Best-selling crime authors Ken Bruen (right), Jane Casey, Declan Hughes and Niamh O’Connor will be joining WritersWebTV on October 30th, ready to arm aspiring authors with all the best writing tips, tricks and methods at the upcoming workshop, Crime Pays: Writing Crime Fiction.For all the details, clickety-click here …
Multi-award-winning Ken Bruen – the author of the Jack Taylor series which has become a TV hit starring Iain Glen – will talk through writing great hook-lines and how to develop characters across a series. Jane Casey, author of the Maeve Kerrigan series of crime novels will guide participants through the basics of narrative and plot. Declan Hughes – author of the Ed Loy PI series – rigorously plans his writing and he’ll be giving his insights on how to plan for your novel while being open to new sources of inspiration. Niamh O’Connor, one of Ireland’s leading crime journalists, will lead us through the research process and crack the code of juggling family, writing and a day job.
This free-to-watch-live, online workshop will cover all aspects of crime fiction and viewers will be able to interact with those in studio to help them develop their skills. WritersWebTV has developed a world-first innovation in online education for writers by providing live-streamed interactive workshops to a global audience, featuring Irish and international best-selling writers and industry professionals.
The one-day workshops are streamed live from a multi-camera broadcast studio in Dublin. Bestselling authors interact with an in-studio audience of aspiring writers, who present their work for critique. Online viewers can communicate with those in the studio using Twitter, Facebook or email. They can ask a question, take part in a workshop exercise, comment online and benefit from on-screen feedback from the authors in-studio.
Led by experienced workshop facilitator Vanessa O’Loughlin, founder of writing.ie, the panel will consider the key elements of fiction writing and furnish viewers with tips, advice and actionable insights to help them improve their writing and get it on the path to publication.
Upcoming courses include Crime Pays: Writing Crime Fiction on Wednesday, October 30th, and Getting Published on Saturday, November 9th, with plans in motion for courses in 2014.
Viewers can watch the full one-day workshops for free when they watch them live. If they want to download a workshop or watch it later, they can pay to keep the course.
A hitmanFor more, clickety-click here …
DI Gavin Sexton is looking into a spate of teenage suicides when he encounters a young girl, paralyzed with locked-in syndrome. Unable to communicate in any other way, she blinks the words: ‘I hired a hitman’.
Was it suicide?
Recovering from loss of sight, Sexton’s old partner DI Jo Birmingham is keeping her promise to investigate the apparent suicide of Sexton’s own wife, Maura. But why does he no longer seem to care?
Secrets thrive on stigma
Sexton believes the girl who cannot move has suffered enough. But how far should he go to protect her? And what if Jo discovers an uncomfortable truth?
I’m off to Dundalk on Saturday, to take part in the inaugural Dundalk Books Festival, and I’m very much looking forward to it. That’s in part because it’s always good to get the opportunity to talk books, but also because I’ll be doing so in the company of two of the country’s finest writers, Declan Hughes (right) and Niamh O’Connor. 
“It’s undoubtedly something to do with the crisp, sharp, pointy, sticky, dark, hilariously funny writing throughout the book … Sure the plot probably needed a tourist guide, a very good torch and maybe a cheat sheet, but I ... simply ... did ... not ... care. I loved the whole package and frankly, had a ball reading it.” - Karen Chisholm, AustCrimeFictionWhich is very nice indeed. Books-wise, the last couple of months at Chez CAP have been largely taken up with BOOKS TO DIE FOR and SLAUGHTER’S HOUND (the sequel to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE), and you do tend to forget that you have other books out there, like children grown up and gone off to discover the world, and reviews like Karen’s function a little like postcards from a distant land, or the past, or somewhere they do things differently.
