News: Tana French and Anthony Quinn Nominated For Awards

Hearty congratulations from all at CAP Towers to Tana French and Anthony Quinn, who have been nominated for Anthony and Theakstons awards, respectively, in the past few days.
  Tana’s THE SECRET PLACE is shortlisted in the Best Novel category for an Agatha Award, which will be announced during the Raleigh Bouchercon weekend, with the shortlist looking a lot like this:

Best Novel
• Lamentation, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)
• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Viking)
• After I’m Gone, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Truth Be Told, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge)

  For the rest of the Anthony Award nominees, clickety-click on The Rap Sheet.

  Meanwhile, Anthony Quinn finds himself in stellar company on the longlist for the ‘2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year’ (as always, I take no responsibility for the spelling and / or punctuation associated with award season). It’s an 18-strong longlist, and Anthony’s novel DISAPPEARED is pitted against offerings from the likes of Belinda Bauer, Lee Child, Ian Rankin, John Harvey, Louise Welch and Tom Rob Smith, among others.
  The shortlist will be announced on June 15; for all the nominees, clickety-click on Euro Crime.

News: Jane Casey Wins the Mary Higgins Clark Award

Hearty congratulations to Jane Casey, who won the Mary Higgins Clark Award last night for THE STRANGER YOU KNOW (Minotaur Books) (the announcement was made during the ongoing Mystery Writers of America / Edgar Awards season). As those in the know will, y’know, know, THE STRANGER YOU KNOW features Jane’s series heroine Maeve Kerrigan, the London-based police detective who is one of the most compellingly drawn protagonists in contemporary crime fiction. Jane has been shortlisted for a number of awards in the past, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first time she has taken home the prize, and it’s fully deserved.
  Meanwhile, Stuart Neville will go head-to-head with some real heavyweights tonight – Karin Slaughter, Stephen King, Ian Rankin – when the Edgar Award for Best Novel is announced. Can he make it an Irish double? Only that most notorious of tittle-tattlers – time – will tell …

Review: DEATH SENTENCES, edited by Otto Penzler

The physical book may be under threat from the digital revolution and its e-books, according to perceived wisdom, but book collectors and bibliophiles are in far more immediate danger of being wiped out.
  At least, that’s the recurring theme in Death Sentences (Head of Zeus), a collection of short stories edited by Otto Penzler and written by 16 crime and mystery authors who are, according to Ian Rankin’s Introduction, ‘masters of their craft’. Jeffrey Deaver, John Connolly, Nelson DeMille, Laura Lippman, CJ Box and Anne Perry are just some of the household names who contribute to a collection in which each offering revolves around books.
  Overall it’s an amusing conceit. We tend to imagine that book lovers, librarians and bibliophiles of all stripes are quiet, gentle folk, likely to live to a grand old age and slip away in their sleep, preferably in a comfortable armchair in a well-lit bay window, a blanket across the knees, a good book still clutched in their gnarled hands.
  In Death Sentences, however, book lovers are bludgeoned to death by their precious tomes, crushed by falling bookshelves, shoved down library stairs whilst holding a tottering pile of research volumes, or blown to bits by a bomb smuggled into their private library. When they’re not the actual murder weapon itself, books provide one or more elements of the crime writers’ beloved triumvirate of means, motive and opportunity.
  Indeed, some of the authors play the concept for wry comedy. William Link’s pulpy throwback to the hardboiled days of the Black Mask magazine, ‘Death Leaves a Bookmark’, features a police detective called Columbo. Nelson DeMille’s The Book Case – one of two stories that features falling bookshelves as the murder weapon – offers a jaunty tone of murder investigation in a crime fiction bookstore, in which the sardonic police detective, John Corey, notes the bestselling writers on display, “such as Brad Meltzer, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, and others who make more money writing about what I do than I make doing what I do.”
  Other writers take a more serious approach. Set in London in 1938, Peter Blauner’s ‘The Final Testament’ is narrated by Sigmund Freud, and tells of how Freud is approached by a Nazi agent who wants to blackmail Freud into putting his name to a piece of black propaganda about the Jewish people. As it happens, a number of the stories here incorporate the Nazis. Set in the American northwest, CJ Box’s story ‘Pronghorns of the Third Reich’ is as bizarre as its title suggests, and true into the bargain (Box even provides photographic evidence of his claim). Thomas H. Cook’s affecting tale ‘What’s In A Name?’ offers an alternative history of the 20th Century, and features an aspiring but ultimately unpublished author with a very potent name. Meanwhile, ‘The Book of Ghosts’ by Reed Farrel Coleman, which tells the tale of the morally conflicted Holocaust survivor Jacob Weisen, is one of the finest of the collection.
  Given that the vast majority of authors are readers so deranged by books that they are themselves maddened into writing, the stories also offer fascinating glimpse of the authors’ personal obsessions. Laura Lippman’s beautifully quirky ‘The Book Thing’ takes her series private eye Tess Monaghan (and Tess’s baby daughter Carla Scout) into the colourful world of children’s bookshops, where she is commissioned to investigate a very unusual crime. Anne Perry’s ‘The Scroll’ is as influenced by the horror genre as it is by crime and mystery, and centres on a mysterious and ancient vellum scroll that hides a dark secret in its Aramaic script. Where many of the stories revolve around valuable and precious books, David Bell’s ‘Rides a Stranger’ concerns itself with a tattered old Western paperback. The Mickey Spillane story ‘It’s in the Book’, finished here by Max Allan Collins, sees the imperishable Mike Hammer in pursuit of a dead Mafia don’s old ledger, its secrets a threat to the President of the United States.
  There are two Irish contributions to the collection. In the first, Ken Bruen – whose protagonists are invariably well-read – brings his unique style to bear on New York and a young Irish-American man’s bitter relationship with his father, a former NYPD cop. When the father dies and unexpectedly bequeaths his son The Book of Virtue, the son is forced to reassess what he knew of his father, and his own life’s direction.
  By contrast with Bruen’s brusque style, John Connolly’s ‘The Caxton Lending Library and Book Depository’ is an elegantly wrought tale of the rather dull Mr Berger, who late one evening witnesses a young woman step in front of a speeding train – and yet can find no trace of her remains on the railway track. The story’s supernatural elements quickly segue into a hugely entertaining tale of fictional characters interacting with reality as Mr Berger pursues the ‘ghost’. (I should declare an interest here by saying that I have in the past co-edited a book with John Connolly; the fact that ‘The Caxton Lending Library and Book Depository’ won last year’s Edgar Award for Best Short Story is testament to its quality).
  Ultimately, the most vulnerable victim in the collection – the plethora of murdered booksellers, readers and bibliophiles notwithstanding – is the physical book itself. Whether the writers make explicit their concerns about the e-book revolution, as Laura Lippman does, or contextualise the veneration of the physical book – or vellum parchment, say, or a hand-stitched volume written by Hernando Cortez – the message remains the same: the book, regardless of the story it tells, is a valuable artefact in its own right, and e-books, even if they tell the exact same story, lack cultural heft, physically and metaphorically.
  The mood is summed up by Andrew Taylor’s ‘The Long Sonata of the Dead’, a beautifully written tale set for the most part amid the labyrinthine stacks of the London Library. “It’s the real, printed book that matters,” our hero, a writer, tells us; as a result, and though his subsequent actions are rather less than savoury, it’s very hard to consider him entirely immoral. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner

News: Stuart Neville and Jane Casey Shortlisted for Edgar Awards

It’s a hearty CAP Towers congratulations to Stuart Neville and Jane Casey, both of whom were nominated for Edgar awards when the shortlists were announced early today, January 21st. Stuart’s THE FINAL SILENCE was nominated in the Best Novel category, while Jane’s THE STRANGER YOU KNOW was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. To wit:

Best Novel
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Wolf by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster – Scribner)
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville (Soho Press)
Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown)
Coptown by Karin Slaughter (Penguin Randomhouse – Delacorte Press)

Mary Higgins Clark
A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton (Minotaur Books)
The Stranger You Know by Jane Casey (Minotaur Books)
Invisible City by Julia Dahl (Minotaur Books)
Summer of the Dead by Julia Keller (Minotaur Books)
The Black Hour by Lori Rader-Day (Prometheus Books – Seventh Street Books)

  For the full run-down of all Edgar categories and nominees, clickety-click here …

Review: WHERE THE DEAD MEN GO by Liam McIlvanney

Ian Rankin and Val McDermid are probably the best known names in the ‘Tartan Noir’ movement, having long since blazed a trail for a generation of Scottish crime fiction authors such as Tony Black, Malcolm Mackay, Nicola White and Doug Johnstone.
  Very few of the new Scottish crime writers, however, will come under the microscope in the same way as Liam McIlvanney. The Acknowledgements in Where the Dead Men Go (Faber), McIlvanney’s second crime title, opens with a reference to a person ‘who made the whole book possible’, but ‘who would rather not be named’. It’s safe to assume, though, that that person is Liam’s father, William McIlvanney, creator of the imperishable Laidlaw but also a poet and essayist cited by Ian Rankin as the inspiration for Inspector John Rebus, and generally credited as the godfather of ‘Tartan Noir’.
  Opening in Glasgow in 2012, Where the Dead Men Go is a first-person tale told by Gerry Maguire, a newspaper reporter who has returned to his old stomping ground at the failing broadsheet Tribune on Sunday after three years away. Once a crime journalist, now a political correspondent, Maguire initially resents being sent to cover a gangland shooting when the Tribune’s star crime reporter, Martin Moir, can’t be contacted. Shortly afterwards, the reason for Moir’s apparent negligence is made horribly clear when he is discovered in his car at the bottom of a flooded quarry. All the signs point to suicide, according to the police, and it subsequently emerges that Moir had motive enough to take his own life – but Maguire is not convinced, and embarks on his own investigation.
  What follows is a hardboiled thriller laced with a bleak kind of poetry. McIlvanney’s Glasgow is a hardscrabble world, its juxtaposition with the leafier suburbs and its satellite towns only emphasising the stark reality of a city stripped of any illusions about itself. Even the intermittent snowfalls that might prettify another setting are deployed here as a filter of sorts, through which we view Glasgow as a harsh, frigid and unforgiving place.
  The gangland shooting and Moir’s disappearance – the journalist enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the city’s leading gangsters – is just the latest eruption of warfare in a city that has almost become inured to the simmering violence of an ancient conflict. “Glasgow’s civil war ground on,” writes McIlvanney, “a city like a failing state. The regime controlled the centre and the West End, the good suburbs, the arterial routes. East and north were the badlands, the rebel redoubts, where the tribal warlords held their courts and sacrificed to their vengeful gods. The M8 was the city wall, keeping out the barbarian hordes.”
  For all the historical references, however, it’s a very contemporary tale. McIlvanney weaves the imminent referendum vote on Scottish independence into the story, and also incorporates violent sectarianism and political corruption. The decline of journalism is yet another theme, as Maguire cites Woodward & Bernstein, and quotes Thomas Jefferson on the importance of a free press, even as he bemoans his personal failures as a reporter working at a struggling, American-owned Sunday newspaper as readers fall away and budgets are slashed.
  Where the Dead Men Go is on one level a persuasively thrilling crime novel that gets under the skin of Glasgow to an unsettling degree, but it also functions as a compelling document of its time and place, and one written in terse but elegant style. If it is as invidious as it is inevitable to compare Liam McIlvanney with his illustrious father, then the very least to be said is that the comparisons are entirely valid. ~ Declan Burke

  This review first appeared in the Irish Examiner.

