Feature: The Alternative Irish Crime Novel of the Year

It’s that time of the year again, as the Irish Book Awards hove into view on November 26th, when I suggest that [insert year here] has been yet another annus terrificus for Irish crime fiction, aka ‘Emerald Noir’. The shortlist for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year runs as follows:

The Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award

Can Anybody Help Me? by Sinéad Crowley
Last Kiss by Louise Phillips
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville
The Kill by Jane Casey
The Secret Place by Tana French
Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

  As always, however, there were a number of tremendous novels published that didn’t, for various reasons, feature on the shortlist. The following is another short list, of books I’ve read to date this year that are also easily good enough to win the title of best Irish crime fiction novel in 2014. As you might expect, there were also a number of very good novels that I didn’t manage to read this year; but the gist of this post is to celebrate the quality and diversity of Irish crime fiction in 2014. To wit:

The Dead Pass, Colin Bateman
The Black Eyed Blonde, Benjamin Black
The Wolf in Winter, John Connolly
Bitter Remedy, Conor Fitzgerald
Cross of Vengeance, Cora Harrison
The Sun is God, Adrian McKinty
Blue is the Night, Eoin McNamee
The Boy That Never Was, Karen Perry

  Finally, the very best of luck to all the shortlisted nominees on November 26th. Given that she has been oft-nominated and is yet to win, and her Maeve Kerrigan series grows more impressive with each succeeding book, my vote goes to Jane Casey’s THE KILL …

Reviews: Gerald Seymour, Louise Phillips, Dominique Manotti, Conor Fitzgerald

Gerald Seymour’s Vagabond (Hodder & Stoughton, €20.85) opens in contemporary Northern Ireland, with MI5 shadowing a dissident Republican group trying to buy weapons from a Russian arms dealer. In France, the former British Army intelligence agent-handler Danny Curnow – call sign ‘Vagabond’ – is now employed driving tourists around the historical sites of the Normandy Landings. When Malachy Riordan leaves Tyrone for Prague in the company of double agent Ralph Exton, Danny gets the call he has dreaded for two decades: come in from the cold, there’s dirty work to be done. Seymour’s multi-stranded narrative of dark deeds and black ops is fuelled by an exhilaratingly bleak cynicism. Here the ambitiously self-serving prosper, and the traditionally noble virtues of loyalty, friendship and patriotism are so many exploitable weaknesses. The pace is funereal and the tone elegiac as the story draws together a number of strands of recent history, with ‘Desperate’ Dan Curnow at the heart of the tale and emblematic of the novel’s overall thrust in his beguiling blend of pragmatism, brutality and unswerving faith in the notion of sacrifice on behalf of the greater good. Seymour, who debuted with Harry’s Game in 1975 (this is his 30th novel in total), tends to be overshadowed by John le Carré as one of the great British post-Cold War novelists, but Vagabond confirms that he deserves to be seated at the top table.

  Louise Phillips’s The Doll’s House, her second novel, won the crime fiction award at the Irish Book Awards in 2013. Last Kiss (Hachette Books Ireland, €14.99) is Phillips’ third novel to feature Dr Kate Pearson, a Dublin-based criminal psychologist who assists the Gardai in investigating their more perplexing murders. Here Dr Pearson attends a bizarre murder scene, in which the male victim is discovered laid out in what appears to be a homage to Tarot card scenario. By then the reader has already met the killer, an unnamed character who offers a first-person insight into her motives. It’s an unusual and deliberately unsettling narrative gambit, as the first-person voice affords the killer a chilling intimacy (“I kill people,” she states in the opening chapter) that somewhat distances the reader from Dr Pearson’s third-person account, and the truth and justice she pursues. Nevertheless, the blend of first- and third-person narratives gives the story tremendous pace as Dr Pearson is dispatched to Paris and Rome in the company of DI Adam O’Connor, their personal and professional lives overlapping as they try to build a profile of the killer from her previous murders. The recurring Tarot card motif and references to archetypal European folktales serve notice that Phillips is engaged in exploring the dark matter of damaged sexual identity, and while the third act veers off into potboiler territory, the abiding impression is of the empathy Phillips evokes on behalf of her anti-heroine, who is as fragile as she is lethal.
  The fifth of French author Dominique Manotti’s novels to be translated into English, Escape (Arcadia Books, €11.99) opens in 1987 with a prison break in Italy. Filippo, a petty criminal, and Carlo, a former leader in the Red Brigades, immediately go their separate ways; but when Carlo is subsequently shot to death during a bank raid, Filippo makes his way to Paris, claims refugee status, and writes a novel about his experience. The book’s blend of fact and fiction makes it a literary sensation in France, where Lisa, an expatriate Italian journalist, and Carlo’s former lover, realises that Carlo’s death was a murder designed to cover up political corruption. “People don’t do politics any more in Italy, they do business, it’s the grand ball of the corruptors and the corrupt,” Lisa tells one of her friends, which gives a flavour of the bracing cynicism that underpins Escape. Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz, and rooted in the radical Italian politics of the 1960s and 1970s, it’s an unconventional tale more concerned with the unintended consequences of writing a political crime novel than pandering to the genre’s traditional pursuit of justice. Indeed, there may well be an autobiographical aspect to the character of Lisa, as Manotti – who was herself a union activist during the 1960s – charts Lisa’s growing awareness that fiction rather than fact may prove the more effective long-term strategy in ‘the battle to salvage our past’.

  Rome-based police detective Commissario Alec Blume returns for his fifth outing in Conor Fitzgerald’s Bitter Remedy (Bloomsbury, €13.99), although it’s a rather offbeat police procedural, given that Blume – recently a father, and apparently suffering something of a nervous breakdown as a result – is taking a sabbatical in a picturesque mountaintop village in order to study herbal remedies. Approached by a local nightclub owner, Niki, to investigate the whereabouts of one of his employees, the missing Romanian dancer Alina, Blume reluctantly agrees, and finds himself dragged into the sordid world of people-trafficking. The American-born Blume has an outsider’s eye for the quirky detail in Italian culture (and particularly its policing), which is given an added dimension here with Blume out of his jurisdiction and the comfort zone of his beloved Rome. There’s an element of the old-fashioned ‘Golden Age’ mystery investigation at play here, with Blume something of an amateur sleuth bumbling his way around a picture-postcard setting, trying to lay to rest some of his own ghosts even as he excavates some long-buried skeletons. As always, the incorruptible Blume’s attempts to locate the truth is given a blackly comic sheen courtesy of the detective’s spiky, morose personality – the deadpan dialogue is often hilariously abstruse – but the comedy is invariably contrasted with the brutality of the crime being investigated, via the missing Alina’s parallel narrative, which details the harrowing experience of being trafficked into prostitution.

