International Crime Fiction at Queens University

Dominique Jeannerod (right) of Queens University is the very charming French gentleman who organised last Friday’s public interview with Pierre Lamaitre at Belfast’s Crescent Arts Centre, which I managed to survive, in my role as inquisitor-in-chief, without entirely mangling the French language. Although I did, to be fair, mangle it quite a bit.
  It was a terrific turn-out on the evening, despite the fact that a number of Norn Iron’s crime writers also showed up, Stuart Neville, Gerard Brennan, Steve Kavanagh and Andrew Pepper among them. It was also lovely to be able to make my annual pilgrimage to No Alibis while I was in Belfast, and pick up some very interesting recommendations from David and Claudia.
  Anyway, Dominique gets in touch to let me know that Queens University – and specifically the International Crime Fiction brigade therein – will be hosting ‘An International Conference on the Noir Genre and its Territorialisation’ later this month. The conference runs over two days, June 13th and 14th, and offers a range of discussions on a number of international crime writers, among them Tana French, Eoin McNamee and David Peace, while Eoin McNamee and Brian McGilloway will be taking part in a ‘Readings and Questions’ session on the Friday afternoon.
  For all the details, and the full programme of events, clickety-click here …

Review: RED OR DEAD by David Peace

‘Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.’ The first three words of David Peace’s RED OR DEAD (Faber & Faber) are key to unlocking not only the 700-plus pages of the novel, but also the philosophy upon which legendary manager Bill Shankly built the fortunes of England’s most successful football club, Liverpool FC.
  Shankly arrived at Liverpool in 1959, when the club was mired in Second Division mediocrity. As a player Shankly had captained Scotland and won the FA Cup with Preston North End, but his managerial career at Carlisle, Grimsby Town and Huddersfield Town was unremarkable prior to joining Liverpool. A life-long socialist, Shankly blended his philosophy in life with the financial resources of Liverpool Football Club and tapped into the dormant passion of the club’s supporters. By the time of his shock retirement in 1974, Liverpool FC had won three First Division Championships, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup. In place were the fundamentals that would yield, by the time of his death in 1981, a further four Championships, three European Cups, a League Cup, a UEFA Cup and a UEFA Super Cup.
  It’s those fundamentals that concern David Peace. The author made his reputation as the author of the ‘Red Riding Quartet’, crime novels set against the backdrop of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper which featured a distinctively clipped, telegraphic style. He arrived in the mainstream as the author of THE DAMNED UTD, an account of Brian Clough’s ill-fated 44-day tenure as the manager of Leeds United in 1974.
  Peace combines a unique style with a football story in RED OR DEAD, those repetitions (“Bill stared out at the line. In the garden, in the rain. The pouring rain. The empty, hanging line. Redundant in the rain.”) emphasising Bill Shankly’s approach to football, which focused on reducing the game to its most basic tenets and repeating them over and over again. Initially irritating, the repetitive style soon takes on a hypnotic quality, a lulling rhythm of everyday routines irregularly punctuated by triumph and failure.
  The style also incorporates Shankly’s attention to detail, and his famed use of psychology. To ensure a daily and intimate identification with the club, for example, the Liverpool players changed at Anfield and then took the bus to their training ground at Melwood, rather than togging out at the training ground, as most football clubs did.
  If the style is the book’s most notable feature on first encounter, however, it’s very much a novel on the theme of substance. Shankly, who believed himself a born socialist, and who worked down a coalmine before becoming a professional footballer, had a vision of how a football club should interact not only with its supporters (‘the People’, as Shankly called them), but also the club’s heartland. Despite all Liverpool’s success, Shankly never lost sight of the importance of the imperishable bond between the players on the pitch and ‘the People’ on the Kop.
  It’s a hagiography, of course, and David Peace makes little attempt to hide his admiration for Shankly and the way he went about his work. It’s a hagiography in the mediaeval style, however, in which a man is praised not for who he is, but according to the stark testimony of his deeds. Even more than Bill Shankly, however, it is the game of football itself, and its importance to its working-class constituency, which is the recipient of Peace’s love letter. Bill Shankly, for all his charisma and achievements, is simply the man who represents for Peace the incarnation of the game’s significance.
  There’s a caveat, of course: I’m a football fan, and I can’t say how a reader who isn’t a fan will cope with the minutiae of, say, training sessions that took place five decades ago. For this Liverpool fan the book is a joy, a powerful and moving tale of how, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, football isn’t simply a matter of life or death, but the stuff of life itself. – Declan Burke

David Peace will be appearing at Eason’s on O’Connell Street, Dublin, on Tuesday, August 20th, where he will be interviewed by Paul Howard. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Some Like It Cold Cold

You’ll have to wait until November, unfortunately, but it’s all kind of good news that Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND will be published in North America by Seventh Street Books, a Prometheus imprint under the steady hand of editor Dan Mayer. Quoth the blurb elves:

For Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, the Troubles are only just beginning ...

Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Bombings. Assassinations. Sky high unemployment. Endemic rioting. Everyone who can is getting out. This is a society teetering on the edge of chaos and the brink of civil war. Amid the madness, Detective Sergeant Duffy is dealing with two cases: what may be Northern Ireland’s first ever serial killer and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. It’s no easy job - especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with one of their sworn enemies in the UVF. For Duffy, though, there’s no question of which side he’s on - because as a Catholic policeman, nobody trusts him. Fast-paced, evocative and brutal, THE COLD COLD GROUND is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles - and a cop treading a thin, thin line.

  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I loved THE COLD COLD GROUND; even though Sean Duffy is pencilled in to appear in a trilogy, I have a gut feeling that there’s a lot more miles in him than that.
  Here’s a review of THE COLD COLD GROUND, which references David Peace, Eoin McNamee, James Ellroy and James Lee Burke. While you’re at it, here’s an interview with Adrian McKinty I had published in the Irish Examiner back in March.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty

I reviewed Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND for RTE’s Arena programme last week, in the very fine company of Arlene Hunt. The audio can be found here, with the gist of my review notes running thusly:

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife.
  And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain. - Adrian McKinty, THE COLD COLD GROUND

  Adrian McKinty’s latest novel opens in the spring of 1981, with a group of RUC officers watching a Belfast riot from afar. The action is described in the first person by Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, a Catholic in the predominantly Protestant RUC. The backdrop to the riots is the ongoing hunger strikes, although Duffy and his cohorts are a little disappointed with this particular riot:

“In fact we had seen better only last week when, in the hospital wing of The Maze Prison, IRA commander Bobby Sands had finally popped his clogs.”

