“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 719: Adrian McKinty

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 Big Sleep is hard to beat. The prose, the style, the attitude … I’m also a big fan of Jim Thompson - The Grifters is one of my favourites. And now that we’re on to this, I also wish I’d directed Blood Simple, one of the greatest noir movies ever.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Anything by Alan Moore, but I don’t feel that guilty about it.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Sad to say I’ve yet to have a truly satisfying writing moment.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
One of the gems by Ken Bruen, but I ain’t gonna pick one.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice. Love that book and it really should be a movie.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is that your friends and family think you’re rich when in fact you’re still dirt poor. The best thing is no heavy lifting.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Banville thinks of the crime genre as a low form of writing, in fact he barely considers it writing at all. It wouldn’t do at all to have the great literary name John Banville connected with such a tabloid medium.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sparkly, cosy, pixie-dust.

Adrian McKinty’s The Bloomsday Dead is the must-buy novel this year

Ssssshhh … It’s All So Unquiet

There’s probably no bad time to be John Connolly (left), but right now the reviews for The Unquiet are coming in like choppers at Da Nang. Says JC Patterson over at the Clarion Ledger: “Enter the dual world of Connolly, where the tangible and the metaphysical often collide, emitting sparks of blood, phantom whispers and the secrets that entomb the living.” Hurrah! As for The Patriot News: “His Parker novels are far from typical whodunits but are multilayered offerings that peel away the soul of the world-weary Parker and most anyone who comes in contact with him,” says Mary O. Bradley. Delia Barnard of the Sunday Life weighs in with, “A lush story with rich characterisation … with frequent touches of wry humour as the good, the bad and the grey characters are cleverly picked over for the readers’ rich enjoyment.” Nice. Then there’s The Telegraph: “Connolly’s books often contain passages of horrific violence, but The Unquiet is less violent and more subtly disturbing. As usual, there is an element of the supernatural, taking the reader into a place where the real, contemporary world is touched by something from our worst nightmares, and he does it in lyrical, almost poetic language which grips and chills.” Woo-hoo! Had enough? Didn’t think so … Here’s an interview with Big Bad John over at the deliciously monikered Culture and Carnage, in which our hero waxes rhapsodical about the delights of his work in progress, The Reapers, and, erm, getting old: “It’s strange to think that The Reapers will be my tenth book. It really doesn’t seem that long ago since I was writing Every Dead Thing. Then again, I only have to compare my jacket photos then and now, and count the grey hairs, to realise that, actually, it was quite a while ago …” Jeez, John - we'll trade you a few non-grey hairs for a few million of your sales, eh?

At Play In The Fields Of The Glynn

If you haven’t come across Alan Glynn’s drug-fuelled masterpiece The Dark Fields yet, you should have – “Scary and brilliantly written, the book should have been a best-seller,” says Declan Hughes over at the The Rap Sheet (scroll down), while on its release the New York Times chipped in with, “There are enough twists and thrills to keep readers up late – even without resorting to illegal and dangerous substances.” Unsurprisingly, The Dark Fields has been picked up for the big screen treatment – the film rights have been sold to Miramax, and pre-production is ongoing as you read. Meanwhile, Glynn is beavering away on his latest, Winterland – which may or may not be about paranoid crazies consuming vast amounts of, erm, ‘snow’. We’ll keep you posted (sniffle) …

This Week We're Reading ... Bishop's Pawn and Cannon Law

I’m not quite dead yet, etc. KT McCaffrey’s latest, Bishop’s Pawn , opens with series heroine Emma Boylan reading her obituary in the newspaper where she works, and subsequently prying the lid off a particularly nasty can of squiggly yokes slithering up out of her past – in other words, it’s a sequel of sorts to Revenge (1999). A multi-character piece with an impressive quotient of psychopathic villains, Bishop’s Pawn is a movie-in-waiting … we’re thinking Hilary Swank as Emma, and the Crime Always Pays staff as the motley crew of psycho freaks. Hey, call us, we’re free … Meanwhile, our nomination for the most underrated private dick scribbler anywhere is Vincent Banville, whose hardboiled(ish), painfully self-aware shamus John Blaine got a third outing in Cannon Law (2001). “An excellent new crime novel from one of Ireland’s foremost exponents of the genre,” reported Read Ireland, describing Banville’s writing as “Gripping, funny and stripped to the bone … packs a punch like a fist in a velvet glove.” Banville treads a fine line between paying homage to the Chandleresque tropes and unmercifully taking the proverbial out of said tropes … and then Blaine, being Blaine, stomps all over that delicately crafted prose. We like it a lot, and wethinks you will too.

