The Don Done Good

Kristoffer Mullin’s Sunday Times review of Matt McGuire’s DARK DAWN (Corsair) - review published yesterday, no link - is not without its caveats, but overall it’s a very positive piece. First, Matt McGuire’s credentials:

“This may be his debut, but Matt McGuire already makes a living out of crime fiction. As a doctor of English literature at the University of Western Sydney, the Belfast-born academic is something of a specialist, and has published articles on the genre.”

  The latest in a long and venerable line of dons dabbling in the dark art of the crime novel does rather well, according to Mullin, with the gist running thusly:

“O’Neill’s struggles to cope with his disintegrating marriage, juggling fatherhood with a monomania for police work, feel well observed rather than trite, bringing a Henning Mankell-style realism to the genre. McGuire has a superb feel for the pressures of policing in Nothern Ireland, still suffering a hangover from the Troubles while dealing with the modern problems of youth crime and workplace politics. He also strikes a convincing tone when delving into Belfast’s underworld […] This is a terrific debut and one that demands a sequel.” - Kristoffer Mullin, Sunday Times

  DARK DAWN is currently teetering atop Mt TBR at CAP Towers, and it’s one I’m looking forward to. I’ll keep you posted …

Scandinavian Crime Fiction: Whither The Mavericks?

I’m reading Barry Forshaw’s DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE at the moment, and a fine piece of work it is too, being a forensically detailed account of the rise and rise of Scandinavian crime fiction. One interesting aspect is the short interviews dotted throughout the text with British-based editors who have signed Scandinavian authors, who respond to Forshaw’s question of whether the current trend for Scandinavian crime fiction is running out of steam with variations on a standard response of, ‘Well, all good things must end, but my guy / gal is different to the rest because …’ Yes. But you would say that, wouldn’t you?
  The book has got me thinking about the future of Irish crime fiction, though - or rather, about the fact that ‘Irish crime fiction’ doesn’t really have a future. A couple of weeks ago I posted a comment on a website which was asking about which country was likely to break through as the ‘next Scandi crime’ phenomenon, suggesting that it had to be Ireland. Now I’m not so sure; in fact, I’m pretty certain it won’t happen.
  That’s not to say that Irish writers aren’t on a par with their peers all over the world; they are, and then some. I honestly believe that some of the Irish crime writers currently plying their trade are some of the finest writers working in the genre.
  The problem, in terms of the break-out to mass commercial success, is also one of Irish crime writing’s greatest strengths: its diversity.
  Over the last year or so I’ve read novels by Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackberg, Roslund & Hellström, Liza Marklund, Jan Costin Wagner, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Anne Holt. Some were better than others; some were very good indeed.
  What struck me most forcibly, however, is how narrow are the parameters of Scandinavian crime fiction. That’s not to say that all the writers are working off the one palette - Karin Fossum’s novels are very different to Liza Marklund’s, for example, and there’s a marked difference in the urban- and rural-based police procedurals written by Jo Nesbo and Camilla Lackberg, respectively.
  Essentially, though, the Scandinavian novels I’ve read have been for the greater part characterised by the classic crime fiction model: a state-sanctioned investigator (cop, private eye, lawyer, etc.) charting the symptoms of turbulence in society and persuading us that the (admittedly tarnished) status quo is better than the alternative.
  There’s nothing wrong with that story-telling model, of course. I’m a fan of many writers who employ it. But it does seem to me, from my limited reading of Scandinavian crime writing, that there’s a homogeneity to the ‘brand’.
  I find that odd. It’s not as if the current crop of Scandinavian crime writers only began writing last year, or the year before. Hakan Nesser published his first novel in 1988; Henning Mankell’s first Wallander novel appeared in 1991; Karin Fossum’s first Inspector Sejer novel arrived in 1995; Anne Holt’s first novel came in 1993. Which is to say that the earliest pioneers have been working in the field for the best part of two decades. Shouldn’t a few mavericks have appeared at this stage, writers keen to subvert the established form by playing with narrative structure, or humour? Are there any Scandinavians working in the historical crime fiction realms that predate WWII, say? Is it the case that there are Scandinavian writers who take a decidedly post-modern take on the crime narrative, in the way Ken Bruen or Colin Bateman does, or in the way that John Connolly blends genres, but simply aren’t translated into English?
  Where are the Scandinavian comedy crime capers? The classical noirs that take the part of the wretched and doomed criminal as he seeks in vain for an escape from the labyrinth?
  If they’re out there, and I’m simply not aware of them, please do let me know.