  Against the powder-keg backdrop of the hunger strikes, DS Duffy investigates a number of murders that appeared to be linked: a homophobic serial killer seems to be targeting homosexuals. Given that Northern Ireland has had no previous experience of a serial killer, however, Duffy has his doubts, and believes that the murders may be perpetrated by someone using the homophobia, and the ongoing tension related to the hunger strikes, as an excuse to settle some personal, paramilitary-related scores …
  DS Sean Duffy is a fascinating character, being a Catholic police officer in a predominantly Protestant RUC at the time of the hunger strikes. This immediately gives his story an extra frisson, as sectarianism was at its height (or nadir) in Northern Ireland during the early 1980s. In fact, and despite being a police officer, DS Duffy keeps his religion a secret from his neighbours, allowing them to presume that he is a Protestant.
  That said, the sectarianism Duffy faces doesn’t necessarily lend itself to conflict. At work, for example, Duffy and his co-workers engage in sectarian banter in which Duffy gives as good as he gets. As often as not, the sectarianism manifests itself as lazy stereotyping; his Protestant superiors, for example, simply presume that Duffy, being a Catholic, must know virtually every other Catholic in Northern Ireland.
  Away from work, Duffy is the antithesis of the ultra-conservative RUC officer. He listens to the period’s more adventurous rock music, and occasionally smokes dope. He appears to be more laidback about life in general than his colleagues, particularly in terms of the sectarianism of Northern Ireland. When it becomes clear that a killer is targeting homosexuals, Duffy is much less homophobic in his attitude towards the gay community than most of his colleagues.
  It’s easy to see why McKinty picked the hunger strikes for a backdrop: the setting provides immediate tension, a sharply divided society, and a very vivid backdrop of continuous rioting. By the same token, the hunger strikes are still hugely important in the psyche of Northern Ireland, and have iconic status in large parts of the Catholic / Nationalist community. Any crime writer deploying the hunger strikes as a backdrop runs the risk of being accused of exploiting the period, and the sacrifices made, for the sake of a crime thriller.
  Having said all that, I got the impression that McKinty picked the hunger strikes for the backdrop to this novel not just because it would provide instant tension, but because that period, arguably, represented the nadir of the Troubles, and so serves as a kind of crucible for the worst that humanity is capable of.
  It’s worth mentioning, I think, that there has been very little by way of serial killer novels in Ireland until very recently. The only explicit examples I can think of are Rob Kitchin’s THE RULE BOOK and TABOO by Casey Hill, although it can be argued that Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE is a serial killer novel (in that particular case, the ‘serial killer’ is a sympathetic character, who kills to avenge others’ deaths). All three novels have appeared in the last two or three years. (Arlene Hunt’s novel THE CHOSEN is in part a serial killer novel, but that book is set in the US.)
  This may be because Ireland itself has had no history of serial killers - officially, at least. By the same token, Ireland has lent itself over the years to being a place where a psychopath could very easily indulge a homicidal streak by signing up to one or another political / paramilitary creed. The Shankhill Butchers, for example, were serial killers in all but name.
  As for the style, McKinty quickly establishes and maintains a pacy narrative, but he does a sight more too. McKinty brings a quality of muscular poetry to his prose, and the opening paragraph quoted above is as good an example as any. He belongs in a select group of crime writers, those you would read for the quality of their prose alone: James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, David Peace, James Ellroy.
  I should probably have pointed out before beginning this review that I’ve been a fan of Adrian McKinty’s work since his first novel, DEAD I WELL MAY BE. I think he’s one of the best crime writers currently working today, and I also think that THE COLD COLD GROUND is his best novel since his debut. Given its backdrop, and the fact that the hunger strikes are still to a great extent a taboo subject in fiction, I would also argue that THE COLD COLD GROUND is an important novel too. - Declan Burke

The Fertile, Fertile Ground

I interviewed Stuart Neville a couple of weeks ago, to mark the publication of STOLEN SOULS, and during the course of the conversation we discussed the fact that his new novel is a less political beast than his previous offerings, THE TWELVE and COLLUSION. Stuart had this to say:

“I know other writers are working in different directions on this,” he says. “I’ve just finished reading Adrian McKinty’s new book, THE COLD COLD GROUND, in which he dives headlong into the thick of the Troubles and the hunger strikes, which is admirable, I think. I do think the Troubles will be quite fertile ground for writers the further we move away from them, and the freer we are to write about them with a more dispassionate gaze.”

  We’ve already had some very fine novels set during the Troubles, of course, including Eoin McNamee’s RESURRECTION MEN and THE ULTRAS, and David Parks’ THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, and Colin Bateman’s DIVORCING JACK. Adrian McKinty’s latest offering, THE COLD COLD GROUND works the same kind of ground covered by McNamee, setting his fictional tale against a historical backdrop, in this case the hunger strikes of 1981. My take runs 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.”

  For more in a similar vein, from far better scribes and I, clickety-click on Adrian’s blog.
  Meanwhile, the novel is published on January 5th by Serpent’s Tail. If your New Year’s resolution is to only read great books next year, THE COLD COLD GROUND is the perfect place to start …

Hate In A Cold Climate

I was at the launch of the Irish Book Awards short-lists last Thursday morning, during the course of which I was introduced to a PR lady who, on hearing that I’m a crime writer, began babbling about this terrific new book coming in January of next year by Adrian McKinty. “I’ve heard of him,” sez I. “Rumour has it he’s not half-bad …”
  The new book the lady was referring to is THE COLD, COLD GROUND, a standalone title from McKinty that I’m very much hoping will become the first in a series; I read it a couple of months ago, and it’s superb. Herewith be the blurb elves:

Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Riots. Power cuts. A homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera. A young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. On the surface, these events are unconnected, but then things - and people - aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy is trying to get to the bottom of it all, but it’s no easy job - especially for a Catholic policeman at the height of the Troubles.

  His publishers are calling McKinty ‘the David Peace of Northern Ireland’, which is lavish indeed, and they’re not the only ones to be lauding him. Ken Bruen opened up his brand new blog with a post about COLD, COLD GROUND, calling it ‘riveting, brilliant, and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland’.
  COLD, COLD GROUND is published on January 5th; if I were you, I’d get it on my Christmas wish-list now. Meantime, why not drop on over to Ken Bruen’s blog and welcome him to the blogosphere? He loves a good chat, does Ken …

Bloodymarvellousland; and Gordon Burn

I mentioned during the week on ye olde Twittere that I’d finished Alan Glynn’s latest offering, BLOODLAND, suggesting that he really should have gone for broke and titled it BLOODYMARVELLOUSLAND. Which is to say, I thought it was terrific, a synthesis of the best elements of his previous offerings, THE DARK FIELDS and WINTERLAND. I’ll be reviewing said tome in due course, so I’ll say no more about it for now, except to say that it’s likely to be one of the finest crime novels published this year, and a very fine example of the classic conspiracy thriller.

  All of which is by way of a preamble to pointing you towards a nifty little piece Alan penned for The Huffington Post last week, in which he speculates on the rise of a new sub-genre, ‘pulp faction’. To wit:

In LIBRA, Don DeLillo’s imagined Oswald and Ruby are so convincing, so forensically delineated, that it almost feels like time travel. Other writers - James Ellroy, Eoin McNamee, David Peace - have done this, too, filtered real events through their fictional prisms, and to equally electrifying effect. But a different approach again was taken in 2008 by the late Gordon Burn in his stunning BORN YESTERDAY, which had the subtitle, ‘The News as a Novel’. In presenting us with the events of summer 2007, Burn makes nothing up. Rather, he conjures it all into a kaleidoscope, a surrealistic canvas of connections, a mediated meditation. With the events of summer 2011 now drifting by, it’s hard not to speculate what Burn might have done with the hacking scandal - with Murdoch, Brooks, Cameron, Sean Hoare, Milly Dowler, The Hour, the sidelined debt crisis, the sidelined famine . . . Oslo . . . Amy . . .

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

  This isn’t the first time the name of Gordon Burn has popped up on these pages, by the way, and if he’s good enough for Alan Glynn and David Peace, then he’s certainly good enough for me. If anyone else out there has anything further to offer on Gordon Burn, I’m all ears.

  Meanwhile, BORN YESTERDAY was recently released as an e-book. You can find all the details here …

You, Me And Ireland’s Answer To James Ellroy

Recently described as ‘Ireland’s more accessible answer to James Ellroy’ by Laura Wilson at The Guardian, Adrian McKinty (right) makes a rare appearance on these shores next Thursday evening at the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. To wit:

No Alibis are very pleased to invite you to celebrate the launch of Declan Burke’s latest novel, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and FALLING GLASS, the latest novel from Adrian McKinty, in the shop on Thursday 18th August at 6:00 PM.