The Weekly Seamus Smith Update: You’ve Not Seen Nothing Like The Mighty Quinn

So what more do we have to do to convince you of Quinn’s greatness? What’s that? You want actual proof in the form of reviews? Okeley-dokely … The folks over at Amazon are only drooling, to wit: “Quinn encompasses both intense bluntness and delicious irony … alongside moments of sharp humour. Harrowing and enlightening, Quinn cleverly shows the shock and the appeal of altered perception.” And then there’s: “By turns exciting, intriguing and horrifying the book never fails to keep you hooked.” But stay! There’s more! “While American Psycho shocked through the creativity of the various murders, Quinn shocks through its cold-hearted premeditation.” And our own Ken Bruen, who should know a thing or seventeen about fictional psycho killers, reckons that, “The hero, Gerd Quinn, is straight from the tradition of Goodis through Thompson to the wry, sly humour of a Willeford.” Quoth the Times: “For all its lightning exposition of Quinn’s swaggering amorality, this first novel proves Smyth to be a truly original, febrile talent.” As for ourselves, you know where we stand: on a pulpit proclaiming Quinn’s genius. Do the right thing, people – you know it makes sense.

Flick Lit # 12: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

“One of the nastiest novels ever published in this country,” declared Time. “The real nihilist of the hard-boiled school, the laureate of the blank wall,” claimed Geoffrey O’Brien. The writer was Horace McCoy, the novel Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948). By then French writers such as Sartre and Gide were ranking McCoy alongside Faulkner, Steinbeck and Hemingway; Simone de Beauvoir went so far as to suggest that McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) was, “the first existentialist novel to have appeared in America.” A veteran of WWI, a pulp writer for Detective-Dragnet, Detective Action Stories and Black Mask, McCoy’s experience as a struggling actor in Hollywood during the Depression provided the material for the downbeat melodramas They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, No Pockets in a Shroud (1937), and I Should Have Stayed Home (1938). He finally found work in Hollywood, but as a screenwriter for B-movie westerns. By the time the French writers ‘discovered’ his novels in the ’40s, McCoy was, he claimed, “broke, depressed and fat.” Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye offered redemption. The novel follows Ralph Cotter, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar who remoulds himself as an immoral killer after his breakout from prison. Once out, Cotter organises a shakedown of a corrupt small-town police chief, dupes a millionaire’s daughter into falling for him, and generally engages in a relentless one-man assault on the mores of middle America. An unusual blend of rapacious action and contemplative self-examination from a reprehensible anti-hero, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye prompted Kirkus Reviews to predict: “This will probably be quarantined from libraries … (it) has a literate, nerve-lacerating, whip-lashing effectiveness.” Happily, James Cagney happened to be looking for “a really nasty role” that would cement his celluloid persona as Hollywood’s premier screen bastard. While his role in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) resembled a reprise of Tom Power, his vainglorious gangster in Public Enemy, gone were the facial pyrotechnics, the grapefruits mashed in moll’s faces, the pathetic self-delusions. Instead Cotter was a phlegmatic character, whose sadistic outbursts of violence were all the more terrifying for their juxtaposition with Cotter’s charisma. Scripted by Harry Brown, the film was directed by Gordon Douglas, who cast a veritable who’s-who of B-movie noir stalwarts, among them Barbara Payton, Ward Bond, Steve Brodie and Barton MacLane (Bond and MacLane had teamed up before, as cops sharking Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon). The direction is classically taut, allowing Cagney every opportunity to chew the scenery and spit it back in the face of the audience. Even allowing for what the audience expected of a Cagney role, Ralph Cotter was a departure for 1950’s America. Callous immorality was one thing, but the leading man viciously beating on his on-screen girlfriend (Payton) was a slap in the face too far. The movie was duly panned by the critics, who obviously knew as much about what ticket buyers wanted back then as they do now … On the back of the film’s commercial success, McCoy sold an original script, Scalpel (1951) to Hall Wallis Productions; again, both novel and film were winners. McCoy was working on a new novel, The Hard Rock Man, when he suffered a heart-attack. When he died in 1955, at the age of 58, his widow had to sell his books and jazz collection to pay for his funeral.- Michael McGowan