In the Popular Fiction category, Marian Keyes is nominated for THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE, which is a very funny take on the private eye novel but one that’s pretty dark and poignant too. Incidentally, Melissa Hill is shortlisted here as well, for THE CHARM BRACELET; I haven’t read it, but I was surprised that Casey Hill’s TORN didn’t make the Crime Fiction shortlist.So there you have it. The Irish Book Awards - vote early, folks, but not often …
Over in the Novel of the Year category we have Keith Ridgway’s HAWTHORN & CHILD, another crime-influenced tome, albeit a crime novel in which all the conventional narrative gambits have been excised. A very interesting offering. I’ve also read Kevin Barry’s DARK LIES THE ISLAND, which I’d be inclined to vote for out of sheer devilment, simply because it’s collection of short stories shortlisted for novel of the year.
In the Crime Fiction category, I’ve gone on record many times to say that Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR is a superb piece of work, and well worth your time. Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, it’s easily the most terrifying book on any of the shortlists this year. Also in contention is TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT by Niamh O’Connor, a writer I’ve huge admiration for.
I haven’t read any of the titles in the Sports Book of the Year category, but if Keith Duggan’s surfing tome THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY is half as good as his weekly columns in the Irish Times then it’s probably an instant classic. Also, it rips its title from THE PRINCESS BRIDE, which means Keith Duggan should be conferred with sainthood in time for Christmas.
In the Children’s Book of the Year category it’s very difficult to see past Eoin Colfer’s ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LAST GUARDIAN, which is a stonking good read, very funny, and a satisfying climax to the Artemis Fowl epic cycle. I loved it.
Finally, the Bookshop of the Year category features ye olde Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar, Dublin, which has hosted more book launches of mine than I care to remember (two, to be precise). A fine emporium, and well worth your patronage.
“There are 119 contributors here, from 20 countries, and the general standard of the essays is high, most of them arguing for the depth and sophistication, the literary quality, of their chosen book or author … In short, BOOKS TO DIE FOR is, even given its biases, as good a collection of short essays on crime fiction as one is likely to find.” - Michael Dirda, Washington PostAs you can imagine, we were, and remain, very pleased with that. Of course, as with virtually every other reader of BOOKS TO DIE FOR, Michael has his quibbles with some of the contributions, and even more quibbles with some of the classic crime / mystery novels that didn’t make it into the book. For the full review, clickety-click here …
Of all the great crime / mystery novels ever written, which one do you love the most?Answers via the comment box below, please, leaving a contact email address (using [at] rather than @ to confuse the spam monkeys) by noon on Wednesday, November 14th. Et bon chance, mes amis …
On Thursday, November 8th, I will be interviewed by Edel Coffey as part of Fingal’s Writing 3.0 Festival, which will take place at 8pm at Blanchardstown Library. For all the details, clickety-click here …So there you have it. If you’re likely to be in the vicinity of any of those events, we’d love to see you there …
On Tuesday, November 13th, I’ll be reading from SLAUGHTER’S HOUND at Sligo Library at 6pm as my contribution to Library Week. Given that I haunted this particular building as a child, and that much of my formative reading was sourced from Sligo Library, I’m very much looking forward to this event. That said, reading from a book set in Sligo to a Sligo crowd is a daunting prospect. Hopefully they’ll all still be buzzing on the endorphin rush of Sligo Rovers winning the League for the first time in 35 years and give me an easy ride …
On Friday, November 16th, I’ll be hosting Crime Night at the inaugural Red Line Festival in Tallaght, Dublin, chairing a panel composed of John Connolly, Mark Billingham, Niamh O’Connor and Declan Hughes, all of whom will be talking about their favourite crime novels and the books that inspired them to first pick up a pen. For all the details, clickety-click here …
VENGEANCE by Benjamin Black.Some of the crime fans I’ve spoken with have expressed surprise that two debut novels - by Laurence O’Bryan and Louise Phillips - made it onto the list, especially as there is a category dedicated to Newcomer of the Year, although I’d be inclined to applaud the fact that the judges were prepared to include books by newly minted authors (I was lucky enough to have my debut, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards when it came out in 2003). Besides, it looks like 2012 might well go down as a particularly quirky year for the Irish Book Awards - the Best Novel category, for example, contains no less than three collections of short stories, by Emma Donoghue, Joseph O’Connor and Kevin Barry.