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

Review: THE MEMORY KEY by Conor Fitzgerald

The fourth novel to feature Conor Fitzgerald’s Rome-based Commissioner Alec Blume, THE MEMORY KEY (Bloomsbury) opens with Blume being called to the scene of an apparent assassination – a young student called Sofia Fontana, who has been shot by a sniper. Fontana, it transpires, was the only witness to a previous shooting, when a former terrorist was also shot, and also by a sniper. Blume’s investigations lead him into the murky world of 1970’s terrorist activities in Italy, as those responsible for a murderous train station bomb some four decades previously clean up the loose ends that could trip up their political futures. As has been the case with Fitzgerald’s previous novels, Rome is something of a character in its own right here, particularly as the labyrinthine nature of its policing contributes handsomely to a claustrophobic tale. Blume, American by birth but a naturalised Italian, makes for a classic crime fiction staple, the insider with the cynical outsider’s eye, and THE MEMORY KEY, which again boasts Fitzgerald’s terse but lyrical style, is another excellent police procedural in an increasingly impressive body of work. – Declan Burke

Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival

UPDATE: Ahead of ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’, which begins today at Trinity College in Dublin, I found myself last night fondly remembering the symposium at NYU in 2011 in the company of some of Irish crime writing’s finest. The details remain hazy, possibly because I found myself caught up in an Alan Glynn novel …

For all the details on the Trinity College festival, clickety-click here …

The Irish Crime Novel of the Year

So here we are, halfway through the year, roughly speaking, and I’m throwing an eye forward towards November and the Irish Book Awards and wondering what the shortlist for the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year might look like.
  It’s an interesting year in many respects, not least because 2013 is a year in which many of the big names in Irish crime fiction – John Connolly, Tana French, Gene Kerrigan, Eoin McNamee, Colin Bateman, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Declan Hughes – haven’t published a crime fiction title. That said, the list of possible contenders below contains a number of previously nominated authors, as well as one or two winners.
  Of the 16 titles already published this year, there are at least nine novels that I would consider worthy winners, let alone nominees. And there are a further six titles, that I’m aware of, to be published in the second half of the year.
  If I’ve missed out on any, by the way, please feel free to drop a comment in the box below tipping me off.

  Anyway, here’s the list of possible contenders – in no particular order – that have already been published:

GRAVELAND by Alan Glynn;

THE DEAL by Michael Clifford;

THE STRANGER YOU KNOW by Jane Casey;

THE CITY OF SHADOWS by Michael Russell;

CROCODILE TEARS by Mark O’Sullivan;

SCREWED by Eoin Colfer;

THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT by William Ryan;

COLD SPRING by Patrick McGinley;

HIDDEN by Casey Hill;

RATLINES by Stuart Neville;

THE POLKA DOT GIRL by Darragh McManus;

HOLY ORDERS by Benjamin Black;

I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET by Adrian McKinty;

THE JERUSALEM PUZZLE by Laurence O’Bryan;

IRREGULARS by Kevin McCarthy;

THE STATION SERGEANT by John McAllister;

ONCE IN ANOTHER WORLD by Brendan John Sweeney;

STIFFED by Rob Kitchin;

  And then there are the novels that will be published in the second half of the year:

THE MEMORY THEATRE by Conor Fitzgerald;

BLINK by Niamh O’Connor;

THE DOLL’S HOUSE by Louise Phillips;

THE CROSS OF VENGEANCE by Cora Harrison;

PURGATORY by Ken Bruen;

ECHOLAND by Joe Joyce;

HURT by Brian McGilloway;

  If you can pick the six titles out that lot that will make the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year shortlist, you’re a better man and/or woman than I …

UPDATE: Louise Phillips points out that Arlene Hunt will publish THE OUTSIDER in October. Thanks kindly, ma’am.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Thomas Mogford

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?
DIRTY TRICKS by Michael Dibdin. A stand-alone novel, rather than one of the ‘Zen’ series, it pulls off the near-impossible trick of making a thoroughly reprehensible main character utterly likeable. As someone who was brought up in Oxford, and has taught more than his fair share of foreign language classes, I felt a worrying sense of solidarity when the venal owner of language school receives a rather shocking comeuppance ...

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Keith Talent from Martin Amis’s LONDON FIELDS. Indefatigability and darts skills.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t often feel guilty about reading books. Free magazines and certain online newspapers, maybe…

Most satisfying writing moment?
When my wife reads something I’ve written, and doesn’t have a hint of a look that says ‘This could be better …’.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
DIVORCING JACK by Colin Bateman. My wife’s family are from Belfast, and this book convinced me that at any point while visiting them I would be kidnapped and trussed-up in a tower block. Still hasn’t happened, unfortunately …

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Irish-written, rather than Irish-set, but THE DOGS OF ROME by Conor Fitzgerald. Dog fights, mafia double dealings, all with the shimmering seedy backdrop of Rome… I’d buy a multiplex ticket for that.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing is experiencing a scene as you write it in a way that is almost as intense as living it. The worst is the crippling sense of uncertainty as to whether that scene is any good.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Gibraltarian lawyer Spike Sanguinetti travels to Malta after the deaths of his uncle and aunt. What appears to be a blood-soaked murder-suicide turns out a great deal more dark and sinister…

Who are you reading right now?
An English translation of the crime novel BRENNER AND GOD by Wolf Haas. Gives the lie to the fact that German-speakers can’t be funny and cool.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I think write, so as to try and pen poems to persuade Him to increase our daily rations of manna.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
The Times called SHADOW OF THE ROCK, ‘Evocative, engrossing and entertaining’, so if I can be forgiven the hideous self-promotion, I’ll go for that.

Thomas Mogford’s SHADOW OF THE ROCK is published by Bloomsbury

Her Loss, Our Gain

It feels like it’s been aaaaaaaages since we’ve seen an Alex Barclay novel, but fear not: for lo! BLOOD LOSS is on the way, and scheduled to touch down on a bookshelf near you on October 25th. Quoth the blurb elves:

FBI agent Ren Bryce takes on her most heart-wrenching case yet when a father’s work places his young daughter in terrible danger…
  Every year Mark and Erica Whaley take a trip to Colorado to celebrate their wedding anniversary. This year they have more cause than ever to celebrate – they’ve finally been granted overnight access with Laurie, Mark’s 11-year-old daughter from his previous marriage.
  But their relaxing family break is shattered when they return from dinner in the hotel to find both Laurie and her 16-year-old babysitter, Shelby, missing.
  Special Agent Ren Bryce will need to be at the top of her game to unravel the bizarre circumstances around this particular kidnapping. For it soon emerges that Mark has an awful lot to hide.
  But Ren has her own battles to fight. Without a psychologist since hers was killed four months previously, she knows she’s headed for a manic episode, and she’s not sure she wants to stop it.
  The lives of two young girls are in Ren’s hands. But she might need to save herself before she can save them.