  Adrian McKinty, as all Three Regular Readers will be well aware, is a firm favourite on these pages, mainly because he has a very good habit of writing very good books. The latest is FALLING GLASS, which I reviewed recently on Crime Always Pays; his previous offering, FIFTY GRAND, was longlisted earlier this summer for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In short, the man is a terrific writer, and given that he currently resides on the other side of the planet, the No Alibis gig is a welcome opportunity to hear him read in person.

  Doing his manly best to play Falstaff to McKinty’s Prince Hal will be yours truly, and delighted and humbled I most certainly am to be invited to the hallowed halls of No Alibis to celebrate the launch of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. David Torrans, the legendary and possibly even semi-mythic owner of No Alibis, was good enough to micro-manage the Northern Ireland launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS a couple of months ago, this in conjunction with the Belfast Literary Festival. A terrific evening it was, too, not least because I got to meet David Peace, although the one disappointment for me was that the event wasn’t actually held in No Alibis. I’d twice stood outside a closed No Alibis prior to that evening, not unlike a book-nerd Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, pretty much pawing at the glass frontage and drooling at the very fine offerings within. On the evening of the GREEN STREETS launch, I finally got to step inside the door; a very pleasant experience, even if we were all very quickly whisked away to the GREEN STREETS event.

  Anyway, it’ll be nice to actually do a gig at No Alibis. There’s a rites-of-passage aspect to it, or a kind of anointing; you’re no one, really, in this Irish crime writing game until your weedy voice has strained for profundity under the No Alibis rafters. The fact that it’ll happen in the company of Adrian McKinty isn’t so much a bonus as a gift.

  Tickets are free, by the way, and all the booking details can be found here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: David Peace

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 GLASS KEY by Dashiell Hammett.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
George Smiley.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t really think like that; if it’s good, I keep reading and if it’s bad, I stop.

Most satisfying writing moment?
1977.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Top three today would be: THE THIRD POLICEMAN by Flann O’Brien; THE ULTRAS by Eoin McNamee; THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Any book by Eoin McNamee, or THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Every day I thank God I can still write; so nothing bad, everything good.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Japan, 1949; One God. One Devil. Two men: THE EXORCISTS.

Who are you reading right now?
HOW LATE IT WAS, HOW LATE by James Kelman.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Reading and writing is the same act for me; so both or neither.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Not finished yet.

David Peace’s ‘Red Riding Quartet’ is now available on Kindle.

Foxing Clever

The Thought Fox is a rare example of an interesting blog from a publisher, not least because - I presume, at least, although I’m open to correction - the blog’s name was inspired by Ted Hughes. Anyway, The Thought Fox is Faber’s blog, and Faber is home to two of the most inventive writers working today, in Eoin McNamee and David Peace, so it was nice to see a homage from David Peace to Eoin McNamee pop up on the blog during the week. To wit:

‘The House of Burn and McNamee’

“Two books have influenced and inspired my own writing more than any others; ALMA COGAN by Gordon Burn and RESURRECTION MAN by Eoin McNamee. Although very different writers, both Burn and McNamee write with the same impulse; to seek out, to confront and to then illuminate the dark corners of history with fiction, with literature, with poetry.
  “Many writers published by Faber talk about the thrill of being published by the House of Eliot and Hughes but, for me, Faber is the House of Burn and McNamee and it remains an honour to be published alongside work as great as BEST AND EDWARDS or THE ULTRAS. Tragically, with Gordon’s death in 2009, there can be no more Gordon Burn books. But Eoin McNamee is still writing, and still writing the best books out there.
  “ORCHID BLUE, which has just been published in paperback by Faber, is a sequel-of-sorts to THE BLUE TANGO, which was published in 2001, and forms the second book in Eoin’s loose ‘Blue Trilogy’. But you don’t need to have read THE BLUE TANGO to read ORCHID BLUE (though I bet you 20 quid you will read BLUE TANGO if you read ORCHID BLUE first).
  “As in all of Eoin McNamee’s writing, ORCHID BLUE takes as its starting point a moment in history; the murder of Pearl Gamble in Newry in January 1961 and the subsequent arrest and trial of Robert McGladdery. McNamee brings to this moment the eyes and ears, the heart and soul of Eddie McCrink. Eddie has been away in London; the London of Jack the Stripper and the Krays. Eddie returns to Ulster as Inspector of Constabulary. Eddie doesn’t like what he finds; a damp place of blood feuds and private vendettas, a place where justice is what strengthens the rich and weakens the poor, a place teetering on the edge of an abyss, an abyss that will stretch for decades over thousands of deaths.
  “This abyss, this history, is the place where McNamee works, where he takes a surgical scalpel to the thin skin of history’s corpse and wades through the blood to the bones of the thing. And in that blood, among those bones, he finds the words and the language of the soul, ugly words in a beautiful language, often in a strange and harrowed tongue, but always in an original, haunting voice.
  “This is what Gordon Burn did. This is what Eoin McNamee does. Cherish it.” - David Peace

  Nicely said, sir. For more Eoin McNamee-related flummery, clickety-click here …

Go North, Young-Ish Man

Off with us yesterday to Belfast for the second launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and a marvellous day out it was too. The launch was incorporated into the Belfast Books Festival, and thus took place at the Crescent Arts Centre rather than the hallowed halls of No Alibis, which was initially something of a disappointment. Happily, the turn-out was such that No Alibis would have struggled to cope with the volume, and anyway David Torrans was on hand to MC proceedings, introduce the various speakers, and generally just about stopping short of clucking like a mother hen.
  Said turn-out included some of the Northern Irish contributors who couldn’t make the Dublin launch for GREEN STREETS, including Colin Bateman, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville and Eoin McNamee; Niamh O’Connor, who made the trip North having missed out on the Dublin launch; Kevin McCarthy and Cormac Millar, who’d been at the Dublin launch and was attending the Belfast Books Festival; Gerard Brennan, who’d ventured South for the first launch and couldn’t get enough GREEN STREETS; Belfast-based scribe Andrew Pepper, who had chaired a conversation between Eoin McNamee and David Peace on Friday night; and the aforementioned David Peace.
  Yours truly was up first to deliver some thanks on behalf of Liberties Press, and then David introduced Brian McGilloway, who provided something of an unexpected treat by reading not from his current tome, LITTLE GIRL LOST, as promised in the programme, but his next Inspector Devlin novel, ISLES OF THE BONES, which will be published next year. Stirring stuff it was too, and whetted the appetite for what sounds as if it will be the most fascinating Devlin story to date.
  David Torrans then introduced a panel composed of Brian, Colin Bateman and Stuart Neville (above), who took part in a Q&A on the past, present and future of the crime novel in Northern Ireland, in the process referencing their present and forthcoming offerings - LITTLE GIRL LOST for Brian, NINE INCHES for Colin, and STOLEN SOULS for Stuart. Great stuff it was too, as entertaining as it was insightful, and terrific value for money and time. All told, it was a hugely enjoyable evening, and many thanks to all who took part, facilitated and helped out in any way.
  Incidentally, I’ve written many times on these pages before about David Peace (right, with Kevin McCarthy), and how much I admire his Red Riding quartet, most recently on Friday, so it was lovely to actually meet him. It was slightly disconcerting to discover that he’s a disappointingly nice man in person - given the intensity of his prose, I was half-hoping he’d be mad, and as likely to bite as shake my hand. But no. He was the very model of friendly approachability, although it was more than surreal when he approached me, with a copy of GREEN STREETS in his hand, and asked me to sign it. Such moments are rare, folks, and I’ll be treasuring that one for a long time to come.
  Anyhoo, that’s the official functions for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS finished, and there’s a certain amount of relief involved, given that it was a very busy fortnight, and that I was concerned first and foremost that the book, and my efforts on its behalf, would do justice to the very fine body of writers who contributed, and to Liberties Press for publishing it in such elegant fashion. Incidentally, Dave Torrans had all the Northern-based writers sign copies of GREEN STREETS, this on top of all those who signed copies at the Dublin launch, so anyone requiring a multiple-signed copy should clickety-click here …
  Back now to the cave for yours truly and the rather more prosaic business of hacking a plausible narrative out of the wilderness I’ve managed to cultivate around my latest humble offering, working title THE BIG EMPTY, although experience tells me that a machete will hardly suffice, and it won’t be long before I’ll be reaching for the flame-thrower and napalm. I’ll keep you posted if and when any reviews of GREEN STREETS pop up, but hopefully the hard sell on said tome is over, and it’ll be business as usual. Well, until August rolls around, and Liberties Press publish my own novel, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. But that, dear friends, is a story for another day …

