Jeeves? The Luger

The Glebe ‘Cultural Summit’ takes place in Donegal next month, as part of the Earagail Arts Festival, incorporating discussions on books, film and ‘the Next Door Neighbours’ - i.e., the relationship between Ireland and Britain.
  It all takes place at Glebe House and Gallery, a rather lovely little spot on the fringe of Glenveagh National Park. The former home of artist Derek Hill, the house is now maintained as a museum by Heritage Ireland. We were there a couple of weeks ago, and got the guided tour - there’s a Picasso, a Renoir, a beautiful Evie Hone, and much more - although the artist that caught my eye was John Craxton, whose ‘Shepherds Near Knossos’ decorates this post, and about whom you will be hearing more of in my next novel.
  But I digress. Its title apart, which has me instinctively reaching for my Luger, the ‘Glebe Cultural Summit’ has a very nice array of Irish talent on board. Peter Murphy, Mary Costello and Paul Lynch engage in a discussion called ‘New Irish Writing - Post-Boom Narratives’; director Lenny Abrahamson is interviewed in ‘Storytelling on Film’, with a particular stress on the forthcoming What Richard Did, which is adapted from Kevin Power’s very fine novel BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK; and a trio of our finest crime scribes, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes and Paul Charles, take part in ‘The Rise of Irish Crime Fiction’.
  For all the details, and how to book tickets, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A (Short) Review: THE HILLIKER CURSE: MY PURSUIT OF WOMEN by James Ellroy

James Ellroy has written about the impact of his mother’s murder in the memoir MY DARK PLACES (1996), and dedicated his novel THE BLACK DAHLIA (1987) to her memory. THE HILLIKER CURSE: MY PURSUIT OF WOMEN (William Heinemann, £16.99) is another memoir, but here Ellroy broadens his remit to discuss how Geneva Hillker’s murder in 1958, when Ellroy was ten years old, set the life-long agenda for his relationship with the opposite sex. Rigorously honest about his early days of criminal activity, voyeurism, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour, it’s equally candid when Ellroy documents how the failures of his personal relationships fuelled his fictional fantasies of brutal men going to war on behalf of vulnerable women. Then there’s the allegation that Ellroy has exploited his mother’s death: “I read from MY DARK PLACES,” he writes. “The six thousandth public performance of my dead-mother act … A man called me glib. I brusquely rebuked him. I said she was my mother - not his. I said I’d paid the price - and he hadn’t.” The prose is Ellroy’s usual cocktail of slang, mangled idiom and staccato rhythms, an electrifying blend that fuels the most compulsively self-flagellating memoir you’ll read this year. - Declan Burke

  For a longer take on THE HILLIKER CURSE, Peter Murphy’s review in last weekend’s Irish Times is well worth checking out …

THE GHOSTS Of Christmas Presents

It’s been a terrific year for Stuart Neville. Superb reviews of his debut novel, THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST); interviewing James Ellroy at the Belfast Waterfront; and last weekend – in case you missed it – a lovely write up from Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times, in which TGOB was the lead review. All of which is very nice indeed, but then Stuart is a very nice bloke indeed, as you’ll see for yourself in this video interview with Keith Rawson. Roll it there, Collette …
  And while we’re on the subject of nice blokes, there was a marvellous turn-out for Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND launch at Dubray Books last Tuesday night, which was cunningly timed to coincide with the official turning on of the Christmas lights on Grafton Street. Among the writerly types in attendance were Declan Hughes, Peter Murphy, Professor Ian Ross, Cormac Millar, Ava McCarthy, Critical Mick and John Boyne, and at least one Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright. Which goes to show how highly regarded Alan Glynn is across the writing spectrum, and deservedly so, because WINTERLAND is a wonderful novel.
  Anyway, you may well be wondering about Christmas gifts at this point. For the reader in your life, you could do a hell of a lot worse than give them THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST or WINTERLAND. Or, better still, both. They’re both beautifully written novels that are page-turning thrillers, but they also do what the best crime writing does: they remind us who we really are and how we live now.
  Incidentally, in a very good week for Irish writing, hearty congratulations to Colum McCann for scooping the National Book Award for LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN.
  Finally, and in contradiction to erroneous information provided here by yours truly, it appears that my latest opus, THE BIG EMPTY, has only gone out for consideration to publishers this week – last Monday, to be precise. I really should pay more attention to such things, but I was under the impression that the book was already under consideration. This is both good news and bad news: good in the sense that the book is still a live grenade, in a manner of speaking, and bad in the sense that the waiting begins all over again. And, given the fact that editors generally have an already existing pile of submissions to work their way through, and that it’s already more than halfway through November, there’s a good chance that we won’t hear how it’s faring until well into the New Year.
  It is, of course, the hope that kills you in the end, but as all three regular readers of this blog will know, I last week went public with my decision to quit writing. So I feel curiously detached from THE BIG EMPTY – although there’s a strong possibility that I feel that way because it’s by far my most personal piece of writing to date, and I’m simply steeling myself against the inevitable rejection letters (hey, not everyone’s going to like it, or love it enough to publish it; that’s just the way things work). Having said all that, I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t feeling just the tiniest frisson of anticipation, or trepidation: in effect, I’ve submitted my baby to a beauty contest, and she’s now at the mercy of factors beyond my control, and depending on the kindness of strangers.
  As for the story, it’s a Harry Rigby private eye tale, a sequel to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, of which the ever-generous Ken Bruen had this to say on its publication:

“I have seen the future of Irish crime fiction and it’s called Declan Burke. Here is talent writ large – mesmerizing, literate, smart and gripping. If there is such an animal as the literary crime novel, then this is it. But as a compelling crime novel, it is so far ahead of anything being produced, that at last my hopes for crime fiction are renewed. I can’t wait to read his next novel.”

  For what it’s worth, I think that THE BIG EMPTY is a better book than EIGHTBALL BOOGIE – but then, I would say that. The fact of the matter is that, when it comes to THE BIG EMPTY, my opinion no longer matters. To belabour the baby metaphor, I’ve done all I can to prepare her for the big, bad world, and can do nothing more to protect her from its harsh realities. All I can do is pray she gets a fair hearing and is treated kindly. Here’s hoping.
  If some kind soul does pick it up, then it would actually jibe quite well with last week’s decision, given that there are another two Harry Rigby novels already written, the rewriting / redrafting of which would allow me to keep my hand in at writing, without requiring the full-time commitment I’d have to make to write a new novel from scratch. In a perfect world, that would be the perfect scenario – although you don’t need me to tell you that neither you, I nor Harry Rigby lives in a perfect world. Anyway, upward and onward: bon voyage, THE BIG EMPTY, and a fair wind …

Yes, We Have No Booker Prize

Peter Murphy has long been a friend of Crime Always Pays, and his debut novel, JOHN THE REVELATOR, is a very fine offering indeed. It put me in mind of Pat McCabe’s opus THE BUTCHER BOY when I was reading it, albeit with a tad less execution by pig-stickers.
  Anyway, JOHN THE REVELATOR is in the running for The Guardian’s innovative ‘Not the Booker Prize’ award, which will be given to the novel that should have been on the Booker longlist, and wasn’t, and you – yes, YOU! – can vote for it. Clickety-click here for all the details …
  Next week - Not the Orange Prize: In which you – yes, YOU! – get to vote for all those books that didn’t qualify for the Orange Prize because they were written by blokes …

Down These Green Streets A Man Must Go …

They say a week is a long time in politics, but a day can be a hell of a time in the writing business too. In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve had one novel rejected by an American publisher; interest expressed in a different novel by another American publisher; and strong interest expressed by an Irish publisher in the non-fiction project DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS. I’ve also moderated a panel of Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy for the Dublin Writers’ Festival, and had my plans for world domination thwarted by Amazon / Kindle (you can’t publish to Kindle unless you have a U.S. bank account - boo). Meanwhile, I’m lightly redrafting a novel I’d kind of forgotten about – this is the one I propose to upload to Kindle – and finding myself pleasantly surprised with it. I might even post the first chapter up hereabouts, just for some feedback … because I really don’t have enough going on right now.

Methinks I need a holiday, folks ...