  It strikes me that a release date of October 25th is leaving it rather fine if BLOOD LOSS is to be considered for the Irish Book Awards, which return this year to the RDS on November 22nd, especially given that Alex Barclay is a previous winner of the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award (BLOOD RUNS COLD, 2009).
  Mind you, it’s going to be a tough year again for the Crime Fiction gong, with or without Alex Barclay, and even if two other recent winners, Alan Glynn and Gene Kerrigan, don’t publish this year.
  Naturally, Liberties Press will be tossing my own book-shaped hat, aka SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, into the ring for consideration, but I think I’d be rather more surprised this year than last if SH garnered a shortlist nomination.
  In terms of actual winners, though, it’s very hard to see past BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French, the release of which in July will be less a publication and more an event. Critically acclaimed and best-selling, and already the recipient of numerous prizes, I’d be very surprised if Tana French doesn’t scoop the IBA Crime Fiction Award this year.
  If anyone is to upset the appletart, Brian McGilloway stands a very good chance with his very good THE NAMELESS DEAD, which is as strong a crime novel as I’ve read so far this year. Elsewhere, TORN by Casey Hill comes on like a crowd-pleasing serial killer / CSI story, before delivering a brutal sucker-punch; A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS by Conor Brady and GHOST TOWN by Michael Clifford represent are both very strong debuts (and may both be shortlisted in the Best Newcomer of the Year category instead); Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE is up to his usual excellent standard; and it’s highly unlikely that John Connolly’s THE WRATH OF ANGELS won’t be up to his usual impressive snuff. And then there’s VENGEANCE by Benjamin Black, HEADSTONE by Ken Bruen, and TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT by Niamh O’Connor … and the blackest of dark horses, THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty.
  All told, it’ll make a hell of a line-up.

On Literary Festivals And The Lesser-Spotted Irish Crime Writer

Hearty congratulations to all involved in ‘Bloody Scotland’, aka Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival, the inaugural edition of which takes place in Stirling this coming September (artist’s impression, right), featuring the likes of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Peter James, Allan Guthrie, Denise Mina, Ann Cleeves, Tony Black, Karin Fossum, William McIlvanney and - oh yes! - the erstwhile Gregory, John Gordon Sinclair.
  It’s a very nice line-up indeed, and the best of luck to the Festival. Here’s hoping it’s the start of many a fine year’s skirling and, well, whatever it is the Scots do when there’s no one around to keep manners on them.
  A similar, Irish-themed event was run in Dublin a few years back, featuring the cream of Irish crime authors plus some interesting international guests, but it was pretty much a bust. It didn’t help that the event coincided with what turned out to be the only weekend of sunshine that summer, but even beforehand the advance sales had been sluggish. Is there an appetite among Irish readers to sit down and listen to writers talk about writing and books? Is it simply the case that Irish crime writers aren’t interesting enough to Irish readers to draw the crowds?
  There are two literary festivals taking place in Ireland in the next couple of weeks. The Listowel festival kicks off on May 31st, while the Dublin Writers Festival begins a week later, on June 4th. Unless you’re prepared to consider Aifric Campbell and Kevin Power crime writers - and I don’t think either author considers themselves a crime writer - then there isn’t so much as a whiff of cordite to be had at either festival.
  That’s a pity, because there’s some very interesting Irish crime writers publishing novels roundabout now: Conor Fitzgerald, Jane Casey, Tana French, Brian McGilloway, Niamh O’Connor, Conor Brady, Michael Clifford … But there’s more - or rather, less. Because the Dalkey Book Festival runs from June 15th to 17th, and crime writers are again conspicuous by their absence. Yes, the excellent Eoin McNamee will be in attendance, but running the eye over all the other contributors suggests that the organisers would be horrified to discover that McNamee is considered a crime writer in less than salubrious places; and Derek Landy is taking part, but I’d imagine that that’s on the strength of his success as a children’s author, as opposed to Skulduggery Pleasant being a wise-crackin’ undead private eye-type.
  And then there’s the West Cork Literary Festival, which runs July 8th to 14th and which is entirely devoid of Irish crime writers. It does, however, feature husband-and-wife team Nicci French, and another husband-and-wife team, Edward Marston and Judith Cutler. A pity there was no room for the Irish husband-and-wife writing team Kevin and Melissa Hill, but there you go, there’s no sense in being parochial about such things, is there?
  Meanwhile, and back to the Listowel Writers Festival, where there is a panel discussion on Thursday night, May 31st, titled (koff) ‘Towards a National Strategy on Literature’. To wit:

A panel discussion with The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan, author Colm Tóibín, Sinéad MacAodha, The Irish Literature Exchange and Sean Lyons, Chairman of Writers’ Week. It is time that we develop a national literary and strategic policy in Ireland. We will take a step forward, evoke ideas, delve into where we are and where we are going … ask controversial but fundamental questions …

  ‘Delve into where we are and where we are going …’
  I could be very, very crude about where literary Ireland is right now, and cruder still about where it’s going. But that won’t solve anything.
  The knee-jerk reaction is to suggest that Irish crime writers should hold and host their own festival next year, along the lines of Bloody Scotland, or Harrogate or Crimefest in England, or the Bouchercon in the US; but Ireland is a small place, and there’s the very real danger of confirming the status quo, of reinforcing a ghetto mentality; like the standalone Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards, it suggests that Irish crime writers need to be corralled off from real books, from proper fiction, and given a special award and a pat on the head.
  The irony is that it’s Irish crime writers who are ‘delving into where we are and where we are going’ as a nation, but it’s a real Catch 22 scenario right now for Irish crime writers: if you demand attention, you’re accused of special pleading; if you shrug and grit your teeth, you’re ignored.
  So what to do?
  Over to you, people. I’m all ears …

