Nobody Move, This Is A Review: FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s fourth novel centres on the Berglund family, who live in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the novel opens. Married couple Patty and Walter are sterling examples of post-Baby Boomer America, liberal in thought and deed, environmentally friendly, thriving in the self-renovated old home and rearing their children, Joey and Jessica, with hands-on parenting.
  A third character, Richard, proves the undoing of their idealistic lifestyle. Walter’s former college roommate, Richard is a musician who initially caught Patty’s eye in college. Despite his selfish ways, particularly in terms of his many relationships, Richard is drawn to boring old Walter in a chalk-and-cheese relationship. As Richard’s fame grows, and her children grow up to achieve independence, Patty finds herself more and more unable to quiet her lustful thoughts for Richard.
  The fourth main character is Joey, who is something of a parallel character to Richard, given that he is attractive, self-sufficient, and sexually advanced from a young age. As the millennium turns, and the Bush administration comes to power when Joey goes to college, Joey confirms his rejection of his parents’ values by becoming an entrepreneurial Republican who makes a decision to benefit financially from the Iraq invasion.
  Jonathan Franzen has a very deft touch when it comes to establishing character, and the most fascinating character in FREEDOM is Patty, which is somewhat surprising, given that she begins the novel as an apparently passive suburban mother-of-two who is content to be a stay-at-home mother. Naturally, given that this state of affairs wouldn’t lend itself to any great conflict or tension, Patty’s character quickly becomes more proactive - or perhaps passive-aggressive is a better way to describe it.
  One of the most enjoyable aspects of FREEDOM is the Autobiography of Patty Berglund, which Patty writes at her therapist’s suggestion. Here Franzen delves deeply into Patty’s psyche, or far more deeply than he does any other character in the novel, even though he uses a curiously distancing third-person technique for the strands of the novel that comprise Patty’s autobiography, which amounts to a confession of her betrayal of her husband, Walter. This distancing technique (‘The autobiographer wonders if one reason why Joyce’s voice always trembles is from struggling so hard all her life to not sound like Brooklyn.’) should be off-putting, but in fact it’s a compelling aspect to the story, because the reader is automatically put on notice that Patty is using this tone in order to distance herself from her actions, which are (presumably) so traumatising that she can’t bring herself to write them in the first-person.
  Franzen’s other main characters are less interesting, however. Walter, despite his ability to reconfigure his life and become a conflicted conservationist, is something of a cliché despite Franzen’s best efforts. His relationship with the ardent young conservationist Lalitha, for example, which comes to dominate the latter half of Walter’s narrative, resembles the feverish fantasy of the older man, the conscious and knowing echoes of ‘Lolita’ in Lalitha’s name notwithstanding. Perhaps it’s the fact that Franzen has written the besotted, beautiful, intelligent Lalitha as too perfect a cipher for Walter’s mid-life crisis, but a cipher she is, and no less a cliché in her own right than if Walter had simply renounced his conservationism instead of his marriage, and gone out and bought a bright red Ferrari.
  The third corner of the love triangle, the reluctant rock star Richard, is a more subtly drawn character than Walter, but again he’s something of a male fantasy figure. Irresistible to women, Richard is a gifted musician with a magnetic appeal to women and men alike. Despite his rock star ambitions, however, which generally involve a hefty dose of self-indulgent ego, Richard is unusually self-aware, and is also unusually gentle and sensitive. When the young Patty more or less throws herself at Richard during a road-trip, Richard gently steers her back towards Walter, despite the fact that Patty and Walter aren’t an item at this point. Later, when Richard finally achieves the success he has craved all along, albeit in as a kind of cult hero who becomes successful almost by default, he performs an about-face, unable or unwilling to deal with the pressures of fame. It’s to Franzen’s credit that he doesn’t impose a kind of rock star martyrdom a la Kurt Cobain on Richard, but the fact that Richard abandons his career to go roofing houses and patios is so faux-humble that it negates any authenticity Richard has built up to this point.
  Arguably the most interesting character in the novel is Walter and Patty’s son, Joey. Indulged as a child (whereas his sister Jessica is kept on a tighter rein), Joey grows up to reject his parents’ liberal middle-class values, and as a young man makes a valiant attempt to financially benefit from the war in Iraq. Here, at least, we have conflict made manifest, and Joey’s internal monologues, in which he debates the merits or otherwise of conforming to expectations, particularly in terms of his commitment (or otherwise) to his childhood sweetheart Connie, have a ring of authenticity that is all too often lacking elsewhere.
  It’s entirely possible, given that title, and the fact that a number of characters appear to be variations on cliché, that we’re being invited to read the novel ironically. That Franzen wants us to snigger at his emotionally stunted suburban creatures, who bumble along wrapped up in their kitchen-sink drama, only occasionally raising their gaze from their spot-lit navels to take cognizance of what has been a fairly dramatic decade in American history. If that’s the case, it’s a very strained and thin kind of irony, and one which fails to skewer its suburban heartland.
  The novel is very much concerned with themes that spring from the ‘personal-is-political’. Walter’s compromises on the environment, for example, mirror the compromises he makes in his personal relationships. Joey’s decision to embrace the free-market philosophy of Republicanism equates with his rejection of his parents’ Clinton-era liberalism.
  Very similar in tone and themes (and even title) to Milan Kundera’s THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, Franzen’s FREEDOM details the personal struggle to live and thrive according to a particular philosophy in the messy confusion that is day-to-day existence. The underlying theme appears to be one of a plea for compromise, whether that’s in the personal, domestic, political or artistic fields. That might well be a fair comment to make on an American political system that has grown hugely fractured ever since George Bush jnr ascended to the White House, and has intensified even more with Barack Obama’s presidency, but a novel that preaches common sense values such as the need for compromise is never going to be the most exciting of reads, particularly as the novel as a narrative form thrives on conflict.
  It’s true that, while there is plenty of conflict in FREEDOM, most of it is internalised, in that most of the conflict is generated by people who are in conflict with themselves, with values that have grown outdated or are no longer useful, or practical. This provides Franzen with plenty of material for extended internal monologues, of which Patty’s autobiography is an example, but it does little to enhance the pace and momentum of the overall story.
  That Franzen, hailed as a great American novelist, should write a story that is essentially so small in terms of its scale, despite the fact that American has been through 9/11, two wars, an economic meltdown, is something of a major disappointment. Adam Haslett’s UNION ATLANTIC, which was published earlier this year and covered much of the same territory as FREEDOM, is a much more mature and provocative novel.
  Overall, FREEDOM is a solid novel that is competently written (although Franzen displays little flair for ambitious language), but one that is far from compelling. Written by a debutant, it would suggest promise - although, if written by a debutant, it would have been heavily edited down from its rather extensive 562 pages. As a novel from the man hailed as the Great American Novelist, however, FREEDOM is something of a disappointment, drab in places, self-indulgent in others, and only fitfully fascinating. - Declan Burke