SLAUGHTER’S HOUND by Declan Burke.
BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French.
THE ISTANBUL PUZZLE by Laurence O’Bryan.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT by Niamh O’Connor.
RED RIBBONS by Louise Phillips.
BLOOD LOSS by Alex Barclay.There were also very fine novels this year from Michael Clifford (GHOST TOWN), Claire McGowan (THE FALL), Casey Hill (TORN), Matt McGuire (DARK DAWN) and Anthony Quinn (DISAPPEARED).
A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS by Conor Brady.
THE LAST GIRL by Jane Casey.
THE NAMESAKE by Conor Fitzgerald.
THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway.
THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty.
‘This is an old country, Mr Rigby. There are passage tombs up on the hills of Carrowkeel and their stones gone mossy long before the pyramids were built. There were Greeks sailing into Sligo Bay when Berlin was still a fetid swamp in some godforsaken forest. Take a detour off our shiny new roads and you’ll find yourself in a labyrinth, because no Roman ever laid so much as a foundation brick on this island. Hibernia, they called it.’ A wry smile. ‘Winterland.’SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is due to be published in June, which is around about the time when the Irish people will be going to the polls to vote in a referendum on whether Ireland should change its constitution to allow for the EU’s new fiscal treaty pact to take effect here. Essentially, I think, the battle for Yes and No will be fought on the basis of how steaming mad the Irish people are at their loss of economic sovereignty at the hands of a German-dominated EU - which isn’t strictly true, by any means, and ignores the extent to which Ireland was culpable in its own downfall (SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is to a large extent a novel about the consequences of not taking responsibility for your actions).
‘Well, the roads run straight enough now.’
‘Indeed. Irish tyres hissing slick on the sweat of the German tax-payer, who will tell you that he has paid for every last yard of straight road built here in the last forty years. You know,’ she said, ‘there have always been those who turned their back on Brussels and Frankfurt, and not everyone who professes to ourselves alone is a Sticky or a Shinner. But I could never understand that. I quite liked the idea that Herr Fritz was spreading around his Marshall Plan largesse to buy himself some badly needed friends.’ She shrugged. Her voice gone dead and cold, as if she spoke from inside a tomb. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. Herr Shylock has returned demanding his pound of flesh, and it appears he is charging blood debt rates. Straight roads, certainly, and more suicides in the last year than died in traffic accidents.’
‘It won’t last,’ I said. ‘Nothing ever does.’
A hard flash of perfect teeth. ‘My point entirely, Mr Rigby. I’m told that the latest from Frankfurt is that our German friends are quietly pleased that the Irish are not Greeks, that we take our medicine with a pat on the head. No strikes, no burning of the bondholders, or actual banks. Apparently they’re a little contemptuous, telling one another as they pass the latest Irish budget around the Reichstag for approval that we have been conditioned by eight hundred years of oppression to perfect that very Irish sleight of hand, to tug the forelock even as we hold out the begging bowl.
‘They are children, Mr Rigby, our German friends. Conditioned themselves, since Charlemagne, to believe want and need are the same instinct. Hardwired to blitzkrieg and overreach, to forget the long game, the hard lessons of harsh winters bogged down in foreign lands.’ Tremulous now. Not the first time she’d delivered this speech. ‘The Romans were no fools. Strangers come here to wither and die. Celt, Dane, Norman and English, they charged ashore waving their axes and swords and we gave up our blood and took the best they have, and when they sank into our bogs we burned them for heat and carved our stories from their smoke and words.’