When Edgar Met Johnny

It’s (a slightly belated) three cheers, two stools and a resounding ‘Huzzah!’ for John Connolly (right), who took home a prestigious Edgar Award last weekend for his short story, ‘The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository’. Not too shabby, as they say, not by a long chalk, and CAP Towers was en fete for the weekend after the news filtered through. And while we’re on the subject, John’s current offering, the latest Charlie Parker novel THE WOLF IN WINTER, is a rather fine piece of work too …

  Elsewhere, and staying with the topic of awards, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville (along with Gene Kerrigan) have been nominated for Barry Awards. Well, it’s a hearty congratulations to both, again, on the news that they’ve been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, which will be awarded at the Harrogate Festival in July. Stuart has been nominated for RATLINES, while Adrian’s nomination is for I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET. Both are terrific novels, in my opinion, but the competition is fierce: the longlist also includes Lee Child, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Cathi Unsworth and Belinda Bauer, among others. The shortlist will be announced on July 1st, by the way, and there’s a public voting system for narrowing down the longlist: if you’re so inclined, you’ll find all the details here.

Review: THE OUTSIDER by Arlene Hunt

The latest crime fiction column in the Irish Times features new offerings from Ian Rankin, Arlene Hunt, Donna Leon, Paul Johnston and Lee Child. The Arlene Hunt review runs like this:

Arlene Hunt is best known for her Dublin-set ‘QuicK Investigations’ novels, which feature the private eye duo John Quigley and Sarah Kenny, although her most recent offering, the standalone The Chosen (2011), was set in a remote rural setting in the US. In The Outsider (Portnoy Publishing, €11.50), Hunt sets her story in another rural setting, that of County Wicklow, with the story centring on the twins Emma and Anthony Byrne. A teenager who ‘may or may not be on the autism spectrum’, Emma develops a rare ability to rehabilitate physically and psychologically brutalised horses; why would anyone want to harm such a gentle soul? The backdrop of the Wicklow countryside suggests that The Outsider belongs to the ‘cosy’ or ‘malice domestic’ tradition, but while the style and setting are far removed from the hardboiled conventions, Hunt excels at excavating the petty passions of village life that, unchecked, lead here to anger, obsession and murderous rage. Moreover, The Outsider is not the straightforward narrative of taboos broached and justice served we expect from ‘cosy’ novels. In creating a community of apparently ordinary people capable of extraordinary cruelty, Hunt deftly blurs the lines between justice and revenge and propels her tale into the realms of true tragedy. – Declan Burke

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

30 Shades of Great: The Best Books Of 2012

It’s that time of the year again, folks, where I tell you what I read this year, and you tell me, this on the basis - presumably - that it’s marginally more interesting than telling one another about our dreams. That said, it’s always nice to be able to talk about good books, and I read a reasonable number of good books during 2012 - roughly a quarter of what I read would be worth reading again, I think. Oh, and as you’ll notice, some of the books below weren’t published in 2012; some were re-reads, others I was reading for the first time. Either way, they’re great books. And now, on with the show …

January
THE SILVER STAIN by Paul Johnston. A very fine private eye novel set on Crete. Fact: those nine words are my recipe for the perfect book.

February
THE GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye. A very impressive debut. Historical crime novel, incorporating the earliest incarnation of the NYPD. Great period detail.

HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander. Pitch-black comedy about a man who discovers Anne Frank living in his attic, typing out her memoir. Probably the funniest book I read all year.

March

THE IRON WILL OF SHOESHINE CATS by Hesh Kestin. Set in New York in the 1960s, and concerned with a most unlikely Jewish mobster, Shoeshine Cats. Actually, this was the funniest book I read all year.

April
THE NAMESAKE by Conor Fitzgerald. I think Conor Fitzgerald could be the greatest of the current generation of Irish crime writers. This is the third of his Rome-set police procedurals. It’s brilliant.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE by Leif GW Persson. I’ve been getting a bit bored with the rather homogenous Scandinavian crime scene of late, but Persson is doing something very interesting. Highly recommended.

May
A LILY OF THE FIELD by John Lawton. I’ve always been a sucker for a great spy novel and this is a great spy novel, with the added bonus of a backdrop of classical music. Marvellous.

I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET by Adrian McKinty. I read this one as a manuscript, which means I won’t be able to review it when it comes out in January. A pity, because Adrian McKinty is the reason Conor Fitzgerald isn’t the best of the current generation of Irish crime writers.

DARE ME by Megan Abbott. THE END OF EVERYTHING was my favourite novel of 2011; this is set in the murderous world of cheerleading, and delivers some of the most fascinating characters of 2012.

THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway. I’ve liked Inspector Ben Devlin more with each passing novel, but THE NAMELESS DEAD is a powerful novel with real emotional depth. If I was only allowed to re-read one Irish crime novel from 2012, this would be it.

THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach. Along with spy novels, I’m also a sucker for baseball novels. Chad Harbach’s debut is much more than a baseball novel, but any book with a genius shortstop as its central character is jake with me. My most purely enjoyable read of the year, I think.

June
HHhH by Laurent Binet. A fascinating exploration of the attempted assassination of uber-Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, this is also an intriguing examination of the author’s right to tell a story, and the extent to which he or she should depend on the cobwebs of memory. Wonderful stuff.

BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French. A marvellous police procedural, this also doubled up as a heartbreaking take on the human cost of the Irish economic bust. Also the most frightening book I read all year.