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tony Bailie

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 SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. Although not strictly a crime writer, Bolaño was hugely influenced by the genre. This large, sprawling novel follows the lives of two South American poets from the perspective of a whole range of narrators who drift in and out of their lives. It starts off in Mexico in the 1970s and follows its central characters to Europe, The Middle East and Africa. The diverse narrative voices can be a bit disconcerting and they often focus on their own stories and barely mention the main protagonists. It demands that the reader work and almost become a detective, trying to sift through the testimonies and piece together the movements of the two poets.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Pepe Carvalho, who appears in a series of novels by the late Spanish novelist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Carvalho lives in Barcelona [a decided advantage when you are sitting in Co Down on a rain-sodden November morning], enjoys gourmet cooking, fine wine, becomes involved with cases that are never that difficult to solve and seems to get laid a lot without trying too hard.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I've a soft spot for science fiction but only now and again ... Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius novels [not the sword and sorcery stuff], Robert A Heinlein and a bit of Philip K Dick. It is interesting how their speculation about a multiverse, which they first aired in the 1960s, now seems to be gaining credibility with modern science.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Five thousand words in a night-long session which just flowed and became the basis of my short story The Druids’ Dance, published in the anthology REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, which was published earlier this year. Usually I write in spurts and splice the results together. Although I don’t regard myself as a crime writer as such, REQUIEMS was an opportunity to experiment in the genre and to meet and be published alongside some of the best crime writers on the Irish scene at present.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
REDEMPTION by Francis Stuart. Set in late 1940s, it tells the story of an Irishman who spent the war years in Germany and who returns to Ireland, which had remained neutral. It strips back the shallow moral values of quiet rural Irish town for which the war was just a rumour and which are exposed when a girl, of easy virtue, is murdered. It is told from the point of view someone who witnessed the total breakdown of human civilization in war-ravaged Europe. Stuart remains a sore point with many people in Ireland because of his war-time activities in Nazi Germany, but that doesn’t devalue his novels, which often confront easy assumptions about right and wrong.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
A story by Gerard Brennan called Hard Rock which first appeared on the ThugLit website, and which is due to appear in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME next year, would make an excellent movie, although possibly with a triple-x rating. My first novel, THE LOST CHORD, told the story of a debauched Irish rock star who ‘disappeared’ and the persistent rumours that he was still alive. However, the characters who appear in Gerard’s story make my characters seem like members of Westlife … it was the most depraved, disgusting and sick piece of writing I have ever read. Fair play to him.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The widespread recognition, the constant offers of film deals, publishers and agents battering at my door offering huge sums of money for my next novel … it can be both a curse and blessing.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Part adventure story, part psychological thriller and part new-age philosophy, ECOPUNKS is an environmental parable for the 21st century.

