Cry Havoc, Etc.

I crave an indulgence, good people, for today I will be mostly plugging my forthcoming tome, aka SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which is a sequel to my first novel, EIGHT BALL BOOGIE. It will be published by Liberties Press, the very fine publishing house responsible for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and the Liberties blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

‘I glanced up but he’d already jumped, a dark blur plummeting, wings folded against the drag like some starving hawk out of the noon sun, some angel betrayed. He punched through the cab’s roof so hard he sent metal shearing into the petrol tank. All it took was one spark. Boom …’

Harry Rigby is right there, an eye-witness when Finn Hamilton walks out into the big nothing nine stories up, but no one wants to believe Finn is just the latest statistic in Ireland’s silent epidemic. Not Finn’s mother, Saoirse Hamilton, whose property empire is crumbling around her; and not Finn’s pregnant fiancé, Maria, or his sister Grainne; and especially not Detective Tohill, the cop who believes Rigby is a stone-cold killer, a slaughter’s hound with a taste for blood …

Welcome to Harry Rigby’s Sligo, where death comes dropping slow.

Studded with shards of black humour and mordant wit, SLAUGHTER’S HOUND is a gripping noir from one of the most innovative voices in Irish crime fiction.

  So there you have it. Meanwhile, two of the planet’s finest crime writers have been kind enough to offer an actual blurb, with the gist running a lot like this:

“Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.” - Lee Child

“SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has everything you want from noir but what makes it special is the writing: taut, honed and vivid … a sheer pleasure.” - Tana French

  With which, as you may imagine, I am very well pleased …

  In tandem with the SLAUGHTER’S HOUND publication, Liberties Press will also be republishing EIGHT BALL BOOGIE. When first published, way back in 2003, said tome was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in the crime fiction category, and managed to pick up some nice reviews for itself in the process. That was about as far as it went for EIGHT BALL, so it’d be nice to think that it might reach a slightly bigger audience this time around.
  Before I forget, I really should mention that the covers were designed for Liberties Press by Fidelma Slattery, and a very fine job it is too.
  So there you have it. I’ll be telling you more - much more, I’m afraid - in the weeks running up to the launch of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND next month, so don’t say you haven’t been warned …

Painting A Very Different Canvas

I know very little about the world of professional wrestling other than it is as fake as it is slick, a fictional world in which one of the greatest gifts is the ability, metaphorically speaking, to convincingly pull a punch as you plant your opponent on the canvas.
  Paul O’Brien’s debut novel BLOOD RED TURNS DOLLAR GREEN is set in a very different wrestling world, albeit one that is no less contrived, and from the blurb it sounds as if very few punches are being pulled. To wit:

1972, New York City, and a dazed Lenny Long walks away from a crash carrying someone’s foot in his hand. He is also searching for the VIP passenger who has somehow disappeared from the back of his overturned van. It’s the first day of his new promotion and Lenny has less than twenty minutes to deliver the missing person or a lot of people are going to get badly hurt. Danno Garland is in Shea Stadium trying to avoid a riot. He’s coming to the end of the most successful wrestling card of all time but he’s also coming to the realisation that he might not be able to deliver his widely hyped main event. He knows there’s more than just the eyes of the stadium looking at him and if Lenny doesn’t arrive soon, blood is going to be sought. probably his. Proctor King nervously watches the show on TV, wondering why his fuck-up of a son doesn’t already have the Heavyweight Championship in his hands. Arranging this match has taken Proctor four years of pay-offs, double dealing and bone breaking to arrange. If all that effort has been wasted then he might just have to take him a business trip to New York. Lenny, Danno and Proctor. Three men with pieces of the puzzle but none with the full picture. When they do piece it all together, the ‘fake’ world of professional wrestling is going to get very real.