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 …

On The Irish Crime Novel and Institutional Cultural Caution

I find myself in a very unusual situation as 2011 draws to a close, because I’ve never before had novels published in consecutive years. Four years separated EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, and it was another four years before ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL landed on bookshelves last year. And yet, if all goes to plan, my fourth novel should arrive some time around the middle of 2012.
  This is, of course, very good news for yours truly, not least because books in consecutive years might create some kind of momentum. Even so, I’m feeling a little bit fraught at the moment. This is partly because there’s still a job of work to be done on the new book, with semi-final revisions due before it goes off to the editor at the end of January, but it’s mainly due to the fact that the new book - formerly known as THE BIG EMPTY, and currently labouring under the working title of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND - is a very different kind of book to AZC.
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a novel that has a little fun with straightforward narrative and conventional tropes, being a story in which an author who bears a very strong resemblance to one Declan Burke is confronted by a character from an abandoned novel, said character being a possibly homicidal hospital porter to demands to be rewritten as a more likeable sociopath, and who promises to make the rewrite worthwhile by blowing up the hospital where he works.
  Before it was published, I was worried that AZC might fall between two stools. Those readers who don’t read crime fiction might not have bothered with it, on the basis that it is essentially a crime novel, once you strip away the bells and whistles; and crime fans who prefer their stories told in a straightforward way could well have shrugged and moved on to something more conventional. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the book was, for the very great part, pretty well received, and that most reviewers were happy to champion the more offbeat aspects of the story.
  Of course, that kind of thing can backfire badly. If I can (immodestly) point you towards the Publishers Weekly review, which is the most recent review AZC has received, the reviewer suggests that, “those looking for a highly intellectual version of Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF will be most satisfied.” Which was nice to hear, although my first instinct was to wonder whether the phrase ‘highly intellectual’ wouldn’t put off more people than it might attract.
  The new book, on the other hand, is far more straightforward a story than AZC. It’s a sequel-of-sorts to my first book, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, and features erstwhile ‘research consultant’ (aka freelance journalist and occasional private eye) Harry Rigby, who has recently been released after serving a term in a prison for the criminally insane. And even if Rigby’s killing of this brother at the end of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE makes him, as one character points out, ‘the least private eye in the business, and Rigby is driving a taxi to earn a living as the novel opens, it is to my mind a private eye story, and proceeds within the parameters of that kind of tale.
  So right now I’m a little concerned that those readers who liked ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL for the way it messed around with story and storytelling might be disappointed by the fact that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has very little interest in meta-narrative et al, and aims instead to tell a hard-boiled tale of fatalistic noir. We shall see.
  I’m prompted to wonder about such things by a piece in today’s Irish Times by Mick Heaney, which looks back on the Irish arts world and the way in which, as Heaney says, “2011 felt like a pivotal year, during which Ireland’s cultural landscape started to take on new, as yet unformed, contours.” The piece takes into account film, music, theatre and the visual arts, and has quite a bit to say about literature too.

Heaney name-checks some established and new names in Irish literary fiction, before having this to say:

“These works suggest Irish literary fiction – the jewel in the crown of Irish writing over the past 20 years – is in a healthy state, but its primacy is quietly being questioned by another, less vaunted, genre.
  “Crime fiction continued to thrive last year, with writers such as John Connolly and Stuart Neville, and newer arrivals such as William Ryan and Conor Fitzgerald, showing how Irish authors can compete in this huge international market.
  “DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, an anthology of home-grown crime writing edited by novelist Declan Burke, showed how such writers can weave contemporary issues and darker themes while maintaining entertainment value. Such work may not have quite the same highbrow appeal as “serious” fiction, but the fact John Banville’s latest volume, A DEATH IN SUMMER, was published under his crime-writing nom de plume, Benjamin Black, is further indication of how the genre has taken centre stage in the public imagination.”

  I’m intrigued by the line about ‘how such writers can weave contemporary issues and darker themes while maintaining entertainment value.’ I’ve gone on record here many times to say that the Irish crime novel is important in terms of how it is documenting the upheaval in Irish society, although it’s interesting that of the five writers Heaney mentions by name, three set their novels outside of Ireland, and one sets his stories in 1950s Ireland. Of the batch mentioned above, only Stuart Neville’s STOLEN SOULS was a contemporary Irish tale.
  I’m also wondering about the primacy of the elements of that line, and whether crime writers are obliged to first create an entertainment, and then invest that entertainment with ‘contemporary issues and darker themes’; or whether the onus is on the crime author to write about ‘contemporary issues and darker themes’, in the process making them entertaining.
  I’m wondering about this because I can write about contemporary issues and dark themes until the cows come home. It’s the making them entertaining bit that keeps me awake at night.
  In terms of the bigger picture, such questions are becoming increasingly important, I think. The Irish crime novel has been in the ‘promising’ phase for quite some time now, without ever fully delivering on that promise and crossing over into the realms of fiction to be taken seriously. This may well be because the crime novel is doomed to be considered entertainment first and foremost, and thus irrelevant in terms of what it has to say about the culture and society from which it springs. Just before Christmas, for example, I had a very interesting conversation with a literary editor of one of the Irish Sunday broadsheets, who said that they’d nominated a certain literary title as their book of the year, this on the basis that it was the only novel they’d read that had something to say about modern Ireland, and even though said novel was set in the past. What was implicit in that statement was that crime novels by the likes of Gene Kerrigan, Niamh O’Connor, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville and Alan Glynn, just to mention some high-profile names, were excluded from ‘book of the year’ consideration because they were crime novelists, even though they all had very pertinent things to say about Ireland in 2011.
  Such an attitude, from an ostensibly well-read person who is after all a literary editor, is entirely dispiriting; or would be, if the times weren’t so dramatically a-changing. To quote again from Mick Heaney’s piece:

“Taken separately, these disparate developments in the literary, theatre, music and visual spheres are exciting; viewed together, they can be seen as the first tectonic shifts in a culture as affected by doubt and upheaval as the wider economy. After all, the current cultural climate was essentially shaped during the extended period of turmoil and decline that ran from the oil shocks of 1973 to the chronic recession of the 1980s, which swept away the institutional cultural caution of before.”

  Next year will be a tough one for Ireland Inc., and all who sail in her; and so will the following year, and the year after that. Ireland is not Greece, as our politicians are fond of telling our overlords in Brussels and Frankfurt, this because the Irish are accepting their harsh and unfair economic medicine without taking to the streets, going on strike and burning banks and bondholders alike.

  But if it all looks very placid on the surface, those tectonic plates are shifting. Essentially, there’s a whole new order up for grabs, politically, economically, and in terms of how we speak to ourselves about ourselves.
  Writers, to paraphrase the Chinese saying, always live in interesting times, and the crime novel is perfectly positioned right now to colonise the Irish literary landscape over the next few years, to speak to us all about who we are, how we got here and where we are going.
  Here’s hoping it rises to the challenge of the new cultural climate, as the current institutional caution is swept away.

CAPNYA: Or, The Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award!

A trumpet-parp please, maestro. The votes are in, the counts have been tallied, the hanging chads ignored, and the winner emerges triumphant. The short-list consisted of THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly, THE RAGE by Gene Kerrigan and FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty, and - ta-da! - it’s FALLING GLASS that wins the hardly-coveted-at-all Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award!
  Now all I need to do is come up with some kind of trophy to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, it’s a hearty congrats to Adrian McKinty, not least, as I’ve said before, because 2011 was yet another very fine year for Irish crime writing. Incidentally, FALLING GLASS has already secured the significantly-more-coveted Audible.com Best Mystery / Thriller of the Year. Which just goes to prove that the readers of this blog, if not its host, have impeccably good taste …
  I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised, by the way, if McKinty’s forthcoming tome, THE COLD COLD GROUND, doesn’t feature on a number of 2012’s Best Of lists. It’s due in January, and I’ve already gone on the record about it on these pages, with the gist running thusly:

“The hunger strikes mark the bleakest period of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’, and it’s entirely fitting that Adrian McKinty should be the writer to plunge into that darkest of hearts. It’s a rare author who can write so beautifully about such a poisonous atmosphere, but McKinty’s prose is a master-class in vicious poise as he explores the apparent contradictions that underpin Ulster’s self-loathing. Be in no doubt that this novel is a masterpiece: 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.”

