Introduction: BOOKS TO DIE FOR, ed. John Connolly and Declan Burke

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that BOOKS TO DIE FOR (Hodder & Stoughton) is being reissued in paperback; last week, the Irish Times was kind enough to carry the book’s Introduction. To wit:

Why does the mystery novel enjoy such enduring appeal? There is no simple answer. It has a distinctive capacity for subtle social commentary; a concern with the disparity between law and justice; and a passion for order, however compromised. Even in the vision of the darkest of mystery writers, it provides us with a glimpse of the world as it might be, a world in which good men and women do not stand idly by and allow the worst aspects of human nature to triumph without opposition. It can touch upon all these aspects of itself while still entertaining the reader – and its provision of entertainment is not the least of its many qualities.
  But the mystery novel has always prized character over plot, which may come as some surprise to its detractors. True, this is not a universal tenet: there are degrees to which mysteries occupy themselves with the identity of the criminal as opposed to, say, the complexities of human motivation. Some, such as the classic puzzle mystery, tend towards the former; others are more concerned with the latter. But the mystery form understands that plot comes out of character, and not just that: it believes that the great mystery is character.
  If we take the view that fiction is an attempt to find the universal in the specific, to take individual human experiences and try to come to some understanding of our common nature through them, then the question at the heart of all novels can be expressed quite simply as ‘Why?’ Why do we do the things that we do? It is asked in Bleak House just as it is asked in The Maltese Falcon. It haunts The Pledge as it does The Chill. But the mystery novel, perhaps more than any other, not only asks this question; it attempts to suggest an answer to it as well.
  But where to start? There are so many from which to choose, even for the knowledgeable reader who has already taken to swimming in mystery’s dark waters, and huge numbers of new titles appear on our bookshelves each week. It is hard to keep up with authors who are alive, and those who are deceased are at risk of being forgotten entirely. There are treasures to be found, and their burial should not be permitted, even if there are some among these authors who might have been surprised to find themselves remembered at all, for they were not writing for the ages.
  And so, quite simply, we decided to give mystery writers from around the world the opportunity to enthuse about their favourite novel, and in doing so we hoped to come up a selection of books that was, if not definitive (which would be a foolish and impossible aim), then heartfelt, and flawless in its inclusions if not its omissions. What we sought from each of the contributors to this volume was passionate advocacy: we wanted them to pick one novel, just one, that they place in the canon. If you found them in a bar some evening, and the talk turned (as it almost inevitably would) to favorite writers, it would be the single book that each writer would press upon you, the book that, if there was time and the stores were still open, they would leave the bar in order to purchase for you, so they could be sure they had done all in their power to ensure it was read by you.
  While this volume is obviously ideal for dipping into when you have a quiet moment, enabling you to read an essay or two before moving on, there is also a pleasure to be had from the slow accumulation of its details. Reading through the book chronologically, as we have done during the editing process, patterns begin to emerge, some anticipated, some less so. There is, of course, the importance of the great Californian crime writers – Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and James M. Cain – to the generations of writers who have followed and, indeed, to each other: so Macdonald’s detective, Lew Archer, takes his name in part from Sam Spade’s murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon, while Chandler builds on Hammett, and then Macdonald builds on Chandler but also finds himself being disparaged by the older author behind his back, adding a further layer of complication to their relationship. But the writer who had the greatest number of advocates was not any of these men: it was the Scottish author Josephine Tey, who is a crucial figure to a high number of the female contributors to this book.