Who are you reading right now?
A biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn by the English novelist DM Thomas. Solzhenitsyn fought for the USSR during the Second World War but was arrested for criticising Stalin and sentenced to eight years hard labour in a gulag and then exiled to Kazakhstan when he was released, where he nearly died from cancer. He used his experiences as the basis of his novels and reportage but fell foul of the Soviet regime in the 1970s and was exiled to the West, where he rounded on the lack of integrity of Western governments who thought he would be a literary battering ram to attack communism with. A truly epic life.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read ... It would be a relief, in some ways.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Gnarled, tortured prose. It’s not really, but I just liked the sound of that … better than ‘can’t really spell’.

ECOPUNKS by Tony Bailie is published by Lagan Press.

The Irish Book Awards: DARK TIMES Never Seemed So Good

A ray of light in these dark times: Gene Kerrigan’s DARK TIMES IN THE CITY deservedly won Best Crime Novel at the Irish Book Awards last night. The shortlist was, as I’ve mentioned before, missing such luminaries as John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt and Alan Glynn, but then last year was a very strong year indeed for Irish crime writing, and the very strong shortlist did include Tana French, Declan Hughes, Alex Barclay, Stuart Neville and Jane Casey. All of which should give Gene an extra fillip as he plonks his award on the mantelpiece. Mind you, Gene being an unusually modest man, there’s every chance said gong will be put away out of sight, lest anyone remark upon it and force Gene to admit that, yes, he’s actually a very fine writer indeed. Hearty congratulations to the man, and commiserations to all the runners-up …
  I reviewed DARK TIMES almost two years ago now, and had this, among other things, to say:

“Cruelly authentic, the novel refuses the simplistic pieties of either the genre’s form or society’s wishful thinking. DARK TIMES IN THE CITY is a very fine crime novel, but it’s also one of the very few novels of any stripe to hold up a mirror to the dark heart of modern Ireland’s boom-and-bust.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, by which I mean my own little world, it’s been a busy, funny and often odd week or so. Yesterday, my former agent, who still holds some of the European rights to THE BIG O, rang to say that the contracts for the Italian version of said tome had arrived, and was I available to sign on the dotted line? Erm, yes, please. The money involved, of course, would hardly stretch to cover some decent lattes and a plate of spag bol, but at this stage, money is not the point. It’ll be fantastic to see THE BIG O in Italian, especially as I have a particular fondness for the country, and it also means that I’ll have been translated into three languages, as EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was published in Holland some years ago, under the title SPEEDBALL. The third language I’ve been translated into, as any of my editors will attest, is English.
  So that was nice. If you have any Italian friends who might enjoy a crime-comedy romp featuring a one-eyed Siberian wolf called Anna, feel free to give them a heads-up.
  Meanwhile, Paul D. Brazill did me proud with a review of the sequel to THE BIG O over at his interweb lair, aka You Would Say That, Wouldn’t You? To wit:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is the follow up to Burke’s splendid THE BIG O and it almost actually IS that oxymoron ‘a screwball noir’. There’s a LOT going on, and it does take a bit to get used to the frantic pace, but it’s a satisfying read that still makes you want more. CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: A SCREWBALL NOIR is a cracking, fast paced, clever and very droll road movie with a top drawer cast - especially Sleeps!” - Paul D. Brazill