  Very pleased I was, not to mention a little gobsmacked, to see a line from that little lot quoted on the back cover blurb of THE COLD COLD GROUND when it fell through my letterbox last Monday morning. But don’t take my word for it. The various blurbs also feature Stuart Neville (“A razor-sharp thriller with style, courage and dark-as-night wit … brilliant”) and Brian McGilloway (“A brilliant piece of work which does for Northern Ireland what [David] Peace’s Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire”).
  So there you have it. THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …
  As for my own favourite novels of the year, well, 2011 was a year in which I was fairly spoiled. They are, in roughly the order I read them:

THE TERROR OF LIVING by Urban Waite;
CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin;
THE GLASS RAINBOW by James Lee Burke;
CITY OF THE DEAD by Sara Gran;
THE TROUBLED MAN by Henning Mankell;
THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald;
THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X by Keigo Higashino;
THE CALLER by Karin Fossum;
FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty;
THE WATCHERS by Jon Steele;
LASTING DAMAGE by Sophie Hannah;
BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn;
THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly;
THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott;
A SINGLE SHOT by Matthew F. Jones;
DADDY’S GIRL by Margie Orford;

  Winnowing those down for the purpose of picking my overall favourite, I find myself stuck on three titles:

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin;
THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly;
THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott;

  Trust me, on this much at least: blow your book token vouchers on those three titles, and you won’t be disappointed.
  Finally, it’s over to you, dear reader. What was your favourite crime title of the year? The comment box is now open …

Phew! It’s Tana French’s Scorcher …

I have no idea if the image on your right will be the official cover for Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR, but I kind of hope it is - it’s all very dramatic, indeed, and pretty timely in terms of where we are in Ireland, with storm clouds overhead and the waves crashing up onto the shores.
  Anyway, the novel isn’t due until next June (boo), but it will feature a minor character from Tana’s previous / current offering, FAITHFUL PLACE, one Scorcher Kennedy, and the blurb elves have been busy already, with their combined best efforts reading a lot like this:

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder Squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk …

  Can’t wait to see this one. And with Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE and Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND already on the way, Laurence O’Bryan’s THE ISTANBUL PUZZLE due in January, and the perennial offering from John Connolly in the shape of THE ANGELS OF WRATH, 2012 is shaping up to be yet another cracking year for Irish crime fiction …

CAPNYA; Or, The Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award

Well, it’s that time of the year again, folks, when we have a look back at the Irish crime titles released in the last twelve months or so, and make a ham-fisted attempt at deciding which was the best of the lot for the not-entirely-coveted Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award - or CAPNYA, if you prefer. I say ham-fisted, because all such ‘awards’ are by definition a lottery of subjective opinions, opinion being a polite word for prejudice; the good news there is, opinions are free, and so is leaving a comment in the box beneath this post. So, if you have a few moments to spare, and have an opinion on what might be the best Irish crime title of 2011, please join in the fun.
  To make it (slightly) interesting, and because the real object of the exercise is to bring the titles of great books to the attention of those who might have missed them first time around, I’m going to ask you to name your top three books, in 1-2-3 order, with the person who gets closest to the right 1-2-3 bagging themselves a signed copy of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL by yours truly (runner-up gets two signed copies, etc.). In the event that two or more contributors tie, the names will go into a bobbly hat.
  The list of books below isn’t so much a longlist as a suggested reading list, and please feel free to include any title that isn’t on it in your 1-2-3. I’m going to run this post for two weeks, with the winner to be announced on Monday, December 19th, and maybe for giggles I’ll post a ‘short-list’ of the most popular books this time next week.
  Incidentally, I’ll be leaving myself and ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL out of the competition. As always, this has less to do with transparency and accountability and the democratic process than it has to do with the horrendous embarrassment that would come with my not winning an award I’m hosting on my own blog. You know it makes sense.
  Anyway, on with the list, which is presented in alphabetical order:

NINE INCHES, Colin Bateman;
A DEATH IN SUMMER, Benjamin Black;
THE POINT, Gerard Brennan;
HEADSTONE, Ken Bruen;
THE RECKONING, Jane Casey;
PLUGGED, Eoin Colfer;
THE BURNING SOUL, John Connolly;
THE FATAL TOUCH, Conor Fitzgerald;
BLOODLAND, Alan Glynn;
TABOO, Casey Hill;
GOODBYE AGAIN, Joseph Hone;
THE CHOSEN, Arlene Hunt;
THE RAGE, Gene Kerrigan;
HIDE ME, Ava McCarthy;
LITTLE GIRL LOST, Brian McGilloway;
FALLING GLASS, Adrian McKinty;
STOLEN SOULS, Stuart Neville;
BLOODLINE, Brian O’Connor;
TAKEN, Niamh O’Connor;
DUBLIN DEAD, Gerard O’Donovan;
THE BLOODY MEADOW, William Ryan;

  So there you have it, folks. Vote early, vote often, and let the games commence …

The Moon, My Butt, And Other Very Big Issues That Occasionally Block Out The Sun

I do understand that e-publishing is proving a very liberating option for many writers, and that some are doing very well indeed from e-only publishing. What I don’t understand is why JA Konrath & Co insist on polarising the issue, and pitch it is as books vs e-books, with winner take all. Isn’t it possible for a writer (and his or her publisher) to accommodate those who like to read books and those who prefer to read on an electronic device? Seems like the simplest solution to me.
  One thing I don’t like about the debate is the way the e-evangelists are delighting in the prospects of dancing on the grave of traditional publishing. Your opinion on ‘gatekeepers’ et al notwithstanding, the decline of traditional publishing will see a lot of jobs to go the wall, and a lot of talented people out of work. Is that really something to celebrate, just so that we can pay $0.99 to read THE MOON, MY BUTT, AND OTHER VERY BIG ISSUES THAT OCCASIONALLY BLOCK OUT THE SUN?
  Anyway, the latest missive from the Dark Lord, aka John Connolly, offers his thoughts on the same subject. To wit:

“It’s one of the reasons why I find myself growing increasingly angry with those of my peers who seem to have divested themselves of any loyalty to bricks-and-mortar bookstores in favour of a rush to solely electronic publishing, too ignorant to even be ashamed to use phrases like “dead tree publishing” or “legacy publishing” about the beauty and usefulness of a printed book. Hey, guys and gals: those bookstores, chains and independents, that you’ve apparently abandoned to their fate were the making of you all, and you were very willing to badger their owners into stocking your books when they were the only game in town. I’m as happy as anyone to take my royalties on e-book sales, and I’m grateful to the companies that distribute me in that form, but I firmly believe that electronic publishing and printed books can co-exist in our brave new world, and I’d dearly like to see bookstores survive to take their place in that world, because it will be a poorer, coarser place without them. End of lesson.”

