When In Rome, Change Your Name

An Editor Writes: Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE arrived in the post yesterday, which got me all fired up to write a post about it - and then I realised I already had, last November. Bummer. Oh well, I guess I can take the day off now, and go lounge in my gold-plated hammock with the diamond-encrusted hookah …

It’s only November, but already 2012 is shaping up to be yet another very fine year in Irish crime writing. I’ve already noted that Adrian McKinty’s latest, THE COLD COLD GROUND will be published in January, with Brian O’Connor’s MENACES to follow in February.
  One novel I’m particularly looking forward to is Conor Fitzgerald’s third offering, THE NAMESAKE, which is due in March. Quoth the blurb elves:

When magistrate Matteo Arconti’s namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it’s a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation. Commissioner Alec Blume, interpreting the reference to his other ongoing case - a frustrating one in which he’s so far been unable to pin murder on a mafia boss operating at an untouchable distance in Germany - knows he’s too close to it. Handing control of the investigation to now live-in and not-so-secret partner Caterina Mattiola, Blume takes a back seat. And while Caterina embarks on questioning the Milanese widow, Blume has had an underhand idea of his own to lure the arrogant mafioso out of his hiding place ...

  I’ve been a fan of Conor Fitzgerald since his first outing, THE DOGS OF ROME, and I thought that the follow-up, THE FATAL TOUCH, was sufficiently good to propel him to the first rank of crime writing, Irish or otherwise - if memory serves, I was moved to compare that novel with John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE. If THE NAMESAKE represents a similar improvement on THE FATAL TOUCH, then God help us all …
  Incidentally, it’s interesting that Fitzgerald, who writes under a pseudonym, and is the son of noted Irish poet Seamus Deane, is here playing with notions of identity, and the truth (or otherwise) of names. Post-modern meta-fiction flummery, or simple coincidence? You - yes, YOU! - decide …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: BLOODLINE by Brian O’Connor

BLOODLINE is the debut novel from Brian O’Connor, the Irish Times’ racing correspondent. The novel opens with a bang, when a young stable-hand, Anatoly, one of a number of Ukrainians who work at Bailey McFarlane’s horse-racing yard, is discovered in a disused stable with the back of his head smashed in.
  It subsequently transpires that Anatoly was dabbling in cocaine, and that he was gay, although O’Connor goes out of his way to stress that illicit drug-taking is very much a rarity in Irish racing; indeed, he also goes out of his way to suggest that homosexuality would be considered a rarity too.
  The murder has, initially, little impact on Liam Dee’s life, but O’Connor is very good at fleshing out the effect of the violent death on the world of Bailey McFarlane’s stables. Anatoly might be a humble stable-hand, but O’Connor expertly creates a stables that is almost a tiny village in itself, and one in which the death of the young man has a traumatic impact, not least on the group of Ukrainians.
  He’s also very good at detailing the pragmatic response of those engaged with the horses, whose concern is first and foremost that the events do not impact negatively on the horses themselves. BLOODLINE is strong on the relationship between racing folk and their horses, and the nuances of the bond between riders and mounts.
  Liam Dee is horse-whisperer-in-chief, a champion jockey in his mid-thirties who is starting to experience some doubts about the wisdom of continuing his career. He’s a very likeable character, hard as nails (as you’d expect a jockey to be), but a thoughtful, empathic character too, particularly in his dealings with Bailey McFarlane. His age, and the effect of a new romance with the Ukrainian beauty Lara, results in Liam wondering if his life might not be due a new beginning. As an unusually tall jockey (‘half an inch under six feet’), Liam is constantly battling with his weight - some of the most sharply observed sections of the book detail Liam’s struggle to shed a pound or three immediately before a race, in order to make the correct weight.
  O’Connor’s insights as a racing correspondent give all of these elements an authentic feel, although it’s notable that most of the conflict Liam Dee experiences is internal. The racing world is notorious for its scandals, particularly when it comes to allegations of race-fixing, but O’Connor makes no reference whatsoever to any kind of illicit behaviour by jockeys in this respect. Indeed, he goes out of his way to emphasise their raw-boned nobility, and the camaraderie that exists between the jockeys. The racing world depicted in BLOODLINE isn’t exactly squeaky clean, but by the same token there’s much less of a whiff of sulphur than a casual reader might have reasonable expected. The characters play hard, bend the rules, and take every advantage going in a very tough sport, but there’s no suggestion that they cheat one another, or resort to artificial stimulants, etc., either for jockeys or horses.
  One of the more interesting aspects of BLOODLINE is O’Connor’s decision to people the riding stables with Ukrainian immigrants. It’s plausibly done, and at one point O’Connor has Lara, a gorgeous blonde Ukrainian, refer to her Cossack heritage to explain her expertise with horses. For all that the Ukrainians are accepted for the ability to do the job required, however, there remains an undertow of conflict. Shortly after the death of young Anatoly, a fist-fight breaks out in the yard between the Irish stable-hands and the Ukrainians. The violence allows festering resentments to come to the surface: the Ukrainians believe they are not being given their full due, while the Irish lads resent the fact that foreigners have come to Ireland to take jobs from Irish men and women, particularly at a time of economic downturn. While O’Connor is broadly sympathetic to the plight of immigrants far from home, there are also strong hints - Anatoly’s dabbling in cocaine, for example - that he is also referencing the extent to which some immigrants can bring their particular brand of criminality with them when they move to a new country.
  O’Connor has cited Dick Francis as an influence, as you might expect, and the scenes in the novel in which Liam is riding give a visceral sense of what it must be like to be aboard a ‘half-ton of horse flesh’. Similarly, the scenes in which Liam purges himself - ‘wasting’, they call it - in order to make the right weight for a ride are equally convincing. Liam more or less starves himself for most of his life, endures long slogging runs to work off weight, and tortures himself in saunas to sweat off even half a pound.
  All told, BLOODLINE is a smart, authentic murder mystery set in the Irish racing world, a quietly assured debut that whets the appetite for more. - Declan Burke