  In the meantime, the whole reason I started writing this post was to celebrate the fact that Eoin Colfer’s postmodern comedy crime caper about a wretchedly balding bouncer, PLUGGED, has been shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prizes in the ‘Mystery / Thriller’ category. The full shortlist runs as follows:

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson
PLUGGED by Eoin Colfer
11 / 22 / 63 by Stephen King
SNOWDROPS: A NOVEL by AD Miller
THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina

  Nice one, Mr Colfer sir. The prizes will be awarded on April 20th, by the way, and here’s hoping that Eoin will emulate Stuart Neville, whose THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) won said category back in 2009.

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 …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Gerry Galvin

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 DEBT TO PLEASURE by John Lanchester, for the cruel, patrician detachment of his main character, Tarquin Winot and his food descriptions, to die for!

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther for the sheer pleasure of being hilariously inept.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
John Grisham, who always tells a good story.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I finally discovered ‘the right voice’ for James Livingstone Gall in KILLER A LA CARTE.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde. A stunning and creepy depiction of depravity, never bettered.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
So many! Any of Benjamin Black’s or Gene Kerrigan’s - all that authentic Dublin detail.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is re-reading my over-indulgent wordiness and the best is loving the precious moments of flow.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Food critic, James Livingstone Gall, finally comes to grips with his murderous nature; rehab and a form of redemption. But he is unaware that a newly appointed Detective Inspector is revisiting past unsolved murders with James Livingstone Gall on top of his most wanted list. James, on the run, soon reverts to murder mode, globe-trotting, one step ahead of the posse.

Who are you reading right now?
THE MASTER by Colm Toibin, having just finished a couple of novels by Lawrence Block, a master in his own right. Henning Mankell’s THE DOGS OF RIGA is on standby.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d insist on the right to consult my lawyer.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Could do better.

Gerry Galvin’s KILLER A LA CARTE is published by Doire Press.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Blatty, Hill, Gran, Lackberg, Mankell

