Stranded: French, Quinn Shortlisted For Strand’s Critics Awards

Hearty congratulations to Tana French and Anthony Quinn, the Irish writers who picked up nominations in the Strand’s Critics Awards for Best Novel and Best Debut Novel, respectively. The shortlists were announced yesterday, with the gist of the press release looking like this:

Recognizing excellence in the field of mystery fiction, the Critics Awards were judged by a select group of book critics and journalists, from news venues such as The Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Sun Times, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, The Guardian, and several other daily papers.

Best Novel
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
Broken Harbour by Tana French (Viking)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown)
Defending Jacob by William Landay (Delacorte Press)
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane (William Morrow)

Best Debut Novel
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash (William Morrow)
The Yard by Alex Grecian (Putnam)
The Expats by Chris Pavone (Crown)
Disappeared by Anthony Quinn (Mysterious Press/Open Road)
The 500 by Matthew Quirk (Hachette)

  Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR, of course, won the Crime Fiction gong at last year’s Irish Book Awards, and will very probably turn up on quite a few shortlists this year. On the other hand, Anthony Quinn’s DISAPPEARED hasn’t popped up on many radars on this side of the pond, which makes his nomination all the more impressive. The very best of luck to both writers when the winners are announced – at a cocktail party, no less – on July 9th.

A Blume By Any Other Name

The latest Irish Times ‘Crime Beat’ column was published on Saturday, featuring short reviews of the latest titles from Elmore Leonard, Claire McGowan, Barry Forshaw, Hesh Kestin and Lyndsay Faye. It also included THE NAMESAKE by Conor Fitzgerald. To wit:

Commissioner Alec Blume returns in Conor Fitzgerald’s third novel, THE NAMESAKE (Bloomsbury, £11.99), although the usual Rome setting quickly gives way to southern Italy as Blume investigates the murder of an apparently innocent man and discovers that the victim shares a name with a magistrate intent on prosecuting a high-ranking member of the Ndrangheta, or Calabrian mafia. As with Claire McGowan’s novel, THE NAMESAKE is as much an exploration of the social, cultural and political factors that led to the rise of the Ndrangheta as it is a conventional police procedural; indeed, the book has as much in common with a spy novel, as Blume joins an undercover agent as he penetrates the Calabrian heartland.
  Exquisitely written in a quietly elegant style, and dotted with nuggets of coal-black humour, THE NAMESAKE is a bold blend of genre conventions that confirms Fitzgerald’s growing reputation as an author whose novels comfortably straddle the increasingly fine line between crime and literary fiction.

  Elsewhere, over the last few days, Eilis O’Hanlon reviewed the debut offering from Michael Clifford, GHOST TOWN; and Eamon Delaney reviewed yet another debut Irish crime title, Conor Brady’s A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Lyndsay Faye

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 BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler. “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.” Stare at that sentence for two or three minutes and marvel at its perfection. That book is magical.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Dr. John H. Watson. I’d have spent my entire life watching someone be amazing.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t feel much in the way of guilt about my pleasures, truth be told. But I do collect atrociously written Sherlock Holmes pastiches, the more crack and unlikely Victorian celebrity cameos and bodice-ripping covers with floating deerstalker art the better. (Incidentally, I also collect excellent ones, but there’s no guilt whatsoever in that.)

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing my first novel. I was baffled by the fact I’d managed it for months. I’m still baffled by it, actually - I’ve never been involved in a single “creative writing” class, just a bunch of excellent courses on the classics, and editorial work like my university writing centre and campus literary magazine.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ooh, apologies to the classics. But IN THE WOODS by Tana French really hits my sweet spot. So gritty and atmospheric and human.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Is THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR by Gene Kerrigan a movie yet?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst aspect for me is the occasional emotional roller coaster that happens in total solitude. Does this work? Will it come together? What if it doesn’t? Where’s the whiskey? But when someone tells me they identified with a person or a moment I invented from thin air - that’s glorious.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Welcome to the sequel to THE GODS OF GOTHAM, winter of 1846, in which I do more terrible, terrible things to Timothy and Valentine Wilde.

Who are you reading right now?
Alex George’s THE GOOD AMERICAN - he’s a fellow Amy Einhorn author. It’s marvellous.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
What a heinous circumstance. Well, selfishly ... I think I’d read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Open, open, open. I’m all about character exposure, breaking people apart to see the nasty and beautiful and selfish and brave bits. The crimes are incidental for me, like nutcrackers or lobster scissors - they exist to get at the meat of the person I’m writing about.

Lyndsay Faye’s THE GODS OF GOTHAM is published by Headline Review.

A White Knight Rises

I don’t read an awful lot of historical crime fiction, but THE GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye (Headline Review) has persuaded me that I very probably should. A fascinating backdrop, neatly observed historical detail, an intriguing protagonist, and beautifully written, with the added bonus that many of the characters speak ‘flash’, aka the argot of New York’s criminal underworld: it’s a potent blend. Quoth the blurb elves:

August 1845 in New York: enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points ... After a fire decimates a swathe of lower Manhattan, and following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last forms an official Police Department. That same summer, the great potato famine hits Ireland. These events will change the city of New York for ever. Timothy Wilde hadn’t wanted to be a copper star. On the night of August 21st, on his way home from the Tombs defeated and disgusted, he is plotting his resignation, when a young girl who has escaped from a nearby brothel, crashes into him; she wears only a nightdress and is covered from head to toe in blood. Searching out the truth in the child’s wild stories, Timothy soon finds himself on the trail of a brutal killer, seemingly hell bent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment and threatening chaos in a city already in the midst of social upheaval. But his fight for justice could cost him the woman he loves, his brother and ultimately his life ...

  The book is published in March, and I’m not the only one who likes it: “THE GODS OF GOTHAM is a wonderful book. Lyndsay Faye’s command of historical detail is remarkable and her knowledge of human character even more so. I bought into this world in the opening pages and never once had the desire to leave. It’s a great read!” - Michael Connelly.
  So there you have it. Incidentally, the book reminded me very strongly of Dennis Lehane’s THE GIVEN DAY, but also Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND, particularly in terms of Tim Wilde’s fish-out-of-water quirks and foibles and Faye’s use of real historical figures, and Wilde’s pursuit of a killer pulling the political strings of sectarian hatred. All in all, it’s a hell of a book.