July
BLOOD LOSS by Alex Barclay. On the one hand a compelling police procedural set in a Colorado skiing town, on the other a fascinating glimpse into a damaged mind that is fully aware it is damaged.

Edge of the seat stuff, this.

HAWTHORN & CHILD by Keith Ridgway. I’m still not fully sure why I liked this so much, although I suspect it’s because Ridgway took a very risky / adventurous plunge in terms of narrative. Akin to a contemporary Beckett, I think.

August
BRENNER AND GOD by Wolf Haas. What I loved about this Austrian-set tale of the abduction of an infant was the narrator’s voice - quirkily omniscient, and yet with a real whisper-in-the-ear quality. A very difficult style to pull off, but Haas does it beautifully.

LIVE BY NIGHT by Dennis Lehane. The second part of the trilogy that began with THE GIVEN DAY, and while I prefer the first, LIVE BY NIGHT is a vividly delivered epic tale. Wonderful.

THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE by Marian Keyes. My very first Marian Keyes novel turned out to be a private eye tale, which was nice, but what makes this stand out is its harrowingly accurate depiction of depression. Hilarious and gut-wrenching, often in the space of the same paragraph.

September
CREOLLE BELLE by James Lee Burke. The Robicheaux plots might be starting to repeat themselves a little bit by now, but when you can write as beautifully, and poignantly, as Burke, who cares?

October
TELEGRAPH AVENUE by Michael Chabon. A fabulous fantasy about America’s potential as a cultural melting-pot, I loved this for the self-mockery of its high-flown language.

MORTALITY by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens writes about dying as he’s dying. Stunning, heartbreaking, uplifting.

RATLINES by Stuart Neville. By all accounts the first of a trilogy, this spy novel set in Ireland in 1963 has it all: intrigue, twists, pace, power.

PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR by Artemis Cooper. If you read this biography thinking it was a novel, you’d never believe it. Fermor packed about seven lives into his ninety-odd years, and Cooper does him full justice.

November
GONE AGAIN by Doug Johnstone. Not due until next March, I think, but one of the best paranoid thrillers I’ve read since the last time I closed an Alan Glynn book.

STANDING IN A DEAD MAN’S GRAVE by Ian Rankin. Rebus is back. Let me say that again: Rebus is back. ’Nuff said.

December

THE BLACK BOX by Michael Connelly. There’s an elegiac quality creeping into Connelly’s Bosch novels I hadn’t noticed before, and which gives the books an added heft that they were brilliant without. Superb.

SMONK by Tom Franklin. CROOKED LETTER blew me away when I read it a couple of years ago; I read HELL AT THE BREECH last year, and just finished SMONK. Reminiscent of early Cormac McCarthy, but funnier.

  So there you have it. If you want to let us all know what your favourite books in 2012 were, feel free to leave a comment in the box below, or a link to your own list on your blog, website, etc.

Ryan’s Slaughter

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Stuart Neville’s latest offering, RATLINES, is due in January, and that it’s a terrific read, and I’m delighted to see that I’m not alone in believing that its protagonist, Albert Ryan, will be with us for the long haul. For lo! The early word is in, and it’s very impressive indeed. To wit:

“Thrilling ... Readers will hope to see more of Ryan, a formidable yet damaged hero.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Wildly entertaining, RATLINES is a superb mystery but in addition, a spotlight on a slice of Irish history largely ignored.”
—Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of The Guard

“Another moody winner mixes Nazis into Neville’s usual Irish noir.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Stuart Neville’s books just get better and better and RATLINES is simply superb.”
—Mark Billingham, bestselling author of Rush of Blood

“RATLINES is a belter: fast, furious, bloody and good.”
—Ian Rankin, New York Times bestselling author of Exit Music

  Sweet. Quoth the blurb elves:

Ireland 1963. As the Irish people prepare to welcome President John F. Kennedy to the land of his ancestors, a German national is murdered in a seaside guesthouse. Lieutenant Albert Ryan, Directorate of Intelligence, is ordered to investigate. The German is the third foreigner to die within a few days, and Minister for Justice Charles Haughey wants the killing to end lest a shameful secret be exposed: the dead men were all Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government in the years following World War II.

A note from the killers is found on the dead German’s corpse, addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favourite commando, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. The note simply says: “We are coming for you.”

As Albert Ryan digs deeper into the case he discovers a network of former Nazis and collaborators, all presided over by Skorzeny from his country estate outside Dublin. When Ryan closes in on the killers, his loyalty is torn between country and conscience. Why must he protect the very people he fought against twenty years before? Ryan learns that Skorzeny might be a dangerous ally, but he is a deadly enemy.

  So there you have it. With Adrian McKinty’s I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET and Stuart Neville’s RATLINES both appearing in early January, I think it’s already safe to say that 2013 will be a very good year indeed for Norn Iron crime fiction …

I Hear The Bandwagon In The Street

Adrian McKinty has been receiving very fine reviews for many years now, but it appears that the Sean Duffy series of novels are moving him onto another level entirely, and not a moment too soon. His forthcoming opus, I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET, is the second in the Duffy series, and bears a couple of very short but very sweet encomiums. To wit:

“It blew my doors off.” - Ian Rankin

“I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET is one hell of a story.” - Daniel Woodrell

  Nice. Herewith be the blurb elves:

Sean Duffy knows there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. But a torso in a suitcase is pretty close. Still, one tiny clue is all it takes, and there it is. A tattoo. So Duffy, fully fit and back at work after the severe trauma of his last case, is ready to follow the trail of blood - however faint - that always, always connects a body to its killer. A legendarily stubborn man, Duffy becomes obsessed with this mystery as a distraction from the ruins of his love life, and to push down the seed of self-doubt that he seems to have traded for his youthful arrogance. So from country lanes to city streets, Duffy works every angle. And wherever he goes, he smells a rat ...

