayo Onatade hosts an interview with John and I about the exquisite pleasure (koff) it was putting BOOKS TO DIE FOR together. Was Charles Dickens really the most surprising inclusion? For all the inside skinny, clickety-click here …
There were many reasons why I enjoyed Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE earlier this year, said tome being the third in a series to feature the Rome-based Commissario Blume. One of the reasons was the light shed on the world of the Calabrian organisation the N’drangheta, a mafia that is far more low-key than similar outfits operating further north in Italy. One claim in particular caught my eye, when one of the characters announces that it was cash from the N’drangheta’s reserves that essentially kept Italy from going bankrupt during the banking crisis of 2008. Preposterous? Well, it certainly sounds dramatic. But here’s a quote from a very fine piece published in the New York Times last Sunday:
Many of the illicit transactions preceded the 2008 crisis, but continuing turmoil in the banking industry created an opening for organized crime groups, enabling them to enrich themselves and grow in strength. In 2009, Antonio Maria Costa, an Italian economist who then led the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told the British newspaper The Observer that “in many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks at the height of the crisis. “Interbank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”
For the rest of the piece, which is titled, ‘Where the Mob Keeps Its Money’, clickety-click here …
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? ALTERED CARBON by Richard Morgan. Sure, it’s set in the future and you’ll find it in the SF section, but at its heart it’s pure noir, with a simple but ingenious central conceit.
What fictional character would you most like to have been? I would like to have been James Lee Burke’s violent, ex-alcoholic Dave Robicheaux. I don’t know what this says about me.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures? Wilbur Smith. Although the Guilt / Pleasure see-saw can tip either way depending on the novel.
Most satisfying writing moment? Apart from typing ‘The End’ onto that first draft, the moment when one of your characters does or says something you had no idea was coming.
If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be? John Connolly’s THE KILLING KIND. Perfect entry point to his work. The scene where Parker meets Pudd for the first time is so dread-soaked it still resonates with me. “They burn well.”... Actually, forget Dave Robicheaux; can I be Charlie Parker instead? And if that’s cheating and I have to recommend an Irish novel set in Ireland, it would be Tana French's BROKEN HARBOUR. Because ... well, because it’s Tana French's BROKEN HARBOUR.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie? THE KILLING KIND. Vivid characters, atmospheric location, great action set-pieces. Shame I’d never go see it because of the spiders.
Worst / best thing about being a writer? Best: creating something that has never existed before. Worst: feeling like you’ve created something that probably never existed for a reason.
The pitch for your next book is …? Academic psychologist Darren McDaid is consulted by detectives after his research student Andrew Corrigan – who was researching the crimes that prisoners had committed but never been caught for – is stabbed to death on one of the main streets of Dublin. Was Andrew killed because someone told him too much? And what does it have to do with McDaid himself, who used to work at the same prison before a horrific, unexplained attack forced him to leave?
Who are you reading right now? Meg Gardiner’s THE NIGHTMARE THIEF and Kim Stanley Robinson’s RED MARS. In non-fiction, my brain is being tied in delicious knots by Antonio Damasio’s THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be? Read. There’s more to be read than I’ll ever get to write. That’s not to say I’d like it; I’d probably cheat by scribbling in the margins and hope Himself wasn’t looking.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …? Must. Try. Harder.
A busy week hoves over the horizon, with a number of book-related events piling up at the far end. First we’re off to Belfast on Thursday to launch BOOKS TO DIE FOR in the Ulster Museum, along with John Connolly’s THE WRATH OF ANGELS and mine own SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, all of which will take place under the watchful eye of David Torrans of No Alibis. Then it’s back to Dublin on Friday, where John launches THE WRATH OF ANGELS at The Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar. Should be a cracker. On Saturday, I’m off to the Electric Picnic to do an event with Ken Griffin, which I am very much looking forward to. Given that the Picnic is an outdoor music festival, and pretty much takes place in the biggest field I’ve ever seen, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the weather report for sunny conditions holds. Otherwise it’ll be like the bloody Ploughing Championships down there. And welly-boots are not a good look for yours truly. Back to BOOKS TO DIE FOR, though. The book’s web lair has for the last week or so been featuring short videos from some of the contributors about their choice for BTDF, including pieces from Julia Spencer-Fleming, Meg Gardiner, Lee Child and Katherine Howell. For more, clickety-click here … Meanwhile, here’s a sample, this from Linwood Barclay, who talks about why he picked Ross Macdonald’s THE GOODBYE LOOK and his personal relationship with Ross Macdonald. Roll it there, Collette …
Louise Phillips’ debut RED RIBBONS (Hachette Ireland) will be arriving on a shelf near you very shortly, and will be officially launched on September 5th at the Hughes & Hughes store in Dublin’s Stephen’s Green shopping centre. Yesterday I had an interview with Louise published in the Evening Herald, which kicked off an awful lot like this:
“I didn’t set out to write crime fiction,” says Louise Phillips, “but pretty early on I realised my writing tended to inhabit darker places.” Never judge a book by its cover, they say. Neither should you judge one by its title. Anyone expecting RED RIBBONS, the debut novel from Irish writer Louise Phillips, to be a frothy chick lit concoction with the ribbons wrapping a Cupid’s bow around the latest forgettable romance is in for a shock. Here, the red ribbons are braided into the hair of dead schoolgirls discovered in makeshift graves in the Dublin Mountains. The novel is not based on any specific true crimes, but the storyline can veer at times uncomfortably close to reality. “I think the fear of ‘the bad man’, whom ever he might be, and how we can recognise him in all his many guises, has changed considerably in modern Ireland,” says Louise. “This is one of the central themes in RED RIBBONS. In Ireland, we’re all too aware of the sins of the past, but even in today’s world, where the protection of our children has never been more to the forefront, are we really equipped to recognise this danger?” It is in the asking and answering of such questions that novels are born. “I think writers and readers are often drawn to crime fiction for the same reason,” says Louise, “a desire to understand those who live by a different set of rules to our own. It is far more than macabre curiosity, or exploration for exploration’s sake. Crime writing at its best doesn’t simply look into the dark. It inhabits both the light and dark within all of us, asking big questions. Like, how would we cope given a particular set of circumstances?”