  Sounds good, right? Well, don’t take the blurb elves’ word for it. Here’s the inimitable Eoin Colfer with his big-up of BLOOD RED TURNS DOLLAR GREEN. Roll it there, Collette …

Making His Bones

KT McCaffrey is one of the unsung heroes of Irish crime writing, quietly ploughing his own furrow with the Emma Boylan series, in which Emma - an investigative journalist - shines a light into some of Ireland’s darker corners. THE TARA BONES is the eighth in the series, by my reckoning, and the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

When a number of young women go missing, investigative journalist Emma Boylan explores the circumstances surrounding their disappearance. When one of her articles, focusing on the release of a sex offender, is published, it incites a vigilante-style protest in his neighbourhood. Accused of irresponsible journalism and condemned by the forces of law and order Emma, is undeterred and unearths some terrifying secrets, discoveries that expose her to a fate similar to those she seeks to investigate. THE TARA BONES takes you on a voyage of unexpected twists and turns as it confronts the abuse meted out to the missing women, in an atmosphere of unnerving suspense.

  Incidentally, KT is also an painter, who has created a series of portraits of Irish writers. If you’re curious as to how Ken Bruen looks in oils, clickety-click here …

Blood Meridian; Or, The Ribbon Redness In The East

Lately it seems as if there’s hardly a week that goes by without another Irish crime novel dropping through the letterbox, and as often as not said novel will be from a debutant writer. Such was the case earlier this week when Louise Phillips’ RED RIBBONS (Hachette Ireland) arrived, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

A SERIAL KILLER

When the body of a missing schoolgirl is found buried in the Dublin Mountains, her hands clasped together in prayer, two red ribbons in her hair, the hunt for her killer reaches epic proportion with the discovery of a second girl’s body 24 hours later.

THE CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Desperate to find the murderer, police call in criminal psychologist Kate Pearson, to get inside the mind of the serial killer before he strikes again. But the more Kate discovers about the killings, the more it all begins to feel terrifyingly familiar as her own past threatens to cloud her investigations.

AN ACCUSED WOMAN

Ellie Brady has been institutionalised for 15 years, for the killing of her twelve-year-old daughter, Amy. After all this time, does Ellie hold the key to finding the killer of the Dublin schoolgirls?

What would you do if you were accused of killing your own daughter? What if those closest to you turned their back on you? And when everyone stopped listening, what next, when even you believe you’re guilty?

  So there you have it. RED RIBBONS is published on September 3rd, and for those of you wondering who Louise Phillips is, herewith be her official bio:

Born in Dublin, Louise Phillips returned to writing in 2006, after raising her family. That year she was selected by Dermot Bolger as an emerging talent in the county. Louise’s work has been published as part of many anthologies, including COUNTY LINES from New Island, and various literary journals. In 2009, she won the Jonathan Swift Award for her short story ‘Last Kiss’, and in 2011 she was a winner in the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice platform. She has also been short-listed for the Molly Keane Memorial Award, Bridport UK, and long-listed twice for the RTE Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition. RED RIBBONS is her debut novel. Her second novel, THE DOLL’S HOUSE, will be published by Hachette Books Ireland in 2013.

Wake Up, It’s Time To Die

It’s a rather nerve-wracking time right now at CAP Towers. BOOKS TO DIE FOR, which I’ve co-edited with John Connolly, will be published at the end of August, but even as you read this the contributors’ copies are winging their way around the globe, the reviewers’ copies are landing with a hefty thump in many hallways, and the genie is very much out of the bottle. Quoth the blurb elves:

With so many mystery novels to choose from and so many new titles appearing each year, where should the reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems? In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about themselves and their work work as they do about the books that they love, more than 120 authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Christie to Child and Poe to PD James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Peter Wimsey, BOOKS TO DIE FOR brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought . . . I want more!

