“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 937: TS O'Rourke

Yep, it's rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire pick-'n'-mix Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
If we're talking Irish crime novel then Every Dead Thing. John Connolly rocks!!! Otherwise, anything by Ed McBain, James Ellroy or Elmore Leonard or George Pelecanos ... Andrew Vachss is great too ... how much space have you got?
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Paul Auster, the master of chance, but Henry Miller will always be king.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Starting a new novel with no known ending ...
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ganglands by T.S. O'Rourke. You had to ask????
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ditto.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The pay / the hunger.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
So that people with lower brows might buy his books?
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Violent, sexual, social ...

Word around the campfire is, TS O'Rourke is currently embroiled in writing a new Dublin-based novel. Jump over here for updates.

Living the Dream, Keeping it Real: Aisling Ltd., Sean Harnett

It's more refined than hardboiled, but Sean Harnett's cracking tale, Aisling Ltd, is well worth a couple of hours of your time: "sparse, sardonic and enjoyable …" say the folks at Open Book, and who are we to argue? No one, that's who - we just direct you to an extract from the novel and let you make your own mind up, 'cos that's the kind of guys-'n'-gal we are. Although, if you jump here, you'll discover that it's "a hugely enjoyable parody of an idealistic young businessman who is equal parts Holden Caulfield and Tom Ripley," apparently. Which is nice ...

The Embiggened O # 1,709: Parp-Parp, Parpiddy-Parp!

Greetings from the coal-face of independent publishing, folks, where the big news today is that your humble correspondent's The Big O has SOLD OUT at Murder Ink on Dawson Street, Dublin (genial host and improbable crime nut Michael Gallagher pictured, left). Yep, that's A WHOLE FIVE COPIES - or would have been, had Michael not insisted on keeping a copy for his window display. Which is nice ... Sad to relate, Murder Ink doesn't have a website, but John Connolly loves the place, as does Critical Mick, and that's plenty good enough for us. You can always contact Michael Gallagher for orders 'n' whatnot at murderbook@iol.ie ... or just drop him a line telling him what a smashing bloke he is.

Funky Friday's Free-For-All: Gin-Joints, Hills Of Beans and Rounding Up The Usual Suspects

It's the burning question that keeps Crime Always Pays up at night, a-tossing and a-turning, although mostly a-tossing, sadly. Anyway, it walks like a noir-ish duck and it quacks like a noir-ish duck, but is Casablanca a true noir? What's that? You don't actually give a rat's ass? Shame on you, when this guy has gone to all the trouble of asking (da-dum!) Casablanca - Noir Or Not? Here's looking at you, kid ... Y'all come back on Monday, y'hear?

"Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down At The Station, Punk?" # 1,209: Jason Starr

Yep, it's rubber-hose time again, folks, in which Crime Always Pays sweats those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you like to have written?
My next one.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Lots of graphic novels, comics, etc. Can't get enough.
Most satisfying writing moment?
In my new thriller, The Follower, the scenes with Peter. I think he's my best anti-hero.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
There are so many greats, but I'd have to go with one of the best of the last several years, Ken Bruen, The Guards.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Bruen's Her Last Call to Louis MacNiece, any of John Connolly's, and Alex Barclay's Dark House. I know I'm missing a lot.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is the unpredictability of it all. There is no set career path for a writer, it's all improv. The best is the flip side of the worst. Since there's no set career path, you don't have to have a boss, you can make your own hours, take vacations whenever you want. You also feel a lot of satisfaction when a book is published so the best outweighs the worst by tons.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
I think he does it to differentiate his crime writing from his literary fiction, and that's probably a smart thing. I don't think there's any real difference between literary and crime; there's just good and bad. There are many works of classic literature with crimes in them, such as works by Shakespeare, etc, but do we call these crime plays? It's smart of Banville though because I think booksellers and marketing people need to make this differentiation, and the pseudonym helps.
The three best words to describe your own writing are ...?
Nobel Prize Winner.

Jason Starr's The Follower is due in the summmer; jump on this for regular news updates.

The Embiggened O # 236: Yes, We Can Now Blow Des Irae On Our Own Trumpet!