I’m delighted to see Gene Kerrigan’s THE RAGE shortlisted for this year’s CWA Gold Dagger, not least because, in his day job as a journalist, Gene’s long been waging a kind of sniper’s war on behalf of working stiffs against the not-so-great and not-terribly-good from the back page of the Sunday Independent. He’s also a bloody good crime novelist. I reviewed THE RAGE in the Irish Times when it was published last year, with the gist running thusly:
THE RAGE (Harvill Secker, £11.99) is the fourth novel from journalist Gene Kerrigan, a serial chronicler of Dublin’s criminal underworld who was last year shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, and was the winner of the Irish Book Awards’ crime fiction prize, for his previous offering, DARK TIMES IN THE CITY (2009). THE RAGE essentially blends two stories, that of Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey, who is investigating the apparent suicide of a banker of dubious morality, and that of Vincent Naylor, a low-level criminal recently released from prison with plans to move up in the world. That the men will eventually cross paths is inevitable, although it’s Kerrigan’s quality of gritty realism that renders THE RAGE an enjoyable page-turner as Tidey negotiates the blind alleys of a labyrinth constructed by officious judges, corrupt lawyers, and even his own superiors. Largely recession-proof (“Bob Tidey was in the law and order business, and whatever else went belly-up there’d always be hard men and chancers and a need for someone to manners on them.”), Tidey is an empathic character, pragmatic rather than idealistic, but what makes THE RAGE a compulsive document of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland is Tidey’s growing awareness that the moral anarchy that reigns at all levels of Irish society means that the old rules no longer apply, especially when it comes to enforcing a crude approximation of law and order, by any means necessary.
A month or so previous to that review being published, I interviewed Stuart Neville, and asked him in passing if he’d read anything he’d like to recommend. Did the perspicacious Stuart go straight for THE RAGE? Yes he did … For all the Dagger nominees, clickety-click here. And the best of luck to all involved …
And so was launched the good ship SS SLAUGHTER’S HOUND at Hodges Figgis last night, the pic above coming courtesy of the good folk at Portnoy Publishing. I have to say I was a little bit stunned - and delighted, naturally - at the turnout. As I said on the night, there’s a kind of double terror that comes with launching a book, the first being that no one will turn up, the second being that people will actually turn up, so that you have no choice but to go ahead and read out loud. But the marvellous support and goodwill in Hodges Figgis made all the nerves worthwhile. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came along, it was truly wonderful to see you all. And thanks too to everyone who got in touch to say they couldn’t make it, but who passed on their good wishes. We’re hugely grateful to Liam and Steven, for taking care of us so well at Hodges Figgis, and I’d like to personally thank the good folk at Liberties Press, but particularly Caroline and Alice, who made the night run like clockwork. I need to run off out into the real world to start earning a living again now, so I’ll keep this one short. Next stop Belfast, next Thursday, August 30th, for the launch of BOOKS TO DIE FOR, SLAUGHTER’S HOUND and John Connolly’s THE WRATH OF ANGELS. It might well be epic …
The fine detail has yet to be finessed, but it appears that I will be appearing at the Electric Picnic music festival on Saturday week with one Ken Griffin. Said Ken Griffin, as all Three Regular Readers will be aware, was kind enough to allow me to use some lyrics from Rollerskate Skinny ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ album. It’s an album I’ve loved ever since I first heard it way back in the mid-1990s, a ground-breaking and earth-shattering piece of work from four Dublin lads that is my perennial contender for Best Irish Album of All Time - and yes, I’m very fond of ‘Astral Weeks’, too. ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ was hugely influential for me, and was as important an experience in my becoming a writer as any book or author. At the time I was harbouring ambitions of being a writer, or of writing a novel, at least, but the books I most loved reading were the hardboiled American crime novels. And then along came ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’. It was a revelation. The fact that you were born Irish didn’t necessarily mean you had to sound Irish; in fact, you could, if you so wished, sound like nothing that had gone before. In retrospect, ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ was perhaps not as unique as it sounded at the time. It stands up, though, and sounds as fresh today as it did fifteen years or so ago. Fast-forward to when I was writing SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, and getting badly stuck. By accident, with no preconceived plan, I slipped ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ into the CD player one day. It was a cathartic experience, as if a crack had been hammered in the dam. So much so that ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ became integral to the plot, and the characterisation. If the book ends up with a tenth of that album’s energy, attitude and originality, I’ll be very happy indeed. Having quoted some of the lyrics, however, I now needed to get in touch with Ken Griffin and see if he’d allow me to use them, and how much he might charge if he did. When I tracked him down, the answer came back immediately: Yes, and no charge. I was incredibly pleased. Not just that I was allowed use the lyrics, but that Ken Griffin, who now lives in New York and fronts the band Favourite Sons, was a very rare kind of humble genius. And then, this morning, when I set out to write this piece, the whole deal became just a little bit more complex. Using the search function to track down a quote or two I’d used in SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, I discovered that I gave a talk about my debut novel, EIGHT BALL BOOGIE, way back in 2003, during the course of which I credited Rollerskate Skinny’s ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ with being a major influence on my becoming a writer. Further, I discovered an outtake from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which suggests that I’d been playing ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’ quite a lot during the writing of that book too. For those familiar with the story, Karlsson takes his long-suffering girlfriend Cassie for a midnight drive out to the back of Benbulben, where they climb up to a cave at the top of a valley reputed to be one of the places used by the star-crossed lovers Diarmuid and Grainne. Karlsson carries with him a portable stereo. Now read on:
I suggest that the valley opens out as if its steep walls were curtains parted by the invisible hands of a damsel distressed in her tower. Cassie is unimpressed. She studies her broken nail. ‘Whatever, K. Let’s just get this over with. And it better be fucking worth it.’ I shrug, roll a joint. We smoke it. I roll another, then move further back into the cave and set up the stereo on a flat rock. Rollerskate Skinny’s Horsedrawn Wishes is ready to go. I engage the superbass, jack the volume up to 11 and press play. The acoustics provided by a cave forty feet high by thirty feet across really have to be heard to be believed. Hermits didn’t live in caves for the central heating. The music booms out past Cassie into the long narrow valley and she jerks, her shoulders stiffening. The valley walls bounce the sounds back into the middle, and there they clash like invisible mediaeval armies. The clanking crash of amour crushed, the whinnies of terrified steeds, the grinding of axe on shield. Bellows, oaths, yodelled screams. This is only the opening track, Swingboat Yawning. I sit on the flat boulder beside Cassie. Her eyes are closed. A tear hangs poised at the corner of each. This may or may not be joy made manifest. This may or may not be despair unrestrained. I spark the second jay as Cradle Burns kicks in. It gallops away down the valley like the Four Horsemen startled. Already, far out to sea, the horizon lightens. Somewhere down there in the hazy grey porridge of dawn farmers are waking to discover their nightmares are real. One Thousand Couples ignites behind us. It hesitates, gathering momentum like a rocket boosting its afterburners. It explodes. The entire valley rumbles. Cassie shouts something in my ear. I cannot hear her, but she seems happy and so I nod. Speed to my Side begins with a primitive arregligious chanting. My circuits spark, spit and fritz. I trip out. I am gone, streaming past the fading stars, moving at a tangent to time. When Bell Jars Away fades into silence, Cassie leans in and engages me in a long, luscious kiss. She opens her eyes, then draws back in mock protest. ‘Hey, you kept your eyes open.’ I nod. ‘I will never again sacrifice even one opportunity to look upon your face.’ Her eyes widen. She smiles, lazy and slow. Her eyebrows flicker. More than anything else, my words appear to have aroused her curiosity. I feel a pang in my chest, but this only reminds me of how much I have already purged.