  Brian O’Connor’s BLOODLINE is published by Poolbeg.

Winner Alright

Irish Times’ racing correspondent Brian O’Connor got a nice bonus a couple of weeks back, when the dear Old Lady published an extract from his very fine debut novel, BLOODLINE. In the extract, our hero Liam Dee has just arrived at the yard where he works as a jockey, and where the body of a Ukrainian stable-boy has been discovered with the back of his head smashed in. Now read on …

Murder on the Curragh

THE ONLY SOUNDS came from crows lazily gliding over the yard to examine the flashing blue lights that still had enough power in the morning gloom to make you blink. But there wasn’t a murmur where there should have been the snorting clatter of keyed-up horses emerging from their night’s sleep and the shouts of frozen lads trying to keep them under control.
  After the initial frenzied arrival of police cars and an ambulance, there was an eerily mundane hour when little seemed to happen. The crime scene was sealed off and so was the stable yard. But then things seemed to stand still in the wait for specialists to show up. Rocky, Bailey and myself told a couple of detectives what we’d seen. Rocky said he’d been in the tack room when he thought he heard someone running outside. He figured his ears were playing tricks on him at first but went out to have a look and saw the box door in the alley open. That was when he saw the body, turned on the lights and tried to call the guards. But he’d heard an engine gunning outside the yard as well – like a motorcycle, he said.
  I told them how I’d encountered someone on a motorbike who’d tried to run me over.
  “What did this person look like, sir?” the detective asked.
  “I’d guess he was about my height, but it’s only a guess. He was wearing a helmet so I couldn’t see his face. Apart from that, nothing really – jeans, a leather jacket, boots. It was all so quick.”
  “What make of bike was it?”
  “It was one of those trackers, like they use for racing on mud.”
  He asked me what I was doing around the place so early.
  I explained that I had just driven from Dublin. He asked if anyone could verify what time I had left Dublin. I told him there wasn’t but I’d stopped for petrol soon after leaving Sandyford and the people in the station knew me.
  “And what were you doing here, sir?”
  “I was coming down to ride work. I’m Mrs McFarlane’s jockey. My car skidded and hit the railway bridge so I ran the rest of the way here.”
  “So you work here every day?”
  “No. I usually just ride out one morning a week, or come for schooling.”
  “Schooling?”
  “Getting horses to practise their jumping.”
  The detective told me to stay around and I assured him I wasn’t going anywhere. It all felt completely unreal. Such things didn’t happen in the middle of the Curragh. The bald, flat plain contained more horses than people, and most of the villains had four legs. Anything to do with horses could be dangerous and sometimes people were killed – but from a flailing leg or a bad fall: this was terribly different.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