  Which, again, is very nice, and thank you kindly, sir. Funnily enough, Sleeps is probably my favourite character from CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, and at one point I was even thinking of calling the book SLEEPS THE HERO. Sadly, for everyone already fumbling for their credit cards in their rush to secure a copy, the book is only available as an e-book, or as a download to your PC, and will set you back a whopping $1.99. If you’re still determined to read it, however, all the details can be found here …
  Finally - and this may cause Ms Witch to prick up her ears, if no one else - I had something of an unusual request last week. In essence, it was from a publisher of children’s books, wondering if I’d like to meet to discuss the possibility of my writing a book for young adults. Now, writing a book for kids has been something that’s been flickering on the very edge of my radar ever since the Princess Lilyput arrived, but I’ve never spent any time thinking seriously about it. Right now, I can’t think of anything else. The idea I hatched has gone forward for consideration, but already I think that I’m going to write the story no matter what the decision is, because I’m entirely enthralled by it. For one thing, it’ll be a massive challenge to write a whole novel without recourse to foul language; for another, it’ll be an equally massive challenge to try to write something that will capture a young reader’s imagination. I have no faith in my ability to achieve either, but I like the idea of trying. Plus, given the rate at which I tend to write and get published, two-year-old Lily should be just the right age to identify with the 13-year-old heroine when the book finally appears. Or, as is far more likely, sneer at it with a carefully honed teenage disaffection …

The North Will Rise Again, Again

Apologies to all Three Regular Readers for the intemperate outburst regarding Irish politics yesterday, a post I had to take down on the basis that it was attracting all kinds of bizarre comments, most of them even more radical in terms of visiting violence on Irish politicians than my own. Normal service is hereby resumed …
  I’ve mentioned Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE on these pages more than once in the last few weeks, but it really is a terrific read. If you don’t believe me, check out John Burnside’s review in The Guardian last week. The gist runneth thusly:

“Northern Ireland, 1961. The body of a young woman, stripped naked, brutally beaten, stabbed and finally strangled, is discovered in a stubble field after a dance at Newry Orange Hall. Though the police have nothing to go on other than the most circumstantial evidence, the whole town agrees that the killer is a young bodybuilder and ne'er-do-well named Robert McGladdery …
“It is this sense of how the defining moments come to be agreed – of how they are essentially defined by the ruling class – that illuminates ORCHID BLUE, so that what begins as a crime thriller gradually builds not only into a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art.” - John Burnside

  Nice. Meanwhile, I was delighted to see Stuart Neville’s very fine COLLUSION reviewed by Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times at the weekend, although it has to be said, it was less of a review and more of a synopsis. To wit:

The violence in Stuart Neville’s novels about Northern Ireland is about as nasty as it gets in noir crime fiction. But while the bloodshed in Neville’s first novel, THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, was viewed from the perspective of a professional killer named Gerry Fegan, in COLLUSION (Soho, $25), a law enforcement officer is drawn into the brutality, which only adds to the sense of despair. Detective Inspector Jack Lennon, a Belfast policeman with an unsavory past, has a chance to redeem himself by coddling an informant with intelligence on local gangsters doing business with a Lithuanian mob. But in the process Lennon learns of more serious criminal collusion involving “the cops, the Brits, the Irish government, the party” — not to mention the mob bosses.
  This corruption can be traced all the way back to the Troubles and to one particular bloodbath that made fugitives of Lennon’s estranged lover and daughter. In his frantic efforts to find them, the detective turns to Fegan, the assassin, who is his only hope of finding out why that old atrocity is being revisited. What he doesn’t hold out any hope for is an end to the cycle of violence — not in Northern Ireland, where even today, in the midst of peace, organized crime is relentlessly intruding. - Marilyn Stasio

  Now, I’m sure Stuart Neville isn’t exactly complaining, but I was left scratching my head as to the point of a ‘review’ like that. Maybe I’m being obtuse, but if I hadn’t read the novel, I’d be no wiser as to if it was actually any good, and if so, why. Which is the point, is it not, of a review?

The Digested Read: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas

Yep, it’s that time of the week again. Herewith be the latest in an increasingly improbable line of Digested Reads, aka the Book du Jour in 300 words. This week: THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas. To wit:

“No-no-no-no-no!” Young Hugo was a bludger. Got caught lbw, everyone saw it, he was out. But he wouldn’t let go the bat. “No-no-no-no-no!” he screamed. So Harry cracked him a right bloody rippah.
  “That’s child abuse, mate!”
  “Nah, it’s just a slap.”
  “I’ll give you a slap.”
  “Don’t tie me kangaroo down, mate.”
  Hector threw a few more tinnies on the barbie.