So there you have it. If you’re around at Electric Picnic on Saturday, September 1st, be sure to drop by the Literary Tent, where I’ll be pretty much stalking the great Ken Griffin, and Ken will be playing some acoustic numbers from ‘Horsedrawn Wishes’, and whatever else takes his fancy. In the meantime, here’s the very fine ‘Speed to my Side’ to give you an idea of what Rollerskate Skinny were all about. Roll it there, Collette …
I thoroughly enjoyed Alex Barclay’s BLOOD LOSS when I read it a couple of months ago, and was more than happy to say so in an Irish Times review. I’m by no means the only reader to have been impressed with Barclay’s deft handling of her heroine’s bipolar condition. Katie Binns reviewed BLOOD LOSS for the Sunday Times’ Culture section last weekend (no link), and had this to say:
This is the third novel in the [Ren] Bryce series. Ren is an engaging character - bipolar, unmedicated and shrink-free - whose wry observations and comical musings are leavened by occasional bouts of self-doubt and relationship disasters […] Barclay’s brilliant and authoritative depiction of bipolar confronts stereotypes about the disease. She describes mania and depression like old friends […] A gripping plot, stylish dialogue, convincing characterisation and the subtlety of the relationships between the main characters combine to make BLOOD LOSS worthwhile reading. - Katie Binns
All of which is very nice indeed, and suggests that Ren Bryce is going to be around for the long haul …
A trumpet-parp please, maestro. The launch isn’t until Wednesday, but SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is officially published today, August 20th, by the ever-lovely Liberties Press. What say the blurb elves?
‘I glanced up but he’d already jumped, a dark blur plummeting, wings folded against the drag like some starving hawk out of the noon sun, some angel betrayed. He punched through the cab’s roof so hard he sent metal shearing into the petrol tank. All it took was one spark. Boom …’
Welcome to Harry Rigby’s Sligo, where death comes dropping slow.
Studded with shards of black humour and mordant wit, SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is a gripping noir from one of the most innovative voices in Irish crime fiction.
“Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.” - Lee Child
“SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has everything you want from noir but what makes it special is the writing: taut, honed and vivid … a sheer pleasure.” - Tana French
So there you have it. If you’re in the general vicinity of Dublin on Wednesday evening, please feel free to come along to the launch. It takes place at 6.30pm in Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin 2, and I’d love to see you there. Meanwhile, for a snifter of Chapter One, clickety-click here …
I had a piece published in the Irish Examiner yesterday on the topic of ‘Pulp Fiction, High Art’, which concerns itself with how contemporary Irish crime novels are deriving their inspiration from classical works - Brian McGilloway’s THE NAMELESS DEAD embracing Greek mythology, for example, or Casey Hill’s TORN taking its cue from Dante’s THE DIVINE COMEDY. Herewith be a flavour:
Brian McGilloway’s current novel, THE NAMELESS DEAD, finds Inspector Ben Devlin investigating the remains of bodies that have been uncovered on an island that is situated halfway between the Republic and Northern Ireland on the River Foyle. McGilloway, the Head of English at St Columb’s College in Derry, found himself drawn to Greek mythology for inspiration. “THE NAMELESS DEAD concerns an island in the centre of a river where the unbaptised are buried,” he says, “leaving them in both a geographical and symbolic limbo. The Greek myths are perfect for dealing with death and the boundaries between the living and the dead. The idea of an island to which the dead had to be brought by boat so obviously lent itself to the figure of Charon, the ferryman. And, as Devlin’s odyssey in this story required him to look for guidance from one who had crossed the river, it made sense he would seek direction from some one like the blind prophet Tiresias. I suppose the inspiration comes mostly from the idea of someone who lives among the dead. Tiresias, who is trapped in Hades in the Greek myths, is here resident in an old people’s home.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Hill, one half of the Casey Hill writing partnership, has this to say:
“You could argue that today’s pulp fiction is tomorrow’s literature,” says Kevin Hill, “and while this is not strictly true for all literature it brings up some important aspects: time and opinion.” […] “The high art versus low art and literary fiction versus commercial fiction argument has been around for centuries, since reading novels became more than just the preserve of the upper classes,” says Kevin. “Today books are as much about entertainment as education and art. So the question of high art versus pulp fiction is ultimately a question of enlightenment versus entertainment. Perhaps the real trick is to enlighten and entertain at the same time.”
Kevin makes some interesting points, I think. The novel was considered something of a rascal when it first appeared 400 or so years ago, a disreputable form of storytelling suitable for those who weren’t quite capable of absorbing the more elevated forms. Fast-forward to the 21st century, and the novel has ascended to its lofty place in the pantheon, where it is touted as a far more cerebral form of storytelling than film, say. That may well be a class thing, as Kevin suggests. It’s the middle- and upper-classes, after all, who have had access to education, historically speaking, and are thus funnelled into a system in which they are brainwashed into believing that one kind of storytelling is superior to another. When the novel first appeared, education and access to literature was a privilege rather than a right. Thus the literary genre still clings to that affectation of superiority, whereas the crime and sci-fi genres - any of the popular genres, really - are more recent developments, and were born into, and were the product of, a more democratic age. The same is true of film, probably. Critics and audiences tend to take a film on its merits, rather than judge it according to its genre roots. Again, film is very much a product of the 20th century. Anyway, for the rest of that Examiner feature, including Ken Bruen’s remedy for any crime writer suffering ‘notions of literary affectation’, clickety-click here …
Another day, another debut Irish crime writer. Donegal solicitor Laurence McMorrow publishes THE UNDERGROUND (PenPress), a novella set in the US during the Reds-under-the-beds era. Quoth the blurb elves:
Late 1940’s America - and Cold War tension is rapidly escalating. J. Edgar Hoover heads up the FBI in zealous pursuit of enemy aliens and subversives. And top on the list of the FBI’s most wanted are the ‘Commies’. Having moved to New York, Maura Connolly, a well-educated young woman from Ireland, becomes deeply involved with Communism, and with one of the Party’s leading lights. As government forces close in, Maura is persuaded to go underground, and assumes a new identity and life. Her risky association with a senior FBI agent however, leads her and her comrades into great danger. Is there anyone she can truly trust? McMorrow’s novella deftly captures the paranoia and anxiety of the age, with a finely tuned sense of edginess and subterfuge.