Semantics, She Wrote

One of the benefits of running a books blog is that you get sent free books all the time, which is absolutely terrific. I received a copy of Aifric Campbell’s THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER last year, when it was first published, but – the demands on everyone’s reading time being what they are – I simply didn’t get around to reading it. Happily, circumstance has forced my hand, as I’m moderating a panel at next week’s Dublin Writers’ Festival, doing my best not to get myself blinded as Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy dazzle their audience.
  Anyway, being the consummate pro that I am (koff), I read THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to have a right good novel-of-ideas to mull over, the kind that you’d read in two days if only you weren’t breaking off to stare out the window every five minutes going, ‘Hmmmm, that’s interesting …’. Example thereof:

“The truth was that creative writers were more qualified to explain humanity than psychiatrists and philosophers. This was what Levi the chemist had eventually realised, that he would have to resort to fiction and poetry to communicate the horror of Auschwitz. The psychologists and psychoanalysts who had staked out their territorial claim knew no more than the great novelists …” – Aifric Campbell, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER

  I’m currently a third of the way through Peter Murphy’s JOHN THE REVELATOR, and enjoying that hugely too. There’s a beautiful narrative voice that puts me in mind of Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, and a whimsical note that suggests a tincture of Flann O’Brien. All of which is most excellent …
  As for Ed O’Loughlin’s NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND, clickety-click here …
  That panel, by the way, takes place next Wednesday, June 3rd, at 6pm at the Project Arts Centre. Tickets are €12 / €10. Of which, sadly, I don’t see a red cent. Boo …
  In other Dublin Writers’ Festival News, the impossibly gorgeous Arlene Hunt moderates a panel composed of Val McDermid and Kate Summerscale on Sunday, June 7th, at 5pm at The Abbey, which is quite posh for crime writers, but there you go. Val McDermid is plugging her latest novel, whatever that happens to be, while Kate Summerscale will be talking about THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER, which I’ve yet to read but I’m hearing great things about … Again, tickets are €12 / €10, which is a bargain for The Abbey. Plus, you get Arlene Hunt, and very possibly Val McDermid on a feminist rant. What more could any red-blooded male want?

On Bludgeoning Puppies: Yep, It’s The John Banville Interview

Our good friend Peter Murphy posts a quite superb interview with John Banville (right) on his Blog of Revelations (as far as I know, it’s also carried in the current issue of Hot Press magazine), which intros thusly:

Banville the Booker Winner. Banville the Book Reviewer. Banville the master craftsman who fashions beautifully written novels like MEFISTO, THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE and THE SEA, mapping the inner psyches of his protagonists with forensic precision while co-opting neo-classical themes and allusions.
  Banville the cold Nabokovian prose sculptor who couldn’t make us care about his characters if he bludgeoned their puppies to death before our eyes. Banville the pariah of the chattering literati who accuse him of aloofness and arrogance. Banville the highbrow stylist slumming it in the noir genre under the non de plume Benjamin Black to the derision of an Irish crime-writing contingent who maintain he couldn’t plot his way out of a paper bag.
  Banville the hatchet-jobber who’s driven his pen into the hearts of everyone from Nadine Gordimer to Ian McEwan (whose SATURDAY he termed a “dismayingly bad book”). Banville the ungracious victor, who, after scooping the Man Booker with THE SEA in 2005, sniffed something about being glad that the prize went to a work of art for a change …

  Trust me, it’s a terrific piece, and well worth your time, and especially if you think Banville = Blandville …

Gone Fishin’

A couple of new offerings from the seemingly bottomless pool of Irish writers, folks. First up is Norn Iron’s resident evil genius Gerard Brennan (right), he of CSNI fame, with the opening to his novel PIRANHAS. To wit:

The streets of Beechmount stank of wet dog. The effect of drying rain in early summer. Light faded from the West Belfast housing area. Joe Philips yawned and slumped against the redbrick alley wall. Half past ten at night. He wanted to be in bed, cosy and watching a DVD until he drifted off to sleep. But he was the leader. The rest of the gang expected him to be there.
  At least it was holiday time. No school to mitch in the morning. He popped his head around the corner and glanced down the avenue.
  “I see one,” he said.
  They all looked up to him. Literally. In the last few weeks he’d taken what his ma called a growth spurt. He’d use his share of tonight’s money to buy longer trousers. Too much white sock showed between his Nike Air trainers and his Adidas tracksuit bottoms.
  “Anyone else about?” Wee Danny Gibson asked. He snubbed a half-smoked fag on the alley wall and tucked the butt behind his ear.
  “No, just the aul doll. Easy enough number.”
  Wee Danny nodded and the rest of the gang twitched, murmured and pulled hoods up over lowered baseball caps. Ten of them in all, not one above fourteen years old.
  “Right, let’s go,” Joe said.
  They spilled out of the alley and surrounded the blue-rinse bitch like a cursing tornado. She screamed, but they moved too fast for the curtain-twitchers to react. Broken nose bleeding, she dropped her handbag and tried to fend off kicks and punches. Wee Danny scooped it up and whistled. They split in ten different directions. The old granny shrieked at them. They were gone before any fucker so much as opened his door.