  Meanwhile, Conor Fitzgerald reviewed John Connolly’s THE BURNING SOUL for the Irish Times a couple of weekends ago, when he had this to say about Connolly’s narrative style:

“THE BURNING SOUL opens with a filmic bird’s-eye view of the setting, thanks to the presence of some ravens on loan from Edgar Allan Poe. Connolly confidently guides us into their malevolent little minds, then it’s up into the cold air again, down into a car and then into a character’s mind in a blending of first-person narration and omniscience that is reminiscent of Dickens. Indeed, as the epigraph of this book consists of an excerpt from GREAT EXPECTATIONS, I am confident that Connolly knows exactly what he is doing and how much he is risking, which, for me, is the mark of a highly accomplished writer now beginning to explore the limits of his chosen form.” - Conor Fitzgerald, the Irish Times

  Dickens, no less. For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Irish Book Awards: Or, How The Competition Is A Right Royal Buggery

I do tend to look forward to the Irish Book Awards at this time of the year, and especially in the last couple of years, ever since the IBA introduced a dedicated Crime Novel section. Not so much this year, as it happens. That’s because, for the first time in ages, I have a book that’s eligible for the IBA; and if there’s one thing worse than not having a book eligible for an award, it’s having said tome eligible, but not short-listed.
  Now, I don’t know where you stand on the subject of books awards. I tend to be of the opinion that books are not Olympic athletes, say, and that it’s very difficult to say with any precision that one book is faster, stronger or higher than another. That said, there’s no doubting that awards are terrific when it comes to raising profile and boosting sales (this will be especially true of this year’s IBA Awards, which will be televised, on November 24th, for the first time). So, and leaving my not inconsiderable ego aside, I’d love to see ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL nominated for the sake of its publisher, Liberties Press, as much as anything else.
  AZC has been pretty well reviewed since it was published in August, with the gist running thusly: ‘a triumph’ - The Sunday Times; ‘a wonderful achievement’ - The Irish Times; ‘clever, funny … entirely original’ - Irish Independent; ‘exhilarating, cleverly wrought’ - Sunday Business Post; ‘witty, philosophical and a page-turning thriller’ - The Dubliner. Which is all fine and dandy-o, and with which I’m very pleased indeed. And you’d imagine, with reviews such as that, and more, that AZC stands a very good chance of being short-listed.
  Unfortunately, it’s not anywhere as simple as that. For starters, I have no idea of the kind of criteria the IBA judges are assessing the books on. More importantly, I think, is the fact that 2011 has been yet another very good year for Irish crime writing. In other words, the competition is a right royal buggery.
  The most basic criteria is that a book needs to have been published between November 1st, 2010 and October 31st, 2011 (I’d have preferred it if only books published between, say, August 10th, 2011 and August 14th, 2011, were eligible, but there you go). That means that the following books are eligible:

THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald, a very fine sequel to THE DOGS OF ROME, and one of my favourite reads of the year;
FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty, a powerful thriller and one laced with philosophical insights;
TAKEN by Niamh O’Connor, her follow-up to IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN, and a hard, cold blast of rage;
THE RAGE by Gene Kerrigan, his fourth novel, and probably his best;
TABOO by Casey Hill, a rip-snorting CSI-meets-serial killer tale from the wife-and-husband writing team of Melissa and Kevin Hill;
STOLEN SOULS by Stuart Neville, a stripped-down thriller in the classic ’70s mode;
A DEATH IN SUMMER by Benjamin Black, the fourth offering from John Banville’s alter-ego, and his best to date;
BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn, a sequel-of-sorts to WINTERLAND and an epic tale in the paranoid thriller tradition;
LITTLE GIRL LOST by Brian McGilloway, a standalone title that confirms McGilloway’s talent as a storyteller;
PLUGGED by Eoin Colfer, his first adult offering and a blackly comic crime caper;
BLOODLINE by Brian O’Connor, a fast-paced debut set in the world of horse-racing;
DUBLIN DEAD by Gerard O’Donovan, a very strong police procedural;
ORCHID BLUE by Eoin McNamee, the second of his loose trilogy of historical crime fiction;
And, last but by no means least, THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly, his latest Charlie Parker novel, and to my mind his best yet.

  That’s an impressive list of titles, and they’re just the ones I’ve read. For various reasons, mostly to do with the fact that they’re only now being published, I have yet to read THE CHOSEN by Arlene Hunt, NINE INCHES by Colin Bateman, HIDE ME by Ava McCarthy, HEADSTONE by Ken Bruen, and THE RECKONING by Jane Casey, all of which are also eligible for nomination.
  The good news, I suppose, is that at least Tana French and Declan Hughes didn’t publish books this year.
  Anyway, it’s a hell of a list. How to boil it down to a shortlist of five?
  There are, of course, mitigating circumstances. Gene Kerrigan won the award last year; can they afford not to short-list THE RAGE, particularly as it’s a better book? John Banville is up for the Nobel Prize for Literature tomorrow; should he win, how could they leave Benjamin Black off the short-list? Meanwhile, it’s a personal prejudice, but of the books I’ve read this year, the five best were written by men; would it be politic to have a short-list with no women on it? (I should say, in relation to this point, that I have yet to read this year’s offerings from Arlene Hunt and Jane Casey, both of whom have been short-listed in the past, and both deservedly so).
  So, with the very important caveat that I haven’t read all the eligible titles, and based solely on the limitations of my reading, my short-list runs as follows, in alphabetical order:

PLUGGED by Eoin Colfer;
THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly;
THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald;
BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn;
THE RAGE by Gene Kerrigan;
FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty;
ORCHID BLUE by Eoin McNamee.

  The more numerically literate among you will notice that that’s a seven-strong list for a short-list of five. Which brings me back to my original point; even as wrapped up as I am in the prospects for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and perhaps understandably so, applying any kind of unsentimental appraisal of the year’s books suggests that I’m going to be a tad disappointed when the IBA short-lists are announced on October 20th.
  So there you have it. As for the overall winner, I’m going to go out on a limb and put my head on the chopping block (I really wish they’d move that chopping block to a less precarious position), and say that, if the decision was mine, I’d have to toss a coin between John Connolly’s THE BURNING SOUL and Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE.
  The decision, of course, won’t be mine. Once the shortlists are announced, readers come on board to vote for their favourite titles. Which suggests that the Awards will be less of an appraisal of the best books published this year, and more of a popularity contest. But that, as Hammy Hamster once said, is a story for another day …

A Blume By Any Other Name

I was mightily impressed with Conor Fitzgerald’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME, when it appeared last year. Domiciled in Rome for the past few decades, Fitzgerald writes about Commissario Alec Blume, an American-born, Rome-based police detective who has the insider’s track on Italian crime and an outsider’s eye for the good, bad and ugly in Italian life. A terrific thriller, THE DOGS OF ROME was notable for the elegance of its language, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to learn that Conor Fitzgerald is a pseudonym for Conor Deane, who is the son of the noted Irish poet, Seamus Deane.

