Review: DEADLY INTENT by Anna Sweeney

One of the reasons why Irish crime writing took so long to develop as a body of work is that Ireland lacked the kind of large, anonymous urban settings where crime fiction tends to thrive. In the era before the Celtic Tiger, in an Ireland long characterised by its squinting windows, the identity of a murderer was often known even before the gardaí arrived on the scene, which rather undermined the suspense element of a ‘whodunit’. There were exceptions, of course – we can go all the way back to Gerald Griffin’s The Collegians (1829), or more recently Patrick McGinley’s superb Bogmail (1978) – but for the most part it took a very brave writer to place an Irish murder mystery in a rural setting.
  The rise of Irish crime fiction has redrafted the parameters, of course, to the point where Anna Sweeney can set her debut novel Deadly Intent (Severn House) on the Beara Peninsula and hardly raise an eyebrow (the novel was originally published as gaeilge as Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2010). The story opens with the discovery of an unconscious woman on a remote hiking trail; her name is Maureen, and she is a guest at Nessa McDermott’s country house Cnoc Meala (Honey Hill). Ambitious young garda Redmond Joyce (“clean-scrubbed and shiny”) is keen to solve the crime as a ticket away from the easy-going pace of life in southwest Ireland to the more adrenaline-charged environs of a big city posting, but soon the entire community is shocked to discover that Maureen’s alleged attacker, millionaire businessman Oscar Malden, has been brutally killed. As a media feeding frenzy descends on Beara, and the gardaí begin to wonder why Nessa’s husband Patrick has departed the country for Malawi at this crucial time, Nessa – herself a former investigative journalist – sets out to discover the truth behind Oscar Malden’s murder.
  What transpires is a murder mystery that firmly inhabits the ‘cosy’ end of the crime fiction spectrum. “Jack makes it all sound like a James Bond film,” observes one of Nessa’s friends about a tabloid hack making hay from the tragic events, but the country house, the idyllic rural backdrop and Nessa’s status as an amateur detective suggest that Deadly Intent is a charming throwback to the ‘Golden Age’ of 1930s mystery fiction. That said, the story is highly contemporary: one sub-plot involves a Russian ship and its crew abandoned by its owners in a nearby port, while drug smuggling on the southwest coast also features, as does illegal international arms dealing.
  One of the novel’s most striking features, unsurprisingly, is its use of the dramatic landscape, which is vividly sketched by Sweeney: “Behind them, Beara’s great backbone of the Caha mountains stretched out along the peninsula. Ahead of them … the dark waters of Lake Glanmore in the embrace of shapely hills; beyond it, a quilted blanket of fertile farmland and abundant hedges; and on neighbouring Iveragh peninsula across the slender rim of the bay, the tip of Carrantouhil, the country’s highest mountain, rising up to the clouds above the muscular shoulders of the Reeks.”
  As beautifully written as it is, there is perhaps a little too much by way of descriptive digression in Deadly Intent, and Nessa’s roundabout way of investigating the murder – which has, admittedly, the ring of truth; in rural Ireland, as with the Beara’s topography, the quickest route between two points is rarely a straight line – nevertheless slows down the main narrative and the central investigation. Those with patience will be rewarded, however, by a mystery with plenty of twists and turns, and one that is entirely faithful to its time and place. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner.

Out Of The Past, Again

Congratulations again to all those shortlisted in the Ireland AM Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards. I know that no one sits down to write a book in order to see it nominated for a prize, but it is a very nice bonus when it does happen, and I’m delighted for everyone involved.
  All told, it’s been another very good year for Irish crime fiction. Looking at my shelves during the week, I realised that the following books were just some of those eligible for the Crime Fiction award, all of them, in my not-very-humble opinion, equally entitled to consider themselves shortlist material:

RATLINES by Stuart Neville
CROCODILE TEARS by Mark O’Sullivan
COLD CASE by Patrick McGinley
I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET by Adrian McKinty
CROSS OF VENGEANCE by Cora Harrison
SCREWED by Eoin Colfer
GRAVELAND by Alan Glynn
THE DEAL by Michael Clifford
ECHOLAND by Joe Joyce
HOLY ORDERS by Benjamin Black

  There were many more Irish crime novels published this year, of course; those above are just the ones I’ve read. If I’ve missed out on any you think deserve a mention, feel free to let me know.
  Incidentally, it may or may not be interesting that six of the ten novels listed above are historical novels, while three of the six shortlisted for the award are also set in the past. That’s also true of three further novels: Arlene Hunt’s THE OUTSIDER, Conor Brady’s THE ELOQUENCE OF THE DEAD and John McAllister’s THE STATION SERGEANT.
  Maybe the past isn’t such a different country after all; maybe things aren’t done so differently there as we might like to imagine.

