Event: Crimefest In Bristol

UPDATE: Hearty congrats to L.C. Tyler, who won the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award at Crimefest yesterday evening, a deserved winner and a very nice man to boot. Nice one, Len …
  For all the Crimefest award winners, clickety-click here …

The Bristol Crimefest 2015 kicks off today, May 14th, and for the first time in what seems like aeons I won’t be spending the weekend propping up the bar at the Bristol Marriott Royal sipping on my patented Pimms-and-liquorice. Bristol’s Crimefest is always a very intimate, friendly affair – as Pimms-and-liquorice-fuelled affairs tend to be – and I’m very disappointed to have to miss out this year. On the plus side, and as mentioned before on these pages, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS (Severn House) has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award, which will be announced along with a number of awards on Saturday night. To wit:

GOLDSBORO LAST LAUGH AWARD

The Goldsboro Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel first published in the British Isles in 2014. The £500 prize is sponsored by Goldsboro Books, the UK’s largest specialist in signed and/or first edition books. The winner also receives a Bristol Blue Glass vase.

The nominees are:

– Lawrence Block for The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Orion Publishing Group)
– Declan Burke for Crime Always Pays (Severn House Publishers)
– Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May – The Bleeding Heart (Bantam/Transworld)
– Shane Kuhn for Kill Your Boss (Little, Brown Book Group)
– Chris Pavone for The Accident (Faber & Faber)
– L. C. Tyler for Crooked Herring (Allison & Busby)

Eligible titles were submitted by publishers for the longlist, and a team of British crime fiction reviewers voted to establish the shortlist and the winning title.

CRIMEFEST annually presents a number of awards at its Gala Dinner which in 2015 will be held on Saturday, 16 May.

  The very best of luck to all the nominees, and may the funniest man win.
  For all the details on all of the Crimefest awards, including the eDunnit and Audible awards, clickety-click here …

Publication: CRIME ALWAYS PAYS now available in paperback

I’m delighted to announced that my current tome, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS (Severn House), is now available in paperback, which means that you can score the hardback edition for £16.99, the paperback for £11.99, or the e-book for £9.65. Quoth the blurb elves:

Who says crime doesn’t pay? The perpetrators of a botched kidnap make their getaway in this hilarious sequel to THE BIG O.
  Karen and Ray are on their way to the Greek islands to rendezvous with Madge and split the fat bag of cash they conned from her ex-husband Rossi when they kidnapped, well, Madge. But they’ve reckoned without Stephanie Doyle, the cop who can’t decide if she wants to arrest Madge, shoot Rossi, or ride off into the sunset with Ray. And then there’s Melody, the wannabe movie director, who’s pinning all her hopes on Sleeps, the narcoleptic getaway driver who just wants to go back inside and do some soft time.
  A European road-trip screwball noir, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS features cops and robbers, losers and hopers, villains, saints – and a homicidal Siberian wolf called Anna. The Greek islands will never be the same again.

  According to the good people at Publishers Weekly, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is ‘both baffling and entertaining’. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Crime Always Pays: Yay Or Nay?

So this is the proposed cover for CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, my forthcoming e-tome, which is a sequel to THE BIG O. It’s a trans-Europe road-trip comedy crime caper set for the most part in the Greek islands. If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, by the way, was briefly available as an e-book a couple of years ago, although given that it was a sequel to a book that wasn’t available in digital form, I thought it best to take it down again. During its brief availability, though, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS made it onto one of my favourite lists – Paul D. Brazill’s Top Ten Novels to Cure Your Hangover.

Crime Always Pays: It’s All Me-Me-Me-Me-Me …

Here we go again …
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’ve tried on a number of occasions to back away from Crime Always Pays. Or to reduce the amount of time I spend updating the blog, at least. Not that it takes up that much time, really – but these days, time is probably the most precious resource, and every little helps.
  Anyway, there are a few reasons as to why I’m going to make another effort to scale back on the daily updates. One is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep tabs on all the Irish crime writers, not least because they seem to be coming up like mushrooms. There was a time when I could make a fair fist of reading most of the Irish crime novels published in any given year; of late, there’s been two or three debut writers appearing every month, and that’s just the debutants.
  Given that most of my reading time nowadays is taken up with books that I’ve been commissioned to read, for review or interview, etc., I really don’t have a lot of reading time to left over to pursue my own interests. Like virtually everyone reading this post, I’d imagine, I have a to-be-read pile that’s in grievous danger of toppling over and doing someone a serious damage were they to be strolling by at an inopportune moment.
  It’s also the case that the blog – or the time spent updating it – is becoming a little counter-intuitive. The whole point of it, apart from bringing Irish crime writers to the attention of anyone who logs on here, is to generate a little awareness among the on-line reading community of my own books. Of course, the more I blog, the less I’m writing. And while we’re all in the business of selling books once they’re written, and while ‘selling books’ can be a very enjoyable pursuit in itself, given the extent to which you get to engage with a whole host of strangers, the point of the exercise, once you winnow out all the non-essentials, is to write. By which I mean, writing for its own sake, for the simple pleasure of moving words around and making them fit as best they can.
  Right now it feels like a very long time since I’ve been fully engaged as a writer.
  Meanwhile, I’m a little bit worried that all of the above is just an excuse, that the reason I’m not writing has nothing to do with time, or the lack of it, but because I’m dreading the process of starting a new book. At this stage, with four or five books under my belt, I’m fairly confident that once I get over some kind of hump that it’ll all start to happen; but right now that hump looks a lot like the north face of the Eiger, and – as always – I have this perverse instinct telling me that I should be able to clear it in one jump, from a standing start. I’ve even resorted to the old tactic of telling myself that if I can only get this one written, and written well, that that will be it – I’ll be happy then, I can stop writing for good.
  Anyway, that’s the general gist as to why things will be slowing down around these here parts. I will be updating the blog as we go along, but I’m afraid there’ll be quite a bit of me-me-me involved; for those of you who prefer more general updates on Irish crime writing, there’s always the Irish Crime Fiction Facebook page to peruse.
  Oh, and one last thing before I go – I’ll be hosting a Crime Writing course at the Irish Writers’ Centre over the next couple of months, which kicks off next Wednesday, February 6th, at 6.30pm. If you’re interested, all the details are here.