William Peter Blatty’s THE REDEMPTION (Piatkus Books, £7.99, pb) is an unusual thriller, as you might expect from the author of THE EXORCIST. Opening in Albania in the 1970s, the story focuses on a man being tortured on suspicion of being an enemy agent of the State. The atmosphere is redolent of a John Le Carré Cold War thriller, albeit one with supernatural overtones - the tortured man, Dimiter, remains effortlessly unbroken, and is spoken of in whispered tones as ‘the agent from Hell’. The setting then switches to Jerusalem, where a local police detective investigates a number of strange murders, and the supernatural tone gives way to a more philosophical enquiry into the politics of revenge, salvation and redemption. Blatty’s prose is starkly rendered, a minimalist style that adds momentum to the propulsive plot. There are occasional poetic flourishes, however, which leaven the story’s hard-headed realism, just as Blatty’s hints that Dimiter may be a creature more exotic than a mere spy lend the thriller format an element of quixotic speculation. The net result is a haunting tale that remains thought-provoking long after the final revelation.
  TABOO (Simon & Schuster, £6.99, pb) is the debut offering from husband-and-wife writing team Kevin and Melissa Hill. The latter is better known as the author of a series of best-selling women’s fiction titles, and here she creates the ultra-feminine feminist Reilly Steel, a California-born forensic investigator seconded to the newly founded Garda Forensic Unit, based in Dublin. The narrative employs for its spine a series of perverse murders that all appear to transgress social taboos, although the plot itself is secondary to the establishing of Reilly Steel as a credible Irish alternative to the international popularity of CSI-related investigations. In this the Casey Hill writing team is largely successful: Reilly Steel is a broadly drawn but likeable character, smart but not omnipotent, entirely capable but vulnerable too. The presence of a Quantico-trained FBI investigator on the mean streets of Dublin is plausibly achieved, and the novel derives its page-turning quality from the rapid pace of events as the investigation gathers momentum. The frenetic pace, however, results in a lack of psychological depth when it comes to characterisation, while the machinations of the fiendish killer are revealed to be disappointingly clichéd at the finale.
  CITY OF THE DEAD (Faber and Faber, £12.99, pb) is Sara Gran’s fourth novel, and the first to feature the private investigator Claire DeWitt. Commissioned to find a missing man in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, DeWitt applies her unique brand of investigation style. This echoes the modus operandi of classic private eyes such as Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, but often appears counter-intuitive due to DeWitt’s devotion to the theories of legendary French detective Jacques Silette, as espoused in his sole publication, ‘Detection’. Searching in the least likely places, working off instinct and hunch, DeWitt trawls the devastated New Orleans in pursuit of a truth she explicitly acknowledges does not exist. The tale has strong echoes of Ken Bruen’s post-modern take on the private eye novel, in which the case being investigated is less important than the self-invigilating investigator; as is the case with Bruen’s Jack Taylor novels, in which his native Galway looms large as a character, New Orleans, and the lack of response from the Bush administration to the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina, provides Gran not only with her setting but also her theme. The result is a tour-de-force. Mock profundity blends into brilliantly detailed description on a line-by-line basis in a novel that deserves to be read in tandem with James Lee Burke’s magisterial THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN.
  THE GALLOWS BIRD (HarperCollins, £12.99, pb) is the fourth in Camilla Lackberg’s Patrick Hedström series, which is set in the relatively sedate backwater of Tanumshede in Sweden. Opening with what appears to be a straightforward single-vehicle drink-driving fatality which subsequently proves to be something rather more sinister, the novel broadens out to accommodate a number of narratives which run parallel to Hedström’s initial investigation. Chief among these is the murder of a contestant in a TV reality show being shot in Tanumshede, although Lackberg also invests the story with domestic detail in the run-up to Hedström’s impending marriage to his partner, Erica, who is herself struggling to cope with the demands imposed by her sister’s depression. Lackberg is one of Sweden’s best-selling authors, but THE GALLOWS BIRD is a curiously disjointed police procedural, its frequent digressions into the domestic minutiae of the protagonists’ lives creating a frustratingly halting tale that lacks narrative drive.
  THE TROUBLED MAN (Harvill Secker, £19.99, pb) of Henning Mankell’s latest offering can only be his perpetually self-questioning police detective Kurt Wallander. In this, his last case, Wallander is more troubled than ever, and not only by the disappearance of the future father-in-law of his daughter, Linda; Wallander, unable to ignore the protests of his aging body, is contemplating his own mortality and casting a cold eye over his career. What unfolds is a novel that works on a number of levels: a compelling investigation into a Swedish Cold War spy ring, a philosophical assessment of the nature of policing and its function in society, and a very personal evaluation of a person’s worth in the grand scheme of things, as Wallander opens a ledger on his own life’s profit and loss. Written in Mankell’s downbeat style (beautifully translated by Laurie Thompson), the fatalistic tone is entirely fitting for the final testimony of one of crime fiction’s great protagonists. The result is a hugely satisfying novel that ranks alongside Mankell’s best, a heartbreaking tale of descent into despair and darkness that serves as a totem for what great crime writing can achieve.

  Declan Burke is the editor of the forthcoming collection DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY (Liberties Press).

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Mankell

I had the very great pleasure last month of interviewing Henning Mankell (right), whose latest novel, THE TROUBLED MAN, will be the last outing for Mankell’s iconic protagonist, Kurt Wallander. The interview ran a lot like this:

Forget Stieg Larsson. Henning Mankell, the author of the Kurt Wallander novels, is the man who put modern Scandinavian crime writing on the map.
  With 30 million books sold worldwide, Wallander is one of fiction’s great police detectives. And yet the biggest mystery surrounding Mankell’s latest novel, THE TROUBLED MAN, is why he would choose to kill off Kurt Wallander.
  “Well,” says Mankell, “the truth is that ten years ago I decided that the Wallander novel I was writing would be his last case (laughs). But in the last number of years I started to feel that there was one more story in him, but that this story would be about Wallander investigating himself and his own life. And you can see, when you finish reading the novel, that there’s really nothing more to be said about him, that he has nothing more to say about himself. So this is why it must be the last Wallander story.”
  Despite his fame, the award-winning and best-selling Mankell is unassuming and quietly spoken, a serious but self-deprecating man with a neat line in dry humour. In fact, it’s tempting to believe that Kurt Wallander bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator.
  Mankell laughs aloud at the suggestion. “Well, I believe Wallander is a cheerful person. It is not true that Wallander is a mirror to myself, but perhaps he is a mirror in one respect, and that is that I too have a cheerful personality.”
  A ‘cheerful personality’ is not a trait a fan would automatically apply to Wallander, especially those who have seen the rather glum Kenneth Branagh play the part during the recent Wallander series. Mankell, on the other hand, believes that of all the actors to play the detective, including those in his native Sweden, Branagh comes closest to capturing the essence of Wallander.
  “Very much so,” he says appreciatively. “I was very pleased when Kenneth Branagh came to me about making the Wallander films, because he is a very serious actor and director. And of course he has that experience of directing Shakespeare, which is perhaps why he made such a success of the films. I liked them very much. Actually, [the producers] might be annoyed with me for saying this, because it might be a secret, I don’t know, but Kenneth Branagh will be making more Wallander films in the near future. I think his films really capture the spirit of the books. They seem to strip away everything and make them bare, in the way that Shakespeare could strip back a stage to its bare essentials.”
  Mankell, who is also a playwright, and who writes teleplays for TV, published his first novel in 1977, although it would be 20 years later before the first Wallander novel, THE FACELESS KILLERS, appeared.
  “Well, I didn’t set out to write crime novels,” he explains. “In the 1980s, I left Sweden to travel and live abroad, to get a sense of how life is lived beyond the Swedish way, to broaden my mind as a writer. And when I came back again, a spirit of xenophobia seemed to have taken hold in the country. And xenophobia, to me, is a crime, so it made sense to address that by writing a crime novel. So the subject came first, and then the way of writing about it came after.”
  Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the Swedish husband-and-wife writing team who created the Martin Beck series, were early influences.
  “Oh yes, very much so. They published their first novel when I was 17, which is a very formative age, and I thought the first four novels were very, very strong. After that I thought they got a little weaker, but that is perhaps understandable, as Wahloo was in poorer health. He died just a year after the first novel was published.
  “But I think if we talk about the influence of crime writing,” he says, “I think it is an old and ancient thing. Take the classical Greek theatre, look at Medea. That play has a woman who kills her two children for the sake of jealousy. If that’s not a crime story, I don’t know what is. And Shakespeare too, he knew the value of writing about crime. And Dostoevsky, he had much to say about crime in society.”
  When it comes to specifically Swedish crime fiction, some theorists have pinpointed the murder in 1986 of the then Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, as the catalyst that sparked the phenomenon. Does Mankell agree?
  “No. Absolutely not.”
  Nonetheless, Mankell acknowledges that Palme’s death had a convulsive effect on Sweden. In THE TROUBLED MAN, for example, the possibility that Palme was in reality a Russian spy is brought up on a number of occasions.
  “There was an element in society that believed that,” Mankell says, “a right-wing conservative element. But then, at the time there were all kinds of attempts to discredit Palme. For instance, there was a rumour that he was mentally unbalanced, because he visited a mental institution so often. Well, yes, he did - because his mother was living there at the time. People would tell him he needed to address these rumours, but he didn’t seem to care. He was a brilliant man. I think that Sweden would probably have changed if he had not died when he did, but I believe that it would not have changed so dramatically, or in the way it did.”
  A moral desire to explore the wrongs undermining Swedish society underpins much of Mankell’s work, but he is not content to play the armchair warrior and simply write about a commitment to righting wrongs. For many years now he has been working, unheralded, as a writer and director of a theatre in Maputo, in Mozambique. He also donates a sizeable portion of his earnings to charity, has co-founded a publishing company dedicated to unearthing young Swedish and African writers, and last year he was on board the MS Sofia as part of the flotilla attempting to break the embargo on the Gaza Strip.
  Given the opportunity, it’s a journey Mankell would be only too happy to repeat.
  “Oh yes, most definitely,” he says enthusiastically. “I believe that if you have a political conscience, then it’s not enough to write about it, it’s important to act. Of course, the trouble is that I am banned from entering Israel for the next ten years as a result of last year’s flotilla. But then, I wasn’t attempting to enter Israel, I was trying to enter Gaza, and I think it’s important to remind people that the Israeli blockade is illegal. It helps such things if there are people involved whose name is known, and if I am one of those people, then I will do all I can do to help.”
  Previous to THE TROUBLED MAN, Mankell’s novels were more literary offerings such as KENNEDY’S BRAIN (2007) and DANIEL (2010). With Wallander exiting stage left, is Mankell leaving crime fiction behind?
  “If you look at the books I’ve written,” he says, “only twenty-five per cent or so are crime novels. And I would never say that I will never write another crime story. If the idea arises, and it is a crime story idea, then that is what I will write.
  “In the past I have written about Wallander’s daughter, Linda, she was the main character in one novel [BEFORE THE FROST (2005)]. Perhaps it’s possible that Linda could come to the fore in future novels, and that her father would be there in the background. That’s certainly a possibility.
  “All I can tell you now is that my next novel, the one I’m working on now, is set in the 19th century in Mozambique, about a Swedish woman who ran the biggest brothel in Maputo. Where did she come from? One day she was the biggest tax-payer in the city, the next she was gone. Who was she? My account is purely fiction, and I couldn’t say even with the subject matter that it’s a crime novel. But after that, who knows?”