Peace Comes Dropping Slow

I’m three-quarters way through the Red Riding quartet, and it’s fair to say that David Peace (right) is a rather intense writer. In fact, I’ve been reading the quartet sparingly, not least because it takes me a James Ellroy afterwards to come down from reading a Peace. I should add that Peace, on the evidence of the Riding Riding quartet at least, is a brilliant writer: he brings a rare quality of psychological intimacy to the page, and his stories get under the skin in the way that most writers, quite frankly, don’t.
  I have no idea what David Peace is like in person, but the good burghers of Belfast will find out at 6pm this evening, Friday 17th, when he takes to the stage for a conversation with Eoin McNamee as part of the Belfast Book Festival, with Andrew Pepper playing the dapper host. The event is titled ‘States of Crime: The State in Crime Fiction’, and should be an absolute cracker. All the details can be found here …
  Later that evening, at 8pm, David Torrans will be interviewing John Banville at the Crescent Arts Centre, this to mark the publication of Banville’s latest Benjamin Black offering, A DEATH IN SUMMER (for a review, scroll down). Taken together, the Peace / McNamee and Banville / Black mash-up has the makings of a splendid night’s entertainment for the discerning crime fic fan.
  Meanwhile, the Belfast launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS takes place on Saturday evening, also as part of the Belfast Book Festival, with David Torrans of No Alibis doing the honours, although the event itself will take place at the Crescent Arts Centre. Authors in attendance will include Brian McGilloway, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O’Connor, Eoin McNamee and Gerard Brennan, and if it’s half as good as the Dublin launch, it’ll be a terrific night for all concerned. For the full details, clickety-click here …
  In other news, the confusion between Declan Hughes and Declan Burke is reaching crisis point - I’ve been contacted three times this week alone on Twitter by people presuming that I’m Dec Hughes. The first thing to say about that is that it sounds like Dec Hughes is having a much more interesting war than I am; the second is that, as I’ve pointed out before, Dec Hughes is the Declan with the looks and talent; I’m the other guy. Anyway, RTE’s Arena programme has very helpfully offered to put the Declan / Declan crisis to bed by featuring us both on tonight’s programme, in conversation about DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which airs at 7.30pm GMT. You can listen live here, but if you miss it, don’t worry: the archive will be up on Arena’s website within a day or two …
  Finally, the ladies at the Anti-Room blog were kind enough to yesterday feature Anti-Room contributor and author Arlene Hunt’s essay from DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, ‘A Shock to the System’. The essay is reprinted in full, and is in my not-very-humble opinion well worth ten minutes of your time. The Anti-Room blog can be found here …

Yet More GREEN STREETS: Or, Dropping Murder Back In The Alleyway, Where It Belongs

(l-r: Claire Coughlan, Jane Casey, Cormac Millar, Declan Hughes, Sara Keating, Kevin McCarthy, Ingrid Black, Arlene Hunt, Declan Burke, Gene Kerrigan, Alex Barclay, John Connolly, Ian Ross, Alan Glynn and Ken Bruen.

Back to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS duty today, folks, and what I consider to be a rather interesting and possibly even historic photograph (above), which was actually taken in a (sadly metaphorical) green alleyway, as opposed to on a green street, outside the Gutter Bookshop at Tuesday night’s launch of said tome. The photo was taken outside, of course, because of the sheer volume of the combined egos involved; one wrong word, one perceived slight, and the Gutter Bookshop could have gone up like the Hindenburg.
  Thankfully, everyone was excessively polite to one another, and very nice it was to see so many excellent writers in the same company. Hopefully we’ll all get the chance to do it again some day. For more pics of the night, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, a certain Ray Thornton of the Evening Herald has the dubious honour of being the first to hit the mainstream newsprint media with a piece on DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY. The article was more in the way of an article offering an overview of Irish crime writing, using GREEN STREETS as a jumping-off point, but Thornton was suitably impressed by chapters from, among others, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison and Tara Brady. He was particularly impressed by the guys ‘n’ gals of Norn Iron. Quoth Thornton:

“One of the most fascinating aspects of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS is the contributions made by writers from the North. If authors in the Republic were reluctant to tack the Troubles then one can only imagine how difficult it was for those operating in the Six Counties. And yet, the travails of trying to figure out a way of writing entertaining books about killers when there was murder and mayhem going on around you adds a blackly humourous edge to the pieces by Colin Bateman, Adrian McKinty and Brian McGilloway.”

  We thank you kindly, sir.
  Incidentally, and if you’re interested, I appeared with Eoin McNamee on TV3’s Ireland AM programme last Wednesday, to talk about GREEN STREETS and the phenomenal rise in Irish crime writing. The link is here …
  Finally, the second launch of GREEN STREETS takes place in Belfast on this coming Saturday, June 18th, at the Crescent Arts Centre, in conjunction with No Alibis and the Belfast Books Festival. I’ll be there, but don’t let that put you off - Brian McGilloway, Eoin McNamee, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt and Gerard Brennan will also be in attendance. If you’re in the Belfast area next Saturday, you’re more than welcome along. All the details can be found here …
  Oh, and by the way - if you’re in Belfast on Friday night, there’s an unmissable gig planned for No Alibis. Titled ‘States of Crime: The State in Crime Fiction’, it’s a conversation between Eoin McNamee and David Peace, which will be hosted by BLOODY WINTER author Andrew Pepper. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Welcome To Ireland, Ma’am

Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Ireland today, and naturally there’s more of a fuss being made of her visit than if she were the Queen of Sweden, say, or Swaziland. Eight hundred years of oppression, the Famine, the Black and Tans, Bobby Sands, yadda-yadda-yadda. I know that some handful of headbangers are apoplectic about the fact that the Republic of Ireland is welcoming the Queen of England to our country, and I also know that there are people who are fairly a-quiver with excitement at the prospect. Most people, as far as I can make out, are pretty blasé about it all - history is a fine thing, certainly, but it don’t boil no potatoes.
  It’ll be interesting to hear what the Queen has to say when she visits Croke Park, for sure, and there’s no doubting the historic importance of the optics of her visit, but really, very little will change. Ireland will go on treating Britain like some kind of older sibling, vaguely resentful of the bullying that went on years ago, a little envious perhaps of its self-confidence, all the while stealing its clothes and playing its games and supporting its teams - unless, of course, it’s England that looks like winning a World Cup - and tapping it up for jobs and the odd five billion now and again.
  As an Irishman, it should go without saying that if I could wave a magic wand, as Declan Kiberd said during the week, and erase the colonialism, the Famine, the Partition and the Troubles, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I can’t. The world is the way it is, and what’s gone, to paraphrase the song, is gone and lost forever. The question is whether we want to live in the past or look to the future. Some people are happier wallowing in the mire of history, given the certainty of its prejudices; some people are happier looking forward. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m one of the latter.
  I’ve liked most English and / or British people I’ve met, and I love the culture - I support Liverpool FC; I love The Stones and The Beatles, The Smiths and Joy Division; I love the novels of David Peace, Lawrence Durrell, William Golding, John Fowles, Graham Greene, and many, many more. I grew up on a steady diet of Enid Blyton, Match of the Day and Top of the Pops. Any time I’ve visited Britain, I’ve been treated with the kind of courtesy and good manners that the Irish are supposed to be famous for. I’ve never been particularly interested in the monarchy, and I’m opposed in principle to the idea that people are born to rule, even in a titular sense; but that’s neither here nor there for the next few days.
  The Queen of England has come to visit the Republic of Ireland, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be treated with the same respect and courtesy she offered Michael Fagan, when she chatted with him for ten minutes when he dropped by her bedroom unannounced. Welcome to Ireland, Ma’am - I sincerely hope you enjoy your stay.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Andrew Pepper