  Nice. For the rest, clickety-click on Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals.
  Meanwhile, Peter Murphy’s JOHN THE REVELATOR will be published next February by Faber and Faber, with the book-trailer looking a lot like this. Roll it there, Collette …

Three Chords And The Truth

If the prospect of ‘low’ entertainment being transmuted into art makes you queasy, look away now. For lo, Peter Murphy has a fine treatise on the influence of punk music on Irish literature over at his Blog of Revelations, in the midst of which he has this to say:

“The compost theory of culture holds that what was once held as ‘low’ entertainment – gothic, southern gothic, pulp fiction, westerns, post-war noir, horror, magic realism, new journalism, the new wave of ’60s sci-fi, EC and Marvel comics, tales from the crypt, performance poetry, graffiti art, graphic novels – gets turned to precious metal by the pressure of successive decades heaped on top of each other, until, at this end of the process, what was once derided as common has become retroactively transmuted into art.
  “Anybody feeling queasy here should note that Cormac McCarthy, maybe the most respected living American writer, has worked exclusively in genre for decades, be it the post-apocalyptic (THE ROAD), modern noir, (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), western (THE BORDER TRILOGY) horror masquerading as western (BLOOD MERIDIAN) or southern gothic (CHILD OF GOD, OUTER DARK).”

  Peter I love like a mother from another brother, etc., but there’s an issue at the heart of his argument I can’t get my head around, which is that he views Irish literary works through the prism of the punk music of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, et al.
  Surely, if the ‘low entertainment vs art’ argument holds true, then punk – and pop, rock, C&W, metal, et al – are simply genres of music, with classical the only music worth taking seriously for true connoisseurs.
  Here’s something that occurred to me while watching the Coen Brothers’ take on NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – the movie would not be judged on its merits as a genre flick, but simply on whether it was a good or bad movie. And when the awards season rolled around, the film wasn’t awarded ‘Best Crime Flick’, it was given ‘Best Flick’.
  You can argue, as I’ve been known to do after a dry sherry or four, that movie-making being a relatively new form, it’s more in tune with generalised democracy and universal suffrage – as with TV, it instinctively understands that its audience is for the very great part composed of a classless society, or at least believes that it belongs to a classless society.
  The world of books, on the other hand, has its roots in a much different world order, one which depended for its very existence on the idea of a pecking order. And no matter how you arranged that pecking order – by title, rank or money – the essential element underpinning it was snobbery.
  Peter, back at the Blog of Revelations, celebrates the social and cultural leveller that was / is the punk ethic by urging us to:

“ … imagine a climate where Irish writers and, crucially, non-Irish writers resident here, co-opted punk’s refusal to observe protocol, where there’s no confining delineation between so-called serious and popular literature, where language, theme, storytelling craft and imagination all co-exist.”

  He goes on to cite, as examples of same, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link, Joe Hill, AM Homes, David Foster Wallace, Steven Hall, Jeffrey Eugenides, Dave Eggars, George Saunders, Katherine Dunne and Tom Spanbauer.
  I don’t get the “and, crucially, non-Irish writers resident here” bit, but what I can suggest is that there many Irish writers who have “co-opted punk’s refusal to observe protocol”. They include John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Alan Glynn, Tana French, Adrian McKinty, Gerard Donovan, Colin Bateman … you get my drift.
  If punk was about anything, it was about telling it like it is. Some, like the Pistols, were wilfully raw. Others, such as The Buzzcocks, were deceptively articulate and sophisticated.
  Crime writing – whether wilfully raw or sophisticated and articulate – tells it like it is.
  All together now: “Even fallen in love with someone / Ever fallen in love / In love with someone / You shouldna fallen in love with …”