  Or one might take the year 1947: it produces both Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place, in which the seeds of what would later come to be called the serial killer novel begin to germinate, and Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury. Both are examinations of male rage – although Spillane is probably more correctly considered as an expression of it – and both come out of the aftermath of the Second World War, when men who had fought in Europe and Asia returned home to find a changed world, a theme that is also touched on in Margery Allingham’s 1952 novel, The Tiger in the Smoke. The pulp formula in the US also adapted itself to these changes in post-war society, which resulted in the best work of writers such as Jim Thompson, Elliott Chaze and William McGivern, all of whom are considered in essays in this book.
  Finally, it’s interesting to see how often different writers, from Ed McBain to Mary Stewart, Newton Thornburg to Leonardo Padura, assert the view that they are, first and foremost, novelists. The mystery genre provides a structure for their work – the ideal structure – but it is extremely malleable, and constantly open to adaptation: the sheer range of titles and approaches considered here is testament to that.
  To give just one example: there had long been female characters at the heart of hard-boiled novels, most frequently as femmes fatales or adoring secretaries, but even when women were given central roles as detectives, the novels were written, either in whole or in part, by men: Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool (created under the pseudonym A.A. Fair), who made her first appearance in 1939; Dwight W. Babcock’s Hannah Van Doren; Sam Merwin Jr.’s Amy Brewser; Will Oursler and Margaret Scott’s Gale Gallagher (all 1940s); and, perhaps most famously, Forrest and Gloria Fickling’s Honey West in the 1950s.
  But at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, a number of female novelists, among them Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, but also Amanda Cross and, in her pair of Cordelia Gray novels, PD James, found in the hard-boiled mystery novel a means of addressing issues affecting women, including violence (particularly sexual violence), victimization, power imbalances, and gender conflicts. They did so by questioning, altering, and subverting the established traditions in the genre, and, in the process, they created a new type of female writing. The mystery genre accommodated them without diminishing the seriousness of their aims, or hampering the result, and it did so with ease. It is why so many writers, even those who feel themselves to be working outside the genre, have chosen to introduce elements of it into their writing, and why this anthology can accommodate such a range of novelists, from Dickens to Dürrenmatt, and Capote to Crumley.
  But this volume also raises the question of what constitutes a mystery – or, if you prefer, a crime novel. (The terms are often taken as interchangeable, but ‘mystery’ is probably a more flexible, and accurate, description given the variety within the form. Crime may perhaps be considered the catalyst, mystery the consequence.) Genre, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder, but one useful formulation may be that, if one can take the crime out of the novel and the novel does not collapse, then it’s probably not a crime novel; but if one removes the crime element and the novel falls apart, then it is. It is interesting, though, to note that just as every great fortune is said to hide a great crime, so too many great novels, regardless of genre, have a crime at their heart. The line between genre fiction and literary fiction (itself a genre, it could be argued) is not as clear as some might like to believe.
  In the end, those who dismiss the genre and its capacity to permit and encourage great writing, and to produce great literature, are guilty not primarily of snobbery – although there may be an element of that – but of a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of fiction and genre’s place in it. There is no need to splice genre into the DNA of fiction, literary or otherwise: it is already present. The mystery genre is both a form and a mechanism. It is an instrument to be used. In the hands of a bad writer, it will produce bad work, but great writers can make magic from it. ~ John Connolly and Declan Burke, Dublin, 2012