The Mid-Week Interweb Mash-Up: Being Honest, It’s Just A Pathetic Excuse To Use The Word ‘Baloohaha’

Nice to see Eoin McNamee (left) isn’t forgetting his crime roots, even if his up-comer, 12:33 (etc.), concerns itself with the surely-no-crime-involved death of Princess Diana: “When I started looking into the story, which I had never taken any particular interest in before, there was a kind of noir, murky atmosphere to it … I feel that, if the art is right, then the moral dimension of the book will follow that.” Well said, Big Mc … The Guru over at greencine.com seems to be impressed with the movie of Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, which we consider Ireland’s The Killer Inside Me: “By the time Sinead O’Connor shows up as a vision of the Virgin Mary, dispensing bad advice for our protagonist, the movie’s already winnowed its way among the greatest – and strangest – coming-of-age films of all time,” says the Guru. Crikey – someone point that man in the direction of Colin McCabe’s tome on the movie (right), courtesy of the Cork University Press … Elsewhere, the dicks at Detectives Beyond Borders have been wondering about the great comic crime novels. “I'd make room for Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr as well as Bruen’s Brant and Roberts series,” says our intrepid investigator in the same breath as he mentions Joe Gores, Donald Westlake, Bill James and Janet Evanovich … There’s a pod-cast with Benjamin Black over at KRCW, in which Benjie very probably talks about writing ‘n’ stuff … Eurocrime offers its verdict on John Connolly’s The Unquiet: “Connolly is always good on tortured souls and tortured locations where evil resides and this is one of his most powerful atmospheric plots,” reckons Carla McKay … The Rap Sheet (scroll down) nailed Declan Hughes for its mammoth ‘You’re Still The One’ series, with Hughes nominating Alan Glynn’s Dark Fields (left) as his ‘smart and scary and brilliantly written’ underrated classic … Finally, Shane Hegarty was kind enough to plug Crime Always Pays over at his Present Tense blog, so we’re returning the favour, and ditto for FinleyNine, the interweb rapscallion who reckons ‘Sam Millar has discriminating taste’ … which is nice. Oh, and can we say ‘baloohaha’ one more time? Yes? Thank you.

Yet More Monk-y Business

Former legal-type and current Benedictine monk at Glenstal Abbey, Andrew Nugent’s Second Burial (aka Second Burial For A Black Prince) gets its paperback release in August through Headline. An “excellent Irish police procedural” according to these here folks, Nugent’s second reprises Inspector Quilligan and Molly Power of the ‘Irish Police Force Murder Squad’ from his debut The Four Courts Murder as they try to work out why a Nigerian man was murdered in the Dublin mountains, the pair aided and abetted by the victim’s brother, Jude. “A bit slow at times,” claims New Mystery Reader, but “Second Burial is worth the effort.”

The Embiggened O # 213: A Trumpet, A Trumpet, Our Kingdom For A Trumpet!

Actually, International Noir reviews our first humble offering, Eightball Boogie, and not The Big O, but ‘The Embiggened Eightball’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Anyhoo, the gist beginneth thusly: “There is classic noir popping up in what would once have been unusual places …” and winds up with … “Most of the time, at least, Harry (Rigby) is almost as funny as he thinks he is, and the comedy keeps the story rolling along between the sudden eruptions of violence. If Harry’s imitation of the voice of a hard-boiled private eye isn’t your cup of tea, stick with the book anyway – Burke’s novel is not just a pulp revival, it’s genuine neo-noir.” Blimey! We’re thrilled skinny-ish! If any of the above intrigues you, we refer you to the Eightball reviews on Amazon UK, where Jon Jordan of CrimeSpree Magazine reckons, “It’s fast-paced and filled with wonderful characters through out … A PI story that moves forward like freight train.” Meanwhile, over on Amazon US, Hank Wagner loses the run of himself entirely: “Burke is in full control the entire way, providing a plethora of witty one-liners and a couple of action sequences so tense and well rendered they’ll leave you breathless. A fun, satisfying read, Eightball Boogie marks the arrival of a new master of suspense on the literary scene.” Mmm, yummy! You know what to do, people – schlep on over to Amazon and make with the food-stamps bartering malarkey today! Or tomorrow! Or, y’know, don’t bother at all. We’re cool …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 84: Bill Crider