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?
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett – the original hard-boiled crime novel and still the best. David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet – four astonishing novels that made me feel physically ill by the time I’d finished them (in a good way). THE POWER OF THE DOG by Don Winslow is a thing of awe and wonder – visceral, finger-chewing stuff and the last word on the lamentable ‘war on drugs’ and the limitations of American power. Anything bleak and angry that asks the right questions but knows not to try and provide answers. Newton Thornburg’s CUTTER AND BONE is another novel I’d loved to have written. Failure and despair are all but inevitable but that doesn’t mean you have to give up. And each time I read the part where Cutter tries to ‘park’ his car I weep with laughter.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Chief Bromden played a cagier game than McMurphy and managed to side-step the lobotomy.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Student essays.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Whenever you know you absolutely should be doing something else and yet you still feel somehow compelled to sit in front of the screen and type away – and before you know it an hour, two hours, four hours, have passed since you last thought to check the time.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE ULTRAS by Eoin McNamee. It’s spare, terse, poetic; it disorientates you and never lets you settle; it delves deep into minds of its characters but never gives you the answers you expect; it tells a gripping and gut-churning story about complicity and state violence without succumbing to political posturing or cliché.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
WINTERLAND by Alan Glynn – I see Richard Gere channelling his best ‘Jackal’ voice for the part of Paddy Norton and Julia Roberts reprising her star turn from ‘Mary Reilly’ in the role of Gina Rafferty.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: Monday 10.37am – everything is great, you’re great, what you’re writing is great, not just great, it’s going to blow every other crime novel ever written out of the water. Great is a word, daring is another, because what you’re doing is ripping up the genre into tiny little pieces and letting them fall where they may on the page …

Worst: Monday 12.13pm – you’ve spent the last half hour picking up those pieces of paper and carefully sellotaping them back into some kind of recognisable order. The result is a piece of writing so dreary and predictable, so utterly moribund, that it could creosote Alan Shearer’s shed and still have time to put in a full shift at the call centre. Not only does it suck, you suck, you’re a fraud, and worse, a coward, and just when you think you can’t sink any lower you’re watching a repeat of ‘Bargain Hunt’ which you know is a repeat because you’ve seen it before …

The pitch for your next book is …?
I slip into the leather booth and when the movie producer asks this same question, I lean across the table and whisper, “Karl Marx meets ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’.” The producer smiles to reveal teeth as white as Belfast (circa 1997) and says, “I saw a Karl Malden movie once.” Not listening, I reply, ‘He was German.” He says, ‘In ‘On the Waterfront’?” I grimace a little and remember to thank him for the first-class flights and the suite at the Chateau Marmont. “Who’s going to play the Marlon Brando role?” says he. I frown. “It’s a searing indictment of the ills of global capitalism.” He checks his phone. “Have you thought about Justin Bieber?”

Who are you reading right now?
Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM. I always feel uplifted when I read proper literature.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
First I’d ask God to do his Morgan Freeman impression. Then I’d ask him about the Old Testament and what happened to his sense of humour. Then I’d select the latter option. Anyone can write. Reading is for the chosen few.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Be. Less. Shit.

Andrew Pepper’s BLOODY WINTER is published by W&N.

Doing His Eoin Thing

I had a pretty good month last November, when I met and interviewed both Eoin McNamee (right) and James Ellroy, whom I regard as two of the finest living writers we have. The Eoin McNamee interview ran a lot like this:

“I THINK THAT THIS is where noir fiction has its universal appeal, if you take that sort of Calvinist ideal of predestination. But if the judge is corrupt, if the person who is controlling the predestination is corrupt, then where do you go in the universe?”
  It’s no easy thing to interview Eoin McNamee. The Down-born author of ORCHID BLUE, which was published late last year and was by some distance the finest Irish novel of the year, is by turns painfully self-effacing and given to profound pronunciations on the business of writing. He laughs a lot too, and defensively, as if concerned you might think he takes himself too seriously. What’s certain, though, is that he’s deadly serious about the business of writing.
  ORCHID BLUE is a novel rooted in the real life murder of Pearl Gamble, who was stabbed to death in Newry in 1961. The man convicted of her murder, Robert McGladdery, was the last man to be hanged on Irish soil. But for McNamee, who has forged a career from writing novels based on historical facts, such as the Shankhill Butchers, the slaughter of the Miami Showband, and the death of Princess Diana, the conviction of McGladdery remains a dubious one.
  “Well, the obvious link is Lance Curran,” says McNamee of his fascination with Pearl Gamble story, “who was connected to both cases - Curran’s daughter was murdered in the first case, which I wrote about in THE BLUE TANGO, and he tried Robert McGladdery for the murder of Pearl Gamble. I was researching the case in the newspaper archive in Belfast, and at this stage I hadn’t read Curran’s charge to the jury. But when I read it, as I describe it in the book, his summoning up was almost icily correct. At the time it was considered fair, but I suspect that it was to cut off every possible avenue of an appeal. I just felt a cold hand on the back of my neck, the way Judge Curran, with malice I thought, summed up the facts of McGladdery’s case. And that was pretty much the starting point.”
  The novel, despite the fact that its ending is a matter of historical record, is a compelling page-turner of a thriller that evokes the atmosphere of its time and place with a dense but spare poetic style. McNamee has often been compared to James Ellroy and David Peace, two writers who also base their novels in historical fact, and he cites the infamous Black Dahlia case, upon which Ellroy based a novel, twice in ORCHID BLUE. Does he feel a sense of kinship with his fellow writers?
  “I’d have come across the Black Dahlia case ever before I heard of James Ellroy,” he says, “so I’d certainly appreciate where they’re both coming from, but I was well set on my own path ever before I came across them. I suppose there is a sense of kinship, in the kind of stories we tell, the style of the writing, but it’d be very easy to fall into the trap of writing a sub-James Ellroy or sub-David Peace kind of writing. When I first read Ellroy and Peace I was thrilled, of course, but on their own terms as writers, not for any other reason.”
  McNamee is a more formal and elegant writer than Ellroy or Peace, and his novels straddle the literary and crime genres. Despite the crime elements in his stories, however, McNamee’s novels offer a more profound experience than crime novels tend to do.
  “Well, as you know yourself,” he says, “a lot of the genre crime stuff is written to entertain and not much else. But I’ve spoken before, I’ve used the phrase, about the novel being an attempt to apprehend the transcendent. And that’s a different kind of book entirely.”
  Is there a danger, when writing novels rooted in historical fact, and given the benefits of hindsight, that the fictional aspect spills over into editorialising?
  “That’s always possible,” he says, “but [ORCHID BLUE] is a 21st century novel. Obviously it’s about a story that took place 50 years ago, but in its structure and conception, it’s a 21st century novel. Certainly you’re putting things in there that may or may not have been there at the time, but it’s not verisimilitude, you’re not trying to write a historical novel.
  “I suppose the thing is, you’re looking at people and the way they behaved within the boundaries that they knew, those of their time. You do have that particular framework. But justice, the concept of it, hasn’t changed since Plato’s time. And I was writing about corruption rather than justice, how people can act on these kind of absolutes when they’ve already been corrupted themselves.”
  Does he owe a debt to the real-life characters he writes about?
  “You’re always walking a moral tightrope,” he agrees, “to a certain extent. Looking back it seems quite easy, the story is what it is. But when you start talking about historical fact, you’re not really talking about the facts at all, you’re talking about the historical record. And that’s a different thing entirely to what the facts were.
  “So you are making judgements all the time, asking yourself where you should take it, wondering if you’ve taken it over the line. But it’s an artistic line you don’t want to cross, if I can put it that way. If you get it wrong in the moral sense, then you get it wrong. But I’m a writer, not a priest. And as a writer, you answer to the god of fiction.”

  Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE is published by Faber and Faber.

  This interview was first published in the Evening Herald.

Truth vs Fiction: And The Winner Is …

Barry Forshaw, reviewing Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE in last weekend’s Sunday Tribune, asks an interesting question. To wit:

How legitimate is it to plunder real-life crime as grist for a fiction writer’s mill? And how long an interval should be left before picking over the bones of a murder? Celebrated crime novelists who have transmuted grim reality into uncompromising books include James Ellroy, who fictionally confronted his own mother’s murder in THE BLACK DAHLIA, and David Peace, who controversially used the Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror in the Red Riding Quartet. Eoin McNamee steps into this dangerous territory with ORCHID BLUE – less visceral than these predecessors, but equally provocative, as he deals with the last hanging on Irish soil …

  I was asked a similar question - How legitimate is it to plunder real-life crime as grist for a fiction writer’s mill? - during a panel discussion last year, when the mood seemed to suggest that such ‘plundering’ wasn’t a good idea at all, although that was in the context of Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST. At the time I’d recently read ORCHID BLUE, though, so it all seemed a pretty good idea to me. And, in general, I’d tend to believe that the writer’s obligation is to write the story as well as he or she can, with all other considerations trailing in a poor second. But that’s just me.
  Anyway, it was a good weekend for McNamee in terms of reviews. Jake Kerridge gave ORCHID BLUE the thumbs up in The Telegraph, and was very approving of Jane Casey’s THE BURNING into the bargain; while yours truly had reviews of ORCHID BLUE, The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman’s DR YES and Benjamin Black’s ELEGY FOR APRIL in the Sunday Independent.
  Meanwhile, both McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE and THE BLUE TANGO (2001) featured Lord Justice Curran, who presided over the trial of Robert McGladdery (ORCHID BLUE) despite the fact that his own daughter was murdered 10 years previously in very similar circumstances (THE BLUE TANGO). Word is that McNamee is planning a third novel to feature Justice Curran; ‘legitimate’ or not, I for one can’t wait.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: ORCHID BLUE by Eoin McNamee

Eoin McNamee has forged a career from novelistic reconstructions of true crimes. RESURRECTION MAN (1994) dealt with the Shankhill Butchers, THE BLUE TANGO (2001) was woven around the murder of 19-year-old Patricia Curran in 1952, THE ULTRAS (2004) concerned itself with the British undercover operative Robert Nairac, and 12:23. PARIS. 31st AUGUST 1997 (2007) with events surrounding the death of Princess Diana.
  ORCHID BLUE, McNamee’s latest offering, is something of a sequel to THE BLUE TANGO (2001). Set in Newry in 1961, it employs the murder of 19-year-old shop assistant Pearl Gamble, and the subsequent investigation, for its narrative arc. Robert McGladdery, who was seen dancing with Pearl on the night of her murder, is considered the main suspect, but Detective Eddie McCrink, a Newry native returning to home soil from London, discovers a very disturbing set of circumstances. Not only have the local police decided that McGladdery fits the bill as murderer, but McGladdery himself appears to welcome the notoriety. Most disturbing of all, however, is the man who presides over the court case when McGladdery is brought to trial. As the father of Patricia Curran, who was murdered in very similar circumstances ten years previously, Lord Justice Lance Curran should have disbarred himself as judge. McCrink quickly comes to understand that the ‘soft spoken and implacable’ Justice Curran has actively sought the position, and is determined that whoever murdered Pearl Gamble should hang. Moreover, it’s clear from the beginning of the novel that Justice Curran and the powers-that-be, including then Northern Ireland Secretary Brian Faulkner, want to see someone hanged for the murder.
  Lance Curran’s daughter Patricia was found savagely murdered on November 13th, 1952. She had suffered 37 separate stab wounds. Iain Gordon, an Englishman stationed at a nearby RAF base, was arrested, tried and convicted of her murder. The evidence was circumstantial, however, and Gordon was released on appeal a year after his conviction. The real killer of Patricia Curran was never caught. In ORCHID BLUE, McNamee delves back into ‘the Blue Tango’ case, exploring Patricia Curran’s family history, and suggesting that her killer was well known to her, and possibly a family member.
  Students of Irish history will know that Robert McGladdery was the last man to be hanged on Irish soil, a fact that infuses Orchid Blue with a noir-ish sense of fatalism and the inevitability of retribution. That retribution and State-sanctioned revenge are no kind of justice is one of McNamee’s themes here, however, and while the story is strained through an unmistakably noir filter, McNamee couches the tale in a form that is ancient and classical, with McGladdery pursued by Fate and its Furies and Justice Curran a shadowy Thanatos overseeing all.
  McGladdery, according to the novel at least, is the perfect patsy. He is something of an unknown presence in Newry, having returned to the town from London with notions above his station, yet lacking the substance to secure or keep a job. He is vain, fascinated with lurid novels, works out as a body-builder, and keeps less than salubrious company. Perhaps it was the case that McGladdery didn’t believe that the evidence was strong enough to convict him, but for most of the investigation he appeared to delight in the attention he received. The son of a single mother, Agnes, Robert was perhaps always operating at an attention deficit, given his mother’s predilection for hard drinking and one-night stands.
  McNamee has described the noir novel as a very ‘Calvinist’ kind of storytelling, with its undertones of implacable fate and predestination. What hope is there for a person if he or she has been fingered by fate before they’re even born? And what hope if the ultimate arbiter of justice - God, for the most part, although McNamee’s arbiter of justice in ORCHID BLUE is Justice Lance Curran - is already prejudiced against the person in the dock?
  The repressed sexuality of the times, and sexual hypocrisy in particular, is a strong secondary theme in ORCHID BLUE, as it was in THE BLUE TANGO. Given the context of 1961 Newry, there’s an element of character assassination that goes along with reports of Pearl Gamble’s last movements in ORCHID BLUE - the very fact that she was at a dance, runs the theory, is akin to her ‘asking for it’. This despite the fact that Pearl Gamble was not sexually assaulted prior to or after her murder. ‘Pearl had been stripped naked,’ writes McNamee, ‘but in the words of the lead detective John Speers, ‘it was a mercy she was not outraged.’’
  In terms of McGladdery, McNamee writes: ‘It was these materials that were found when the Newry police raided Robert’s house, leading to the rumours which swept the town concerning Robert’s sexual preferences.’
  A minor character in the novel, Margaret, the girlfriend of investigating detective Eddie McCrink, is a single woman of a certain age, and so must conduct her affair with McCrink in privacy, so as not to offend the town’s sensibilities.
  The relationship between Robert and his mother, Agnes, is also given a flavour of repressed sexuality:

‘Robert would watch Agnes at her dressing table getting ready to go out … He saw it on her clothes when she came home. The zips and fasteners strained at. A button missing. Fabric pulls and ladders in the stockings … She seemed ruined in an epic way, smelling of gin and smoke, sitting on the edge of his bed … She would stroke his face and murmur his name.’