Behind the façade of Nun’s Cross, an exclusive gated development in South Dublin, lurks a dark secret. The body of one of its residents, Amanda Wells, is found in a shallow grave in the Dublin mountains, a plastic bag stuffed in her mouth. When her neighbour, Derek Carpenter, disappears, he becomes the prime suspect: he was questioned about the disappearance of his sister-in-law, Sarah, many years earlier. It seems like an open and shut case, but DI Jo Birmingham is not so sure, and she has her own personal reasons to prove Derek innocent: it was her husband Dan who had cleared Derek of Sarah’s disappearance. But when Jo starts digging, she unearths more than she bargained for, and her own fragile domestic peace comes under threat. And the one person who could help Jo crack the case, Derek’s wife Liz, is so desperate to protect her family that she is going out of her way to thwart all efforts to establish the truth. Can both women emerge unscathed?There’s a depressing familiarity to the phrase ‘body found in a shallow grave in the Dublin (or Wicklow) mountains’ these days, and it’ll be interesting to see what O’Connor - true crime editor with the Sunday World - carves from the stark facts and newspaper headlines. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT isn’t due until June, but it’s certainly one for your calendar …
I had a piece published in the Irish Examiner the weekend before last, which centred on Irish women crime writers, and exploring the reasons why crime fiction written by women comes at the crime narrative in a way that’s distinct from the male take on the genre. It featured a rather fabulous photo-shoot styled by Annmarie O’Connor (right), which starred Arlene Hunt, Ava McCarthy, Niamh O’Connor and Alex Barclay as latter-day femmes fatales, and opened up a lot like this … A WOMAN’S work is never done, especially when that work involves excavating the fears, hopes and traumas that lie at the heart of crime fiction.For the rest, clickety-click here …
Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O’Connor and Ava McCarthy are four of the leading lights of the current wave of Irish crime writing — women who prove that the female author is very often deadlier than the male.
“Crime novels are about life, death, love, loss and broken minds,” says Alex Barclay. “A broken mind is a very attractive thing to a woman, because there is a compulsion to understand it. I’m not saying that no man is wired that way, just that more women are.”
Some reviews for your delectation, O Three Regular Readers, the first batch of which were published in the Sunday Independent earlier this month, and which concentrate on Irish crime offerings. First up, Adrian McKinty’s FALLING GLASS. To wit: FALLING GLASS is Adrian McKinty’s sixth offering, a thriller in which an underworld enforcer, Killian, is commissioned to track down Rachel, the ex-wife of a wealthy Northern Ireland businessman, who has absconded with his two daughters. Naturally, things do not go smoothly for Killian, for the most part because a ruthless killer, a Russian soldier and veteran of the brutal conflict in Chechnya, is also on the woman’s trail. Framed by an increasingly violent game of one-upmanship, the story hurtles down the tortuously twisting byways of rural Northern Ireland.For the rest, which includes reviews of Benjamin Black’s ELEGY FOR APRIL and Niamh O’Connor’s TAKEN, clickety-click here …
However, a number of elements set FALLING GLASS apart from conventional shoot-’em-up thrillers. McKinty has established himself as a writer who blends riveting plots, a muscular kind of poetry and blackly comic flourishes, investing his fully rounded characters with thoughtful insights that frequently veer off at tangents into something akin to philosophy …
I particularly liked Karin Fossum’s THE CALLER and Charles Cumming’s THE TRINITY SIX, with the latter review coming in the wake of the Stella Rimington, and kicking off thusly: More deserving of the Le Carré comparisons is Charles Cumming’s fifth novel, THE TRINITY SIX. As a young man, Cumming was recruited by MI6, and his experience working for the Secret Intelligence Service is so palpable here that Cumming can at one point even afford to allow his hero, Dr Sam Gaddis, to wander into post-modern territory near the Ferris wheel made famous by Orson Welles in the classic movie ‘The Third Man’ ...It’d been years since I’d read a good old-fashioned spy thriller, and THE TRINITY SIX reminded me of how much I used to love them. Good timing, too, with the film adaptation of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY on the way in the next couple of weeks. Anyway, for the rest of the Irish Times column, clickety-click here …