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'm not at all sure I can answer this. On any given day, the answer would probably be different. For today, The Big Sleep, followed closely by The Maltese Falcon and The Chill.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I never consider reading to be guilty, but at the moment I'm reading the new paperback edition of Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers. That's about as guilty as it gets.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Any time I finish a book or story.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Can I call The White Trilogy a single novel? That's what got me started reading Ken Bruen. I'm not really qualified to answer, though, not knowing as much as I should about the Irish crime novel. Certainly the "middle period" Jack Higgins books are wonderful stuff. Or does Higgins count? He was born in Belfast, I think.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again I'm not really qualified to answer. How about John Connolly's Every Dead Thing? The right director might do well with that one.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: the huge royalty checks. Worst: there's a worst?
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Branding? Like, if you buy a Ford, you want a Ford. If you buy John Banville, you want "literature."
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Laid-back, wry, rural.

Edgar-nominated Bill Crider recently published Murder Among The OWLS

Yep, This One Will Run And Run ... And Run

What's that? You can't get enough of Garbhan Downey's (right) boyish good looks and roguish charm? No, we neither - so why not jump over here for an extract from his rather spiffing political farce about an Irish presidential race, Running Mates (first line: "No offence, Taoiseach," said the dumpy redheaded man, "but you’re talking out of your hole."). "Another of his irresistibly funny satirical novels," it says just about here-ish ... Meanwhile, Garbhan's also the editor of Verbal, a superb publication that goes out monthly with the Belfast Telegraph, and they're always on the look-out for nubile young literary flesh to sink their not always entirely metaphorical fangs into. If you're a writer and it's reviews you're after, drop Garbhan a copy of your opus at: Garbhan Downey, Editor, Verbal, Verbal Arts Centre, Mall Wall and Stable Lane, Bishop St Within, Derry, BT48 6PU. We did it, and look at us now - forced into indentured service plugging Running Mates ad infinitum. Still, it's a good life if you don't weaken.

Smells Like Pre-Teen Spirit

How do we love thee, Siobhan Dowd? Let us count the ways … Well, she’s modest for starters: “Although I’m not a crime writer as such,” says Siobhan (right), “I’m launching a mystery story for 9- to 12- year-olds, inspired by Sherlock Holmes, on June 7th. It is called The London Eye Mystery and is about a boy who goes up the London Eye – and doesn’t come down. His cousins Ted and Kat become sleuths in their urgent efforts to find out what has happened to him.” Hurrah! We’re off to a book launch! Or not, as the case may be … The launch, which takes place in the London Eye itself, is invite-only, but Siobhan will be signing copies in Waterstone’s of Trafalgar Square that evening – probably. “I am not sure if I can stage my own disappearance at the launch party, in Agatha Christie style, as I’m too keen on remaining for the champagne!” Hmmm, modest and a champagne quaffer to boot – our kind of gal. Oh, and did we mention that the lady in question was recently crowned a ‘literary lion’ by the Sunday Times? No? We really should tell you about that sometime …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Colour of Blood by Declan Hughes

When Shane Howard, a Dublin dentist, receives compromising pictures of his 19-year-old daughter accompanied by a note demanding 50 grand, he calls in the professionals. Enter one Ed Loy, your standard troubled private investigator with a passion for the gargle who somehow manages to avoid cliché; by the end, Loy has uncovered about ten murders all tangled up with one family’s tortured history. The myriad subplots zig-zagging through the novel keep the pace at a steady gallop and Hughes weaves together a complicated story with aplomb, without sticky endings or facile conclusions. The cast of characters – which includes a South Dublin princess, a supposedly reformed criminal whose pots of cash have bought his acceptance at an exclusive rugby club, and a femme fatale who calls the shots – often play for laughs, but they never run into caricature. It is contemporary Dublin, however, which is the novel’s central character. Its new wealth, opportunity, development and shiny apartments may shimmer at the surface but it’s the city’s nefarious underbelly that becomes a much more prominent persona – with all its attendant greed, exploitation, criminal gangs, hypocrisy, snobbery and the repression of old.- Claire Coughlan