Gotta love those funky folks at your super, soaraway, giveaway Metro who published a rather fetching four-star review of your correspondent's humble opus, The Big O ... electronic bouquets to Therese McKenna from Crime Always Pays. If you fancy doing all your early Christmas shopping at a discount price without leaving the comfort of your own home, jump over to those lovely independent publishers Hag's Head Press for further details ... tell 'em the Trumpet Parper sent you. Oh, and while we're at it - Ocean FM is broadcasting an interview with yours truly on Sunday night, 8pm. Which is nice ...

Public Service Announcement: Don't Mind The Gaps

After a torrid time spent fending off the world's press in the wake of The Big O's publication, we're off for a well-earned holyer. Can't tell you where we're going, naturally - blummin' paparazzi, etc. - but the clue is in our Random Non-Crime Book of the Week Pick (TM), aka Phillip O'Ceallaigh's rather spiffing Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse. Jump over here for some Guardian-ish reviews of same, and try not to notice the occasional gaps in our posting regime while we're gone, although normal-ish service will be maintained - it'd be criminal of us not to post at least once from a Turkish whorehouse, no?

Drum-Roll Of Excellence Please, Maestro: Introducing ... Brian McGilloway!

All sorts of rave reviews are coming through for Brian McGilloway's Borderlands - according to Marcel Berlins (nope, we neither), McGilloway has joined the Irish crime fiction 'roll of excellence' that includes Ken Bruen, John Banville and John Connolly. "Brian McGilloway’s command of plot and assurance of language make it difficult to believe that Borderlands is his debut ... [He] tells this with style and compassion. His characters convince and he skilfully conveys the cloying atmosphere of a small rural community." Which is nice ... Jump on this for updates on what's happening in McGilloway-world.

A Psycho Is A Person In Your Neighbourhood: American Skin, Ken Bruen

Ken Bruen's American Skin is getting the kind of reviews that tend to give writers moist nether garments ("the scariest damn book I've read all year" ... "a dark, hilarious nightmare of a book that stretches genres and concepts" ... "an instant noir cult classic" - and there's plenty more where they came from). It's also on Barnes and Noble's Best of 2006 crime list. So WHY THE HELL HASN'T IT BEEN RELEASED THIS SIDE OF THE POND? EH? And who the hell do we have to blow to get a review copy? Sheesh ...

This Week We're Reading ... No Country For Old Men and The Moon In The Gutter

"Cormac McCarthy is like a man who spends hours in front of the mirror getting his hair to sit just right but will break your jaw if you tell him he's beautiful." Genius. Jump here for more of the same from The Guardian's Adam Mars-Jones, or elsewhere for some high-falutin' wibbling ... As for yon Goodis, the 'pitilessly hardboiled' ... 'Knut Hamsun of Noir' - according to Ed Gorman, "David Goodis didn't write novels, he wrote suicide notes." Trundle over here for some readers' reviews of The Moon in the Gutter, and here for a look at Goodis' hardboiled Philadelphia ...

Christine Falls 'N' Rises 'N' Falls 'N' Rises ...

The reviews for John Banville's / Benjamin Black's Christine Falls have been mostly positive, which is nice, although we're loving Critical Mick's MP3 review, the gist of which runneth thusly: "These 390 pages required a long dark, damp, January month." Meanwhile, the New York Times is pernicketishly ambivalent: " ... it’s hard to dismiss what emerges as a particularly insidious strain of misogyny ... this is a story in which women die, seemingly a punishment not only for their sexuality but also for their gender." Crumbs! The burning question: why wasn't The Book of Evidence considered a crime novel? We demand a recount!

Another Angel Gets Her Wings: Susan Aldous Takes Off

They're churning 'em out thick 'n' fast over at Maverick House, the latest being The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison, by Susan Aldous, which is co-written by Dublin freelance writer Nicola Pierce. Aussie Aldous, a self-confessed hell-raiser in her youth, now devotes her time to the 'thousands of prisoners wasting away in Thailand's squalid prisons'. Which is nice ... Tap-dance across this, media-types, to arrange an interview with the author; the rest of you can jump here for an extract from the book.

