Anthony Quinn will launch his latest novel, THE BLOOD DIMMED TIDE (No Exit Press), at No Alibis in Belfast on November 20th. To wit:
We at No Alibis Bookstore wish to invite you to the launch of Anthony Quinn’s upcoming novel THE BLOOD DIMMED TIDE. Join Anthony in No Alibis Bookstore on Thursday 20th November at 7pm.
London at the dawn of 1918 and Ireland’s most famous literary figure, WB Yeats, is immersed in supernatural investigations at his Bloomsbury rooms. Haunted by the restless spirit of an Irish girl whose body is mysteriously washed ashore in a coffin, Yeats undertakes a perilous journey back to Ireland with his apprentice ghost-catcher Charles Adams to piece together the killer’s identity. Surrounded by spies, occultists and Irish rebels, the two are led on a gripping journey along Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast, through the ruins of its abandoned estates, and into its darkest, most haunted corners. Falling under the spell of dark forces, Yeats and his novice ghost-catcher come dangerously close to crossing the invisible line that divides the living from the dead.
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? Anything by Graham Greene, because his shading of good and evil still resonates strongly today. Has there ever been a better writer of noir?
What fictional character would you most like to have been? Patrick Kavanagh’s Tarry Flynn - a life spent constructing hayricks and reading poetry in the hedgerows, with a pitchfork to hand for devilment at night.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures? Social media websites are a terrible distraction when you have writer’s block at the computer. Dickens and Shakespeare were so prolific only because their inkwells weren’t full of friends and followers jostling for their attention.
Most satisfying writing moment? Successfully forging a doctor’s prescription. No, seriously, when a background character you thought insignificant suddenly takes over a page and then an entire chapter.
The best Irish crime novel is …? I know this is the golden age of Irish crime fiction with authors such as mine host’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL redefining the genre itself, but I think the best Irish crime novel is still out there, lurking in the subconscious, waiting to be written …
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie? Any of Stuart Neville’s thrillers, which read as vivid cinematic treatments of Northern Ireland.
Worst / best thing about being a writer? Worst thing is the daily confrontation with a blank page. Best thing is filling same – even though you might feel like flushing it down the loo the next day.
The pitch for your next book is …? My historical thriller BLOOD DIMMED TIDE is currently doing the rounds. WB Yeats and his assistant ghost-catcher are summonsed to Sligo by the restless spirit of a girl whose body is mysteriously washed ashore in a coffin from the previous century. They are led on a gripping journey through the ruins of Sligo’s abandoned estates and into its darkest, most haunted corners as the country descends into a bloody war of independence.
Who are you reading right now? Cormac McCarthy’s early ‘Appalachian noir’.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be? I’d pick ‘read’ rather than ‘write’, and hope it’s not an Old Testament God, otherwise he’ll condemn me to an eternity of reading my own work as a just punishment for attempting to get it published.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …? Everything is practice.
Anthony Quinn’s DISAPPEARED is published by the Mysterious Press.
On October 28th, 1940, the Italian ambassador to Greece, Emanuele Grazzi, delivered an ultimatum to the Greek prime minister (and erstwhile dictator) Ioannis Metaxas: Greece allowed the Italian-German Axis forces to occupy strategically important Greek bases, or suffer the consequences. 1n 1940, Greece was no more an international powerhouse than it is today. Metaxas knew with certainty that were he to refuse Grazzi’s ultimatum, the consequences would be dire. Even if the Greeks managed to repel Mussolini’s invading army, which they did in some style, the Germans were waiting impatiently, jackboots tapping. Legend has it that Mextaxas offered a single, laconic ‘No’ (‘Ochi’). What he actually said was, ‘Alors, c’est la guerre.’ Nowadays October 28th is celebrated in Greece as ‘Ochi Day’ - ‘No Day’. The Guardian runs an editorial today on the Irish referendum on the EU Fiscal Treaty, summing up the Yes and No vote as Fear and Anger, respectively. It’s not quite that simple, but it strikes a chord. It certainly strikes a chord when the Irish Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, who disgracefully dismissed Ireland’s links with and concerns for Greece as no more than a waning appetite for feta cheese, attempts to bully the electorate into voting Yes. Today I think Ireland will vote Yes to the Fiscal Treaty. It will vote Yes because it is afraid, and it is afraid because it is being bullied, and because it has been conditioned by 800 years of colonial oppression to take bullies seriously, and because the Famine still haunts the darker shadows of its subconscious. Today, and despite the fact that Sinn Fein are urging a No vote, I’ll be voting No. I’ll be voting No because I refuse to be bullied and to live in fear and to accept that I must live the rest of my life to the rhythm of impatient jackboots tapping and according to the