  Henning Mankell’s THE TROUBLED MAN is published by Harvill Secker on March 31st.

  This interview first appeared in the Evening Herald

A Country For Old Men

I’ve read some Henning Mankell novels in the past, but THE TROUBLED MAN is the first Kurt Wallander story I’ve dipped into; and even though reviews are embargoed until March 31st, I’m sure his publishers won’t mind me saying that, 100 pages or so in, it’s a terrific read so far.
  It has a lot in common with James Lee Burke’s THE GLASS RAINBOW, which I read last week and thoroughly enjoyed. Both Wallander and Dave Robicheaux are thoughtful, reflective men; both Mankell and Burke are unobtrusively brilliant stylists; both writers, it’s fair to say, are closer to the end of their careers than the beginning, which is probably why both novels find their protagonists meditating on their own mortality, and the decline and fall of Western civilisation in general, as filtered through Sweden and Louisiana, respectively. Both THE TROUBLED MAN and THE GLASS RAINBOW are excellent examples of novels that employ the tropes of crime / mystery fiction as a jumping-off point for novels that have ambitions above and beyond the conventions of genre fiction (another current example is Tom Franklin’s excellent CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER). Both rather brilliantly lend the lie to the perception of crime / mystery fiction as a game for young men and women, in which dynamic characters dash from one shoot-out to another, dodging bullets and leaping from burning buildings, breaking heads and hearts with equal aplomb.
  Despite the creaking bones and elegiac tones, few novels I’ve read recently have been as dynamic as THE TROUBLED MAN and THE GLASS RAINBOW. Both stories have a propulsive momentum and a page-turning quality that has as much to do with the fine writing and insightful asides as the unravelling of their respective mysteries. Perhaps it’s because both Wallander and Robicheaux are concerned about their legacies, and as such are avatars for their creators (THE TROUBLED MAN is being flagged as the last ever Wallander novel). Maybe I’m reading too much into the stories in that respect; perhaps it’s simply the case that both Mankell and Burke are seasoned professionals and providing exactly what the reader wants and needs; but there’s no doubt that both novels offer a reading experience that’s significantly more satisfying that most crime / mystery offerings I’ve read recently.
  Anyway, I’m scheduled to interview Henning Mankell tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to teasing out some of those issues. In the meantime, if you have any questions you’ve ever wanted to asked Henning Mankell, just leave a note in the comment box and I’ll do my best to work them in.

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

The good people at Quercus are offering three free copies of THREE SECONDS by Roslund and Hellström, said pair being a journalist and creator of Sweden’s number one cultural TV program, Kulterkanna, and an ex-criminal who founded a criminal rehabilitation program in Sweden, respectively. First, the blurb elves:

Piet Hoffman is the best undercover operative in the Swedish police force, but only one other man is even aware of his existence. When an amphetamine deal he is involved in goes badly wrong, he is faced with the hardest mission of his life: to infiltrate Sweden’s most infamous maximum security prison. Detective Inspector Ewert Grens is charged with investigating the drug-related killing. Unaware of Hoffman’s real identity, he believes himself to be on the trail of a dangerous psychopath. But he cannot escape the feeling that vital information pertaining to the case has been withheld or manipulated. Hoffman has his insurance: wiretap recordings that implicate some of Sweden’s most prominent politicians in a corrupt conspiracy. But in Ewert Grens the powers that be might just have found the perfect weapon to eliminate him ... Intelligent, gripping, brutal, THREE SECONDS is the latest thriller from Roslund and Hellström, the heirs apparent to Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell as masters of Scandinavian crime.