This piece was first published in the Irish Times.

Review: THE POLKA DOT GIRL by Darragh McManus

Hera City, the setting for Darragh McManus’s The Polka Dot Girl, is a very unusual place. On the surface it resembles countless cities to be found in American-influenced hardboiled detective fiction, being sleazy at its heart and increasingly affluent the further you move out into the suburbs. Its lower social reaches teem with crooks and cops, prostitutes, drunks and drug addicts, all of whom are preyed upon by the corrupt politicians and wealthy business folk who gaze down on the city from their position of privilege like so many vultures anticipating their next feast. So far, so conventional – but what gives this novel a notable twist is that Hera City is entirely populated by women.
  The story is told by Hera City Police Department detective Eugenie ‘Genie’ Auf der Maur, who investigates the murder of Madeleine Greenhill, a young woman found floating in Hera City’s docks wearing a polka dot dress. Ambitious and conscientious, Genie is in her second year as a detective and keen to prove herself, not least because Madeleine Greenhill is the only daughter of Hera City’s most feared woman, the matriarch Misericordiae ‘Misery’ Greenhill.
  Struggling to compensate for her inexperience and lack of self-confidence, Genie initially finds herself grasping after shadows in Hera City’s labyrinth. Surviving an assassin’s attempted hit has the perverse effect of steadying Genie’s nerves, however, not least because it tips her off that Maddy Greenhill’s death was not a straightforward tragedy of a young woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a more sinister affair engineered by a powerful cabal with secrets to hide.
  It’s an intriguing set-up, and Genie makes for a very charming narrator. The book’s cover blurb suggests that we can anticipate ‘Sam Spade in lipstick and a dress’ but Genie, by her own admission an extremely petite example of a HCPD detective, is a much more vulnerable and sensitive character than Dashiell Hammett’s Spade or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, both of whom are strong influences on her hardboiled patter.
  Indeed, McManus and Genie establish their hardboiled credentials early in the story, as Genie leaves the Greenhill mansion after informing Misery of her daughter’s murder. “I drove straight home,” Genie tells us, “listening to a jazz station on the car radio. Sure, it’s a cliché – the wiped-out cop, in the middle of the night, driving through the dark streets with clarinets and cymbals in her ears, a smoke in her mouth and a fresh murder on her hands. All it was missing was the rain. But hey, I never said I was original. Besides, I’m a sucker for the classic stuff.”
  That ‘classic stuff’ extends to the way in which The Polka Dot Girl mirrors the narrative arc of much of hardboiled detective fiction, as Genie pulls on the thread of a street-level murder only to find that the unravelling runs all the way up to the highest echelons of society, laying bare its greed, corruption and immorality.
  This, despite the quirky setting of Hera City, is familiar territory for the crime fiction aficionado, and if you’re willing to buy into Genie’s knowing self-awareness of her place in crime writing mythology, then The Polka Dot Girl is an enjoyably offbeat take on the post-modern mystery novel. It’s overtly old-fashioned, and not only in the way it taps into the roots of the contemporary hardboiled crime genre. McManus litters the story with references to classical Greek tragedy and mythology: the obligatory femme fatale is called Cassandra, while geographical locations are given names such as Pasiphaë Prospect and Hecate Point. At the heart of the tale lies a religious cult which worships the moon goddess and appears to be derived from the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ancient Greece, a cult in which only women were indoctrinated.
  It all makes for very pleasant meta-fiction cross-pollination, but what Darragh McManus is trying to achieve with his plethora of classical references and his women-only city is never made explicit. Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky are probably the best known of the authors who have adapted the hardboiled private detective voice, and created feminist heroines who take on men – and more importantly, perhaps, a historically male-dominated genre – to succeed on their own terms. McManus adapts the same tone – albeit one that’s painfully self-aware of its fictional history – to a woman-only narrative, but Genie’s investigation of the prevailing culture ultimately reveals that the female of the species is no more or less deadly than the male. Meanwhile, and despite the unique setting, the patriarchal origins of the language remain the same: the detectives are still known as ‘Dicks’, a prostitute’s client remains a ‘John’. A crucial plot-point requires a prostitute to be beaten almost to death by a group of (female) clients, only to find herself somehow pregnant when she emerges from the subsequent coma.
  It’s arguable that McManus, who has a palpable affection for the tropes of the classic hardboiled novel, is simply retaining the linguistic conventions – fans of Black Mask-era pulp fiction, for example, will be delighted to find a hired killer referred to as a ‘gunsel’. It’s also true that McManus, in his career to date, has been more engaged with playing with the genre’s tropes than reinventing the wheel – his debut Cold! Steel!! Justice!!! (2010), published under the pseudonym Alexander O’Hara, was a spoof of Mickey Spillane-style masculinity, while Even Flow (2012) featured a trio of vigilantes waging war on society’s homophobes and misogynists.
  All told, there’s a nagging sense throughout that McManus has missed a trick by not recalibrating his narrator’s voice and language in order to make the most of Hera City’s unique setting. That said, The Polka Dot Girl is a very interesting addition to the growing canon of Irish crime writing which confirms Darragh McManus’s promise. - Declan Burke

Black Ops

It took me a couple of books before I began warming to the Benjamin Black novels, but at this point it feels like John Banville has grown into the persona of his crime-writing alter-ego Benny Blanco and – whisper it – may even be enjoying the process. I reviewed the latest Benjamin Black novel, HOLY ORDERS (Mantle), as part of the latest crime fiction column in the Irish Times, which also includes Sara Paretsky’s BREAKDOWN, Benjamin Tammuz’s MINOTAUR and Marco Vichi’s DEATH IN FLORENCE. For more, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, if you’re in Dublin city next Wednesday evening, June 12th, John Banville / Benjamin Black will be taking part in a Q&A with Olivia O’Leary at the Smock Alley Theatre. To wit:

Writers at Smock Alley – John Banville as Benjamin Black in conversation with Olivia O’Leary
Venue: The Smock Alley Theatre
Date: Wednesday 12th June – 6pm until 7pm

The Gutter Bookshop are delighted to announce the second event in a new series of author events with their neighbours, the Smock Alley Theatre 1662. Join them in this beautiful and unique theatre to meet bestselling Irish novelist John Banville who will be discussing his new Benjamin Black crime novel Holy Orders with journalist and broadcaster Olivia O’Leary, as well as the new Quirke television series, and the film version of his Booker Prize winning book The Sea. A book signing will take place after the event.