  These are all echoes of similar themes explored in THE BLUE TANGO, when the investigation of the murder of Patricia Curran gets bogged down in her sexual exploits.
  McNamee’s preference for fictionalising true-life crimes has led to comparisons with David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet and the work of James Ellroy (McNamee twice references the infamous Black Dahlia case in ORCHID BLUE), although McNamee offers a more elegant, formal style of prose. Indeed, the style is often densely lyrical. Depending on your point of view, the brevity of the sentences and the dense lyricism can lend itself to poetry or the staccato rhythms of the classical noir novel.
  Relentlessly sinister in tone and poisonously claustrophobic, the novel is equally capable of almost unbearable poignancy, such as when the emotionally brutalised Robert McGladdery writes from his prison cell:

‘My mother Agnes McGladdery what can be said about her she done her best. I wish she’d stayed home nights when I was small the wind was loud in the slates it roared dear God it roared.’

  Knowing that the novel is based on a true-life murder and its investigation, it’s difficult to read the novel without wondering where the reportage ends and the fiction begins. McNamee’s research appears to be terrific, and the period detail is beautifully wrought, but you do start to wonder about the extent to which he is editorialising when he begins to write, for example, from Robert McGladdery’s point of view.
  That said, McNamee does not overly indulge in hindsight, or explore events in 1961 from a 21st century morality. It’s also true that what was immoral in 1961 - if McGladdery, for example, was being framed for a murder he did not commit - then such an act is equally immoral in 2010.
  All told, ORCHID BLUE is a powerful tour-de-force and probably McNamee’s finest novel to date. - Declan Burke

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson

Former policewoman and now a security guard at a Leeds shopping centre, Tracy Waterhouse makes a shocking, split-second decision on an otherwise ordinary day. In ‘buying’ a child from a junkie, Tracy puts herself on the other side of the thin blue line she has defended ever since she left school. Fifty-something, lonely, and living a life that grows increasingly meaningless with every passing day, Tracy is fully aware of the enormity of her decision, and yet every instinct screams at her to protect the half-starved mite, Courtney.
  A number of stories run parallel to Tracy’s. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator and a recurring character in Atkinson’s novels, criss-crosses the Northeast of England as he attempts to track down the genealogical roots of a client who was adopted at a very young age, and whose parents subsequently emigrated to New Zealand. Tilly, an aging actress who suffers from early dementia / Alzheimer’s, witnesses Tracy’s ‘purchase’ of Courtney, but can barely differentiate between who she is and the character she is playing, let alone help the police with their enquiries.
  A further narrative strand takes us back to the mid-’70s, when the Yorkshire Ripper was at large in the Northeast. Tracy’s first case, as a young policewoman on the beat, involves discovering a woman dead in her flat, and a young, half-starved boy who has been left alone with the mouldering remains of his mother for a number of weeks.
  It’s something of an understatement to say that STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, the follow-up to Atkinson’s runaway smash WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, is an unusual crime novel. On the face of it, and given that it features a policewoman (both as an ex-policewoman and, in flashbacks, when she was actively working the beat) and a private eye, the novel appears to be adopting the standard tropes of both the police procedural and the private detective novel. Once you get under the skin of the novel, however, it quickly becomes clear that Atkinson employs these tropes in order to subvert them. Although she gains our sympathy very early in the story, and retains it throughout, Tracy Waterhouse is far from a typical copper. To begin with, her ‘buying’ of a young child is a shocking development mere pages into the story, regardless of how noble her motives are, or how desperate the circumstances Courtney is escaping. Atkinson never shies clear of how outrageous Tracy’s actions are, and yet still manages to generate reader sympathy for her self-imposed plight.
  Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie is arguably the most whimsical private detective in contemporary fiction. His past, which is alluded to in a number of tangential sections, suggests that he is by no means a man to be messed with, and yet his internal monologues, and the ‘conversations’ he carries on in his head with his ex-wife, often border on pure farce. Brodie, incidentally, is the man who ‘adopts’ the dog of the title, when he rescues a terrier from a bullying owner. His ‘adoption’ of the dog runs parallel to Tracy’s ‘adoption’ of Courtney, and much of the black humour of the novel derives from their lack of understanding of their new charges.
  Tilly, the aging actress, is also presented largely by way of internal monologue, although Tilly’s version of events tends to be cloudy at best, given that she is suffering from short-term memory loss and incipient dementia. Tilly is currently shooting a TV series called Collier, which is set in the Northeast and features the kind of hard-nosed, rebellious copper beloved of screen crime writers. Here, again, Atkinson has plenty of inter-textual fun poking jibes at fictional representations of crime in mainstream media, particularly in terms of how TV cop dramas tend to be chock-a-block with incident, whereas Atkinson’s story is positively mundane by comparison.
  Atkinson writes in a deceptively elegant style, with the musings of her characters rendered almost conversational. The easy flow and apparently disjointed thought process masks precise plotting and superb attention to detail, although the style does become more staccato in the flashback sequences that take us back to the mid-’70s, when the writing - deliberately or otherwise - echoes the more impressionistic but simultaneously brutal style of David Peace’s haunting ‘Red Riding’ quartet, which also employed the Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror for backdrop.
  Atkinson’s subversive treatment of the tropes of crime fiction, and particularly those of the staple narratives of police procedural and private eye, is very much to her credit. Many crime fiction fans read little other than crime stories, and many are very happy to re-read the same kind of story over and over again. In playfully deconstructing the police procedural (Tracy, for example, uses her skills as a policewoman in order to keep herself beyond the reach of the long arm of the law), Atkinson is tapping into a zeitgeist in which concepts of law and order grow more fluid by the day. That sense of fluidity can be something as simple as the downgrading / upgrading of a particular drug from Class A to Class B, or vice versa, with the penalty for possession and / or dealing very much dependent on the political will of the day; or it can emerge from a much more important philosophical point of view, given that Britain - for example, and whether the majority of its citizens like it or not - played a major part in the illegal invasion of Iraq. If it’s okay for a government to flout international law, runs the theory, then why should the citizens of its country feel obliged to obey domestic laws? When the particular case explored here, that of Tracy’s rescuing the stray waif Courtney from horrible domestic circumstances, is an example of doing the right thing regardless of what the law demands, then the line between right and wrong is further blurred.
  This is especially the case when Tracy’s actions are set against the historical backdrop of the novel, in which corruption, murder and cover-up go right to the heart of the policing establishment.
  Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie’s private investigator is in many ways a parody of the conventional private eye. Yes, he is dogged, and yes, he follows through on his case to uncover the truth for his client. By the same token, Brodie has been commissioned to discover the truth about a woman’s birth details, which is hardly the kind of mission any self-respecting fictional private eye would concern him or herself with. Moreover, Brodie appears to be using the case as an excuse to visit monasteries and castles and other tourist traps. And while Brodie does deliver the information required, his emotional commitment in the novel is to the stray waif of a dog he has rescued from a bullying owner. This sub-plot strand is apparently designed to parallel that of Tracy and her rescue of Courtney, and Atkinson seems to be saying that, in the grand scheme of things, one more or less rescued child is worth no more or less than a rescued dog.
  It’s also possible that the reverse is true, and that Atkinson is suggesting that a society can be judged on how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable, and that that applies not just to its human beings. If Brodie, a hard-nosed cynic with a dubious past, is prepared to go the extra mile and learn to live with his new best friend on its terms, then society is far more robust in terms of doing the right thing at its grass roots level than it is in its higher echelons.
  Despite its picaresque structure and its flaunting of the standard crime novel tropes (and perhaps because of this), STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG is never less than a compelling page turner. It’s also a very good novel of any stripe, genre or otherwise, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Atkinson’s debut novel BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM (1995) won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Atkinson, of course, isn’t the first literary author to turn her hand to crime fiction, and she won’t be the last. What makes this offering so satisfying is very obviously immersed in the genre, to the extent that she can afford to stand its conventions on their head and still turn in a pulsating, thoughtful, intelligent thriller. - Declan Burke