  So there you have it. SIRENS is released on January 10th, which means you have plenty of time to pick up the first Sean Duffy novel, THE COLD COLD GROUND, before it arrives. For what it’s worth (two cents, actually), here’s my two cents on said tome.

Review: THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway

THE NAMELESS DEAD (Macmillan) is the fifth in Brian McGilloway’s Donegal-set series to feature Garda Detective Ben Devlin. He is also the author of a standalone novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST (2011).
  Whilst investigating a tip-off on the small island of Islandmore, in the middle of the River Foyle, the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains discovers the body of a man believed to have been murdered by the IRA some thirty years before. They also turn up a number of other corpses, those of infants, all of whom appear to have suffered from a condition that would have killed them at birth - apart from one, which appears to have been strangled to death.
  Detective Inspector Ben Devlin, operating out of Lifford on the border with Northern Ireland, wants to investigate the death of the strangled infant. Unfortunately, the legislation is crystal-clear: any evidence uncovered by the CLVR cannot lead to prosecution.
  Devlin, a devout Catholic and a family man, refuses to allow the matter to rest, determined that the infant, and those others buried with it, will not be left in the limbo of the nameless dead …
  Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation in recent years as a thoughtful, intelligent crime novelist whose stories, set on the border - between Lifford and Strabane and the Republic and Northern Ireland, but between old and new Ireland too - are told with a quiet authority.
  One of the most interesting features of his novels is that Devlin is the antithesis of the traditional crime fiction policeman, who tends to be dysfunctional, alcoholic, haunted by demons, and a loner.
  Devlin, by contrast, is a happily married man with a quiet but strong religious faith, who works well as part of a team, and particularly with his peer on the other side of the border, the PSNI’s Jim Hendry. These characteristics feed into how the Devlin novels evolve: Devlin is doggedly in pursuit of rightness and justice not simply as theories or philosophies, but because he believes that it is in their observance that society functions best.
  Naturally, as a policeman, Devlin tends to see society at its worst; as a novelist, McGilloway crafts his stories so that the political is very much personal for Devlin, as various aspects of investigations impact on his own family home, and Devlin is forced to question his own morality. For example, when his daughter is physically assaulted by a teenage thug, everyone - his peers, his daughter, his wife - expects Devlin to break the law in order to revenge his daughter. Can he allow himself do that and still exert moral power in his own home, and in his own conscience?
  What sets THE NAMELESS DEAD apart, however, is its subject matter: the fate of the ‘nameless dead’, the forgotten infants, one of which is murdered, gives the novel an elegiac tone, and a poignant one; there were a number of times when I found myself reading with a lump in my throat.
  The Ian Rankin-esque title is fully deserved: THE NAMELESS DEAD is one of the most insightful and affecting novels you’ll read this year. - Declan Burke

No Apostrophe? Now That Is Peculier

I’ve been more than a bit baffled over the last few years about the fact that John Connolly never seems to be nominated for the plethora of crime fiction awards. I wouldn’t mind so much if Connolly had, like so many successful authors before him, hit a plateau in terms of ability and ambition and was simply churning out the same book year after year. Anyone who has read his last two novels in particular, however, will testify that this is not the case; indeed, I’d argue that John Connolly is now writing the best fiction of his career. THE BURNING SOUL, especially, struck me as a very special novel, so I’m delighted to see that it has been recognised as such, and long-listed for the ‘Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year (a much-coveted title, despite (cue pedantic harrumph) the criminal absence of an apostrophe in the title of a writing competition. If you tolerate this, then your children will be unpunctuated, etc.
 

I’m equally delighted to see that Stuart Neville has also been nominated for said prize, for COLLUSION, which is to my mind the finest of his three novels to date, notwithstanding the fact that everyone else seems to prefer his debut, THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (aka THE TWELVE). COLLUSION has previously been nominated for the LA Times Crime / Mystery Novel of the Year, an award Neville won with THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, so the book has pedigree in this kind of thing.
  Either book has a very strong claim to actually winning the prize, although they’ll have to survive the shortlist cull first, which takes place on July 5th, I think; but they’re up against some very strong opposition, including novels from Val McDermid, Robert Harris, Denise Mina and Ian Rankin, not to mention last year’s most wildly overrated crime novel, BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by SJ Watson.
  For the full long-list line-up, clickety-click on the venerable It’s A Crime (or a Mystery) …

No Name, There Is None

Some people like their crime stories to be up-to-date and rooted in reality; others prefer a more escapist read. Brian McGilloway’s latest Inspector Devlin novel, THE NAMELESS DEAD, is very much in the former camp, revolving as it does around the discovery of a body by the ‘Commission for Location of Victims’ Remains’. Quoth the blurb elves:

“You can’t investigate the baby, Inspector. It’s the law.” Declan Cleary’s body has never been found, but everyone believes he was killed for informing on a friend over thirty years ago. Now the Commission for Location of Victims’ Remains is following a tip-off that he was buried on the small isle of Islandmore, in the middle of the River Foyle. Instead, the dig uncovers a baby’s skeleton, and it doesn’t look like death by natural causes. But evidence revealed by the Commission’s activities cannot lead to prosecution. Inspector Devlin is torn. He has no desire to resurrect the violent divisions of the recent past. Neither can he let a suspected murderer go unpunished. Now the secret is out, more deaths follow. Devlin must trust his conscience – even when that puts those closest to him at terrible risk . . .