  THE DOGS OF ROME, by the way, was last week shortlisted for a John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger by the Crime Writers’ Association.

  I sat down with Conor Fitzgerald a few weeks ago to interview him for the Sunday Independent, this to mark the publication of the second Alec Blume novel, THE FATAL TOUCH, and a very pleasant couple of hours it proved too. First let me say that, as fine a novel as THE DOGS OF ROME is, THE FATAL TOUCH represents something of a leap forward for Fitzgerald, even if it is only his second offering. My review of it is here, with the gist running thusly:

“Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.”

  Marilyn Stasio, writing in the New York Times, liked it too; clickety-click here for more …

  Anyway, what was particularly interesting about the interview, for me at least, was Conor Fitzgerald’s comment on how his writing career was influenced by his father, the poet - although not necessarily in the way you might expect. To wit:

“My father’s an extremely clever man, he really is,” says Conor, “but at some stage in his life he decided that the only things that were really interesting were detective novels and football […] In the pre-Amazon days, he used to send me books in the post. With poetry, for example, he’d always say, ‘This guy is very good, but ...’ and he’d make some observation, which could be political, or academic, literary, or simply in bad taste. With the crime novels, he’d just say, ‘This is brilliant’.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Conor Fitzgerald: Start Spreading The News

If you can make it there, you’re going to make it, period. It’s always nice to see the cream rise to the top, and such was the case over the weekend, when Conor Fitzgerald’s very fine novel THE FATAL TOUCH was reviewed in the New York Times. To wit:

Some Americans abroad fantasize about lingering in Paris to paint or jumping ship in Jamaica to become beach bums. Conor Fitzgerald had a better idea in his first novel, THE DOGS OF ROME, when he allowed his ex-pat hero, Alec Blume, to put down roots in Rome as a homicide cop. A free-spirited maverick, Commissario Blume returns in THE FATAL TOUCH (Bloomsbury, $25) to investigate the death of an old tramp, a notorious brawler and a drunk, assumed to have been killed during a mugging. But this routine case takes a tricky turn once Blume, whose parents were art historians, determines that this was no mugging and that the victim was really a skilled forger with clients in high places. Although an organized crime angle injects an element of danger into the investigation, there’s more pleasure to be had from Fitzgerald’s commentary on the victim’s dodgy trade, including fascinating technical instruction for “forgers, interpreters, emulators, admirers and genuine artists.” - Marilyn Stasio

  Very nice indeed. In fact the ‘victim’s dodgy trade’, which Fitzgerald offers courtesy of a memoir written by said victim, the art forger Henry Treacy, could very easily have spun off into a novel itself, and one that wouldn’t be dissimilar in tone and content to John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, had Freddie Montgomery traded in ripping of famous artists as opposed to murder. I very much liked THE FATAL TOUCH too, with the gist of my review running thusly:

“Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.” - Declan Burke

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, I had a hugely enjoyable chat with the very generous Ben LeRoy of Tyrus Books yesterday, which he recorded and has since posted as a podcast. The general thrust of the chat had to do with DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS and my forthcoming ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, but it’s a pretty general chat, and incorporates crime writing of all stripes, with a strong flavour of Irish crime fiction. If you’re interested, clickety-click here …
  Finally, although staying with GREEN STREETS, Tony Black was good enough to post his memories of the launch of said tome over at Pulp Pusher, although by the time the pic at right was taken in the Turk’s Head, it was all over bar the screaming, and plenty of that there was too. Quoth Tony:

“Mr Bruen was on particularly sparkling form, dropping a request for the assembled to reveal their life’s regrets! Don’t think I’m detailing those here: what goes on in the Turk’s Head stays in the Turk’s Head. Particularly nice to see Ken again, though, because the last time we met (the London launch of CROSS) I was an unpublished wannabe and he couldn’t have been more effusive in his encouragement. Hollywood success hasn’t changed him a bit. Luvly fellah.”

  Amen to that. For the rest of Tony’s reminisces, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald

Set in Rome, but featuring an American-born Italian police detective, and written by an Irishman, THE FATAL TOUCH is Conor Fitzgerald’s sequel to last year’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME, which garnered him comparisons with the late Michael Dibdin, who along with Donna Leon had virtually cornered the market on English-language crime fiction set in Italy until his untimely death.
  ‘Conor Fitzgerald’, by the way, is a pseudonym for Conor Fitzgerald Deane; the author is the son of poet and academic, Seamus Deane. Intriguingly for a man who has previously translated Joycean academic work, Fitzgerald has given his protagonist the name Blume.
  Here Commissario Alec Blume investigates the murky world of art forgery, aided and abetted by his colleague Caterina Mattiola, former policeman Beppe Paolini, the mysterious Colonel Farinelli, and the memoirs left behind by a dead forger, the Irish artist-in-exile Henry Treacy.
  Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.
  Despite his cynicism, however, one of Blume’s chief virtues is his laconic sense of humour, which gives rise to deliciously dry and deadpan observations on virtually every page, most of them at Blume’s own expense.
  Blume is a loner, an outsider and a potential alcoholic, but Fitzgerald cleverly reworks the police procedural’s conventions, much as the forger Treacy pays homage to the Old Masters, and makes a distinctive hero of Blume, particularly in terms of his ability to not only adjust to the corruption that is integral to Italian policing, but to employ it on his own terms. This is a particularly clever twist, as the world is fully aware that corruption is endemic to Italian public life, but this is the first time I’ve come across a character proactively employing corruption as a policing tool.
  Meanwhile, Treacy’s memoirs provide a secondary narrative strand that is equally compelling, and which neatly feed into the main story despite Treacy’s penchant for baroque and self-serving prose. Treacy’s journals, of which there are extensive excerpts, put me in mind of John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, had Freddie Montgomery turned to art forgery rather than murder.
  The character of Colonel Farinelli is also an intriguing one. A corpulent sybarite, he carries a whiff of cordite wherever he goes. Formerly a powerful policeman, he has long since been shunted out of the corridors of power, due to a murky past in which he was involved, unsuccessfully, in attempting to secure the release of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who was abducted and subsequently murdered by the Red Brigade in 1978.
  All these elements come together in a scintillating novel which offers a compelling snapshot of contemporary Rome, courtesy of a guide, in Alec Blume, who seems set fair to become this generation’s Aurelio Zen. - Declan Burke