Tickets cost €5 and available from Smock Alley Theatre (01 6770014) or the Gutter Bookshop (01 6799206).

World Book Night: And Miles To Read Before I Sleep …

You may or may not know that tonight is World Book Night, in which tons of books are given away free to stimulate reading. A good idea, I think, no matter how you look at it.
  Naturally, being something of a contrarian, I decided that it’d be nice notion to look into the possibility of an Alternative World Book Night - i.e., to ask a number of writers, poets et al to nominate a recently published book that they consider to be unjustly overlooked by the critics and public alike. The result was published in the Irish Times on Saturday, with the most fascinating / totally bonkers answer coming from poet David Lordan. To wit:

CYCLONOPEDIA: COMPLICITY WITH ANONYMOUS MATERIALS
By Reza Negarestani (re.press, 2008)
“I’d like to plump for the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani’s genre-bending ‘Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials’. It’s one for active readers and fans of “difficult work”. A continuously inventive and artistically ambitious work that, like many great literary refoundations, is simultaneously a reimagining of reality and a reorientating of literature against currently dominant trends. Negarestani draws on a polyglot engagement with contemporary theory and on a schizophrenic, inhumanist literary heritage including Lovecraft, Stein, Burroughs and Pynchon, to give us an astounding depiction of history as a minor subplot within a struggle of much older, more vast forces. Cyclonopedia refreshed my paranoia and left me more doubtful and contemptuous of things-as-they-are than ever before, something the most sustaining works of art have always done for me.” - David Lordan

  For the rest, which includes nominations from George Pelecanos, Aifric Campbell, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, China Miéville, Sara Paretsky, Mark Billingham and more, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: McGilloway, Paretsky, Nadelson, Hiaasen and Fitzgerald

The latest of my monthly crime fiction columns for the Irish Times appeared yesterday, featuring Brian McGilloway, Sara Paretsky, Reggie Nadelson, Carl Hiaasen and Conor Fitzgerald. It ran a lot like this:

Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation with his Donegal-set series of Inspector Devlin novels, but LITTLE GIRL LOST (Macmillan, £12.99) is a standalone set in Derry, featuring DS Lucy Black of the PSNI. While investigating a case of a missing teenager, Black discovers a younger girl wandering through a snowstorm in her pyjamas. Her reward is an unwanted transfer to the Public Protection Unit, although Black has more pressing, personal concerns: she is the prime carer for her father, a former RUC officer who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while her ultimate superior is her mother, who walked out on Lucy’s family some decades previously. Effortlessly blending Black’s personal woes into her professional life, McGilloway weaves a taut police procedural in an unadorned style that belies the story’s complexity. With a backdrop provided by the PSNI’s ongoing evolution as a police force, and the tension inherent in the force’s attempts to police a vibrant Derry that is in the process of shaking off the shackles of its recent history, McGilloway has tapped into a fascinating and febrile setting. Black, meanwhile, is reminiscent of Jane Casey’s DC Maeve Kerrigan, a painfully self-conscious but thoroughly competent young woman whose ability to do her job has very little do with her gender. All told, it’s an impressive statement of intent from an author whose reputation grows with each successive release.
  BLOOD COUNT (Atlantic Books, £12.99) is the ninth in Reggie Nadelson’s series of Artie Cohen novels, in which the hardboiled cop investigates a series of unusual deaths in an upmarket Harlem apartment building. The fact that Artie’s on-off love interest Lily appears to be implicated in the deaths complicates matters, and renders Artie something of an ambiguous narrator, which in turn gives the reader a delicious frisson of being party to the subversion of both law and morality Nadelson unveils. It’s an issue-driven novel, as Nadelson invokes the recent history of the Soviet Union’s collapse, sleeper agents, and the complicated relationship between Communist Russia and the historically dispossessed African-Americans. The story takes place in the wake of Barack Obama’s election, which has the benefit of investing the historical elements with a contemporary immediacy, but there are times when Nadelson forsakes Artie Cohen’s hardnosed realism in order to hammer home a political message. The net result is a potentially enthralling snapshot of melting-pot New York that is at times undermined by the author’s digressions into the realms of polemic.
  Sara Paretsky is no less issue-driven in BODY WORK (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99), the 14th novel to feature her iconic private eye, VI ‘Vic’ Warshawski. An artist’s right to portray herself onstage as she sees fit leads to the murder of a young woman, and Warshawski’s investigations subsequently uncover a conspiracy of silence generated by corporate giant Tintrey, a firm which offers security consultancy in Iraq. The consequences of sending unprepared and poorly outfitted men and women to war becomes a major theme, but Paretsky is too canny to allow her political concerns to dominate the narrative at the expense of pace, story and character. Warshawski, nearing 50, is a self-described feminist and street-fighter, a very modern woman who nonetheless harks back to the classic knight errants of private detective lore, as originally created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. The mix is a potent one, and BODY WORK confirms, yet again, Paretsky’s status as one of the great crime authors of her generation.
  STAR ISLAND (Sphere, £14.99) is Carl Hiaasen’s 12th adult crime novel, a blackly comic caper that features his recurring anti-hero Skink, the former Florida governor who now lives half-wild in the Everglades. A multi-character tale, it centres on wild-child pop star Cherry Pye and her ‘undercover stunt double’, Ann DeLuisa, who impersonates Cherry when the star is too befuddled with drugs and booze to function. Blackmail, kidnap and violence enter the picture when a sleazy paparazzo gets Cherry in his sights, and soon Hiaasen is merrily plumbing the sludgy depths of modern America as he pops off deadpan zingers at a host of targets, most notably the puddle-shallow cult of celebrity. Despite the many and (deliberately) implausible twists and turns, STAR ISLAND sticks to Hiaasen’s tried and trusted formula, delivering a polished comedy that will delight newcomers and satisfy established fans.
  Set in Rome, featuring an American-born Italian police detective, and written by an Irishman, THE FATAL TOUCH (Bloomsbury, £11.99) is Conor Fitzgerald’s sequel to last year’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME. Commissioner Alec Blume investigates the murky world of art forgery, aided and abetted by his colleague Caterina Mattiola, former policeman Beppe Paolini, the mysterious Colonel Farenelli, and the memoirs left behind by a dead forger, the Irish artist-in-exile Henry Treacy. Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Blume himself is a loner, an outsider and a potential alcoholic, but Fitzgerald cleverly reworks the police procedural’s conventions, much as the forger Treacy pays homage to the Old Masters, and makes a distinctive hero of Blume, particularly in terms of his ability to not only adjust to the corruption that is integral to Italian policing, but to employ it on his own terms. Chief among Blume’s virtues is his laconic sense of humour, which gives rise to deliciously dry and deadpan observations on virtually every page, most of them at Blume’s expense. Meanwhile, Treacy’s memoirs provide a secondary narrative strand that is equally compelling, and which neatly feed into the main story despite Treacy’s penchant for baroque and self-serving prose. The blend results in a scintillating novel that confirms and enhances Fitzgerald’s burgeoning reputation. - Declan Burke

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

The Other Clones Cyclone

There’s about five hundred reasons for getting along to the Clones Flat Lake Festival this coming weekend, given that it’s chock-a-block with events musical, literary and film-related – although I have to say that my favourite will very probably be the 30-second disco. Hard on the heels of that will be the crime writing panel, which will feature Brian McGilloway (right), Declan Hughes and Some Chancer, Esq., aka Your Humble Host, all under the watchful eye of Eoin McNamee, who will be asking some very easy questions that – given the panel takes place on Sunday, after the frolics and of The Night Before – we can only hope will require no answering at all.
  Those all important details: The Flat Lake Festival is co-hosted by Patrick McCabe and Kevin Allen, and will take place in Clones, Co. Monaghan, from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th of August. For more, clickety-click here …
  And while we’re on the topic of book-related jamborees, the Books 2009 Festival takes place from September 10th to 13th in Dublin’s fair city. The crime fic element alone is worth the price of admission: the line-up includes John Connolly, Sara Paretsky, The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Paul Williams, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Tom Rob Smith, Mandasue Heller, Stuart Neville, Alan Glynn, Ava McCarthy, Alex Barclay, Some Chancer, Esq., and – save the best ’til last – JOHN MCFETRIDGE! Who will, no doubt, be sporting a Montreal Bluestars basketball cap. Or something.
  Incidentally, John Banville will also be appearing at the festival, but as John Banville, to promote his new novel, THE INFINITIES. So there’s probably not much chance that he’ll bump into Ruth Dudley Edwards. Boo.
  For the running schedule, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 1,004: Sara Paretsky