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

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 has got to be the coolest ever. And it got the best movie adaptation too.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Has to be Sam Spade, right? I’d have to work on the Bogie lisp though.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
To hell with guilt: the Flashman series is the funniest thing on paper!

Most satisfying writing moment?
Re-reading bits of my first book ADD A ZERO recently and not having to do so though my fingers!

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Since my other half is Niamh O’Connor, I would say it has to be IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN. Now, put that shovel and bag of lime down, dear.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Any new book that features murder on the Curragh, racism and a tincture of tasteful sex against a background of Irish racing should be snapped up immediately by a major Hollywood studio for an obscene amount of money.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst is facing into a day when the pressure is on and you need a thousand words. The best is having managed to squeeze out that thousand.

The pitch for your next book is …?
“Seriously, Johnny Depp has agreed to play the main guy in a movie of it.”

Who are you reading right now?
I’m re-reading Groucho Marx’s autobiography, GROUCHO AND ME. He always was going to be the Marxist that would survive the test of time.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, every time.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Very. Reasonably. Priced.

Brian O’Connor’s BLOODLINE is published by Poolbeg.

They’re Under Starter’s Orders … And They’re Off!

Crikey. You wait ages for a thriller set in the world of Irish horse-racing, and then suddenly you’re looking at a neck-and-neck race to what we can only hope will be a photo finish. Last week these pages featured a Q&A with horseracing journalist Lissa Oliver, previously a nominee in the James Tait Award and Longman History Award, whose CHANTILLY DAWNS is published by the small but perfectly formed imprint Book Republic. Quoth the blurb elves:

When top jockey Marcel Dessaint loses his racing licence, his whole world falls apart. Accused of deliberately pulling up healthy horses, Marcel is passed a verdict of ‘Gross Misconduct’ and forced to face the enmity of his peers. With a famous face and nowhere to hide in Chantilly, Marcel becomes an outcast in the only world he knows. With The Derby now out of his reach, he struggles to overcome his own self-doubt, while battling to uncover the truth behind the horses’ defeats and clear his name. As he gradually fears he may have been betrayed by one of his closest friends, he discovers all too late that it’s not just his licence on the line. Lives are at stake …

  All of which suggests that Ireland, a country with an honourable heritage in the Sport of Kings, has finally found its own Dick Francis. But lo! Here comes Irish Times’ horseracing journalist Brian O’Connor’s BLOODLINE, out of the Poolbeg stable, thundering up on the rails:

Liam Dee’s world is turned upside down when a young foreign groom is murdered at Bailey McFarlane’s stables on the Curragh. Liam, a champion steeplechase jockey, is initially both witness and suspect. However, shrewd police detective Diarmuid Yeats takes a gamble on his innocence and enlists his help in the hunt for the killer. This nightmare experience exacerbates the tensions in Liam’s life. He has been falling out of love with his job, his joy in racing relentlessly worn away by the struggle to keep the weight down on his six-foot frame. Is it time to quit? But McFarlane’s stables houses the brilliant Patrician, a potential Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, and Liam wants to be the jockey to get him first past the finish post in the race that matters most. With emotions at pressure point, Liam falls in love with the exotic blonde Ukrainian stable girl, Lara, leaving him in an even more vulnerable position than before. Then the killer strikes again and the race to the finish post is replaced by a race for survival . . . and there is no second place.

  So there you have it. A two-horse race with no clear favourite, and both contenders boasting a noble lineage. They’re under starter’s orders … and they’re off!