  Sounds like an absolute belter. THE NAMELESS DEAD, by the way, sounds very much like an Ian Rankin title to me, but it’s Peter James who provides the encomium on the front cover. To wit:

“McGilloway has created a truly human and original police officer, flawed, maverick and vulnerable.” - Peter James

  Very nice indeed. For those of you wondering when said tome will be available, Brian launches THE NAMELESS DEAD in Derry’s Central Library next Wednesday, May 9th, at 7.30pm, with all welcome. If you can’t make it, you can pre-order a copy of THE NAMELESS DEAD here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Paul Johnston

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 changes on a daily basis - today, Michael Dibdin’s DEAD LAGOON. (Sorry, Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP, James Ellroy’s WHITE JAZZ, Ian Rankin’s BLACK AND BLUE, Robert Wilson’s A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON, James Lee Burke’s IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH THE CONFEDERATE DEAD - best title award, and John Connolly’s THE KILLING KIND.)

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
It would have been Sherlock H, but he’s been debased by modern revamps. So how about the Continental Op, with fewer pounds and more hair?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
*Inhales deeply* Tolkien.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing THE LAST RED DEATH (2003), my novel about terrorism in Greece. I’d been feeling like shit and it turned out I had a very nasty cancer (called ‘Thatcher’). Nearly didn’t see publication day...

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Aha! I won’t embarrass you by saying ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (oops, I just did), so I’ll go for Eoin McNamee’s RESURRECTION MAN.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Well, they screwed up RESURRECTION MAN big time. I think Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND fits the bill.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The blank page or screen/ the last hours of writing a novel, when everything - unbelievably - comes together.

The pitch for your next book is …?
THE GREEN LADY - Athens 2004: the Olympic Games, the eyes of the world, and a major industrialist’s daughter goes missing. Think Persephone, Hades and all hell breaking loose around PI Alex Mavros ...

Who are you reading right now?
David Lodge’s A MAN OF PARTS, about H.G. Wells - disappointingly little about the great SF books, mainly because ‘HG’ wasn’t shagging anything that moved when he wrote them. Crime novels I’ve read recently are Peter May’s THE BLACKHOUSE (over-rated), Christa Faust’s MONEY SHOT (not as revealing about the making of porn movies as I’d hoped ), Tony Black’s TRUTH LIES BLEEDING (good), Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN (excellent) and Joyce Carol Oates’ ZOMBIE (the last word on serial killers and squirm-inducing, in a good way).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God? Who s/he? Anyway, obviously ‘write’. Then I could read what I’d written, thus sneakily defeating your conundrum.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Political, fast-paced, violent. (Oh, and on the grounds that no one expects the Irish Inquisition, deep.)

Paul Johnston’s THE SILVER STAIN is published by Crème de la Crime.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD by Ian Rankin

Off with yours truly to RTE last Monday night, and the Arena arts programme, there to review Ian Rankin’s THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD in the company of Sean Rocks. The audio of the review is available here, with the gist running thusly:

THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD is the second in Ian Rankin’s series of novels about Malcolm Fox, who is a police officer with the Scottish Professional Ethics and Standards Department, which is the equivalent of internal affairs, colloquially known as ‘the Complaints’.
  Inspector Malcolm Fox and his ‘Complaints’ team of Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith are based in Edinburgh. The novel opens with their arrival in Kirkcaldy, Fife, where they have come to interview a police officer, Detective Paul Carter, who has been found guilty of misconduct after Carter’s uncle, himself a former police officer, blew the whistle.
  Carter was convicted of asking for sexual favours, and generally threatening women, and Fox and the Complaints are in Fife to discover the extent to which Carter’s behaviour was covered up by his colleagues. On interviewing Paul Carter’s uncle, Alan Carter, Fox realises that the retired policeman is conducting an informal investigation into the suspicious death of a radical lawyer in the mid-1980s, this at the request of an Edinburgh-based solicitor. When Alan Carter is subsequently discovered dead, in what appears to be a suicide, Fox suspects a conspiracy and a cover-up, especially as the gun Carter uses to kill himself doesn’t officially exist …
  It’s difficult to review an Ian Rankin novel without referring at some point to Inspector Rebus, so it’s probably best to get that out of the way first. I know many people will disagree, but I actually prefer Malcolm Fox to Inspector Rebus. He’s a far more balanced and nuanced character than Rebus, who was very much a black-and-white, us-versus-them kind of character.
  When I read the first Malcolm Fox novel, THE COMPLAINTS, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Fox. He seemed a milder version of Rebus, and I wondered why Rankin would offer the reader a similar kind of story, and investigator, while making his new protagonist less confrontational, and therefore less dramatic, character. I believed that Rankin could have challenged himself more, but it took THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD to persuade me that that is exactly what Rankin did.
  It’s probably fair to say, I think, that Malcolm Fox is a more difficult character to write than Rebus. Fox is a complex man, but he is essentially good-natured; he is also a team player, whereas Rebus was, as the conventions of the police procedural often demand, very much a loner. Moreover, the nature of Fox’s job - a cop investigating other cops - gives him a depth that Rebus’s job didn’t confer. Fox is not a crusader for a perfect police force; he understands that people are prone to making mistakes, and that cops are no less likely than civilians to fall foul of human faults and foibles. Neither does he set himself up as a shining example of what a policeman should be. In his personal life, Fox is as guilty of making mistakes as anyone else. By the same token, having been seconded to ‘the Complaints’, Fox is determined to do the best job he possibly can. If that means that he will earn the opprobrium of his peers for investigating their wrongdoing, then that is a price he is prepared to pay.
  One of the most likeable aspects of the novel as a whole is its understated tone. One example: Fox and his team of Kaye and Naysmith. Most writers, with a team of three to fill out, would have made one of the team a woman, if only for politically correct reasons, and especially as the majority of crime fiction readers are women. Instead, Rankin gives us three relatively ordinary blokes who aren’t particularly sexist or politically correct, who enjoy friendly banter and pass their days in one another’s company with the minimum of friction and conflict. Given the pressure the trio are under, and especially as they are so despised by their peers, there’s an endearing quality to their understated mini-brotherhood.
  That understated tone also extends to Rankin’s style. Here he writes in a pleasingly crisp, unfussy style, and seems content to allow the story emerge in what appears to be an organic fashion, rather than forcing the issue by giving proceedings a fake sense of urgency. The chapters unfold at a languid pace, and yet this belies the fact that there is plenty by way of drama and event being recorded.
  One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is its historical backdrop. According to Rankin, that backdrop is rooted in reality. When I interviewed Rankin recently , he had this to say:

“It’s based on a real case. The lawyer found dead in his car is absolutely accurate, it happened in 1985, although in the real-life case he was a Glasgow-based lawyer rather than an Edinburgh lawyer. His name was Willie MacRae. And all that stuff in the book, the Dark Hand Commando, the letter-bombs, the anthrax - that’s all taken from the newspapers of the time.”

  Despite the sectarianism of the Celtic-Rangers football clashes, we don’t normally associate Scotland with extreme nationalism, and certainly not with paramilitary terrorism. THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD offers a glimpse of a time and place not so far from Northern Ireland in the 1980s, and suggests - explicitly, at one point - that the situations weren’t all that different. The real difference, Rankin suggests, is that the Scottish equivalent(s) of the Irish paramilitary groups were far less organised and ruthless, and were quickly infiltrated by British secret services and Special Branch.
  By the same token, there are contemporary resonances to be taken from THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD in terms of Northern Ireland, not least the fact that former paramilitaries wind up democratically legitimate and working in government.
  Ultimately, I give THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD a very warm recommendation, to existing Ian Rankin fans who have yet to take plunge into the Malcolm Fox series, and also to those wondering why Ian Rankin is so highly regarded. It showcases his ability to construct an intriguing police procedural plot and people it with believable and interesting characters, and to provide a page-turning entertainment while still investing his story with a thoughtful critique of contemporary society. - Declan Burke

My Bloody Valentine

I had a very pleasant experience a couple of weeks ago, when I sat down with Val McDermid (right) to interview her for the Irish Examiner on the publication of her latest opus, THE RETRIBUTION. Fair to say, I think, that Val’s reputation for not suffering fools gladly goes before her, but maybe she was in particularly mellow mode that day, because she certainly suffered this particular fool at length, especially when I broached the hoary old chestnut of her being ‘a blood-thirsty lesbian’. The piece opens a lot like this:

Val McDermid’s perspective as a woman is key to her ability to write crime fiction, but the genre is more than it seems, she tells Declan Burke.

VAL McDERMID writes crime novels about serial killers. She’s also a lesbian. You conflate those facts to call her a “blood-thirsty lesbian” at your peril, however, as her fellow author Ian Rankin discovered when a throwaway remark led to one of crime fiction’s most notorious literary spats.
  “Well, the ‘blood-thirsty lesbian’ bit, that was the headline in The Times,” says McDermid, who gets a steely gleam in her eye when the topic is raised.
  “But what Ian actually said was that the most graphic and violent of novels were being written by women, and of those the most violent were written by lesbians. I mean,” she shrugs, “it was a row that was entirely confected by the media. There was no falling-out between Ian and I. Ian was at my wedding, and we’ve been friends for long enough to know we’re capable of having differing opinions from our pals.
  “I do think his statement was wrong,” she says, warming to the theme. “But what it led onto was a wider discussion that seemed to indicate that there was something inappropriate about women writing violent crime fiction, which is something I take extreme exception to.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

We Have Nothing To Fear But The Fear Index Itself

I sometimes wish that I hated my job. That I’d come home in the evening fairly simmering with resentment, ready to pound all the anger and rage out of my system, taking it out on the keyboard first, and then the characters created. Rage, I think, makes for the most interesting stories.
  Unfortunately for my writing prospects, I like my job. Some days I love it. Last Friday being a case in point, during the course of which I legitimately spent two hours watching a good movie (‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’), an hour or so reading a good book (THE AFFAIR by Lee Child), and an hour or so chatting about books and writing with Robert Harris, whilst interviewing him to mark the publication of his latest offering, THE FEAR INDEX (which is very good indeed). He was a nice guy: urbane, modest, self-deprecating to a fault. I don’t know, if I ever became rich and famous through writing, I think I’d be an egomaniacal prick.
  Actually, as all Three Regular Readers already know, I am an egomaniacal prick. All I need now is the wealth and fame. Don’t hold your breath …
  Anyway, my short review of THE FEAR INDEX appeared on Saturday in the Irish Times, along with reviews of Sophie Hannah’s LASTING DAMAGE, Liza Marklund’s EXPOSED, and Jon Steele’s THE WATCHERS, along with a quick review of the Len Wanner-edited DEAD SHARP, which is a series of interviews conducted with Scottish crime writers including Ian Rankin, Allan Guthrie, Louise Welch, Paul Johnston and Karen Campbell. The review of THE FEAR INDEX runs thusly:

Robert Harris is renowned for his historical novels, although his eighth offering, THE FEAR INDEX (Hutchinson, £10.99), could hardly be more contemporary and relevant. Set in Geneva, in the world of high finance, it centres on Dr Alexander Hoffman, who was once a prodigy at Cern but who has since learned to adapt his scientific theories to profit from the world’s trading markets. The novel opens with a break-in at Hoffman’s mansion, with Harris establishing a tone of paranoia that quickly escalates, as Hoffman’s persecution by an anonymous enemy increases in tandem with the collapse of the global economy. It sounds perverse to describe THE FEAR INDEX as an old-fashioned techno-thriller, but while the computer-based, self-generating algorithms Harris describes are at the cutting edge of technology, the theme itself is old, dating back to when primitive man first picked up a stone and realised the double-edged potential of a weapon. Harris writes with a deceptively languid elegance, so that the novel straddles not only the crime and sci-fi genres but also that of literary fiction. A satisfying read on a number of levels, it is strongest as a character study of a man who discovers, pace Hemingway, the true meaning of the phrase “grace under pressure”.