  To be in with a chance of winning a copy, just tell us what your fantasy crime-writing duo might be. James Ellroy and Janet Evanovich? John Connolly and Michael Connelly? Ken Bruen and Stieg Larsson? Elmore Leonard and Patricia Highsmith? Quirkiest, most apt or simply the funniest entries go into the hat, with bonus marks for a quick synopsis of your fantasy duo’s novel …
  Entries in the comment box below, please, and the closing date is noon, December 23rd. Please include an email contact address, using [at] rather than @ to confuse the spam-munchkins. Et bon chance, mes amis …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ ‘Crime Beat’ Round-Up

Being a shorter-than-usual version of the ‘Crime Beat’ round-up in the Irish Times, due to circumstances that were largely beyond my control, not that my control is ever all that controlled. Anyhoo, herewith be the truncated column:

German author Andrea Maria Schenkel’s BUNKER (Quercus, £12.99) is a chilling tale of a woman’s abduction and incarceration. What makes the tale so compelling is that Schenkel isn’t content to simply ratchet up the tension with a conventional will-she-escape tale. Instead, Schenkel offers parallel narratives, from captor and abductor, both delivered for the most part in internal monologues, interspersing both with a third-person account of a nameless victim arriving to an emergency ward on the point of death. It’s a clever and wholly believable strategy, as Schenkel delves into both characters’ memories to excavate a complex and interlocking labyrinth of motive and guilt.
  Henning Mankell’s DANIEL (Harvill Secker, £12.99) is another unusual crime novel. Set in 1875, it follows entomologist Hans Bengler to the Kalahari Desert, where he ‘adopts’ a young native, the sole survivor of a massacre. Naming the boy Daniel, Bengler takes him back to Sweden, where the child’s inability to adjust to his new surroundings eventually results in tragedy. A psychological study of alienation and its consequences, Mankell’s tale lacks the pace, punch and body count of his more conventional crime tales, and may disappoint fans of the traditional mystery / thriller genre. Furthermore, the character of Daniel never fully rings true: a sullen naïf when the plot suits, he is nonetheless phenomenally successful at mastering the Swedish language and gives voice to implausibly profound yearnings in one so young.
  Val McDermid also ploughs something of a new furrow with her latest novel, TRICK OF THE DARK (Little, Brown, £18.99). Renowned for her gory murders, McDermid offers a more genteel story than usual when disgraced clinical psychologist Charlie Flint is asked by her former Oxford tutor to discreetly investigate the suspicious circumstances of the death of her son-in-law on the day of his wedding. McDermid, too, employs a neat narrative conceit in allowing the chief suspect for the man’s death to offer a first-person account of events by way of a memoir she is writing, although aficionados of the genre, expecting twists and turns, might deduce that too much is being pinned on one suspect. That said, McDermid writes a fluid, compelling novel of manners underpinned by a believable mystery plot, and Charlie Flint is a fascinating addition to the canon of intrepid female investigators.
  Meanwhile, the rather-less-than-intrepid Mystery Man returns in the third of Colin Bateman’s new series of novels, DR YES (Headline, £14.99). The nameless hero, who owns the Belfast crime fiction bookstore No Alibis, is reluctantly dragged into yet another caffeine-fuelled adventure when legendary Northern Irish crime novelist Augustine Wogan commits suicide after alleging that a famous plastic surgeon - the eponymous villain - has murdered his wife. Bateman delights in undermining the crime tropes, making his ‘hero’ a cowardly neurotic who detects his way through the mostly self-inspired mayhem by taking his cues from the classics of the genre. Here Mystery Man meets - but fails to recognise - his first bona fide femme fatale in Pearl Knecklass, crime fiction fan and receptionist to Dr Yes, who may or may not be party to the real-or-imagined murder. Written with obvious affection for the genre, yet always ready to pounce on its clichés (Dr Yes fillets the current craze for serial murderers), the Mystery Man novels are page-turning whodunits with the bonus of a slyly subversive commentary on the contemporary crime novel.

  This review first appeared in the Irish Times.

Go Nord, Young Man

I had one of those pieces on ‘Nordic Writers Wot Aren’t Stieg Larsson’ published in the Sunday Independent last week, which featured contributions from Jan Costin Wagner, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Hakan Nesser. It went a lot like this:

The Thrillers Who Came In From the Cold

With the second movie of the ‘Millennium Trilogy’ coming at the end of August, a Hollywood remake of the first movie starring Daniel Craig and (rumour has it) Scarlett Johansson already in the works, and the discovery of a fourth Blomkvist-Salander novel on his computer, it’s fair to say that the publishing phenomenon that is Stieg Larsson has some way yet to run.
  Aficionados of the genre, however, are aware that Scandinavian crime writing has much more to offer than Stieg Larsson. The Sweden-set ‘Martin Beck’ series of novels written by husband-and-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered a milestone in the evolution of the realist crime novel, while Henning Mankell is a household name, particularly for his Kurt Wallander novels.
  A whole new generation of Scandinavian crime writers have emerged in the last decade, however. While the sub-genre has its roots in Sweden, the crime novel is now indigenous to Norway and Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Writers such as Karin Fossum, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Jø Nesbo, Jan Costin Wagner, Karin Alvtegen, Håkan Nesser, KO Dahl, Camilla Lackberg, Leif Davidson, Arnaldur Indridason and Gunnar Staalesen are hugely popular not only at home, but increasingly so abroad too.
  The conventional theory has it that the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 had a seismic impact on the Swedish psyche, one consequence of which was an explosion in crime writing. Given the seriousness of the catalytic event, the crime novels were taken seriously by the Swedish literati, resulting in an ever-increasing quality of writing and criticism.
  Swedish author Håkan Nesser, on the other hand, takes an irreverent approach to the question of why there has been such a boom in Scandinavian crime writing.
  “When I’m in my most optimistic mood I tend to answer, ‘It’s due to the fact that we are such damned good writers,’” he says. “Right now we probably have the world’s largest number of good crime writers per capita, but please be aware of that we also have the world’s largest number of bad crime writers!
  “There is no such thing as a ‘Swedish way’ of writing a crime story,” he continues. “We are all different. The only thing we have in common is that we write in Swedish. Any reader who reads a book by Stieg Larsson, a book by Karin Alvtegen and a book by myself will realise this immediately. We all have different styles, different plots, different aims and agendas.”
  German author Jan Costin Wagner, who sets his novels in Finland, agrees. “Basically I think that every author has to find their own language,” he says, “their own key topics, characters and ways of approaching a story. And, of course, not each Scandinavian crime novel is a good one. But apart from that, I think that many Scandinavian crime writers understand how important it is to be serious and committed to their story and their characters.”
  Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir believes that Iceland offers a unique setting for the crime novel.
  “Iceland, with its 300,000 inhabitants, is a whole lot smaller population-wise than most countries,” she says. “As a result, the atmosphere here is still quite similar to that of a small town, despite our attempts at becoming cosmopolitan. This allows for complex interactions and ties between characters that differ greatly from those one expects in stories that take place in a big city. Another ingredient of the social fabric that differentiates us from other western countries is an unusually high belief in the occult and the supernatural, which adds an element that would probably strike a false note in crime stories based elsewhere.
  “Also,” she continues, “old secrets, vendettas and misdeeds might lie dormant here but they are never fully forgotten - or forgiven. When the social aspects just described are coupled with the smorgasbord of eerie scenery my geologically active country has to offer, Iceland thankfully has the makings of a wonderful backdrop for good, fun and creepy murders.”
  While Sigurdardottir highlights the physical and social aspects of her settings, Wagner identifies a more psychological appeal.
  “I don’t feel committed to a ‘school of writing’,” he says, “because I want to stay committed to my own inner movement: that is most important for everything I write. I feel close to the Scandinavian crime writing because Scandinavians quite often stay focussed on the inner, maybe hidden, life of a story and a character. I like novels which surprise the reader by finding their way beyond cliché. I like the silent moments, the words that are hidden behind the lines; I also like the silent showdown and not so much the bombastic one, which is based on a kind of formal, expected resolution.”
  The idea that the modern Scandinavian crime novel offers a blend of social realism and a more introspective take on the traditional crime narrative is echoed by Håkan Nesser.
  “Ingmar Bergman is a cineastic icon around the world,” he says, “and for most people a Bergman character is the true essence of a Swede: gloomy, depressive, suicidal, tragic, silent and deeply, fundamentally unhappy. But interesting, somehow.
  “I like to think that the above is not an accurate description of our national character,” he says, “but in all clichés there is an element of truth. And actually – though I find it a little hard to acknowledge – such stereotypes might be good material for characters in a crime story: morose men and women who can store grudges inside themselves for half of a lifetime, and then one day take desperate but calculated action like a bolt out of the blue.” - Declan Burke

  Håkan Nesser’s THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE is published by Mantle.
  Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s ASHES TO DUST is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
  Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE is published by Harvill Secker.

  This article first appeared in the Sunday Independent.