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 POISON ORACLE. Such a sophisticated weaving together of layers of story; Peter Dickinson shows a mastery of linguistics, the Arab world, primate behaviour, and the painful life of his loner protagonist that the book is a tour de force in any genre.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Georgia Strangeways (I’m assuming this is in crime fiction).
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Delano Ames.
Most satisfying writing moment?
When I got the author copies of my first novel.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I have to pass on this one because I’m woefully ignorant about Irish crime fiction. I like John Connolly and Ken Bruen very much, but I need to explore some of the other people on Declan’s blog.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
John Connolly’s THE BLACK ANGEL is crying for a film!
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worse thing about being a writer: constant anxiety. The best thing: getting to go to work in your underwear (my last job I had to wear pantyhose -- and a skirt).
The pitch for your next book is …?
The search for a missing man leads V.I. Warshawski back to the turbulent days of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago and forces her to question her beloved father’s role in some of the most despicable acts of the Chicago Police force.
Who are you reading right now?
VANITY FAIR and DEATH OF A FELLOW TRAVELER by Delano Ames.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I quit.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Insightful. Witty. Literate.

Sara Paretsky’s BLEEDING KANSAS is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

A hat-tip to the Book Witch for putting us in touch with Sara …

“You Charm Us To Sorrow.” Irish Crime Fiction: A CrimeSpree Appraisal

Last week we wrote a feature article for the Evening Herald to a pretty tight deadline, which was why Reed Farrel Coleman’s reply to our query, in the wake of the Edgar nominations, about why Irish writers are becoming so popular in the US of A arrived a little late. Ditto the answer from Ruth and Jon Jordan of the indispensable CrimeSpree Magazine (right, clutching the prestigious Anthony Award for ‘Cutest Couple in Crime Fiction’), both of whom have been cheerleading for Irish crime writing since God was a boy. Herewith follows their rather generous two cents on why Irish writing is becoming so popular:

“The economic and political status of Ireland today is much in line with that of the time in which American crime classics were written. A poor-to-affluent generation living in a post-violent but pre-pacific time, remembering the religious ironies and icons with equal resonance and enwrapping them in a story like a taco bell quesadilla. The Irish story is updated with generations more of ennui and religious acceptance behind it, the precarious situation that is refracted by words of today flirted with, exposed and uniquely discovered by a group of writers who embrace the crime novel as the way to tell their story for all the world.
  “The talent for words is remarkable and embraced by a United States at once ahead and behind a continent we’ve pretended to understand for three generations. Our story, told with more history and depth. Yet Ireland is unique, as are the people writing of it in crime form. Different voices tell the story and make it stronger, more complete. You charm us to sorrow and make us examine where we are today.
  “The background of many of today’s Irish crime fiction writers includes not only a reading of ‘literary fiction’ but also almost all have found the literary brilliance within American crime fiction, be it recent greats like Lehane, Pelecanos, Connelly, Lippman, Rozan, Paretsky and James Lee Burke (to name a few), or the classics (Chandler, Hammett, Cain). They elevate their novels’ structure from the debut and almost always add a fresh voice to the genre. They don’t want to emulate as much as pay tribute to this often overlooked genre of fiction. Pay it forward and make it better, to use an American phrase. They see the possibilities of one flawed man/woman trying to solve a unique and usually violent problem. The writing jumps off the page and connects with the American reader because Irish authors use the entire environment of the crime and make it resonate.
  “The first author I fell in love with from Ireland is John Connolly, an Irishman who set his fiction in a relatively remote American locale. John has said he loved the work of James Lee Burke and many others. He grabbed a location he knew and made it his own. Last year’s work is remarkable in any time: THE UNQUIET is a true literary novel and I cannot think of many recent reads who express the joy of reading and the possibility it has to soothe, but THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved a book and lost a loved one.
  “From Connolly I went to L. Welch, who strips bare any pretences in her prose to expose the baldness of story, and Declan Burke, whose approach to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was as refreshing as THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE in its time. Ken Bruen’s arrival on our shores made everyone take notice. From THE GUARDS forward, Ken has infused admiration and anticipation for a writing style so unique it cannot be compared to anyone else writing today. Full of bon mots and cultural references that put you into the being of his characters, only someone so sharp of pen could get away with it.
  “America came full circle with the words of one Declan Hughes, whose third novel [THE PRICE OF BLOOD] is about to launch in the States. Instead of taking an Irish sensibility and applying it to the American detective, he brought an Irishman home who has been an American P.I.
  “The possibilities are just beginning and yet we’ve already come full circle.”