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice To See A Work Of Pulp Win The Booker Prize?”

Erm, no. Allen Barra penned a mildly controversial piece for The Daily Beast earlier this week, suggesting that Benjamin Black, the alter-ego of John Banville (right), should win the Booker Prize. Herewith be the gist:

“One reason, I think, that critics are giddy over Black is that—let’s just say it—he’s more fun to read than Banville. (Well, some of Banville.) THE SEA is as exquisite as an Irish mist, but I won’t read DOCTOR COPERNICUS, KEPLER, and THE NEWTON LETTER again for all the whiskey in Quirke’s favourite pub. Another reason is that Benjamin Black’s territory is a new one for critics who regard themselves as “serious.” I suspect most of them have never dipped into the sordid but seductive world of Irish crime fiction—Patrick McGinley, for instance, or Ken Bruen, who is direct enough about his debt to Chandler to title a book DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS and whose detective, Jack Taylor, is so dissipated he makes Quirke seem like “a parfait genteel knight.” Banville might take it as an insult, though I think Black would not, that the Quirke novels are as good as anything produced by his contemporaries.
  “In 2006, when Banville accepted the Booker Prize for THE SEA—and, to be clear, if they had asked me, I would have voted for it—he made his famous statement, “It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize.” The egoism expressed in this statement bothers me not at all, but the deliberate tossing about of the phrase “work of art” makes me think that the man who used it was a pretentious prig who could do with a cheap thrill or two. Perhaps there is a difference between John Banville and Benjamin Black; if so, I think I prefer the latter. Black is Banville to be sure, and as Groucho said, outside of the improvement, you can’t tell the difference.
  “Wouldn’t it be nice to see a work of pulp win the Booker Prize?”

  A couple of things about all that:
  One, a work of pulp will never win the Booker Prize, because the Booker Prize isn’t awarded for pulp. It’s like suggesting that a pole-vaulter should win the gold medal for the javelin, because they’re both Olympic sports and involve running for a bit with a big stick and then letting go. The Booker Prize is what it is; I honestly don’t get this obsession some crime fiction writers and readers have with a crime novel winning it. To me it suggests an inferiority complex, that crime fiction will only be fully validated when it wins a literary prize. The truth is, if you want to win the Booker Prize, or be in with a chance of winning it, at least, then write the kind of book that tends to win the Booker Prize. And yes, I know that there’s great excitement about the fact that AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker (along with Patrick DeWitt’s western SISTERS AND BROTHERS), and happy days for AD Miller if the book wins. Would it change the way people read and write crime fiction? Should it? Isn’t one of the attractions of crime fiction that it’s the half-breed outlaw of the publishing world? It is for me, at least. Do I want or need to see the kind of stories I like to write and read receive some kind of belated pat on the head as they pass through the gilded pillars into the whited sepulchre? Because - and it gives me no great pleasure to say this - literary fiction is on its knees. And not just in terms of sales - how often have we read the latest in an interminable series of ‘the novel is dead’ eulogies, in which some writer we’ve never heard of laments the fact that the literary novel has disappeared up its own fundament? The fact of the matter is, the literary novel is a vampire, a beautiful but dead shell which requires regular infusions of new blood in order to maintain the illusion of vitality, sucking up inspiration from the genres it purports to despise. Maybe crime fiction and AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS is just the latest victim, who knows. And really, who cares?
  Secondly, and as all Three Regular Readers will be aware, Ken Bruen has yet to write a book called DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, although he did contribute a short story to the collection of essays, interviews and short fictions published by Liberties Press earlier this year.
  Thirdly, John Banville is as entitled to a sense of humour as anyone else, and his ‘It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize’ comment was as much mischief as it was any kind of qualitative judgement on previous winners.
  As to whether Benjamin Black is as good, or better, a writer than John Banville, well, that’s a matter of opinion, and mine is that Banville is the better writer by some distance. But one thing is certain: Benny Blanco don’t write no pulp, in either guise.

Lost Classic # 74: Bogmail, Patrick McGinley

Variously reviewed as an "an unclaimed jewel of a book" and a "truly funny, witty and stunningly well-told story of murder in a small Irish village near Donegal," Patrick McGinley's Bogmail (1978) is a dark, twisted and blackly hilarious tale of rural shenanigans in the deepest, darkest Northwest(est). But don't take our word for it: Bogmail got the five-star treatment from Time Magazine, the New York Times, and sundry peers who nominated it for Best Novel at the 1981 Edgars. Which is nice. Are we hereby, forthwith and post-haste demanding its immediate republication? Bet your sweetchips, baby ...