Listowel: Tough On Crime, Tough On The Writers Of Crime

Another Irish literary festival, another who’s-not-who of Irish crime fiction. Yep, it’s the turn of Listowel Writers’ Week to virtually ignore the scruffy cornerboys and assorted low-lives who scribble nasty words on grubby pages, with only Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls (left) representing the nauseatingly popular genre. Nominated alongside Roddy Doyle (Paula Spencer), Gerard Donovan (Julius Winsome), Pat McCabe (Winterwood) and Claire Kilroy (Tenderwire), Black is on the short-list for the Irish Fiction Award 2007, to be decided May 30 – even though his biog on the Writers’ Week site makes no mention of ‘Benjamin’, ‘Black’, ‘Christine’ or ‘Falls’. Odd, that – although yon blurb spoofs on about quite a bit about John Banville, for some bizarre reason. Anyhoo, we’re rooting (metaphorically, sadly) for Claire Kilroy (right), partly because she’s the only gal on the short-list (solidarity, sister) but mainly because she’s the hottest fox since they cremated Basil Brush. Boom-boom, etc. Seriously, though, there’s a €10,000 prize going for the Irish Fiction Award, which isn’t to be sneezed at, even if you do win it for (eeek!) writing a crime novel – eh, John?

The Monday Review: Like, Are There Any Irish People Out There Who AREN'T Writing Crime Fiction?

A bumper crop of reviews this Monday, folks, kicking off with The Times’ take on John Connolly’s The Unquiet: “At times he approaches the spiritual and the supernatural, without falling into the abyss of total impossibility.” Which is, um, good, right? Cool … “Hugely under-rated among thriller writers,” Paul Charles gets the big-up from the Sunday Tribune, which reckons his latest Detective-Inspector Kennedy yarn, Sweetwater, is “one for that long air journey.” … Mystery Books is equally impressed with Ruth Dudley Edward’s latest, Murdering Americans: “Baroness Jack is a delightful character … in this entertaining and witty book.” Mmm, lovely. Next up is Alex Barclay, who “shows promise as a mystery writer, but she needs to make her characters behave more rationally,” warns the rather stingy Kansas City Star … “Be warned: even my scepticism did not prepare me for the ending of this book,” says The Book Chase of Ken Bruen’s The Dramatist. “I was stunned at its suddenness and power. (It’s) the first Ken Bruen novel that I’ve read without thinking about, and admiring, the author’s style more than the novel’s plot. Jack Taylor fans will consider this one to be a classic.” Crikey – do you want jam with that, sir? … Neville Thompson is well in with RTE’s Afternoon Show: “Mama’s Boys is a touching yet funny story starkly depicting life today,” say the Afternooners … Elsewhere, the Kirkus Reviews lauds Andrew Nugent’s Second Burial: “What shines throughout (is) the piercing compassion that crosses racial and national lines to embrace everyone who seeks the truth,” say Mr & Mrs Kirkus … “Irish-born Michael Collins is an astute chronicler of contemporary America, and this stylish campus thriller sees him at the top of his game,” clickety-clicks The Telegraph about The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton, while The Elegant Variation is tickled pink at Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls: “Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn’t worry … At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery.” A ‘Banvillean’ creation? Don’t confuse Der Blandville with Benjamin Black, bro – he won’t be best pleased.

Bruen Up A Storm

It’s tough keeping up with everything Ken Bruen (right, with the uber-glam Tess Gerritsen, righter) is up to these days, people. Apart from publishing Cross this side of the pond and American Skin over yonder Stateside, he’s released A Fifth of Bruen through Busted Flush, a compilation of all his early novellas and short stories featuring an intro by Allan Guthrie. “A beautiful book ... a must-have for all Bruen’s fans,” says Jon Jordan of CrimeSpree Magazine over at Amazon, and he should know … Meanwhile, Bleak House have released These Guns For Hire, a hardboiled short story collection featuring Ken’s Punk, and you can hear him reading it over here somewhere-ish … and if that wasn’t enough, there’s his second collaboration with Jason Starr, Slide, which will be published by Hard Case Crime in October with the delicious tag-line, ‘Beauty is only sin deep’. Oi, Bruen – leave some room on the shelves for the rest of us, ya bum!