Colin Bateman: The One-Man Industry Returneth

Colin Bateman's proposed opera (!), King Billy, has been shelved, albeit temporarily - "It ain't over till the fat bringer of our freedoms sings," claims Bateman on his rather tasty blog. So what's the idling waster been up to lately, then? Erm, writing scripts for the new Rebus series (after getting the green light from Rankin himself, no less) and publishing his latest opus, I Predict A Riot (right), due next month. Oh, and he's editing a new anthology of short stories (scroll down) from Blackstaff Press. The lazy bugger ... Whatever happened to the Protestant work ethic, eh?

Lost Classics # 2,091: Death Call, TS O'Rourke

As blunt and effective as the average anvil, TS O'Rourke's prose in Death Call was hardboiled, pickled and left out to dry under a post-apocalyptic sun. Set in London, where DS Dan Carroll and DC Samuel Grant shark a psychopath preying on prostitutes, the novel was in the vanguard of Irish crime fiction, albeit a little ahead of its time. "He has caught onto something which will stand him good stead in his following novels – how to gross-out the reader," reckoned one palpably unnerved reviewer, before awarding it five stars. Are we hereby instigating a campaign for it to be republished forthwith and post-haste? Yep, you betcha.

John Connolly: Pimp My Book Of Lost Things

In all the fuss surrounding the launch of The Unquiet, don't miss out on No Alibis' launch of a very special limited edition of John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things - a labour of love courtesy of Anne Anderson, Liam McLaughlin and Dave Torrans of No Alibis - that's bound in Chieftan goatskin, no less. For more info, contact Dave at david@noalibis.com. Meanwhile, jump over here for John's interview with The Independent on the release of the original.

"And This Year's Award For Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'Fuck' Goes To ... Jennifer Fucking Jordan!"

Courtesy of that fine crime blogging experience Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind comes the news that the anthology formerly known as Fuck Noir is to be relased in November by Bleak House Books as Expletive Deleted, with the ubiquitous Ken Bruen contributing a tale in homage to "that granddaddy of all cusswords; that most adaptable and descriptive grouping of letters; that searing, offensive, musical, perfect sound: fuck." Which is nice-ish ... The book is edited by Jennifer Jordan, sister of Jon, the editor of the rather brilliant Crime Spree magazine who was kind enough to say this this to say about your correspondent's Eight Ball Boogie when it came out all those light years ago. Sure isn’t that only lovely?

The Weekly Seamus Smyth Update: Some Streets Are Meaner Than Others

Yep, we managed to track down Irish crime fiction's JD Salinger last week ... the story with Quinn (a hardboiled lost classic, folks - think Paul Cain's Fast One transplanted to '90s Dublin) is that the publishers managed to screw up its potential (quelle surprise, eh?), which included no less than seven bona fide movie offers. "By turns exciting, intriguing and horrifying, the book never fails to keep you hooked," claims this reader's review (scroll down), which is only one reason why we're starting a campaign to get Quinn republished (see sidebar, right). Stay tuned for a Seamus Smyth Q&A and some kind of petition flummery in the weeks to come ...

'No Such Thing As Bad Publicity' Dept. # 3,019: The Torso In The Canal, John Mooney

So where were you when you first heard about the torso in the canal? The news that Kathleen Mulhall is to be brought back from Britain to face charges over the murder and dismemberment of Farah Swaleh Noor in 2005 reinforces the shocking content of John Mooney's bestselling non-fiction offering from Maverick House:

"The Torso in the Canal explores the circumstances surrounding the notorious killing and the effect it had on those involved. Based on exclusive interviews with relatives, friends and investigators, this comprehensive book reveals new information about the investigation and the backgrounds of both the killers, and their victim."

Jump here for an interview with John Mooney and here for an extract from the book ... Gerry Ryan liked it, but don't let that put you off.

Declan Hughes @ Rocky Sullivan's: How More Oirish Do You Need It To Be, Exactly?

HarperCollins are plugging the bejasus out of Declan Hughes' The Colour of Blood, and why not when he's the critics' darling du jour? New Yorkers can hear Declan's dulcet tones at Rocky Sullivan's at 129 Lexington Avenue @ 29th on Wednesday night. It's an 8pm kick-off, but we'd get there early if we were you ... this is one Buzz that's going stratospheric.

