The Dial Code Was … Death!

First published in 1997, DEATH CALL by TS O’Rourke was one of the earliest of the modern Irish noirs. In common with some other Irish crime writers of the time - Vincent Banville, Ingrid Black, Eugene McEldowney, Jim Lusby, Seamus Smyth - O’Rourke was probably a little too far ahead of the curve, and the first phase of his career could probably be characterised by the old maxim about pioneers, who tend to get shot, and generally in the back.
  Happily, TS O’Rourke is a hard man to kill, in the literary sense, and he has recently begun publishing again. Not only that, but he has just republished DEATH CALL, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

It was all he could do to stop his hangover from spilling out onto the victim as he studied her neck and what he made out to be the initial puncture wound in her abdomen. From that point, he thought, she had been opened like an envelope with a paper knife, revealing a mess of entrails and blood.
  With a deranged serial killer on the loose, Detective Sergeant Dan Carroll and his new partner Detective Constable Samuel Grant find themselves trawling the seedy side of London in search of a brutal killer who preys on prostitutes.

  For all the info you need on TS O’Rourke’s novels, new and otherwise, take a wee wander over to his interweb lair …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Lawrence Block

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?
I never know how to answer the question. There are any number of books I admire hugely, but I can’t say I yearn to have written them; what makes them work is that they were written by their own authors. So now my answer is THE DA VINCI CODE, on the basis not of its text but of its royalties.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Archie Goodwin, exc. for all the dancing.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Almost anything Charles Ardai publishes at Hard Case Crime.

Most satisfying writing moment?
I don’t believe I’ve ever had more sheer enjoyment writing than I did with Getting Off. It was enormously satisfying for me, esp. the conversations between Kit and Rita.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Tough one for me, as I’ve not read all that much in recent years. I’ve enjoyed Ken Bruen’s work, and both the Banvilles, John and Vincent. And they’re not crime novels (though I think they’d go down well with many crime fiction fans) but Thomas Flanagan’s three historical novels are high on my list of favourite books.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
One that already did, not a novel but a play, was ‘The Field’, by my late friend John B. Keane. A dear man, a wonderful writer.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: when I’m writing, I never have the unsettling feeling that there’s something else I really ought to be doing instead. Worst: when I’m NOT writing, I always have that feeling.

The pitch for your next book is …?
THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC is just out this week. All the Matt Scudder short fiction, including two new and previously unpublished stories, all in a $2.99 eBook or $14.95 trade paperback. My next book’s not been written yet, and I don’t like to talk about them until they’re done.

Who are you reading right now?
SHOCK WAVE, John Sandford’s newest. He never disappoints.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Dunno whether it’s age or all those years in the business (not that they don’t go hand in hand) but I’ve largely lost my taste for reading in recent years. It’s rarely what I feel like doing, and I don’t finish many of the books I start. Then again, two years ago I thought I was done writing novels. (Shows what I know.) But if I have to pick one, I’ll stay with writing. After all, nobody pays me to read...

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
“Fool never quits.”

Lawrence Block’s latest offering is THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC. Hard Case Crime publishes GETTING OFF.

Have Novel, Will Travel

FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES popped through the post-box the other day, said tome being a collection of essays on ‘Real Locations in Crime Fiction’ edited by Maxim Jakubowski and written by the likes of Barry Forshaw (Brighton, Edinburgh, Sweden and Venice), Sarah Weinman (New York and Washington DC), Peter Rozovsky (Iceland), John Harvey (Nottingham), Oline Cogdill (Florida), J. Kingston Pierce (San Francisco), Martin Edwards (Shropshire), David Stuart Davies (London), and Maxim himself on a selection of locations. It also - disclaimer alert - includes yours truly waffling on about Vincent Banville, Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes, and the crime stories they set in good ol’ durty Dubbalin town. To wit:

Whether it be the London of Sherlock Holmes or the Ystad of the Swedish Wallander, Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco or Donna Leon’s Venice, the settings chosen by crime fiction authors have helped those writers to bring their fictional investigators to life and to infuse their writing with a sense of danger and mystery. FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction’s greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work. Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city’s dark streets and hidden places. The book includes beautifully designed maps with all the major locations that have featured in a book or series of books - buildings, streets, bars, restaurants and locations of crimes and discoveries - allowing the reader to follow Inspector Morse’s footsteps through the college squares of Oxford or while away hours in a smoky Parisian cafe frequented by Inspector Maigret, for example. Aimed at the avid detective fan, the armchair tourist and the literary tourist alike, FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.

  You’ll appreciate that I’m biased, of course, but it’s a lovely, detailed and not entirely unfunky piece of work …

Yep, It’s Another ‘Dear Genre’ Letter

John Connolly reviewed Irvine Welsh’s latest novel CRIME for the Irish Times today (Saturday), making the following point in the process:

Genre conventions offer literary writers both significant advantages (structure, momentum and, frankly, the promise of some hard cash in return for increased sales) and potential pitfalls, the latter usually a result of their failure to take the genre in question seriously. Occasionally, though, their literary credentials liberate such writers from the expectations that readers might have of a more mainstream genre novel, allowing them to create something startlingly different while remaining, for the most part, within the structures of their adopted form.