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 214: Charles Ardai

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?
The Big Sleep.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Dan Brown.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Appending the words ‘The End’ to the final page of a book I’ve worked on for years.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I can’t pretend an exhaustive enough knowledge of the contenders to make this determination – but it wouldn’t surprise me if the right answer was a book with the words “by Ken Bruen” on its spine.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
The Guards, Ken Bruen.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: Rarely possible to make a living at it, even if you’re good. Best: If you do it right, a little piece of you will live forever.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Damned if I know. I only know why I do: because I'm a sucker for clever anagrams.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sorrowful, disillusioned, bleak.

Charles Ardai is an Edgar-winning writer and co-publisher of Hard Case Crime

The Disembiggened O # 312: No Trumpets, There Are None

Quel fromage! Phantom 102.5 FM’s The Kiosk subjected our humble offering, The Big O, to something of a rather vigorous colonoscopy on Saturday and the results – you have been warned – aren’t pretty. If Nadine O’Regan (not pictured, right) wasn’t such a total babe, she’d be off our Christmas card list until, oh, November at least. But she is, so she isn’t, if you follow our drift. In the spirit of interweb openness, accountability and transparency, etc., you can hear the ten or so minutes of the review here or hereabouts, and a big shout-out to Critical Mick for doing the knob-twiddling on the diggery-wibbly technology bit. Meanwhile, The Rap Sheet has taken our prints in their rather wonderful ‘overlooked crime classic’ series, for which we’ve nominated Paul Cain’s Fast One. “Reading Fast One was like travelling to Antarctica,” says this enlightened soul (scroll down a tad), “once you arrived, there was nowhere else to go.” Sweet.

The French Correction

It’s barely a couple of weeks since we reported that Tana French’s (right) In The Woods was getting mixed reviews, and lo! here we are sautéing our words in a light balsamic. To wit: “French, in addition to the quiet, chilling psychological study that forms the bedrock of In The Woods, has crafted a first-rate mystery,” says the Book Reporter, while the Daily American chips in with: “French writes as if she were far more experienced as a novelist. Her pacing is fast, her characters are vivid and well-developed and her plotting is so engaging that it's hard to put down. This is one of the best mystery novels this year.” So far, so fantastic. But tarry awhile, there’s more … “In the Woods is as creepily imaginative as it gets,” reckons USA Today, while the Irish Indo goes one or twelve better: “This astonishing first novel weaves a web of intrigue to confound even the most astute; and its denouement, swift, shocking and sublimely executed, will remain with the reader long after the final page has been turned.” Blimey! Rock on over to Book Opinion to get a round-up of In The Woods’ recent reviews, and also to catch the gal du jour yakking it up in an interview …

This ‘Funky Friday’s Free-For-All’ Malarkey: It’s Just Another Name For An Interweb Mash-Up Baloohaha Thingy, Isn’t It?

Erm, yes. Moving swiftly on … the RTE Guide was less kind than it might have been to Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo, claiming that, “the basic premise is good … but there are too many loose ends and sub-plots that never quite get off the ground.” Still, the Raith Rovers fan will always have the Portico Prize AND the Theakston's Old Perculier Crime Novel of the Year award she won for The Grave Tattoo to sustain her … Unsurprisingly, Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands gets the 21-gun salute from Shotsmag: “Borderlands is a highly tense, taut debut novel with the same intensity one has come to expect from established authors.” Which is nice … Staying with Shotsmag, they’re getting to know Ken Bruen (left) quite well, apparently: “Bruen’s writing has a beguiling quality, written in very intimate first person … If you like your crime thrillers to challenge the way you think, then Bruen’s your man.” And staying with all things Bruen, Murderati has his ‘essay’ A Tale of Two Childhoods, which contains the deliciously downbeat kiss-off to the rich ‘n’ famous, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, look who he gave it to.” Ooooh, get him … John Connolly has had his prints taken over at Rap Sheet, where they’re asking a host of writers what crime novel they think has been most unjustly ignored over the years. Ross Macdonald’s The Chill, says John: “At the risk of being heretical, Macdonald was a much better novelist than Chandler, who was a flashier writer … read The Chill not only for its exquisite plotting and elegant, measured prose, but for the empathy, humanity and sheer generosity of spirit that infuses every page.” Couldn’t agree more … Finally, we got information, man, new shit has, uh, come to light … yep, it’s a double-whammy for Coen Brothers fans: not only did Ethan (right) and Joel's (righter) movie of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men get les reviews raves at Cannes and finally blot out the blight that was The Ladykillers, but the Guardian brings news of a Coen Brothers-Working Title tie-in, Burn After Reading, Working Title being the company who worked on Fargo and The Big Lebowski (“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.”). Joy untrammelled, eh? Finally-finally, here's aspiring author Bernard Black / Dylan Moran of Black Books (below), not really coming to terms with his latest rejection letter. Altogether now: "Piss-midget!" And that’s all for another week, folks: have a good weekend and y’all come back now, y’hear?