For the rest, clickety-click here …

Uptown, Top Rankin

The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman gets in touch to avail of the two molecules of oxygen publicity Crime Always Pays offers, suggesting that we might like to mention the fact that tonight, Thursday 22nd, he’ll be interviewing one of the crime writing world’s luminaries tonight in Bangor, Norn Iron. To wit:

“I’m launching ‘Colin Bateman’s Crime Night’ at the Aspects Literary Festival in my local manor of Bangor, which will in a very minor way feature the launch of my new novel, NINE INCHES, and in a very major way see me attempt to interview Ian Rankin in the festival marquee before 300 baying fans of yon Scottish bloke. Amongst other questions, I will ask him if he would ever considered dropping his first name and just being called Rankin, because it’s all the rage.”

  Short notice, I know, but hey - that’s the way the Batemeister rolls. For booking details, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, I understand that said whippersnapper Ian Rankin also has a new title for your delectation, said tome being called THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Malcolm Fox and his team from Internal Affairs are back. They’ve been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nephew’s nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon complicated by intimations of conspiracy and cover-up - and a brutal murder, a murder committed with a weapon that should not even exist. The spiralling investigation takes Fox back in time to 1985, a year of turmoil in British political life. Terrorists intent on a split between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were becoming more brazen and ruthless, sending letter-bombs and poisonous spores to government offices, plotting kidnaps and murder, and trying to stay one step ahead of the spies sent to flush them out. Fox has a duty to get at the truth, while the body count rises, the clock starts ticking, and he fights for his professional and personal life.

  So there you have it. Two titans of the contemporary crime writing scene together at last, in Bangor, Norn Iron. The place may never be the same again …

Down These Clean Streets A Man Must Go …

The reviews for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS continue to trickle in, said tome being a collection of essays, interviews and short fiction by Irish writers on the phenomenon that is Irish crime writing. The latest comes courtesy of Michael Malone over at Crime Squad, with the gist running thusly:

“It is by turns discursive, instructive and entertaining, and is never less than fascinating. This needs to be in every crime writing fan’s library.” - Crime Squad

  We thank you kindly, sir. For the full review, clickety-click here and scroll down …
  Elsewhere, and continuing in a similar vein, I recently read the forthcoming DEAD SHARP, a collection of interviews compiled by Len Wanner with a number of Scottish crime writers, including Ian Rankin, Louise Welsh, Karen Campbell, Paul Johnston and Allan Guthrie. A very fine collection it is, too, although I’ll keep my powder dry for the moment, as I’ll be reviewing it in due course. For more, clickety-click here …
  Also forthcoming, although not until January, is another intriguing prospect: DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE, an investigation into Scandinavian crime writing by Barry Forshaw. Quoth the blurb elves:

DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE is a celebration and analysis of Scandinavian crime fiction, one of the most successful literary genres. Barry Forshaw, the UK’s principal expert on crime fiction, discusses books, films and TV adaptations, from Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s influential Martin Beck series through Henning Mankell’s Wallander to Stieg Larsson’s demolition of the Swedish Social Democratic ideal in the publishing phenomenon THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. In intelligent but accessible fashion, the book examines the massive commercial appeal of the field along with Nordic cultural differences from Iceland to Norway. Including unique interview material with writers, publishers and translators, this is the perfect reader’s guide to the hottest strand of crime fiction today, here examined both as a literary form and as an index to the societies it reflects. Includes Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Håkan Nesser, Karin Fossum, Camilla Läckberg, Liza Marklund, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Matti Joensuu and many others.

  Personally, and while I quite like DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE, I’d have thought a book about Scandinavian crime fiction should have been called DOWN THESE CLEAN STREETS. But that’s just me …

The Very Best In Nasty Sex, Sorta

Pray silence for the Kindle-only publication of Allan Guthrie’s modern classic, TWO-WAY SPLIT, a debut novel which won the Theakston’s Old Peculier award in 2007. If you haven’t stumbled across Allan Guthrie before, this was Crime Always Pays’ take at the time:

“The holdall sat on the bed like an ugly brown bag of conscience.” Fans of classic crime writing will get a kick or five out of TWO-WAY SPLIT, and we’re talking classic: Allan Guthrie’s multi-character exploration of Edinburgh’s underbelly marries the spare, laconic prose of James M. Cain with the psychological grotesqueries of Jim Thompson at his most lurid … The result is a gut-knotting finale that unfurls with the inevitability of all great tragedy and the best nasty sex – it’ll leave you devastated, hollowed out, aching to cry and craving more. – Declan Burke

  For more in the same vein, clickety-click here …
  And if you don’t believe me - I wouldn’t - then how about these two encomiums?

“Seek him out and buy his book.” - Ian Rankin
“Excellent.” - George Pelecanos

  So there you have it. TWO-WAY SPLIT for 99p on Amazon UK, or 99c on Amazon US. Buy it now, or Big Al will come around and bat his eyelashes at you … Or is it that if you do buy it, Big Al will come around and bat the eyelashes? I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter. Just buy it. You won’t regret it.