Commie-baiting noir? Sold! By the way, there’s an interview with Noir Nation here which describes Laurence McMorrow as a British writer. As I understand it, Bundoran is still a part of the Republic of Ireland, although it’s been a busy week at CAP Towers and there’s been a few developments I haven’t been keeping abreast of. Have we sold off Donegal to pay down the IMF debt? Has Ireland decided to throw in with sterling? Has Colin Bateman finally gone all colonial on our collective ass? Any and all info is very welcome …
There was a very fine interview in The Independent last weekend, in which John Connolly spoke with James Kidd on a variety of topics, including the forthcoming BOOKS TO DIE FOR, the blending of genres, the use of language in crime fiction, and the influence of Catholic Ireland on his Maine-set Charlie Parker novels. Here’s a taster:
Then there is THE WRATH OF ANGELS, the 10th of Charlie Parker’s haunting, scary and addictive investigations – to my mind the finest crime series currently in existence. As always, the plot marries an ingenious, if recognisable, detective story with something wicked and otherworldly. The sinister and possibly demonic Collector makes a welcome reappearance. “The notion of fusing genres is still something the crime-writing establishment in England is uncomfortable with. There’s a sense that it interferes with the purity of the form. It suggests a lack of faith in what I am doing.” Connolly’s magpie imagination is not the only reason his books are an acquired taste. His lyrical prose is an oddity in the spartan milieu of contemporary crime writing, and betrays what seem suspiciously like literary aspirations. “There is sometimes a feeling in crime fiction that good writing gets in the way of story,” Connolly says with a hint of defiance. “I have never felt that way. All you have is language. Why write beneath yourself? It’s an act of respect for the reader as much as yourself.” Connolly is on a roll. He explains his welding together of “rational and irrational” forms by rewinding to his Irish Catholic upbringing. “Crime fiction was born from the idea that the world can be understood by the application of logic. Irish people have always been uncomfortable with this point of view. Possibly because we are a Catholic nation, we don’t think rationality encompasses the entire world. We believe that human beings are far stranger than rational thought allows.”
I would largely agree with that, although I think the instinct taps into a deeper well than a Catholic or Christian heritage. If you drive around Ireland today it won’t be very long before you come across a curious phenomena, that of the neatly tended field disfigured by a ragged patch of ground that remains untilled or overgrown, an untouched hump or hummock allowed to run wild. It’s not that the farmer gave up, or got lazy - these are ‘fairy forts’ or variations thereof, which local tradition or superstition claims are sacred to ‘the little folk’. Should a farmer prove foolhardy enough to mow or plough the fairies’ land, bad fortune will quickly follow. Now, there are few occupations more pragmatic than that of the Irish farmer - attempting to wring a living from the floating puddle that is Ireland tends to knock the romantic notions out of a man’s head very early on. If you were to suggest to one of the horny-handed sons of the soil that there are actual fairies living in such places, you would receive polite but very short shrift. And yet still, in the 21st century, the ‘fairy fort’ is common enough in the Irish landscape to be unremarkable.
Do we believe in fairies? No. Do we really believe that the bulldozing of ‘fairy forts’ would result in curses and bad fortune? No. Do we leave the fairies and their forts alone? Yes. It used to irritate me, this very visible manifestation of childishly illogical superstition. Now I like it. It’s a reminder that this is an old country, older than logic and imposed order, where we’re comfortable with daily reminders of our most ancient and primal fears. The crime / mystery novel, largely a cultural by-product of the industrial revolution and concerned with a rational, scientific pursuit of truth - “The facts, Jack, just the facts” - seeks to confirm and celebrate a cause-and-effect world that can be laid bare and explained. Thus tamed, it need no longer be feared. The crime / mystery novel asserts a seductive but blatantly false thesis, essentially proposing that if we can only dig deep enough we will eventually uncover all we need to know, and especially when it comes to character and motive, the ghost in the machine. This, for my money, is why John Connolly’s books work so well. I have no idea if he is comfortable with this notion that much of the world, for all our advances, is unknowable, but he is willing to embrace it. That his Charlie Parker novels are still considered radical, in that they ‘interfere with the purity of the form’, says much more about the narrow parameters of the crime / mystery novel than it does about John Connolly, who is using that form to tap into the oldest kind of storytelling we have. For the rest of that Independent interview, clickety-click here ...
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 MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett.
What fictional character would you most like to have been? Once, when I was fifteen, I made the national papers for swearing. One word out of a long story, ‘Bloody’! They called me ‘Pretty Pygmalion’. Guess it will have to be Eliza Doolittle.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures? Stephen King, loved THE STAND.
Most satisfying writing moment? When I finally type THE END.
The best Irish crime novel is …? That’s a hard one. Must say I love anything by Stuart Neville and Ken Bruen.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie? THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville.
Worst / best thing about being a writer? Holding your brand new book in your hand for the first time. / Batting your head against the wall when the ideas stop flowing and you’re on a deadline.
The pitch for your next book is …? THE FINAL COUNTDOWN is No 3 in the ‘Holy Island of Lindisfarne’ trilogy, the first being THORN IN MY SIDE, No 2 just out in paperback, NOWHERE MAN. THE FINAL COUNTDOWN brings everyone together and the secret of the families who have ruled the world for 30 centuries out in the open, with shocks for all concerned. Thrilled with the final word from editor. It hits the ground running and doesn’t stop.
Who are you reading right now? John Connolly, THE BURNNG SOUL.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be? It would have to be write, or else I would probably go crazy with all of these characters in my head.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …? Fast, fast and faster!