  So then, like, the cops got involved and Harry got arrested and a trial date was set and some people thought the kid deserved a slap and some people didn’t and some people said whether or not he deserved it wasn’t the point and some other people said the point was there was no point, and so on.

  Meantime, Hector the Greek wasn’t happy married to Aisha the Indian and Harry was Hector’s brother, the bloody gallah, and Hugo’s parents were hippies, the flaming drongos, and Richie the student was coming out of the closet and isn’t Australia such a wonderfully rounded multicultural country when people aren’t slapping other people’s kids?
  “Yeah but, right, see, if the hippies had slapped Hugo when they should have instead of smoking all those joss sticks, Harry wouldn’t have had to stick his billabong in, would he?”
  “Hmmm, maybe you have a point.”
  “Yes. Except the point is there isn’t any point, isn’t it?”
  “I take your point.”

  So, like, anyway, Hector’s father thinks Harry did the right thing, but he’s Greek, so what would he know? Besides, wouldn’t the world be a better place if Hector’s mother was nicer to Aisha? Hey, maybe then Hector wouldn’t have ended up screwing Aisha’s friend.
  “I say slap ’em all, let God sort ’em out.”
  “You may have a point there.”
  “I’ll take that point and ram it up your wazoo, mate!”
  “Touché, sir.”

  So, like, anyway, multiculturalism: looks good on paper, but it ain’t worth a flaming XXXX if you can’t throw it on the barbie.

  The End.

  The Digested Read, in one line: “What’s that, Skip? A mouthy kid got slapped? Rippah!”

  This article first appeared in the Evening Herald.

Torture-Porn: Yay Or Nay?

In a comment on one of the posts below, Richard L paraphrases Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo in saying that ‘Literature, both the writing and the reading of it, makes men more humanely compassionate.’ And women too, you’d imagine, particularly as women account for the majority of fiction readers these days, and at least half of fiction writers.
  On the same day Richard L left his comment, I received a review copy of a book that had the strap-line, ‘TAKEN, TRAPPED, TORTURED’. Written by Chevy Stevens, the novel comes complete with a raves from Kathy Reichs and Karin Slaughter, and tells the story of ‘Annie Sullivan’s abduction, her year in captivity and the chilling aftermath’.
  Now, I do appreciate that writers set up their serial killers / torturers / sex fiends et al as straw men, to be burned to the ground in a vigilante narrative that, presumably, offers readers a sense that justice (natural or otherwise) prevails against the evil that men do.
  I have no idea of how subtly or otherwise Chevy Smith handles the torture of Annie Sullivan in STILL MISSING, and I won’t be finding out, because I have zero interest in reading novels that are predicated on violence against women. That Chevy Smith is a woman writing about violence against women is neither here nor there. I’m just not interested.
  It’s not that I have my head buried in the sand. I know that such things happen in the real world. In Ireland, in the last few days alone, we’ve had some desperately tragic news that included the smothering of a toddler and the stabbing to death of an infant. So I do understand, unfortunately, the evil that men do, and as often as not to women and children.
  Reading about such depravity in the newspaper is one thing, however. Reading about it in a novel that is packaged as entertainment is another thing entirely. Neither Karin Slaughter’s rave (‘Will have you spellbound from the first page’) nor Kathy Reichs’ (‘Fast-paced and utterly absorbing’) suggest that Stevens has written a novel railing against violence done to women; their appreciation of the story is bound up in Stevens’ ability to entertain.
  Maybe I’m a little squeamish about such things these days because I have a baby girl of my own, and because - being a man - I’m all too aware of how deviant men can be. In fact, in my first novel, I have a scene in which a woman is tortured by having her fingers broken one by one. In my second novel, a female character is beaten, has her leg broken, and an eye gouged out with a fork, and the fact that Anna is a Siberian wolf is neither here nor there. Neither novel, on the other hand, could be described as torture-porn. As it happens, one of the main reasons I wrote the second novel was to find out how convincing (or otherwise) a crime novel could be with an absolute minimum of violence employed. In the first instance, when fingers are broken, I did my best to minimise the lurid aspect of it, and the finger-breaking lasts for less than a page.
  That said, I’ve never had any interest in reading books or watching movies in which a defenceless woman is physically or sexually brutalised by a man, or men. Torture-porn, I believe the phrase is, and regardless of how total and deserved the eventual revenge scenario proves to be, the experience (when I’ve had to sit through such a movie for review purposes, say) leaves me feeling dirty and degraded. Not because I’ve identified with the victim, necessarily, but because I belong to a society and civilisation that obviously believes that making a profit out of suffering is a good idea.
  There are good novels to be written about the brutalisation of women, and I’m sure they’ve already been written. A novel, for example, that dealt with the experience of a Muslim woman lashed into unconsciousness, or even stoned to death, for adultery real or imagined. Or the experience of a woman enduring the banal evil of marital rape. Or - and not to belabour the broader Muslim community unnecessarily - the experience of a woman targeted for an honour killing, because she refused to participate in an arranged marriage, or wear certain kinds of clothing. Or the story of a six-year-old girl who had acid thrown in her face for daring to go to school.
  These kinds of stories, I’d imagine, providing they’re well written, could hardly achieve any other impact than to make men and women more compassionate, as Richard L suggests is the point of writing and reading books.
  Of course, it’s possible to argue that the torture-porn sub-genre is making the point that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the women of so-called ‘civilised societies’ are no less vulnerable to an underlying fear of women that manifests itself in male violence, brutality and perversion. If that is the case, then it’s arguably a valid point to make.
  By the same token, there’s an equally valid question to be asked about the kind of novels that incorporate torture-porn into page-turning entertainments, and it’s this: What, apart from financial profit, is the ultimate point of the torture-porn novel?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mike Dennis