  Conor Fitzgerald’s THE FATAL TOUCH is published by Bloomsbury.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: McGilloway, Paretsky, Nadelson, Hiaasen and Fitzgerald

The latest of my monthly crime fiction columns for the Irish Times appeared yesterday, featuring Brian McGilloway, Sara Paretsky, Reggie Nadelson, Carl Hiaasen and Conor Fitzgerald. It ran a lot like this:

Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation with his Donegal-set series of Inspector Devlin novels, but LITTLE GIRL LOST (Macmillan, £12.99) is a standalone set in Derry, featuring DS Lucy Black of the PSNI. While investigating a case of a missing teenager, Black discovers a younger girl wandering through a snowstorm in her pyjamas. Her reward is an unwanted transfer to the Public Protection Unit, although Black has more pressing, personal concerns: she is the prime carer for her father, a former RUC officer who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while her ultimate superior is her mother, who walked out on Lucy’s family some decades previously. Effortlessly blending Black’s personal woes into her professional life, McGilloway weaves a taut police procedural in an unadorned style that belies the story’s complexity. With a backdrop provided by the PSNI’s ongoing evolution as a police force, and the tension inherent in the force’s attempts to police a vibrant Derry that is in the process of shaking off the shackles of its recent history, McGilloway has tapped into a fascinating and febrile setting. Black, meanwhile, is reminiscent of Jane Casey’s DC Maeve Kerrigan, a painfully self-conscious but thoroughly competent young woman whose ability to do her job has very little do with her gender. All told, it’s an impressive statement of intent from an author whose reputation grows with each successive release.
  BLOOD COUNT (Atlantic Books, £12.99) is the ninth in Reggie Nadelson’s series of Artie Cohen novels, in which the hardboiled cop investigates a series of unusual deaths in an upmarket Harlem apartment building. The fact that Artie’s on-off love interest Lily appears to be implicated in the deaths complicates matters, and renders Artie something of an ambiguous narrator, which in turn gives the reader a delicious frisson of being party to the subversion of both law and morality Nadelson unveils. It’s an issue-driven novel, as Nadelson invokes the recent history of the Soviet Union’s collapse, sleeper agents, and the complicated relationship between Communist Russia and the historically dispossessed African-Americans. The story takes place in the wake of Barack Obama’s election, which has the benefit of investing the historical elements with a contemporary immediacy, but there are times when Nadelson forsakes Artie Cohen’s hardnosed realism in order to hammer home a political message. The net result is a potentially enthralling snapshot of melting-pot New York that is at times undermined by the author’s digressions into the realms of polemic.
  Sara Paretsky is no less issue-driven in BODY WORK (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99), the 14th novel to feature her iconic private eye, VI ‘Vic’ Warshawski. An artist’s right to portray herself onstage as she sees fit leads to the murder of a young woman, and Warshawski’s investigations subsequently uncover a conspiracy of silence generated by corporate giant Tintrey, a firm which offers security consultancy in Iraq. The consequences of sending unprepared and poorly outfitted men and women to war becomes a major theme, but Paretsky is too canny to allow her political concerns to dominate the narrative at the expense of pace, story and character. Warshawski, nearing 50, is a self-described feminist and street-fighter, a very modern woman who nonetheless harks back to the classic knight errants of private detective lore, as originally created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. The mix is a potent one, and BODY WORK confirms, yet again, Paretsky’s status as one of the great crime authors of her generation.
  STAR ISLAND (Sphere, £14.99) is Carl Hiaasen’s 12th adult crime novel, a blackly comic caper that features his recurring anti-hero Skink, the former Florida governor who now lives half-wild in the Everglades. A multi-character tale, it centres on wild-child pop star Cherry Pye and her ‘undercover stunt double’, Ann DeLuisa, who impersonates Cherry when the star is too befuddled with drugs and booze to function. Blackmail, kidnap and violence enter the picture when a sleazy paparazzo gets Cherry in his sights, and soon Hiaasen is merrily plumbing the sludgy depths of modern America as he pops off deadpan zingers at a host of targets, most notably the puddle-shallow cult of celebrity. Despite the many and (deliberately) implausible twists and turns, STAR ISLAND sticks to Hiaasen’s tried and trusted formula, delivering a polished comedy that will delight newcomers and satisfy established fans.
  Set in Rome, featuring an American-born Italian police detective, and written by an Irishman, THE FATAL TOUCH (Bloomsbury, £11.99) is Conor Fitzgerald’s sequel to last year’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME. Commissioner Alec Blume investigates the murky world of art forgery, aided and abetted by his colleague Caterina Mattiola, former policeman Beppe Paolini, the mysterious Colonel Farenelli, and the memoirs left behind by a dead forger, the Irish artist-in-exile Henry Treacy. Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Blume himself is a loner, an outsider and a potential alcoholic, but Fitzgerald cleverly reworks the police procedural’s conventions, much as the forger Treacy pays homage to the Old Masters, and makes a distinctive hero of Blume, particularly in terms of his ability to not only adjust to the corruption that is integral to Italian policing, but to employ it on his own terms. Chief among Blume’s virtues is his laconic sense of humour, which gives rise to deliciously dry and deadpan observations on virtually every page, most of them at Blume’s expense. Meanwhile, Treacy’s memoirs provide a secondary narrative strand that is equally compelling, and which neatly feed into the main story despite Treacy’s penchant for baroque and self-serving prose. The blend results in a scintillating novel that confirms and enhances Fitzgerald’s burgeoning reputation. - Declan Burke

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

When In Rome, Giggle Your Socks Off

I started Conor Fitzgerald’s THE FATAL TOUCH the other night (gorgeous cover, right), which is set in the Eternal City, and even at this early stage it’s evident that the novel is more assured than Fitzgerald’s very fine debut, THE DOGS OF ROME. That assurance manifests itself in a laconic sense of humour that knowingly undermines the crime novel’s tropes, as offered by Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Commissioner Blume:

When Grattapaglia had gone, Blume leaned back and turned his face up to the sun. “I need a job that allows me to drink coffee, eat pastries, and soak up the morning warmth. A job without people like Grattapaglia. I’d keep the dead bodies and crime victims, though. I wouldn’t have any perspective on life without them. So, what’s your impression so far?”

  And again, as Blume contemplates a locked door:

“We could go in from this side, or go back and enter through that green door. I have some picklocks in the tactical bag.”
  Blume patiently worked at the tumbler lock on the door. “Almost have it,” he said after five minutes. “I’m a bit out of practice.”
  Three minutes later he pulled out a crowbar from the same bag, stuck it into the wood frame next to the strike plate, and hurled his body against the door.

  Good, clean fun it is too, and THE FATAL TOUCH has put a wry smile on my face with virtually every page. If the rest lives up to the promise of the first 60 pages or so, it’ll be one of the finest crime novels of the year.