Around The Web In 80 Seconds*

Crumbs! There’s nothing like eBay to give you a sense of perspective. An ARC of THE BIG O just went over there for $3, which is a long, long way from the heady heights of the $195.36 it was selling for on Amazon not so long ago. Talk about a credit crunch …
  Anyhoos, on with the more interesting stuff. Over at The Blog of Revelations, Peter Murphy reports that David Simon will be in Dublin on September 19 for a special screening of The Wire, which will be followed by a public interview. Jump on this for all the details …
  Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS hits the U.S. shelves this week, and Brian’s blogging his heart out over at Moments in Crime all week, with today’s instalment concerning itself with why he picked up the quill in the first place. To wit:

“It was as a fan of these series that, four or five years ago, I had a strong sense that many of them were nearing an end: Rebus was reaching retirement; Morse had died; Robicheaux thought he was taking a heart attack in LAST CAR TO ELYSIAN FIELDS. I decided that, in case these series should stop, I would need a new book to read, featuring that sense of place and central character linked. And so I wrote BORDERLANDS …”

  Which is nice. Meanwhile, over at the Book Witch’s impossibly glamorous lair, the Witch is talking up Oisín McGann’s SMALL-MINDED GIANTS, which Eoin Colfer recommended to her. Quoth la Witch:

“The cover of SMALL-MINDED GIANTS says this is a book for older readers, and there may be some truth in this. It’s a violent story, in a way, and the future looks bleak. Oisín has written a thriller with lots of action, and none of the clever gadgets or the backup that Alex Rider enjoys.”

  If it’s good enough for Eoin Colfer and the Witch, it’s good enough for us. Finally, Sam Millar gets in touch to let us all know that BLOODSTORM has reached American shores, complete with a funky new cover, and that the early reviews have been very positive indeed. First our good friends at Publishers Weekly:

“BLOODSTORM is the first in a powerful new crime series from Irish author Millar. Extremely original, it is a chillingly gripping book, and the consistently tough prose should help gain Millar more fans in the U.S. with a taste for the hard-boiled.”

  Nice. And then there’s the folk at Booklist:

“Irish crime writer, Sam Millar (THE REDEMPTION FACTORY) is back with a brand new anti-hero, Karl Kane … crime noir doesn’t get much darker or grittier than this shocking tale of corruption and revenge …”

  Nicer still. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – it’s always Millar time at Crime Always Pays.

* Providing you don’t click any of the links, of course

The Blog Of Revelations

Peter Murphy is a name I think you’ll be hearing a lot of in 2009. His debut novel, JOHN THE REVELATOR, will be published by Faber and Faber in February, but you can get on the bandwagon early by jumping over to his Blog of Revelations, where he’s currently wibbling about the arrival of Richard Price’s LUSH LIFE at the Revelatorium and linking to an interview he conducted with Price for Hot Press back in 2003, which is terrific stuff. Meanwhile, here’s one we prepared earlier …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 973: Peter Murphy

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?
Oh boy. A photo-finish between FROM HELL by Alan Moore, THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy, and Borges’ story ‘Death And The Compass’.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure when it comes to books. Crime novels, sci-fi, music books, comic books, journalism, ‘mainstream’ literature, ‘slipstream’ literature, biographies, tales of the macabre … MAUS is just as valid as MOBY DICK.
Most satisfying writing moment?
That Twilight Zone thing where your peripheral vision goes fuzzy and time buggers off …
The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. Poe was melancholic, alcoholic and black-humoured, so he qualifies as Irish by default.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Mike McCormack’s short story ‘A Is For Axe’ from GETTING IT IN THE HEAD would be a hoot.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst – it’s a profoundly antisocial occupation. Best – see above.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Black and sticky.
Who are you reading right now?
THE NEW GRANTA BOOK OF AMERICAN SHORT STORY, edited by Richard Ford. They’re all great, but every fourth or fifth story just about makes my heart stop. And I’m re-reading A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND by Flannery O’Connor, ’cos she's the queen.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Blood, sweat and tears.

Peter Murphy’s JOHN THE REVELATOR will be published by Faber & Faber and Harcourt (US) in 2009.