  Incidentally, I finished Jan Costin Wagner’s SILENCE last night, and it’s a terrific piece of work. Highly recommended.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: William Ryan

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?
It would be nice to have written the one I’m halfway through now.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Erast Fandorin from Boris Akunin’s pre-Revolutionary Russian series. Except ideally I’d have the novels moved to somewhere with nicer weather.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Hello Magazine – I sometimes get my hair cut unnecessarily if it has a good cover. I’m very worried about Cheryl – my hairdresser thinks they’re getting back together.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I knew THE HOLY THIEF was going to be published, I suppose. Even if I don’t really believe it still.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler, on the basis his mother was Irish and he spent at least a part of his youth in Dublin. They should name a street after him, or maybe they already have.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ronan Bennett’s ZUGZWANG – I’m not sure how they’d do the chess bits though.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Well, it’s not the worst profession in the world, but the copy-editing and proof-reading process for a novel can be a bit of a trial – after the tenth rereading, you sort of lose sight of what you liked about it in the first place. And every time you think you’ve finally put the stake into its heart, it comes back to life. A bit like a typewritten Terminator. The best thing is having a bit of a run.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Burly thirties Moscow detective uncovers nefarious shenanigans on a Soviet film set - think High Noon meets Fiddler on the Roof.

Who are you reading right now?
THE DOGS OF RIGA by Henning Mankell. I’m a bit hooked on Henning at the moment.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Well, you can’t write without reading, so I suppose it’d have to be to read. Also, if God appeared to me, I probably wouldn’t be allowed pointy things like pencils and pens, as well as being quite heavily medicated.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Quirky Soviet Noir

William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF is published by Mantle on May 7th.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: ‘The Story Of Crime’ by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Ten titles comprise The Martin Beck Mysteries, published between 1965 and 1975 and co-authored by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
  The first six have been reissued (with fine cover designs by Gregg Kulick) by the aficionados of crime fiction at Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Press. This imprint also publishes Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, James M. Cain, Ross Macdonald, James Ellroy and Jim Thompson so you know where to go.
  These ten Martin Beck novels were influenced by Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series which started in 1956 – nine years before the first Beck Mystery. In MURDER AT THE SAVOY, the murderer mentions reading McBain’s TILL DEATH, so the authors were aware of McBain and acknowledging his role. The Beck Mysteries went deeper than the early McBain books through Beck’s greater interaction with the ensemble of police colleagues, through delineating Beck’s inner life and struggles in a more obvious and human way and through explicit social commentary (often scathing).
  The detailed plots and meticulous unravelling of clues meshed very well with the socialist dialectic of the Marxist authors and the narrative and integrity of the writing did not suffer. For example, in THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED, in reference to minor disturbances the previous summer of 1968:

“Instead they were handled by people who thought that Rhodesia was somewhere near Tasmania and that it is illegal to burn the American flag, but positively praiseworthy to blow your nose on the Vietnamese. These people thought that water cannons, rubber billy clubs and slobbering German shepherd dogs were superior aids when it came to creating contact with human beings …”

  The story never suffers from these polemics and even in MURDER AT THE SAVOY, which castigates big business, corruption and its fallout among ordinary citizens, the book is one of the most accomplished in the series - taut, rigorous and true.
  Henning Mankell, another Swede, is the natural inheritor of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s tradition. Mankell’s Inspector Wallander, an existential warrior battling crime and his own melancholia, closely resembles Beck.
  The Beck series used the Swedish weather to great effect - grey skies, rain, mist, sleet, snow, wind and hailstones and at the other extreme the scorching summers as a backdrop to the stories. The drab edifices of Stockholm’s public housing, the anonymous urban landscape, the ennui of the population and public servants, and the political and corporate corruption, is the milieu where Beck operates.
  The ten books are collectively known as The Story of Crime, comprising 300 chapters (30 chapters per book). They are all written with aplomb and honesty and set the standard for all police procedurals that followed. – Seamus Scanlon

Swedish Crime Fiction? Now There’s A Turnip For The Books

The rather fine Detectives Beyond Borders interweb yokeybus has a neat link to a fascinating piece on Swedish crime fiction in the Toronto Star, which runneth thusly:

The article also traces the current wave of Swedish crime writing to a traumatic national event: the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, shot dead in Stockholm while walking home from a movie with his wife. Anyone who dismissed crime fiction as trifling might be interested in this passage about the Palme assassination:
“In a way, Sweden has never recovered,” says Swedish author and critic Marie Peterson. “Sweden changed, brutally, on almost every level, but this change was nowhere to be found in literature. No one explored it, analyzed it or wrote stories about it. Except the crime writers, starting with [Henning] Mankell.”

Are there parallels to be drawn with the Irish experience of another assassination, in this case the murder of investigative journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996 and the subsequent explosion in Irish crime fiction? There’s a significant paper to be written here, o ye students of Ireland.