  This, of course, is always the period of phoney war. That agonizing time when you’ve done all you can to make a book as good as it can be, when editors and designers have wrought their magic, and the book seems to exist in a kind of limbo between what you hope it is and how the rest of the world will perceive it.
  There is nothing more to do but fret and sweat, and try not to obsess over the most minute of details.
  Unusually for me at this point in the proceedings, and alongside all the usual traumas, I’m feeling a quiet pride for helping to bring BOOKS TO DIE FOR to this stage. That’s the case even though there’s an added pressure on this occasion, because BTDF isn’t just my book, and won’t simply stand or fall on how my efforts. To a large extent, I think, the book belongs to everyone who contributed to it, and to the crime fiction / mystery community at large, writers and readers alike.
  But even while acknowledging that, and accepting that BTDF isn’t perfect - no book is, and I’d imagine that there will be very few well-informed crime / mystery readers who won’t read it and wail, ‘But what about [insert overlooked tome here]?’ - it still feels pretty good to have helped to bring the book this far. It was a fraught experience at times, and a steep learning curve, but it was terrific to be involved in it, and particularly to observe, in John, a writer at the top of his game and how he goes about his business.
  Being the generous soul he is, John Connolly won’t tell you that he pretty much shouldered said hefty tome up the hill and over the finish line in a kind of Sisyphus-taunting performance, but he did, and did so in some style too. For my own part, I like to think that I brought a little panache in the way I stood back and watched and admired, and occasionally applauded. It’s also true that Clair Lamb’s input was prodigious, crucial and never less than excellent.
  Anyway, as I say, the genie is out of the bottle now and on its way to a bookstore near you. Launch dates for BOOKS TO DIE FOR in South Africa, Dublin and Belfast can be found here, and there’s oodles of information on the book, its contributors and the books and authors they wrote about, here and here. I sincerely hope you enjoy …

O Danny Boy Woodrell

Senator Eoghan Harris made an impassioned pitch in last weekend’s Sunday Independent for Daniel Woodrell to be considered an Irish writer - “or at least an Irish reader.” To wit:

Doyle Redmond, the chief character in GIVE US A KISS, is an educated ‘hillbilly’ (an intimate term like ‘Paddy’ which Ozarkers resent on the lips of outsiders) who deliberately damps down his vocabulary when at home. And while Doyle is a novelist he’s also someone the Kansas police want to talk to.
  But when Doyle holes up in a shack in the Ozarks he lovingly lays out “the books I never left behind, and made any crap hole I landed in home to me”. Look at the list and you will see why Woodrell should be accorded an honorary status as an Irish writer -- or at least an Irish reader.
  “There were a couple of Elizabeth Bowen novels, a quartet by Edward Lewis Wallant, one volume of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana, The Williamsburg Trilogy by Daniel Fuchs, Carson McCullers’s oeuvre, a stack of Twain, a batch of Erskine Caldwell’s thin li’l wonders, some Liam O’Flaherty and John McGahern and Grace Paley and Faulkner, all of Chandler, and a copy of Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die.”

  Woodrell is not only the senator’s favourite crime novelist, he’s his favourite novelist, full stop.
  That, it’s fair to say, is not something I might have expected to hear from an Irish senator in my lifetime. For the rest of the piece, clickety-click here.
  Senator Harris is in for a treat this September, because the great Daniel Woodrell will be appearing at the Mountains to Sea Literary Festival in Dun Laoghaire, on Sunday September 9th at 4.30pm.
  I’m delighted to say that your humble host will be reading alongside Daniel Woodrell - and that, it’s fair to say, is not something I might have expected to hear from myself in my lifetime. Arts journalist and broadcaster Sinead Gleeson will be playing the genial host, and already it’s shaping up to be one of the highlights of my year. For more information, and booking, etc., clickety-click here.
  Finally, and while we’re on the subject of the Mountains to Sea Festival, I’ll be hosting a crime writing workshop on Saturday, September 8th, during which I will “guide participants through the principles of good crime writing and will talk about the particular nuances of this popular form and explore the craft of the genre, outlining the elements that comprise a compelling novel.”
  Of course, I could just tell you now to read Daniel Woodrell’s entire canon and achieve pretty much the same result. But where’s the fun in that?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Anthony Quinn

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.