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 would have to say STREET 8 by Douglas Fairbairn. It’s a sadly-overlooked noir classic from 1977. It’s told from the point of view of a car salesman in Miami as he watches his hometown transform itself into a Latin city. The Cubans are there to stay, but who can be trusted? Like most noir protagonists, he soon finds himself embroiled in circumstances that have careened completely out of control. I lived in Key West, my adopted hometown, for many years, and I quickly learned about this great book. Every Florida crime author since 1977 has been influenced by it in one way or another. Fairbairn himself, incidentally, wrote very few novels before his death a few years ago. STREET 8 was his best.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Don Corleone. He really had it all, didn’t he? A close family who loved and respected him, power, money, a real sense of accomplishment in his life. Sure, he was shot, but remember, it was business, not personal. Besides, he recovered and went on into a pleasant retirement surrounded by his loved ones.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I have most of the Out Of The Gutter magazines. Have you ever read them? A lot of them are wa-a-a-ay over the top, but where else can you find something like that? They’re kind of refreshing, in a perverse sort of way.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Without a doubt, it occurred when I finished my newest novel, MAN-SLAUGHTER. The ending was a most unusual one, hard (for me) to pull off properly, but I feel like I nailed it.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Well, if I told you I’ve never read an Irish crime novel, will this interview end right here?

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above answer.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
For me, the worst thing is looking at that damned blank screen when I’m starting a new novel. I don’t use an outline, so I just let my characters tell the story for me. They have to tell it, because I can’t make up stories. Honestly. I’ve tried sitting there, concocting a tale, and nothing comes out. It’s only when I get an opening line, a sense of place, and a central character to work with that the story gets told. But waiting for those things to appear is unquestionably the worst, most aggravating part about being a writer. The best part is when they finally do appear, and the novel takes flight. Then all I have to do is write it down.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s called THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA and the description goes something like this: A young woman is brutally murdered in the back of a Key West nightclub. Robbie, the club’s owner, and Elena, the victim’s sister, believe that a local strip club operator is to blame. However, they soon learn that larger, far more sinister forces are behind the killing, and they become ensnared in a deadly race to a safe deposit box in Las Vegas, whose contents hold the key to decades-old secrets and threaten national security.

Who are you reading right now?
Gil Brewer’s novel, THE BRAT. Brewer was one of the best at creating hopelessly-doomed noir characters. And he usually did it the same way every time out. Ordinary Joe has chance encounter with sizzling chick, gets roped in, pays dearly in the end. For some reason, though, you never feel like you’re reading a formula novel when you’re reading Brewer.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Find a new religion.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Circumstances, choices, consequences. That really just about sums up the human condition, doesn’t it?

Mike Dennis’ THE TAKE is available now.