So there I was last week scribbling about how this is a strange but fascinating time for Irish crime fiction, and I didn’t know the half of it. For lo! Word filters through that Marian Keyes, the runaway bestseller of women’s fiction and most recently the author of the wonderfully titled how-to book SAVED BY CAKE, will publish a private eye novel next month, THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE. Quoth the blurb elves:
Helen Walsh doesn’t believe in fear - it’s just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs - and yet she’s sinking. Her work as a Private Investigator has dried up, her flat has been repossessed and now some old demons have resurfaced. Not least in the form of her charming but dodgy ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, who shows up with a missing persons case. Money is tight and Jay is awash with cash, so Helen is forced to take on the task of finding Wayne Diffney, the ‘Wacky One’ from boyband Laddz. Things ended messily with Jay. And she’s never going back there. Besides, she has a new boyfriend now, the very sexy detective Artie Devlin and it’s all going well. But the reappearance of Jay is stirring up all kinds of stuff she thought she’d left behind. Playing by her own rules, Helen is drawn into a dark and glamorous world, where her worst enemy is her own head and where increasingly the only person she feels connected to is Wayne, a man she’s never even met. Utterly compelling, moving and very very funny, THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE is unlike any novel you’ve ever read and Helen Walsh - courageous, vulnerable and wasp-tongued - is the perfect heroine for our times.
So there you have it, folks. Is Marian Keyes about to become the Irish equivalent of Stieg Larsson and drag the rest of the Irish crime writers kicking, screaming and spitting cake-crumbs into the publishing stratosphere? Only time, that canary-type stool-pigeon, will tell …
The trope of the crime fiction protagonist battling his or her inner demons is a common one, as you all know, although John Connolly gave the convention an ingeniously literal twist by externalising said demons for poor, tormented Charlie Parker. More recently, for his young adult novels, Connolly has pitted the boy wonder Samuel Johnson against a host of demons, and even sent him down to harrow hell. Elsewhere, Ken Bruen cut straight to the chase with THE DEVIL (2011), in which poor, tormented Jack Taylor came face to face with Satan himself - or did he? Now Gerard Brennan publishes FIREPROOF (Blasted Heath). Quoth the blurb elves:
Hell hath no fury for Mike Rocks. He’s fireproof, an anomaly caused by a slip-up in afterlife bureaucracy. Lucifer bundles him off as an embarrassing problem with a mission to introduce Satanism to Northern Ireland. And while he’s at it, Mike can exact revenge on the men who took his life. FIREPROOF is equal parts crime fiction, dark urban fantasy and black comedy. For fans of Colin Bateman, Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski.
So there you have it. “Scintillating, hilarious, surreal … a total blast,” declares the aforementioned Ken Bruen of FIREPROOF, and in truth it sounds a ripsnorter. Introducing Satanism to Northern Ireland? This could well be the (blackly) comic novel of the year.
Kristoffer Mullin’s Sunday Times review of Matt McGuire’s DARK DAWN (Corsair) - review published yesterday, no link - is not without its caveats, but overall it’s a very positive piece. First, Matt McGuire’s credentials:
“This may be his debut, but Matt McGuire already makes a living out of crime fiction. As a doctor of English literature at the University of Western Sydney, the Belfast-born academic is something of a specialist, and has published articles on the genre.”
“O’Neill’s struggles to cope with his disintegrating marriage, juggling fatherhood with a monomania for police work, feel well observed rather than trite, bringing a Henning Mankell-style realism to the genre. McGuire has a superb feel for the pressures of policing in Nothern Ireland, still suffering a hangover from the Troubles while dealing with the modern problems of youth crime and workplace politics. He also strikes a convincing tone when delving into Belfast’s underworld […] This is a terrific debut and one that demands a sequel.” - Kristoffer Mullin, Sunday Times
DARK DAWN is currently teetering atop Mt TBR at CAP Towers, and it’s one I’m looking forward to. I’ll keep you posted …
As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, yours truly has a new novel published later this month, said tome rejoicing in the subtle title (too subtle, perhaps?) SLAUGHTER’S HOUND. It opens up a lot like this:
1.
It was rare fine night for a stroll down by the docks, the moon plump as a new pillow in an old-fashioned hotel and the undertow in the turning tide swushing its ripples silvery-green and a bird you’ve never heard before chirring its homesick tale of a place you might once have known and most likely now will never see, mid-June and almost midnight and balmy yet, the kind of evening built for a long walk with a woman who likes to take long walks and not say very much, and that little in a murmur you have to strain to catch, her laughter low and throaty, her humour dry and favouring lewd, eyes like smoky mirrors of the vast night sky and in them twinkles that might be stars reflecting or the first sparks of intentions that you’d better fan with soft words and a gentle touch in just the right place or spend the rest of your life and maybe forever wondering what might have been, all for the want of a soft word and a touch gentle and true. It was that kind of evening, alright. That kind of place. You ever find yourself there, say something soft, and be gentle, and true. Me, I found myself hunched over the charred dwarf that had once been Finn Hamilton, parts of him still sizzling in a marinade of oily flesh and melting tar, and all around the rank stench of singing hair and burnt petrol, seared pork. Midnight, and balmy yet. I’d seen him jump. Pacing the yard below, phone clamped to my ear. ‘Listen, Ben, she’s under pressure at work, okay? You need to take that on -- What? Yeah, I know. But look, sometimes your mum says things she --’ I heard him, first. Faint but clear from nine stories high. ‘Bell jars away …’ From instinct I glanced up with the next line already forming, let’s be fearless with our promises, but by then he’d jumped, a dark blur plummeting, wings folded against the drag like some starving hawk out of the noon sun, some angel betrayed. I guess he punched through the cab’s roof so hard he sent metal shearing into the petrol tank. All it took was one spark. Boom … The blast smashed me ten feet into a heap of scrap metal, left me deafened and half blind, limbs rubbery as I scrabbled around ripping my hands on rusty steel. Stunned and flopping in the aftermath of a quake that tore my insides apart lie down stay down lungs pounded by hammers O Jesus breathe, breathe and a roaring in the ears of blood tortured to a scream ‘Dad?’ coming tinny and distant ‘Dad? Are you there?’ the phone two feet and a million miles away, dirt thick in my teeth ‘I think you’re breaking up, Dad …’ and the taste of roasting flesh and metal thick on my tongue. A hot knife pierced my ribs as I reached for the phone. ‘Ben?’ A harsh grating. ‘Ring you back, Ben.’ I lurched to my feet on spongy knees and stumbled across the yard towards the blaze. The air all a-shimmer so that his feet looked submerged, some weirdly wavering polyps. One of his moccasins came away as I pulled him free and at first I thought I’d ripped him in half. Then I thought he’d dropped a dwarf on the cab. Strange the things you think when you’re trying not to think at all, dragging a man from a torched wreck and his flesh frying in lumps on the melting tar. As I twisted my head, guts already heaving, I realised why he seemed so short. He’d dived, come down arrow-straight, in the final instant pulling back his arms so that the impact drove his head and shoulders back up into his chest. There was still some remnant of what had once been his neck but the head had pulped like so much ripe melon. I puked until the heaves came dry and then rang it in. Globs of grey grease spitting on the cab’s skeletal frame.
