Ochi Day: Nay, Nay And Thrice Nay

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.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jeffrey Siger

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?
Though one might not think of it as a ‘traditional’ crime novel, I’d have to say BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy. There’s none better to my way of thinking.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
No question about it. Sherlock Holmes, original version. Golden Victorian prose and none of that DNA detecting stuff to clutter one’s tiny attic of an investigative mind.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The plays of August Wilson, he’s a master of dialect.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When my new Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis novel, TARGET: TINOS, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Although I’ve received similar reviews for earlier works, TARGET: TINOS was a particularly long haul to complete; indeed I had to write two books to come up with just one. I’d written the first one in 2010 and it was scheduled to come out in January 2012, when out of the blue its central storyline and later my primary bad guy came to life and played out across the world as independent, front-page headline news events. What I’d put forth as an original story line now seemed hopelessly derivative and my publisher and I agreed to kill it. Writing the novel that replaced it was not a pleasant experience … for all the while I had an eye on the headlines, praying events I imagined would not again be overrun by reality. As things turned out they were! But by then I was smiling ear-to-ear for the first reviews were in, calling TARGET: TINOS, “another of Jeffrey Siger’s thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales”—The New York Times, “superb…a winner”—Publishers Weekly, “complex portrait of contemporary Greece to bolster another solid whodunit”—Kirkus Reviews, “fast paced…interesting and highly entertaining”— Library Journal, “throbs with the pulse of Greek culture…an entertaining series”—Booklist.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Excluding my host’s novels, which must be included at the very top of any such list, and since I’m being pressed to answer, I’ll say IN THE WOODS by Tana French.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: you can very easily forget about your obligations to the rest of your life. Best: you can very easily forget about your obligations to the rest of your life.

The pitch for your next book is …?
“Honest, it’s almost done.” Oh, you don’t mean to my editor. Then I’d say: “Life as we know it is changing in the West. Forces of occupation no longer come with armaments, but with pens, promises, and lots of cash.”

Who are you reading right now?
Believe it or not, Samuel Beckett. Just finishing up WAITING FOR GODOT for the zillionth time.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. Although I think it would be in everyone’s best interest that I be allowed to read my work for editing purposes.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Authoritative, compelling, authentic.

Jeffrey Siger’s TARGET: TINOS is published by the Poisoned Pen Press.

Charlie’s Angels

I don’t get excited about covers as a rule, but the artwork for John Connolly’s latest Charlie Parker novel, THE WRATH OF ANGELS, is rather impressive. Shades of the cherubim taking up station east of Eden, methinks, although if memory serves there was a flaming sword involved in that particular imbroglio as opposed to a pair of burning wings. Quoth the blurb elves:

In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of an aeroplane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money: it is power. Hidden in the plane is a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those who believe that it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness.

  The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and the serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter.

  But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets.

  Someone has survived the crash.
  SOMETHING has survived the crash.
  And it is waiting . . .

  So there you have it, and there really isn’t much point in me saying much more. I’m ridiculously comprised in relation to John Connolly’s work, partly because I’ve been a fan for years, but mainly because (a) he launched my own tome last year and (b) he and I have co-edited a title, BOOKS TO DIE FOR, which will appear in August. All of which means that anything positive and/or complimentary I say here about John Connolly can be considered deeply suspect, and perhaps rightly so.
  Happily, John Connolly needs no such big-ups from yours truly, and would continue to sell books by the freighter-load were this blog to burn down, fall over and sink into a swamp.
  What I can say without fear of contradiction is that John Connolly’s Charlie Parker stories combine all the essential elements of a great novel - character, story, style and theme - and deliver them in a unique blend. I won’t be shocked if he doesn’t win the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, because there’s a very strong field on the longlist this year; by the same token, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if he did win, on the basis that he’s as fine a crime novelist as has emerged from these islands in the last two decades.
  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is yours truly’s two cents.