The Embiggened O # 937: All We Hear Is Radio Ga-Ga. And Trumpets

It’s been said more than once that Crime Always Pays has a wonderful face for radio, and Ireland’s lit-crit glam queen and Phantom FM presenter Nadine O’Regan (left) is to test the theory yet again. The Kiosk is set to review our humble offering The Big O live on air this coming Saturday, May 26, kicking off at 11am, which is why we’re taking ourselves off to the nearest sealed bunker for the hour in question. If you’re crazy enough to be up at that kind of ungodly hour on a weekend, you can listen in on-line here …

DWF: WTF?

’Twas a sordid ‘n’ shameful dalliance and perhaps it’s best that the twisted relationship between crime fiction and the Dublin Writers’ Festival (June 13-17) has ended, for the sake of the kids if nothing else. Mind you, the kids are all growed up now and well capable of looking after themselves – skulking around Eason’s last week, Crime Always Pays counted nine Irish crime fiction authors on the new release wall, as compared with six Irish chick lit writers. Has Irish crime fiction reached some kind of tipping point? Is it time for a Crime Writers Ireland association thingymabob? Only time, that notorious tittle-tattler, will tell … Elsewhere on the festival circuit, Ruth Dudley ‘Do-Wrong’ Edwards (left) of Murdering Americans fame will very probably be a model of decorous restraint when she debates ‘Multi Cultural Ireland – Is There A Limit To Tolerance?’ with Brian Lenihan, TD, and Anna Lo, MLA, on Saturday, June 2, at the Goldsmith International Literary Festival, while John Blandville will be able to take a break from all that pesky talk of crime fiction scribbling when he fetches up at the John Hewitt International Summer School in the company of Fintan O’Toole, TP Flanagan and Kenneth Bloomfield. Blandville (right), who is quickly becoming notorious among the crime writing cognoscenti for his – to put it politely – disdainful attitude to crime fiction and the grubby urchins who read it, should find himself right at home in the rarefied atmosphere of Armagh’s Market Place Theatre from July 23rd to the 27th. Which is nice …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Wire (HBO)

Possibly the best drama series I've ever watched, including The Sopranos. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, The Wire is a police drama in name only. There are no good or bad guys; every character is compromised and yet fully realised. Its link to crime fiction is deliberate, the producers hiring Denis Lehane, Richard Price and George Pelecanos (who also produces) to write episodes, but in the way of the best of crime fiction, it's about a lot more than crime. David Simon, creator and executive producer, puts it thus: "The American obsession with police procedural and crime drama usually only allows for villains –in large part black or brown – who exist as foils, to be pursued and destroyed by cop heroes. We're addressing ourselves to where the villains actually come from, and whether we have any right to regard them as somehow less human than the rest of us." Hailed by virtually every critic of note as brilliant (the San Francisco Chronicle calls it 'broadcast literature' and the Guardian compares it in scope and quality to Dickens and Zola), The Wire is must-see viewing for any serious readers of crime fiction. There’s a fifth and final series in production, so get the DVD box sets: start with series one and figure on taking a sick day or two. It's just that good.– Kevin McCarthy

Speed Dating With Destiny: Tony Herbert Cocks A Snook

Corks! Not only did Speed Dating, which stars Hugh O’Conor (right), scoop the Best Feature at the Malibu International Film Festival earlier this month, it’s also yoinked the Audience Award at both the European Independent Film Festival in Paris AND the Indianapolis International Film Festival. And this “despite receiving some damning reviews at home,” sniffs Martina Nee at Galway First, going on to suggest that perhaps the Irish film critics are “just a bit too picky”. Mmm, stern stuff. And it’s true, Irish movie critics often demand adequate acting, a cohesive script, decent editing and direction that has, well, a direction. The greedy buggers, eh? The Crime Always Pays verdict? We thought it was a crock. But hey, what do we know? We’re not even from Indianapolis.