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 TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith.
What fictional character would you most like to have been? Like any storyteller, I’m tempted to say God but on the other hand He might have the last laugh.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures? PG Wodehouse, Josephine Tey.
Most satisfying writing moment? When Livia Gollancz said she’d publish my first novel ... also, in one sense far more satisfying, anytime the writing’s going well.
The best Irish crime novel is …? THE THIRD POLICEMAN by Flann O’Brien.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie? I’d love to see a movie based on Declan Hughes’ Ed Loy series. Or maybe a TV series.
Worst / best thing about being a writer? Writing / writing. Of course.
The pitch for your next book is …? NYGB - noir and nasty in the last months of British New York in the 18th century. Due in February 2013.
Who are you reading right now? Laura Lippman’s THE INNOCENTS, Barry Forshaw’s GUNS FOR HIRE, and - wait for it - E. Nesbit’s THE ENCHANTED CASTLE.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be? Write (I shall need to rewrite the Bible, for a start).
The three best words to describe your own writing are …? Don’t. Ask. Me.
Andrew Taylor’s Cold War thrillers - THE SECOND MIDNIGHT, TOYSHOP and BLACKLIST - are now available in e-book format.
Yet another intriguing Irish crime title emerges in 2012, with the publication of Joe Murphy’s DEAD DOGS (Liberties Press) - although, Liberties Press being my own publisher, I’m reliably informed that DEAD DOGS is not a straightforward crime novel, and may not even be a crime novel at all, but a literary offering with crime fiction elements. Quoth the blurb elves:
In rural Wexford, a young teenager is worried about his friend Sean. Sean, you see, has just accidentally killed a pregnant dog and her puppies. Sean isn’t stupid but he sometimes gets a bit confused. When the unnamed narrator brings him to Dr. Thorpe’s house to see about some new medication, they end up watching through the letterbox as Dr Thorpe beats a woman to death. This sharp witted and psychological narrative explores the troubles these teenagers face as they move towards a climax that will tear their worlds asunder.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a crime narrative to me. Then again, I haven’t had the chance to read the book yet, so I’ll hold fire until such time as I do. The same issue raised its head a couple of weeks back with Keith Ridgway’s very fine HAWTHORN & CHILD, which features a pair of London-based police detectives but is more a novel about characters involved in crime - victims, investigators, criminals - than it is about the crimes themselves, or their detection and/or consequences. These are strange but exciting times for the Irish crime novel. One of the best crime titles of the year to date, Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR, probably functions best as a novel detailing the personal cost of the Irish economic collapse, and less well as a dedicated police procedural. Only this week, it was announced that John Banville’s alter ego, Benjamin Black, will publish a new Philip Marlowe novel next year in the style of Raymond Chandler. Meanwhile, authors such as Keith Ridgway and Joe Murphy are offering stories that are bound up in criminal activity, yet shy away from explicitly describing themselves as crime novels. This may be in part a reluctance to be consigned to the crime fiction ghetto, as many people consider it. It may also be a literary reaction to the impossibility of coming to terms with the legal heisting of an entire country by a small number of gamblers and thieves. There’s a kind of schizophrenia abroad than can be loosely summed up as, ‘Yes, a crime took place; yes, it was immoral and unethical; yes, it was fully legal.’ Yet again, I’ll put forward my definition of a crime novel: if you can take out the crime and the novel still works, it’s not a crime novel; if you take out the crime and the story collapses, then it’s a crime novel. Not that any definition matters, of course. What truly and only matters is whether the book is well written and has something interesting to say. By that mark, and having read the first few pages, DEAD DOGS is a very intriguing prospect. Stay tuned for more …
I mentioned last week that Liberties Press will this month publish my latest novel, SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, said tome being a Harry Rigby mystery. It’s going to be an interesting time, I think, because SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is a more traditional kind of crime novel than was my last offering, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which played around with narrative and character and was something of a meta-fiction. SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, on the other hand, is a private eye story - at least, Harry Rigby starts out as a private eye, or ‘research consultant’, in EIGHT BALL BOOGIE, which was first published in 2003 and is being republished by Liberties complete with a gorgeous new cover. So I’m a little bit nervous, I have to say, as to how SLAUGHTER’S HOUND will be received. AZC garnered some very nice reviews from people who liked the fact that it wasn’t a traditional crime novel, and I’m hoping that those people won’t be disappointed by the fact that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is. In fact, I may start taking bets as to how long it’ll take for a review to conclude with the words, “ … but unfortunately, this book is all bark and no bite.” Mind you, if it wasn’t that then I’d be nervous about something else. Publishing a book is one of the most wonderful and simultaneously nerve-wracking experiences there is. And on top of all that there’s BOOKS TO DIE FOR, which I co-edit with John Connolly, and which also hits a shelf near you later this month. Good times … And now, a trumpet-parp please, maestro. For lo! It is my very great pleasure to announce that the Dublin launch of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND will take place on Wednesday the 22nd of August at 6.30pm, at Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street, Dublin 2. If you’re able to get along, it really would be terrific to see you there. Meanwhile, on August 30, I’ll be in Belfast’s Ulster Museum with John Connolly for the three-way launch of BOOKS TO DIE FOR, John’s latest Charlie Parker novel THE WRATH OF ANGELS, and SLAUGHTER’S HOUND. The event takes place at 6.30pm, and is a free-but-ticketed event - to book a ticket, call David at No Alibis on 44 (0) 28 9031 9601, or email david@noalibis.com. So there you have it. Feel free to RSVP for the Dublin launch in the comment box below. Or, y’know, just turn up on the night and surprise us all …
It’s becoming a job in itself keeping up with the debut Irish crime writers this year. The latest to come to my attention is THE CARAVAGGIO CONSPIRACY (Lilliput Press) by Walter Ellis, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:
Caravaggio was the greatest artist since Titian, a favourite of popes and wealthy bankers. But at a time when the resurgent Ottoman Empire was planning a second wave of conquest, he discovered a secret so dark that it threatened the very existence of the Catholic Church. The secret endures. Four hundred years later, Declan O’Malley, the first Irish-born Superior General of the Society of Jesus, learns that his friend, the German Cardinal Horst Rüttgers, has died in mysterious circumstances. With his nephew Liam Dempsey, recovering from wounds received while serving as a soldier with the United Nations, he tries to uncover the truth, bringing him into conflict with the sinister and virulently anti-Muslim Cardinal Bosani – Camerlengo, or High Chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church – in charge of the upcoming Conclave to elect a new Pope. As the two prelates grapple, Dempsey finds a bizarre link between Bosani and Caravaggio’s masterpiece, ‘The Betrayal of Christ’, lost for 200 years until it emerged in 1999 in the unlikely setting of the Jesuit house in Dublin. The painting turns out to be more than a sublime depiction of Christ’s seizure in the Garden of Gethsemane; it is also the key to a centuries-old conspiracy of evil. Can O’Malley and Dempsey, aided by the cool and resourceful Maya Studer, daughter of the Commandant of the Swiss Guard, prevent Bosani from re-igniting a calamitous war between Europe and the Muslim World?