On Winning The Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award, And Failing Better

I genuinely did not expect ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL to win the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ Award at the Bristol Crimefest, not least because the shortlist included two of my all-time favourite writers - Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen - along with a slew of very good contemporary authors, among them a previous winner in the shape of the very gracious Len Tyler.
  In fact, I’d been in touch recently, by email, with Elmore Leonard’s PR guy and right-hand man, and had told him that if Elmore was to win, I’d be more than happy to pick up the award for him, given that I’m travelling to the States in the near future and would love an excuse to visit Elmore Leonard.
  Then David Headley of Goldsboro Books read out the shortlist of nominees, and the winner, and I was halfway to the podium and still in a state of shock when I realised that the only winner’s speech I had prepared was one on behalf of Elmore Leonard. Hence the blithering idiot (the non-Jeffery Deaver guy above, right) who bumbled his lines in front of an audience of wordsmiths, their publishers and agents.
  I do remember saying something about how my wife, before I left, told me not to bother coming home unless I won (which sounded vaguely like the Spartan mother’s blessing, ‘Come home behind your shield, or on it.’), so that winning was something of a pity, because I was really starting to warm to Bristol …
  I’ll write a longer post during the week about the Crimefest weekend in general, but for now I have to hit and run. Suffice to say that I was very pleased indeed to be sitting beside my good friend Peter Rozovsky when the winner’s name was read out; had he not been there to shake my hand, and confirm that it wasn’t some deranged acid flash-back hallucination, I may well have remained sitting in my seat all night, getting more and more paranoid that everyone was staring at me. And thanks too to Brian McGilloway, who took the photo above, and was kind enough to broadcast it to the world on the night.
  I’m still not the best of it, mind. I was very tempted to check out of the hotel early on Sunday morning, in case they’d made a mistake.
  Anyway, I’m back home now, and the prize is taking up pride of place on the office windowsill, and I’m slowly starting to descend from the improbable high of it all. It feels good, it really does.
  One final word, which occurred to me late on Saturday night, and which might be of use to any writers out there who are finding it difficult to find a publisher: ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL went through fourteen publishers, all of whom said no, before finding its place with Liberties Press. To paraphrase Sammy B: fail, fail again, fail better …

The Troubles We’ve Seen

Following on from Friday’s post on Anthony Quinn’s post-Troubles, Northern Ireland-set debut novel, and at the risk of giving the impression that anything approaching consistent thought goes into this blog, I had an interview with Stuart Neville published yesterday in the Irish Examiner, during the course of which Stuart spoke about Northern Ireland as a setting, and how ‘the Troubles aren’t the most commercial topic in fiction these days’. To wit:

When he sat down to write his third novel, however, the recently released STOLEN SOULS, Neville was aware he could well be painting himself into a corner.   “Well, COLLUSION is probably the most political of the three books,” he says, “and STOLEN SOULS is very much a reaction against that, a move away from that. Because there is the danger that you could get bogged down in the Troubles, and post-Troubles politics, and all the rest of it. And it’s true, with my commercial head on for a moment, that the Troubles aren’t the most commercial topic in fiction these days (laughs). So if I want to be purely mercenary about it, then it’s a good idea to move away from the politics.”   Neville is in the vanguard of a number of authors who are engaged in writing about the newly transformed Northern Ireland, a cohort that includes Colin Bateman, Adrian McKinty, Eoin McNamee and Gerard Brennan.   “I know other writers are working in different directions on this,” he concedes. “I’ve just finished reading Adrian McKinty’s new book, THE COLD COLD GROUND, in which he dives headlong into the thick of the Troubles and the hunger strikes, which is admirable, I think. I do think the Troubles will be quite fertile ground for writers the further we move away from them, and the freer we are to write about them with a more dispassionate gaze.”

  What say you? Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) made a huge impression when it first appeared, and Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND has been garnering all kinds of wonderful reviews since it was published earlier this year. But is it the case that Norn Iron and its ‘Troubles’ are a turn-off for most readers?   More to the point, perhaps: should writers give less than a fiddler’s fandango for what readers want, and simply write the books that need to be written?