Beanz Meanz Classicz: 'Tis Beantown, Begorrah!

Whaddya mean, ya haven't seen Beantown yet? Bloody philistines ... "A blood-soaked chronicle of the final desperate gang war between Boston's Irish and Italian mobs," no less, with the Winter Hill mob, headed up by Sheep-Shaggin' Sean MacDoogle, going to war with the dastardly Eyeties, fronted by Sergio 'The Director' Leone. Actually, no, they're utterly serious ... check this for an interview with director Timothy Norman, and this for ZeroHour's proposed comic book prequel. Multi-media, people - it's the only way forward.

"Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down At The Station, Punk?" # 43: Ken Bruen

Yep, it's rubber-hose time, folks ... a rapid-fire pick-'n'-mix Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you like to have written?
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V. Higgins.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Jason Starr.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Putting the end to my new stand-alone title, Once Were Cops.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
The End of the Line, KT McCaffrey.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
The Wrong King of Blood, Declan Hughes.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst, the continual self-doubt; best, meeting the readers.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
’Cos he’s a condescending wanker, like the rest of the Irish lit Mafia.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Brief, terse and challenging.

Ken Bruen's Cross is now available at all good book shops, but jump on this for regular news updates ...

Ordinary Decent Criminology: Martin Cahill's Daughter Has Her Say

We've had Brendan Gleeson (left) playing him, and Kevin Spacey, and Paul Williams has written a bestseller ... those tales about Ireland's much mythologised and romanticised Robin Hood just won't go away. Now a little birdie at New Island tells us that they've an intriguing release due this autumn ... Martin Cahill, My Father, by Francis Cahill, aka the General's daughter. At the very least, it should make for a testosterone-free take on The General in his labyrinth, no? Which will be nice ...

The Write Stuff: Critical Mick Wants To See Bleeding Fingers, People

The weekly carrier pigeon arrived from Critical Mick this morning, panting hotfoot-ish in a most unpigeonly fashion with news about the Writing Show's 'First Chapter of a Novel' writing contest. There's prizes galore for everyone who makes a submission, apparently, including a guaranteed 750-word critique of your work. "Tell the people!" roared Critical Mick, and when Critical Mick says 'Jump!', we mumble, 'Through exactly how many hoops, sir?" Hey, if you knew Critical Mick like we know Critical Mick ...

The Monday Review: Garbhan Downey, Take A Bow

Slim pickings in the weekend review sections for crime wibblings, folks: the Indo's Ian O'Doherty (what's the story, Indo-types - no link?) gave John Connolly's latest The Unquiet loads of elbow space but finished up with a Mr Garrison-ish 'Mmmmkay' verdict ("... another riveting read - although longtime fans may be rather disconcerted by the ending"), while Stephen Price enthuses about Richard Stark's Ask the Parrot in the Sunday Business Post ("Chandler it ain’t, but there is the same wry, fast-paced entertainment that’s to be had from just about anything Westlake turns out") before getting all pissy about the John Banville endorsement on the Irish edition. The big thumbs-up came from the Indo's Siobhan Cronin for Garbhan Downey's Running Mates ("Its rapid-fire pace, intriguing twists, high body count and brilliant dialogue make it a really exciting read, and a worthy addition to the ever-growing list of classy Irish crime novels"). Which is nice ... Jump here for an audio interview with Garbhan that includes him reading some excerpts from Running Mates and his upcomer, Across the Line.

Irish Crime Classics # 247: Nun More Deadly, Part 1

"Hard boiled crime novelist Raymond Chandler spent his childhood summers in Waterford City.

"It was the setting for a novel he planned to write shortly before his death in 1959.

"It was never written ..."

Irish Crime Classics # 247: Nun More Deadly, Part 2

"Can’t a man take a vacation without having to wade through the darker recesses of the human condition? I just wanted to sleep ..." A cracking 13-minute Chandler homage courtesy of the WYD-Eye Film Unit from 2005 (tongue in cheek optional), written by Rodney Lee and directed by David O'Sullivan, Nun More Deadly hustled itself a veritable bushel of awards, including Best Irish Short at the Cork International Film Festival, Best Fiction at the Sligo Short Film Festival and the Tiernan MacBride Award for Best Irish Short at the Galway Film Fleadh. Someone give those guys a proper budget, fer Chrissakes ...