Always Trust A Greek Bearing Gifts

Yep, it’s CRIME ALWAYS PAYS at Crime Always Pays - and before you ask, no, crime doesn’t pay. Or crime writing, at least, for me, doesn’t pay. But it is fun.
  Anyway, as all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I published CRIME ALWAYS PAYS - a comedy crime caper set in the Greek islands - as an ebook a couple of years ago, just when things went a little screwy around here, time-wise (new baby, writing a novel, day job, etc.). Which meant that I didn’t get any time to promote it, which was a shame, because I’m of the not-very-humble opinion that CAP is the best book I’ve written to date.
  I have a little more time on my hands these days (baby is all grown up, turning four next week, and currently learning to cook, clean, vacuum and take out the trash), so I’m rebooting CRIME ALWAYS PAYS with a brand spanking new cover, and planning to spend a bit more time promoting it.
  First, the blurb elves:

“You never get away. You’re always getting away ...”

When a kidnap scam goes south, Karen and Ray head for the Greek islands to lay low for a while. Trouble there is, Anna - their Siberian wolf - ripped off Rossi's ear, Rossi being Karen's ex who believes he's owed half the kidnap score. Then there's Doyle, the cop Ray was making gooey eyes at; Sleeps the narcoleptic getaway driver who wants to go back inside for some soft time; and Melody, who’s in the market for a decent story she can turn into a movie. All of which is just Chapter One ...

A trans-Europe screwball noir, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS features a cast of cops and robbers, losers and hopers, villains, saints and a homicidal Siberian wolf. You’ll never see the Greek islands in quite the same light again …

Praise for Declan Burke:

“Among the most memorable books of the year, of any genre, was Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL … Burke splices insights into the creative process into a fiendishly dark thriller that evokes the best of Flann O’Brien and Bret Easton Ellis.” - Sunday Times, ‘Best Books of the Year 2011’

“Imagine Donald Westlake and his alter ego Richard Stark moving to Ireland and collaborating on a screwball noir and you have some idea of Burke’s accomplishment with THE BIG O.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“I have seen the future of Irish crime fiction and its name is Declan Burke.” - Ken Bruen on EIGHTBALL BOOGIE

  In the interests of promoting said tome, by the way, I’m more than happy to email on a review copy (i.e., e-friendly copy) to anyone who thinks they might like to review it. Or, for that matter, to anyone who thinks they might like to read it with no strings attached. If you do, drop me a line at dbrodb[@]gmail.com. Hell, drop me a line anyway, just to say hello, let me know what you think of the new cover …
  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS did receive a couple of very nice reviews on its first pass around, by the way, the first from the inimitable Glenn Harper over at International Noir:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is part road movie and part farce, reminding me sometimes of Elmore Leonard, sometimes of Allan Guthrie, sometimes of Donald Westlake and sometimes of the Coen Brothers - sometimes all at once.” - Glenn Harper, International Noir

  Meanwhile, the lovely folks at the New Mystery Reader declared that the novel was “ … a little like what might be expected if Elmore Leonard wrote from an outline by Carl Hiaasen ... It’s as close to watching an action movie as a reading experience can be.” Which is nice …
  Finally, here’s a little taster, aka how the novel kicks off, with the less-than-intrepid duo Rossi and Sleeps taking a visit to a veterinarian:

Sleeps

It was bad enough Rossi raving how genius isn’t supposed to be perfect, it’s not that kind of gig, but then the vet started carping about Sleeps’ pride and joy, the .22, nickel-plated, pearl grip, enough to stop a man and put him down but not your actual lethal unless you were unlucky. And right now, empty.
  Sleeps waggled it in the vet’s general direction. ‘Less talk,’ he said, ‘more angel of mercy. How’s that ear coming?’
  Not good and not fast, Rossi ducking around like Sugar Ray in a bouncy castle. Still in shock, bofto on the wowee pills, with these delusions of grandeur – he was Tony Montana or maybe Tony Manero, Sleeps couldn’t say for sure.
  It didn’t help there was no actual ear. The wolf had tore it clean off, along with enough skin to top a sizeable tom-tom. Plus the vet was using catgut and what looked to Sleeps like a needle he’d last seen on the Discovery Channel stuck horizontal through a cannibal’s nose.
  In the end Sleeps stepped in and stuck his forefinger in the wound, stirred it around. Rossi screeched once, high-pitched, then keeled over.
  ‘I’ll be wanting,’ Sleeps said, wiping his finger on Rossi’s pants, ‘a bag of horse tranks. And whatever gun you use for putting down the animals.’
  The vet shook his head. ‘We don’t use those anymore, they’re not humane.’
  ‘Humane? You’re a vet, man.’
  ‘We treat them like children,’ the vet said, ‘not animals.’
  ‘Nice theory.’ Sleeps scratched the cattle-prod off his mental list, gestured at Rossi with the .22. ‘But what if they’re a little of both?’

  So there you have it. CRIME ALWAYS PAYS. In comedy crime capers, at least. If you have the time, the energy and the inclination, I’d be very much obliged if you’d spread the good word …