Shades of Dan Brown there, of course, although the Sunday Times appears to like it:
“A sophisticated intrigue with a taut, measured style ... an impressive debut.” - Alan Murdoch, The Sunday Times
THE CARAVAGGIO CONSPIRACY is Ellis’s first thriller, but it’s by no means his first book. To wit:
Walter Ellis is a journalist who worked as a feature writer and foreign correspondent for The Irish Times, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. He is the author of two non-fiction books, THE OXBRIDGE CONSPIRACY, about elitism in British higher education, and THE BEGINNING OF THE END, a memoir of growing up in Belfast as best friend to the man who would become the INLA’s most ruthless assassin. Both books were widely reviewed and serialized. Born in Belfast, Ellis now lives in New York.
Melissa Hill, over at the Irish Crime Writing Facebook page, tips us off to a rather juicy piece of industry rumour-become-fact, which is that John Banville (right), under his crime writing nom-de-plume Benjamin Black, is to publish a Phillip Marlowe novel next year. All the details are here, but it appears that Banville / Black will be writing a full-length Chandleresque tale, set in Bay City, and featuring Marlowe - a novel in the same vein as Robert B. Parker’s PERCHANCE TO DREAM and POODLE SPRINGS. Should be very, very interesting indeed, particularly as (a) Banville took a right good lamping for daring to dabble in the dark arts of crime writing when first he donned his fedora as Benjamin Black; (b) Chandler, these days, tends to be lauded more for his romantic stylings than his plots, which is often a charge levelled at Benjamin Black himself; and (c) John Banville’s older brother, Vincent, was the first to introduce the Chandleresque homage to Irish crime writing, back in the early to mid-1990s, with his John Blaine private eye novels. Crikey. Cat? Meet the pigeons …
Possibly because said Furies are all in Maine, masquerading as angels for the purpose of John Connolly’s latest offering. THE WRATH OF ANGELS is the 11th Charlie Parker novel from the Dark Lord, aka John Connolly, and very impressive it is too, if we can dispense with centuries of wisdom and judge said tome from its cover. The book will be launched in Ireland at Belfast’s Ulster Museum on Thursday, August 30th, along with BOOKS TO DIE FOR, and gets its Dublin launch on Friday 31st, at the Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar. All the details can be found here. Meanwhile, the first chapter of THE WRATH OF ANGELS is available online over at John’s interweb lair. It opens up a lot like this:
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. — Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
Chapter I
At the time of his dying, at the day and the hour of it, Harlan Vetters summoned his son and his daughter to his bedside. The old man’s long gray hair was splayed against the pillow on which he lay, glazed by the lamplight, so that it seemed like the emanations of his departing spirit. His breathing was shallow; longer and longer were the pauses between each intake and exhalation, and soon they would cease entirely. The evening gloaming was slowly descending, but the trees were still visible through the bedroom window, the sentinels of the Great North Woods, for old Harlan had always said that he lived at the very edge of the frontier, that his home was the last place before the forest held sway. It seemed to him now that, as his strength failed him, so too his power to keep nature at bay was ebbing. There were weeds in his yard, and brambles among his rose bushes. The grass was patchy and unkempt: it needed one final mow before the coming of winter, just as the stubble on his own chin rasped uncomfortably against his fingers, for the girl could not shave him as well as he had once shaved himself. Fallen leaves lay uncollected like the flakes of dry skin that peeled from his hands, his lips, and his face, scattering themselves upon his sheets. He saw decline through his window, and decline in his mirror, but in only one was there the promise of rebirth. The girl claimed that she had enough to do without worrying about bushes and trees, and his boy was still too angry to perform even this simple service for his dying father, but to Harlan these things were important. There was a battle to be fought, an ongoing war against nature’s attritional impulse. If everyone thought as his daughter did then houses would be overrun by root and ivy, and towns would vanish beneath seas of brown and green. A man had only to open his eyes in this county to see the ruins of old dwellings suffocated in green, or open his ears to hear the names of settlements that no longer existed, lost somewhere in the depths of the forest. So nature needed to be held back, and the trees had to be kept to their domain. The trees, and what dwelled among them.
First published in 1997, DEATH CALL by TS O’Rourke was one of the earliest of the modern Irish noirs. In common with some other Irish crime writers of the time - Vincent Banville, Ingrid Black, Eugene McEldowney, Jim Lusby, Seamus Smyth - O’Rourke was probably a little too far ahead of the curve, and the first phase of his career could probably be characterised by the old maxim about pioneers, who tend to get shot, and generally in the back. Happily, TS O’Rourke is a hard man to kill, in the literary sense, and he has recently begun publishing again. Not only that, but he has just republished DEATH CALL, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:
It was all he could do to stop his hangover from spilling out onto the victim as he studied her neck and what he made out to be the initial puncture wound in her abdomen. From that point, he thought, she had been opened like an envelope with a paper knife, revealing a mess of entrails and blood. With a deranged serial killer on the loose, Detective Sergeant Dan Carroll and his new partner Detective Constable Samuel Grant find themselves trawling the seedy side of London in search of a brutal killer who preys on prostitutes.