whims of the utterly inept gamblers of the international markets, those laughably self-styled ‘Masters of the Universe’. I’ll be voting No because dignity matters. I’ll be voting No because Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fail - all of whom have miserably failed this country since its Independence, and will continue to do so for as long as we give them a mandate to do it - want me to vote Yes. I’ll be voting No because, contrary to what the Fat Fool Noonan might believe, I have far more in common with the vast majority of the Greek people than feta cheese, not least of which is a very healthy suspicion of the ruling classes, this on the basis that a desire to rule should be in itself sufficient reason to bar any man or woman from ever taking power. I’ll be voting No in solidarity with the Greeks on the basis that if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Ochi, Ochi, Ochi, Ochi. I’ll leave you, if I may, with a soupcon of WB Yeats:
What need you being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till, And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men were born to pray and save: Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
There are better ways of spending your Bank Holiday Saturday evening than in the company of your brother (right) watching Leonard Cohen perform at Lissadell House, the spiritual home of WB Yeats, but last Saturday evening, I couldn’t think of any. I grew up in Sligo, way up there on the northwest coast of Ireland, during the 1980s, with a love of reading and books, and a love of writing - homework essays, for the most part. When I was 14, someone - I think it was an aunt - gave me a copy of Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits. Suzanne sounded like the kind of interesting girl we never saw in Sligo - half-crazy, living down near the river, with those tea and oranges all the way from China - but it was the second verse that blew me away:
And Jesus was a sailor / When He walked upon the water / And He spent a long time watching / From His lonely wooden tower / And when He knew for certain / Only drowning men could see Him / He said, ‘All men will be sailors then / Until the sea shall free them.’ / But He himself was broken / Long before the sky would open / Forsaken / Almost human / He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone … /
Until then, I didn’t know you were allowed write like that, or sing songs like that. Hell, I didn’t know you were allowed to think like that … I’ve had plenty of musical love affairs since I was 14, anyone from the Pixies to REM, Dylan and the Tindersticks, Mozart and the Stones. The one constant throughout has been Leonard Cohen. I even got to interview him once, albeit on the phone. Despite my star-struck babbling, he was lovely. (A few minutes before the interview was due to start, I rang up a mate of mine for a chat, just so I could say, when the office receptionist rang through, “Sorry, mate, have to go - Leonard Cohen’s on line five.”) I’d seen Leonard Cohen live a couple of years back, at Kilmainham here in Dublin, and wonderful it was too to see him in the flesh - laughing, humble, dark and funny. He does a mean live show, too - three hours plus, with most of the ‘greatest hits’ thrown in. The gig on Saturday night was virtually identical to the one I saw in Kilmainham, which was a little disappointing, and there’s way too much jazzy noodling and virtuoso solos. He did cut loose in the second half with a brilliant version of The Partisan, and the second half was tighter all round, but I’d have loved something rawer, like Avalanche or a good old-fashioned blast of Please Don’t Pass Me By. I guess the man is entitled at this point to do whatever he wants to do. Gavin hadn’t seen him live before and pronounced it all terrific, so there you go. Anyway, it was fantastic to see him in the Lissadell setting, where I spent so many Sunday mornings on family breakfast picnics, with Benbulben away to the north and Queen Maeve’s grave atop Knocknerea away to the south across Sligo bay. Idyllic doesn’t come into it. Even the rain stayed away until the very end. Leonard gave a nice little spiel to about Lissadell in the fading light, and two girls, both wearing silk, one a gazelle … and how he’d learned those verses fifty years before in Montreal, and never thought his steps would take him to Yeats’s spiritual home. Apparently he even requested that he sleep in Yeats’s bed on the Saturday night. All told, it was all very sweet. Above and beyond all else, though, was how incongruous it all was. If you’d told me at the age of 14 that I’d be watching Leonard Cohen play Lissadell, that he’d sing Suzanne into the fading light still haunted by those young girls wearing silk … well, it was as likely as the possibility of seeing him play on the moon. I haven’t a doubt in the world that I wouldn’t be a writer, wouldn’t be who I am today, if I hadn’t heard Suzanne at the tender age of 14, hadn’t had everything I’d thought and known and believed blown away in the space of a single song. Maybe, being from Sligo, I should pretend that it was WB Yeats who first inspired me to pick up a pen. Why pretend, though? It was just very, very nice to be sitting in the serried ranks on Saturday night while Leonard paid homage to WB Yeats, and in my own half-assed way, just by being there, pay homage in turn to Leonard. Roll it there, Collette …
Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.