On Literary Festivals And The Lesser-Spotted Irish Crime Writer

Hearty congratulations to all involved in ‘Bloody Scotland’, aka Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival, the inaugural edition of which takes place in Stirling this coming September (artist’s impression, right), featuring the likes of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Peter James, Allan Guthrie, Denise Mina, Ann Cleeves, Tony Black, Karin Fossum, William McIlvanney and - oh yes! - the erstwhile Gregory, John Gordon Sinclair.
  It’s a very nice line-up indeed, and the best of luck to the Festival. Here’s hoping it’s the start of many a fine year’s skirling and, well, whatever it is the Scots do when there’s no one around to keep manners on them.
  A similar, Irish-themed event was run in Dublin a few years back, featuring the cream of Irish crime authors plus some interesting international guests, but it was pretty much a bust. It didn’t help that the event coincided with what turned out to be the only weekend of sunshine that summer, but even beforehand the advance sales had been sluggish. Is there an appetite among Irish readers to sit down and listen to writers talk about writing and books? Is it simply the case that Irish crime writers aren’t interesting enough to Irish readers to draw the crowds?
  There are two literary festivals taking place in Ireland in the next couple of weeks. The Listowel festival kicks off on May 31st, while the Dublin Writers Festival begins a week later, on June 4th. Unless you’re prepared to consider Aifric Campbell and Kevin Power crime writers - and I don’t think either author considers themselves a crime writer - then there isn’t so much as a whiff of cordite to be had at either festival.
  That’s a pity, because there’s some very interesting Irish crime writers publishing novels roundabout now: Conor Fitzgerald, Jane Casey, Tana French, Brian McGilloway, Niamh O’Connor, Conor Brady, Michael Clifford … But there’s more - or rather, less. Because the Dalkey Book Festival runs from June 15th to 17th, and crime writers are again conspicuous by their absence. Yes, the excellent Eoin McNamee will be in attendance, but running the eye over all the other contributors suggests that the organisers would be horrified to discover that McNamee is considered a crime writer in less than salubrious places; and Derek Landy is taking part, but I’d imagine that that’s on the strength of his success as a children’s author, as opposed to Skulduggery Pleasant being a wise-crackin’ undead private eye-type.
  And then there’s the West Cork Literary Festival, which runs July 8th to 14th and which is entirely devoid of Irish crime writers. It does, however, feature husband-and-wife team Nicci French, and another husband-and-wife team, Edward Marston and Judith Cutler. A pity there was no room for the Irish husband-and-wife writing team Kevin and Melissa Hill, but there you go, there’s no sense in being parochial about such things, is there?
  Meanwhile, and back to the Listowel Writers Festival, where there is a panel discussion on Thursday night, May 31st, titled (koff) ‘Towards a National Strategy on Literature’. To wit:

A panel discussion with The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan, author Colm Tóibín, Sinéad MacAodha, The Irish Literature Exchange and Sean Lyons, Chairman of Writers’ Week. It is time that we develop a national literary and strategic policy in Ireland. We will take a step forward, evoke ideas, delve into where we are and where we are going … ask controversial but fundamental questions …

  ‘Delve into where we are and where we are going …’
  I could be very, very crude about where literary Ireland is right now, and cruder still about where it’s going. But that won’t solve anything.
  The knee-jerk reaction is to suggest that Irish crime writers should hold and host their own festival next year, along the lines of Bloody Scotland, or Harrogate or Crimefest in England, or the Bouchercon in the US; but Ireland is a small place, and there’s the very real danger of confirming the status quo, of reinforcing a ghetto mentality; like the standalone Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards, it suggests that Irish crime writers need to be corralled off from real books, from proper fiction, and given a special award and a pat on the head.
  The irony is that it’s Irish crime writers who are ‘delving into where we are and where we are going’ as a nation, but it’s a real Catch 22 scenario right now for Irish crime writers: if you demand attention, you’re accused of special pleading; if you shrug and grit your teeth, you’re ignored.
  So what to do?
  Over to you, people. I’m all ears …

Romantic Ireland's Dead And Gone ...

… and living on a ghost estate, apparently. Only sixty more sleeps before Tana French’s latest novel, BROKEN HARBOUR, is published on July 21st, gorgeously eerie cover and all. I’m looking forward to it, I have to say: French is one of those writers blessed with a number of gifts, offering substance by way of an intriguing plot set in the here-and-now of modern Ireland, with her elegant prose providing the style. Quote the back-page elves:

In BROKEN HARBOUR, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.
  Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .

  The novel has already attracted some very nice encomiums. To wit:

“Broken Harbour is better than whatever’s going to win the 2012 Man Booker. It’s better than the novels that are going to win the Costa and Orange prizes, and if it doesn’t win the Gold Dagger for best crime novel, the injustice might drive me to go and sit in a tent for a while, even though I hate camping. Tana French is a genius.” - Sophie Hannah

“I’ve been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. She is, without a doubt, my favourite new mystery writer. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. You’ll see what I mean.” - Harlan Coben

“Tana French is one of those rare novelists who combine a gift for dialogue and characterisation, with suspense, intrigue and fabulous plotting. And she’s a beautiful writer, to boot. A real treat.” - Kate Mosse

  Very nice indeed. Finally, here’s a promo vid in which Tana French makes what appears to be a crime writing queen’s speech to Canada - roll it there, Collette …