  Maybe it’s just that I don’t read enough but my most recent experiences of literary authors writing crime – Benjamin Black’s THE LEMUR and Sebastian Faulks’ DEVIL MAY CARE – have resulted in anything but ‘startlingly different’. THE LEMUR, in point of fact, is hugely enjoyable because Black is poking fun at the genre’s tropes, but it’s by no means a radical departure for crime fiction. DEVIL MAY CARE, on the other hand, is utter tripe.
  The last time I read a terrific novel from a literary author writing crime fiction was JULIUS WINSOME by Gerard Donovan. And Donovan would probably explode into a million literary pieces if he heard we were describing his novel as crime fiction.
  Elsewhere in today’s crime-packed Irish Times, Vincent Banville returns – hurrah! – with a Crime File round-up that includes the latest offerings from Jeffrey Deaver, Harlan Coben, Patricia Cornwell, Michele Giuttari, Sue Grafton, Camilla Lackberg and Karin Fossum. Giuttari’s A DEATH IN TUSCANY has been winking at yours truly from near the top of Mt. TBR for some weeks now, and Banville’s review (“a long, absorbing and entertaining read set in a most exotic location”) sends it straight to the summit.
  The Big Question – when will we get to read another Vincent Banville novel? Only time, that notoriously prevaricating doity rat, will tell …

Saints, Scholars, Cops And Killers

Given that it’s Paddy’s Day (hic), and we’re supposed to be celebrating Irishness in all its wonderful manifestations (the lovely caílín, right, being a prime example), Crime Always Pays would like to take this opportunity to direct your attention to some Irish crime writers that we believe were woefully neglected in years gone by. To wit, and in no particular order:

Seamus Smyth: “This is not just a great crime novel, it’s one hell of a novel, full stop. QUINN should be THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for this decade, it’s that good and fresh and innovative.” – Ken Bruen

Eugene McEldowney: “The novel was a reaction to some of the awful books that had been written about Northern Ireland and which made no effort to place the political violence in any kind of context.” – Dublin Quarterly

Vincent Banville: John Blaine was the original hardboiled Irish private eye. He may yet sue Declan Hughes for being younger and thus better placed to capitalise on Ireland’s newly minted mean streets.

Philip Davison: “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene … thoroughly compelling… cracking dialogue.” – The Independent. “Each word in this bleakly humorous novel promises to explode and bring light to the shadows … Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit.” - The Times Literary Supplement

TS O’Rourke: “History is written in stone. I know that history is also written by the victor, but the truth, the whole story of these terrible times, is now emerging and I have tried to present at least a small picture of what the Civil War was like for a foot soldier, a volunteer, in Dublin City.” – Dublin Quarterly

There’s many more, of course, but right now we’re blogging from the pub and some amateur has just spilled a pint of green beer onto our laptop and fhizz signal seems to be crrssshsprcklefrtz … Arrah, bollocks. Hic. Another bucket of porter there, Jamesey, and don’t shpare the horshes …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Dolly Mixture Pick-‘n’-Mix Of Interweb Baloohaha

We’re not sure if crime writers are even allowed to send in their grubby manuscripts, but RTÉ Radio 1 is calling for entries for the 2007 RTÉ Radio 1 Short Story Competition in memory of Francis MacManus. Closing date is Oct 29, so get scribbling … Any excuse to mention Vincent Banville is a good excuse, but hell – exactly how garish is this cover (right) for Sad Song? It burns, it BURNS! … Seth Harwood, author of Jack Wakes Up and This Is Life, is running an interesting experiment in interweb flummery – the novels are podcast-only, and available free over here. Is Harwood an evil genius destined to take over the publishing world? Only time, that notorious doity rat, will tell … The Indo’s Ciara Dwyer has an interview with Mary Rose Callaghan, author of Billy Come Home, somewhere in this direction … It’s not particularly Irish or crime fiction, but the Crime Always Pays elves are trampolining on their tiny little elf-beds at the news that Johnny Depp has picked up the option to Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary … Cora Harrison’s historical mystery set in the Burren, My Lady Judge, is a September Book Sense pick at the Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market blog … Nick Stone, who published King of Swords last week, guest-blogged at Sarah Weinman’s Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind yesterday … Finally, here’s a vid of a very short-‘n’-sweet Q&A with Ken Bruen at Bouchercon, in which Ken picks Mitchum over Bogie on the basis that Mitch once declared he had two ways of acting – with the horse, or without the horse. And that’s it for another week, folks. Thanks for dropping by, have a fabulous weekend and see y’all next week, y’hear?