Breaking News: Edel Coffey In 'Sultry Fox DJ' Shocker!

Sultry fox, quality disc-spinner and all-round wunnerful gal Edel Coffey doesn't just play tunes on Phantom 105.2's Access All Areas - no indeedy, she also hosts writerly-types ...

"Next week I've got some fabulous guests for you. Tune in early on Monday as the author John Connolly will be in studio to talk about his new book, The Unquiet, which comes with a CD featuring bands like Low and Midlake amongst others."

Yep, we're loving John's multi-media attack ... jump here for his masterplan for world domination.

Funky Friday's Free-For-All: Peter Dragon Speaks!

Yep, it's Friday, which is funky, and thus it's a posting free-for-all ... Seems the general consensus among the literati seems to be that crime fiction is one rung up the ladder from your actual porn. Next time you hear it, point them in the direction of Action's Peter Dragon, seen here defending violent movies before a Senate Committee as only Peter can, to wit: "If I’m a malignancy and my movies are cancer, I hope the whole damn country gets cancer!" Roll it there, Collette ... See you on Monday, folks. Y'all come back now, y'hear?

The Big O: More Extracts Than A Dentist On Crystal Meth

We've been absolutely inundated* with requests for extracts from The Big O ever since our NBF Karen Delaney posted this to Amazon readers' reviews, and so, reluctantly, and with all due modesty, we offer our humble yadda-yadda blah courtesy of those wunnerful folks over at Hag's Head Press. Tread softly, dear reader, for you tread upon something that might get stuck to the sole of your shoe.

* Not one feckin' request. Not a sausage. Crikey, would it have hurt you just to ask? Piss-ant, rhubarb, etc.

Cheer Up, Weepy Gene

Crumbs, but he's a miserable looking sod and no mistake. In what's probably a vain bid to lighten Gene Kerrigan's gloom, we herewith offer a sample of reviews for The Midnight Choir from the interweb thingygummy ... Trumpet-parp, maestro ... annnnnd there's The Independent for starters, and the lovely Sharon Wheeler at Reviewing the Evidence ... and Clive James in the New Yorker, who's a snobby bollocks while still offering a backhanded thumbs up ("It would be nice to think that Kerrigan had got himself lost in a genuine search for complexity, but I fear that he just became impatient with the form") ... and a rather tasty big-up from International Noir. Gene? Try a smile. You won't be stuck with it if the wind changes. Seriously ...

Critical Mick: Evil Genius or Intellectual Dilettante? Discuss

We're still not sure about Critical Mick - mad, bad and probably dangerous to know, we can't decide if he belongs on an election poster or a 'Wanted' handbill. Here's Mick on the title of Gene Kerrigan's, The Midnight Choir: "Quoting a master like Leonard Cohen is well and good, but choosing old ground like Bird on a Wire for a title puts Gene Kerrigan among the throng groping Goldie Hawn's sloppy seconds." Erm, chardonnay moi? Jump here to see who gets Mick's 'barking mad seal' of approval in Irish True Crime ...

Frank Pig Says Howdy-Doody, Again

Julia O'Faolain may liken Pat McCabe's The Butcher Boy to Crime and Punishment, but we're thinking more along the lines of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. All of which is neither here nor there when it comes to Colin MacCabe's The Butcher Boy, published next month by the Cork University Press, in which MacCabe follows up tomes on Joyce and Godard with an in-depth look at Neil Jordan's movie. Sample quote: "The Butcher Boy is perhaps the finest film to have come out of Ireland. Although it marks a clear break with the more banal canons of realism, it is nonetheless the most realistic of Irish films." Erm, no and no again. Still, Pat McCabe and Neil Jordan will be turning out for the launch at the IFI on May 3 ... which is nice.

This Week We're Reading ... The Deadly Percheron & The Wrong Kind of Blood

John Franklin Bardin's hilariously convoluted The Deadly Percheron (1946) gets mixed reviews when it comes to plausibility, but if amnesiac shrinks investigating their own murders float your hovercraft, this is for you. A psychologically dense take on the unreliable narrator ... So many kinds of blood, so little time - erstwhile playwright Declan Hughes' debut, The Wrong Kind of Blood, has a Chandleresque first line to make a bishop kick a hole in his stained-glass window: "The night of my mother's funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband." Jump here for some reader reviews ...