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself referring frequently to an Irish Top Ten bestsellers list from about two months ago, in which eight of the ten titles were crime fiction. Proof positive of the Irish public’s voracious appetite for crime fiction, although none of the titles, unfortunately, were by Irish writers. Exactly why Irish readers have remained so resistant to the fine body of Irish crime writers is something of a mystery, especially given the best-selling and prize-winning calibre of some of said writers in the US, UK and Germany, in particular. “Niamh O’Connor, the true crime editor of the Sunday World, has written five successful true crime books, and burst onto the burgeoning Irish thriller scene last year with her first Jo Birmingham adventure, IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN, which was a best-seller. With TAKEN, O’Connor has pulled off the elusive feat of delivering a second novel that betters the original.”O’Connor writes police procedurals, has been compared to Lynda La Plante, and TAKEN bears a blurb from no less a writer than Tess Gerritsen, who acclaims the novel as gripping and terrifying. All of which explains why Niamh O’Connor is one of the few Irish crime writers to crack the Top Ten this year. The Big Question is, why so few others? Answers on a used twenty to Declan Burke’s Funny Money Stash, c/o Dodgy Facilitators Inc., Freeport, Grand Bahama. Or you could just leave a comment …
Given the recent headlines relating to despicable behaviour in some of Ireland’s more prestigious nursing homes, the title of Abbie Taylor’s second novel, IN SAFE HANDS, has a rather ironic ring to it. Quoth the blurb elves: Nursing is everything to Dawn. Having lost her beloved grandmother to cancer, it breaks her heart to see a terminally ill patient suffering in the same way. So when the old lady begs Dawn to end her life, Dawn knows it is the kindest thing to do. But what she doesn’t realize is that someone in the hospital has been watching her. Someone who is intent on making her pay for what she’s done. Wracked with guilt, Dawn struggles to meet her tormentor’s demands. But she is already way out of her depth. And things are about to take a very sinister turn …I have no idea of what the book is like, given that I was only recently alerted to Abbie Taylor’s existence by the good works of one Niamh O’Connor, but I like the idea of it: the examination of a crime is the examination of society, as Michael Connelly says in his foreword to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and it’s axiomatic that any society can be judged on how it treats its weak, sick and most vulnerable. If anyone out there has read IN SAFE HANDS, I’m all ears …
All told, it was a hugely enjoyable evening, and many thanks to all who took part, facilitated and helped out in any way. 
I’m three-quarters way through the Red Riding quartet, and it’s fair to say that David Peace (right) is a rather intense writer. In fact, I’ve been reading the quartet sparingly, not least because it takes me a James Ellroy afterwards to come down from reading a Peace. I should add that Peace, on the evidence of the Riding Riding quartet at least, is a brilliant writer: he brings a rare quality of psychological intimacy to the page, and his stories get under the skin in the way that most writers, quite frankly, don’t. 
Anyway, RTE’s Arena programme has very helpfully offered to put the Declan / Declan crisis to bed by featuring us both on tonight’s programme, in conversation about DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which airs at 7.30pm GMT. You can listen live here, but if you miss it, don’t worry: the archive will be up on Arena’s website within a day or two … 
Being the latest in Crime Always Pay’s erratic series to celebrate the publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, in which contributors to the collection nominate their favourite Irish crime novel. This week, it’s Niamh O’Connor: “For me, it comes down to the choice between Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY and John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE. Both were shortlisted for the Booker because both voices are so strong, reading either is like being in a vacuum. Both achieve that Holden Caulfield effect of managing to slightly warp the readers’ own view of the world. To pick one over the other, I had to ask myself who is more terrifying? Francie - a troubled boy with a suicidal mother, and an alcoholic father; or Freddie - a scientist, husband, and father who in the cold light of day makes a clinical confession that is as logical as it is conscience free. Who poses the greater threat to society? Frankie is a victim of his circumstances, intent on wreaking his revenge. Freddie is beyond hope of redemption, a man who has managed to master the maze of his own mind. Ultimately I think the answers, combined with the fact that THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE is based on the chilling true crime case of double murderer, Malcolm McArthur, the same case which prompted Charlie Haughey to coin the GUBU (Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented) phrase, gives the Banville book the edge.” - Niamh O’ConnorNiamh O’Connor’s TAKEN is published by Transworld Ireland.