With the death of Maeve Binchy at the age of 72, Ireland has lost one of its leading literary lights. “I don’t think that Maeve was ever accorded the same kind of respect that some of the novelists who are considered more literary received,” says her colleague Sheila O’Flanagan, “but I think her storytelling certainly set a benchmark for commercial fiction that is very high and rarely surpassed.” […] Her place in the pantheon of great Irish writers has long been secured, but for many years Binchy has served as another kind of leading light, as a literary pathfinder who guided and inspired a younger generation. “It was simply the fact that she made it okay to write about Ireland,” says Marian Keyes. “I remember reading The Lilac Bus, I suppose I was about 17, and that was back in the days when nothing Irish was any good. All our things were just crap versions of US or UK TV shows or bands or books or whatever. And suddenly, somebody was writing about the Ireland we all knew. So that gave me confidence when I came to write, to think, ‘I don’t have to pretend to be English or American.’” Nor was it necessary to want to emulate James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, et al. “That was it as well,” Marian agrees. “The way she wrote was so conversational, and it was so true to how people talked, how Irish people are.”
There’s nothing like sport to heal political wounds, and Garbhan Downey’s latest tome, ACROSS THE LINE (Guildhall Press), is nothing like a novel eulogising sport as a political wound-healer. Instead, Derry’s premier satirist and comedy crime caperist employs football - that’s ‘soccer’ to those of you on the North American continent - to point up how, in post-Peace Process Norn Iron, sport is (pace Orwell) war without the guns but only until such time as it becomes actual war. Quoth the blurb elves:
It’s more than fifteen years since the Irish ceasefires, and the natives are happy to grow fat grazing on the peace dividend. Well, most of them at least. Truth is, Harry the Hurler – former chief executive of The Boys Inc – is bored. So when his old adversary Switchblade Vic proposes a little bet over a football tournament, what’s the worst that can happen? Okay ... apart from a full-blown litany of bombings, murder, and a lurid plot to blackmail the British Prime Minister into redrawing the Northern border? In two beats of a Lambeg drum, all sides are back to their old villainy, and the streets are littered with more stray limbs than Sex in the City. Rival team managers Dee-Dee Dunne and Gigi McCormick have but one goal: to play fair – and stay married in the process.
So there you have it. ‘A superb blend of comedy, political dirty tricks, grisly murder and bizarre twists!’ says the Sunday World, and who knows about such things better than the Sunday World? Eh? For a brief extract from ACROSS THE LINE, clickety-click here …
Commenting on a blog can be a funny old business. Some people are happy to do it, and merrily chirp their way through the blogosphere, dropping comments like Johnny Appleseed. Other people comment sparingly, or only on particular blogs. And some people prefer not to comment at all, and good for them. Crime Always Pays tends to receive relatively few comments, in part (I think) because it’s an info-driven blog, and that kind of delivery doesn’t encourage interaction. It’s also true that I don’t have the time during the day to interact with each comment individually, which can in turn lead to further comments. It may also be true that I’m simply not the kind of person / blogger who generates comments and on-line connection. If the blogosphere is an on-line party, I’m the guy hanging out in the kitchen beside the fridge, talking geeky niche-niche-niche content and scaring away all the pretty girls. Well, not all the pretty girls, obviously … I’ve received quite a few emails and Twitter messages in the last week or so, letting me know that the comments function on CAP has been restricted to ‘team members’ only. I’m a little bit surprised by the volume, because as I say, CAP posts don’t tend to attract many comments in the first place. What they do attract is spam - which is the reason I shut down the comments function so that it can be accessed by ‘team members’ only (i.e., yours truly) - and in increasingly annoying amounts. These days I can spend as much time weeding the spam comments out as I can writing up a post. And I really don’t have that kind of time to waste. It’s also true that while the spambots are irritating, the human spammers are far worse. ‘Hey, nice post! It reminds me of my new book, MY GIANT ARSE-FACE, an autobiography you can find at this link. Have a nice day, and don’t worry at all about me leeching off your work!’ What kills me about those particular spammers is that if they’d had the common decency to contact me in the normal, natural way, I’d have been more than happy to accommodate them on the blog. Anyway, I’ve opened up the comments function again, less by popular demand than because I’d hate for anyone to think that they were being frozen out of any discussions. I’ll have to try to work out some fool-proof way of making the blog anti-spam whenever I get a spare ten minutes. But if in the near future you try to leave a comment and discover it’s only accessible by ‘team members’, please don’t take it personally. It’s just one frustrated blogger’s knee-jerk reaction to the spam munchkins and what can at times seem like a tidal wave of spam …
Hail the mighty sub! I had a crime fiction column published in the Irish Times last Saturday which appeared under the very nifty headline, ‘A Barclay You Can Bank On’, largely because Alex Barclay’s BLOOD LOSS was among the titles reviewed. It went a lot like this:
Alex Barclay is […] deft in making the personal political in BLOOD LOSS (Harper, £6.99), her fifth novel in all and the third to feature the Denver-based FBI agent Ren Bryce, who works with Colorado’s Safe Streets programme. The disappearance of two young girls from their hotel room in the skiing town of Breckenridge looks to be a straightforward case of abduction, but Ren, who suffers from bipolar disorder and is struggling with one of her manic phases, quickly finds the case opening up to involve the abuse of antipsychotic drugs and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. By making Ren’s internal monologues an integral part of the character’s appeal, Barclay establishes her heroine as an empathic, self-questioning, no-nonsense woman who is deliciously self-lacerating when it comes to her faults, even if such hyperawareness tends to cause her to doubt her own judgment. Perversely, given the theme of the damage wrought on mental health by misdiagnosis and prescription for profit, this is arguably Barclay’s most balanced novel to date, as Ren’s personal and professional concerns dovetail for a persuasive finale.
For the rest, clickety-click here … Meanwhile, and if we skip back a couple of weeks, I had an interview with Alex Barclay published in the Evening Herald, during which Alex touched on the issue of ‘Big Pharma’. To wit:
BLOOD LOSS opens with the apparent abduction of two young girls, but it quickly broadens out to explore the malign influence of ‘Big Pharma’ and the corruption in the US pharmaceutical industry. “This was the most astounding research I’ve ever done,” says Alex. “I was tearing myself away from the research to write. I just found it heartbreaking. I mean, the fact that the top five prescribed drugs in the US are all anti-psychotics is extraordinary. At no point could they all be prescribed to psychotic people. It’s just ludicrous. And this diagnosis of children with bi-polar disorder is absolutely unfathomable.”
Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.