Less Haste, Less Speed Dating, Please ...

New Irish crime flick Speed Dating, starring Hugh O'Conor, doesn't go on general release until tomorrow, but already it's won Best Feature at the Malibu International Film Festival. Huzzah! Mind you, the reviewer at entertainment.ie probably won't be having his eye taken out by any celebratory champagne corks ... "It's back to business for Irish movies - unfocused, nonsensical plots, Harp ad dialogue, Fair City lighting and one-liners that might have been slightly amusing a couple of years ago when inebriated in the pub." Yikes. Jump on this for the trailer.

Cormac Millar - Grazie, Il Mio Amico

The deal with this blogging blummery is, if someone links you, then you link them. Forthwith we commend Cormac Millar into your tender hands, author of An Irish Solution and The Grounds, a rather funky website plugging every Irish crime writer since Jonathan Swift (yep, we have a Swifty-as-crime-hack theory) and holder of the rather dubious title of Penguin's Most Wanted. Oh, and if he seems a bit serious, then he is - he's a professor-type in Italian at Trinity College. But Trinners isn't the setting for groves-of-academe thriller, The Grounds. Heaven forfend, etc.

New-ish Release: Loot, Thomas McShane

Maverick House is churning out some pretty weird 'n' wonderful non-fiction crime, Thomas McShane's March release Loot being a case in point. "A fascinating read ... a great book to take along on your holiday! says RTE's Ryan Tubridy, and Tubbers should know. Jump here to read Chapter One ... or here for the Telegraph's review (warning: occasional 'guilty liberal' hand-wringing may occur).

Russell Crowe to play Brant? Mmmm, scoopalicious!

Word around the campfire is that Russell Crowe is donning his dirty cop bib yet again, this time as Ken Bruen's Inspector Brant in a Nathan 'Son of Alan' Parker adaptation of Blitz (aka Brant Hits the Blues). Crowe as an ornery, hard-drinkin', tough-talkin', all-fightin' force of nature? Hmmmm, it's so damn crazy, it might just work ... and perish yon art-imitating-reality thoughts, ye begrudgers.

"A Bruges Too Farrell?" Nope, that won't work either ...

The last best Irish crime movie? I Went Down, naturally. The next best? In Bruges, if the Hollywood Reporter knows its onions - Martin McDonagh directs his tolchock-a-go-go script, with Colin Farrell (left, on set, in ultra-rare Paddington Bear pose), Brendan Gleeson and Ralph ("That's Rafe, actually") Fiennes doing the standing around pouting bit. "I've never written anything trying to be violent," Martin McDonagh tells Variety, "they just come out that way." Yep, and if you pull our other one it plays Greensleeves. Oh, and can someone please tell the geezer in the background his syrup has slipped? Cheers.

Adrian White: A hard Rain's gonna fall

Katie Maguire ... looks 'n' brains 'n' media job ... blah-blah ... 'Nice Guy Mike' ... blah-blah - but hold! What's this? A Vegas heist gone wrongish in her murky past? Can Galway-based erstwhile Eason's buyer Adrian White's latest, Where the Rain Gets In, be the fabled hardboiled chick-lit genre-bender we've all been waiting for? "Yes!" say the punters at Bibliofemme ... which is nice. "Mmmkay," say the Mr Garrisonalicious folks at Emigrant Ireland ... which less nice than it should be. Boo.

New Release: The Unquiet, John Connolly

"This world is full of broken things. Broken hearts, broken promises, broken men, broken people ..." Stop the clocks, people - John Connolly's The Unquiet has hit Irish shelves. Jump here for an author interview ... here for the first chapter ... or here for a couple of tasters from the 'other' Charlie Parker. Eclectic? We wouldn't know how to spell it ...

