In Like Quinn

Another week, another debut title by an Irish crime writer. This week it’s Anthony Quinn, whose DISAPPEARED is published by Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press / Open Road Media in July. Quoth the blurb elves:

DISAPPEARED is a poignant and haunting tale of Northern Ireland’s history. Perceiving two mysterious incidents as a sign of something much larger, Inspector Celcius Daly knows an old hatred is resurfacing, and a bloodbath broods ahead. Until now, Emerald Isle experienced its first taste of peace, and it is up to a Catholic detective (in a Protestant land) to restore that peace and solve a murder, digging deep into the garish history of a land stained red with blood.

  ‘Garish history of a land stained red with blood.’ Doesn’t sound very promising, does it? Then again, those blurb elves can’t always be trusted. I read the first few pages of DISAPPEARED on pdf, and they read nowhere as luridly or clunkily as the synopsis above might suggest; in fact, it was all very deftly put together. There’s an ARC on its way to CAP Towers as you read, so I’ll keep you posted …

A Very Irish Noir

Some whippersnapper called Otto Penzler has been making predictions about the ‘Future Masters of Noir’, and of the five tipped for the top (or bottom, if you’re being noir-ish about it), two are Irish. Not bad going, chaps. The two are Ken Bruen and Stuart Neville (right), authors of the recently published THE DEVIL and COLLUSION, respectively, and while I’m certainly not going to quibble about the inclusion of either, you’d have to question the bit about Ken Bruen being a ‘future’ master of noir. Which is to say, Sir Kenneth of Bruen has been writing some of the most provocative noir for the best part of 20 years now - although Otto does hedge his bets a little there, suggesting that Ken is already a master, even if the mainstream has yet to embrace his bleak, twisted vision of the world.
  Anyhoo, it’s all kinds of good news for both men, and well deserved to boot. For the full list of Penzler’s ‘Masters of Noir’, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, Stuart Neville had a piece on ‘Emerald Noir’ published in the Sunday Tribune last weekend, and a fine piece it is too, with Stuart waxing lyrical on the origins of the current boom in Irish crime writing and invoking names such as John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman, Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan and FL Green. Quoth Stuart:

“Perhaps the blossoming of home-grown crime fiction can be better explained by a change in attitude, rather than circumstance. Having more money in our pockets, however fleetingly, was a symptom of change, rather than a cause. The simultaneous transformations of the Celtic Tiger and the peace process went hand-in-hand with a deeper, more permanent shift that occurred on this island: Ireland, north and south, began to look outward rather than inward. With that change came a greater willingness, particularly in the Republic, to discuss and confront the uglier aspects of its own history, such as state and church abuse against children.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Mr Pot? Your Kettle Is Waiting.”

The Rap Sheet, bless its cotton socks, brings our attention to the John Banville (right) essay Criminal Odes in the current issue of Book Forum, in which Benny Blanco’s alter ego throws the eye over THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS, edited by Otto Penzler. “It’s a good piece overall,” comments The Rap Sheet’s Grand Vizier J. Kingston Pierce, “though Banville tries a bit too ardently to prevent the grit of this genre’s untidy roots from getting under his nails.” A case in point, perhaps, being Benny’s appraisal of Ray Chandler’s work, to wit:

“On mature reflection, I consider the Marlowe books forced and even a touch sentimental, for all their elegance and wit and wonderful sheen … Chandler perhaps laboured too long and too hard at effecting the transmutation of life’s raw material into deathless prose.”

Take that, damned Pot! Feel the wrath of the Mighty Kettle! For lo! here’s Benny holding forth on the writing process in last week’s Irish edition of the Sunday Times, to wit:

For one thing, these days Banville is revelling in the freedom afforded by his guise as a crime novelist. “On the brink of old age, I’m suddenly having fun,” he says. “I didn’t realise writing novels as so easy until I became Benjamin Black – you just sit there and make it up as you go along. I mean, John Banville will work on a sentence for half a day; Benjamin just goes, ‘Bugger it, that’ll do.’”

No labouring too long and too hard for ol’ Benny Blanco, eh? Because that deathless prose malarkey is only for serious writers. Except Ray Chandler, obviously.