As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY will be published later this month by Liberties Press, with yours truly responsible, in my role as editor, for all gaffes therein. Inspired by Stuart Neville’s big-up of Gene Kerrigan’s latest novel, THE RAGE, I thought it might be a nice idea to ask some of the GREEN STREETS contributors to nominate their favourite Irish crime novel. Last week it was Adrian McKinty on Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN. This week: Gerard Brennan on Adrian McKinty’s DEAD I WELL MAY BE: “When asked to name and explain my favourite Irish crime novel I panicked a little. There are so many of them out there and I can barely choose my favourite author at the best of times. The more I think about it the harder it is to narrow down. And even now that I’ve made a decision that I’m somewhat happy about, I kind of want to cheat and name my favourite trilogy rather than my favourite book. That would be the Dead Trilogy by Adrian McKinty. But damn it, I need to learn to be more decisive. So I’m picking the first McKinty book I read. DEAD I WELL MAY BE. From that ‘Belfast Confetti’ opening, I was hooked. McKinty’s debut crime novel has a gangster vibe going for it that would appeal to those who guiltily rooted for Tony Soprano (The Sopranos), Omar White (The Wire) and/or Walter White (Breaking Bad). Also included -- top notch writing, a badass protagonist and some of the most terrifying prison scenes I’ve ever read. And to the best of my knowledge, nobody gets called a Sligo cow-fucker in the first book, which has got to mean something to Declan Burke, right?” - Gerard BrennanErm, no. I know nowt about cow-fuckers, in Sligo or anywhere else. Mooo-ving on swiftly …
Staying with GREEN STREETS, the very generous folk at Shots Magazine are currently hosting a competition / giveaway for two copies of said tome, and the best bit is that you don’t even have to answer any pesky questions. Clickety-click here for your chance to win a copy …Harry Martinez, ace hacker turned private eye, is hired to expose a casino cheating crew in the Basque country. Her native Dublin no longer feels like home and her already fragile relationship with her mother has broken down for good. So she figures it’s time she escaped to explore the Spanish side of her identity. Her client is Riva Mills, head of a casino empire who believes someone is using computers to cheat her roulette wheels. The head of the crew conning the casinos is Franco Chavez, and once upon a time, Riva meant the world to him. But now she’s his target and he’s out to exact a bitter revenge. When the crew’s expert hacker is brutally murdered, Harry is pulled in as a replacement. As a dangerous criminal underworld opens up for her, Harry begins to see that for Chavez, cracking the casinos is just pocket change. She is so desperate to hide away and deceive even herself, that she gets trapped in a world of global corruption, where the stakes are sky-high and the currency is death…‘The currency is death’? Hmmm, sounds like an ECB / IMF bailout. Anyhoo, Ava McCarthy is just one of the panellists who’ll be taking part in an event at next weekend’s Kildare Readers’ Festival, on Saturday, May 14th, where she’ll take to the podium in the company of Alex Barclay and the aforementioned Arlene Hunt, with yours truly doing his level best to bring some badly needed glamour to the occasion and asking the occasional question. For all the details, clickety-click here …
Another potentially intriguing crime writing event is Murder in the City, which takes place on Wednesday, May 11th, under the umbrella of the Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. Quoth the PR elves: Enter the murky world of crime and murder as writers from Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy and Scotland read and discuss their works. An atmosphere of suspense and intrigue will be created by musicians from Dublin Institute of Technology. Crime journalist and writer, Niamh O’Connor, will introduce this exhilarating cast of contemporary crime writing talent.Sounds like it could be a cracker. For all the details, you know what to do …