Lost Classics # 27: Quinn, Seamus Smyth

"Murder is such an emotive term. It implies malice ... But there's no malice in what I do." Teak-tough stuff from Seamus Smyth on his debut, with Gerd Quinn as his first-person borderline psycho Mr Fixit wreaking homicidal havoc in Dublin's crime world. You want a car-bomb wired up outside a kids' school? Yep, Quinn's yer only man ... and that's just for openers. An Irish Jim Thompson, and no mistake. It was too hardboiled for mass consumption when first released back in 1999, maybe, but Quinn's time has surely come around. Any chance of a re-release, folks?

Sssshhh ... It's all so Unquiet

We're loving the whole multi-media approach: John Connolly's upcomer, the new Charlie Parker yarn The Unquiet, comes with a CD attached (a la Black Angel) of music referenced between the covers. We've emailed him at his blog hoping for a few tasters but don't stay tuned, we don't know the guy (although we did review his Nocturnes for the Irish Times, so we're kind of hoping for a favour). Meanwhile, here's some early reviews for your delectation ... "John Connolly at his chilling best" seems to be the general consensus. Which is nice ...

Galway: Tough on Crime, Tough on the Writers of Crime

Slim pickings for crime fiends at Galway's upcoming Cúirt Festival, April 24-29 ... the best we can recommend is Erwin James (pictured left, in the infamous prison on Devil's Island), whose A Life Inside: The Prisoner’s Notebook is a stone-cold classic, and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting, Filth), who chows down as part of the Bardic Brunch on Sunday 29 ... Hell, we know it's supposed to be a literary festival, but didn't anyone have Banville's number?

The Banville Conundrum: When Johnald Met Donville

John Banville / Benjamin Black (left/left) hangs out with Donald Westlake / Richard Stark to discuss the unbearable lightness of being yourself - "To find a new direction to go in was liberating," says John-Ben of his alter-ego's segue into crime fiction, Christine Falls. "I’m kind of playing with this, and I don’t quite trust it yet. It may be a terrible mistake." A profitable one, though: John-Ben has a sequel on the way ... and why not, when the first got the all-important 'nifty Chandler homage' thumbs-up from the Sydney Morning Herald ... which is nice.

The Embiggened O

No sense in having a blog if you can't plug yourself once in a while ... The Big O's first Amazon review went up today, and electronic bouquets to Karen Delaney - "A multi-layered novel that zips along at a rate of knots,with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments" ... which is nice. Still, why buy on Amazon when you can get a discount from those lovely people at Hag's Head Press? You know it makes sense ...

Ohmigod, they haven't killed off Kenny's

Kudos to Kenny's Online for making Ken Bruen's Cross their Book of the Week, given that it's, y'know, crime fiction. Eurocrime seems to be rather keen too ... "I cannot recommend this series highly enough", says Karen Chisholm, all the way from Oz. Which is nice. Read the full review here.

Declan Hughes: The good kind of Blood money

A bracing big-up for Declan Hughes in the Sunday Times ("A classic temptress ... and a complex plot enrich this hugely enjoyable homage") for the audio version of The Wrong Kind of Blood, which comes on like a Bogie voice-over, apparently. Lovely. Have a listen here ...

Gene Genie

Gene Kerrigan gets the hup-ya treatment from the New Yorker - sort of - for his latest, The Midnight Choir (Leonard Cohen in crime fiction title shocker? Mmmm, zenalicious). And proper order too - yon Midnight Choir's a sweet read with a triple-downer ending to boot. Which is nice ...

Talk about the Passion

Down those mean streets a man must go who is not himself stingy ... The latest Jack Taylor outing from Ken Bruen, Cross, gets the five-star treatment from Myles McWeeney in the Irish Independent: "Bruen's writing is as bleak and spare as Taylor's take on modern Ireland". Which is nice, although what's nicer is being nominated for a Gumshoe, the European Crime Novel Award ...

God bless you, Mr Rosewater

One day Kurt Vonnegut is alive, the next he isn't. So it goes. The welcome home party on Tralfamadore should be just about hitting its stride right about now ...

Early days and all that ...

Okay, so we're just road-testing this posting-to-blog malarkey ... Declan Burke has just had his second novel published by Hag's Head Press, it's called The Big O, and the Mail on Sunday says "Elmore Leonard with a harder Irish edge". Which is nice ...