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: That Crucial First Week In Full

It was only last week that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS went live on Kindle, and already there’s so, so much to report. For one, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS knackered Mack Lundy’s Kindle mid-flight. Sorry about that, Mack. That blip was supposed to be a dry-run for my cunning plot to activate the virus I’ve coded into the text of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS in order to knacker the entire Kindle system on October 28th ...
  Sales-wise, it’s fair to say, things could have gone better. CRIME ALWAYS PAYS entered Amazon’s Kindle charts at # 8,245 and soared almost immediately to # 1,235 before it promptly plummeted out to # 13,889. On a chart, the graph would resemble the orbit of Halley’s comet. So that’s not good.
  On the other hand, the book did get the latest in its many write-ups from the lovely Book Witch. Quoth Ms Witch: “It’s simply a very amusing and mad crime novel, which any crime fan should enjoy.” So that’s good.
  Then Duane Swiersynski announced on Twitter that he’d bought a copy, which was good, but there’s been radio silence ever since, which is not good. Duane? I operate a value-for-money payback guarantee, so if it didn’t buzz your bajingas, just let me know where I should send the cheque.
  And then … Actually, no, that’s it. Just as well, really. It was all getting a bit frenetic there on Monday, and I am, to be quite frank about it, a parcel of vain strivings, loosely tied, methinks, for milder climes than these. Or words to that effect …
  In a nutshell, then, the week was a pretty fair reflection of the amount of work I put into promoting CAP, which amounted to little more than a blog post and a couple of tweets on Twitter. Now, it’s still early days, and the UK Kindle is coming this month, apparently, so that might make a difference – but even at this early stage it looks as if my avant-garde experiment in laissez-faire promotion is paying off handsomely. What I’m trying to prove in this experiment is something I already know, which is that it’s impossible to achieve a working wage in the publishing industry without having to work ten times as hard as you would in a job that pays minimum wage. Even the fact that I’m talking about writing books as ‘the publishing industry’ is fairly damning. The fact is, though, that it is an industry, and as with all industries, it’s the best capitalised endeavours that will rise to the top. Which is to say that, generally speaking, publishing a book these days is a pointless endeavour, if your aim is to reach the maximum number of readers possible for your particular kind of book, unless you’ve got pretty explicit incriminating photographs of the guy or gal behind the advertising budget. Forget quirky titles, and great stories, and viral marketing, and book trailers, and blogs and word-of-mouth and every other one-off fluke success story you’ve ever heard – as far as I can make out, it’s all about the promotional spend.
  Apart from the paltry few hours it took me to write CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, the spend on the book has been pretty minimal – about $20, or thereabouts. Which is why it is currently languishing at (checks Amazon Kindle listings on Friday night) # 5,711. Which is, okay, better than it was earlier this afternoon, but still not causing Dan Brown any sleepless nights.
  Meantime, I’m using the time that I’m not blogging / promoting / shilling to write. It’s going well, thanks for asking – I’m having fun screwing around with conventional notions of ‘story’, ‘novel’ and ‘book’. If I’m honest, I’d have to say that it is by a country mile the least commercial story I’ve ever written, and if I’m totally honest, I’d have to say that that’s deliberate. One reason for that is because, in the last year or so, I’ve had three books picked up by an editor at a pretty reputable U.S. publisher, and three times he has failed (no fault of his own) to get them past the bean-counters. Two of the three were straightforward enough, being a crime caper and a PI story, while the third was (to be fair to the bean-counters) rather more unconventional. The problem for me is that it’s the unconventional one that I found to be the most fun to write; and, if I’m not going to get published anyway, then I might as well keep writing, in the scarce few writing hours I have every week, the stuff that’s fun.
  It’s also, I think, a bit of a reaction to an industry that is becoming increasingly sterile and homogenous. There’s no getting away from the fact that that’s a very subjective take on things, and obviously it depends very heavily on the books I’ve been reading. I’ve read some terrific novels this year – Gene Kerrigan’s DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST), Robert Wilson’s THE IGNORANCE OF BLOOD, Ed O’Loughlin’s NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND, John Connolly’s THE GATES, Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND, Scott Philips’ COTTONWOOD, John Banville’s THE INFINITIES – but apart from re-reads – James Ellroy’s LA CONFIDENTIAL and Raymond Chandler’s FAREWELL, MY LOVELY – the only books that truly blew me away were GENIUS, a biography of Richard Feynman by James Gleick, 1974 by David Peace, and I AM ALIVE AND YOU ARE DEAD, a biography of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère.
  The Richard Feynman biography was mind-blowing because it incorporates a history of 20th century quantum physics, which, as is always the case when I dip into quantum physics, is akin to leaving my brain behind on a roller-coaster to fend for itself – I don’t know much about what’s going on, but it’s a hell of a ride. The same, I suppose, applied to 1974, but what I particularly liked about that was David Peace’s ability to bypass my eyes and lodge his words directly in the cerebral cortex – I’d imagine it’s the way a trained composer, say, ‘reads’ music off the sheet. What I liked about the Philip K. Dick book was the way Carrère screwed around with the biographical form, blending Dick’s professional and personal fictions and fantasies to the point where they became something of a double-helix, and it was virtually impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
  I have no idea of how well, or otherwise, the three books sold when they first appeared. I do know that all three, if not exactly life-changing reads, had the capacity (had I read them at a more impressionable age) to change the way I perceived books: to re-evaluate what a book can deliver, and the way in which a story can be told. I’m not trying to say that they were ‘unputdownable’ (the Feynman book, especially, required putting down on nearly every second page), or that the writers were such slick craftsmen that the pages seemed to turn on their own, so that I found myself transported to a world of the writer’s creation, blah-de-blah, nor offer any of the absurdly reductionist opinions that the commercial publishing world seems to value so highly. I don’t read to be ‘swept away’, or ‘entertained’, or distracted from my commute or to while away the hours on a beach – I read to be challenged and provoked, to be goaded into a greater awareness of my place in the grand scheme, etc. Most books these days, and fiction in particular, seem to want to be the literary equivalent of either Valium or Viagra, but life’s too short, and the world too wide, to waste it on third-rate knock-offs of stories that were already old by the time Aristophanes got around to spoofing Athenian intellectuals with CLOUDS – of which, I should say, bringing us full circle, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is a fourth-rate example, which may well account for why it is currently (checks Amazon Kindle rankings on Saturday morning before uploading post) languishing at # 14,199. Hence the new departure.
  All of which is a roundabout way of saying that, if I’m going to be a pathetically failed writer, then I’ll be a pathetically failed writer on my terms, not the industry’s. Yes, that ‘clunk-click’ you hear is yours truly bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted – and yes, you’re perfectly entitled to wonder whether I’d be so critical of the industry had one of my books being bought for a tidy sum in the last year or so. The answer, I’m pretty sure, is ‘Yes, I would’ – although I wouldn’t be blogging about it. I’d probably just bitch about it in private, and then go and write something similar to fulfil the contract, and put the interesting story that I’d really like to write on the back-burner, for another year at least.
  I guess I’m pretty lucky. I’m happy and healthy, I like my job, I can pay my bills, and I can – given that very few people in the publishing industry care either way – write whatever the hell I want to write. I’ll probably end up publishing the new story to the web next year, to the electronic equivalent of a few embarrassed coughs, but hey, it’s mine own. Life is good.