Making Hay: Barclay, Bateman Hit The Festival Circuit

Nice work if you can get it, etc. - the ravishing Alex Barclay (right) and the Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman are the Irish representatives on the Crimewave panel (Allan Guthrie also appears) at the Guardian-sponsored Hay Festival, which runs from May 24 to June 3. It's A Crime has the truncated running list, but you can wade in up to your oxters in talking writers (lo! 'tis a paradox!) over at the official Hay Festival site. Oh, and while you're here, check out Alex's Top Ten Psychological Thrillers - she picks Jim Thompson at numero uno. Which is nice ...

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 419: Sam Millar

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?
No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. That book has put me into more arguments with my publisher for failing deadlines. I keep rereading it and rereading it and …
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Nelson DeMille. A master storyteller. Fluent and effortless. Oh, and Marvel comics and Stan Lee.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting a phone call from my agent in New York informing me that Warner Brothers had bought the rights to On The Brinks. I had about ten quid left in my bank account (now I have even less).
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Anything by Maeve Binchy. I think all her books are a crime.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
On The Brinks.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
People thinking I’m rich / People thinking I’m rich.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Why do men wear women’s clothing? You would have to ask him that. If he tells you, please let me know. Perhaps he wants to be a tough guy, and slug it out with the rest of us losers in the down and dirty ring of crime writing, without his legion of adoring fans finding out that he’s a roughneck underneath all that suave complexity. Anyway, I guess it’s better than using a condom …
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Should Be Banned (so says Ian Paisley).

Sam Millar’s Darkness of the Bones is available in all good bookshops, and most of the bog-standard ones too

This Week We're Reading ... Running Mates and Pulp Culture

At a twist per page, Garbhan Downey’s crackerjack political comedy-thriller Running Mates has roughly 291 twists (although some of them, if we’re being academic about it, actually qualify as turns) – the words ‘Hiaasen’ and ‘Carl’ spring to mind in no particular order, as do the words ‘Bateman’ and ‘Bateman’ (you’re not allowed call him Colin anymore, according to a Headline fatwa). The story? A Derry newspaper editor and a stunning-if-profane judge fall out of the nuptial bed and into a presidential race down South, with a CSI-style body count along the way. “Downey's pace, wit and fresh eye on the body politic of Ireland make for a great read,” claims one enlightened soul over on Amazon … Meanwhile, Woody Haut’s Pulp Culture and The Cold War is a more sober affair, despite the flamboyant cover, but it’s a fact-tastic take on “the seminal crime novels of the Forties and Fifties, featuring the work of two dozen or so pulp novelists, including Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford, whose dicks decode the culture as well as investigate the crime,” says the Richmond Review. Okay, but is it any good? Well, we loved it … but then, we like cold baked-bean sandwiches too, so what do we know?

The Thick Plottens: Yep, 'Tis The Mid-Week Interweb Mash-Up Baloohaha Thingy

Good vibes from the Seattle Times, people - "The book's plot and pacing are rock-solid, but its tender characterizations — particularly the deepening relationship between Ryan and his brainy, tough female partner — are what set it apart," says Adam Woog of Tana French's In The Woods, while Declan Hughes' The Color of Blood "is a classic hard-boiled detective story, adding an Irish twist to the archetypal Chandler/ Macdonald style." Mmmm, lovely. Hughes also gets a big-up from Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times in a review we missed from last month, to wit: "The overheated theatrics are a proper fit for his tough-guy hero, whose stern moral code and haunted personal history lend credibility to Hughes’s recurring theme of 'the sins of the fathers." Peachy. Adrian McKinty's The Bloomsday Dead gets a mention too - "Bullets fly and Joycean literary references ricochet everywhere as Forsythe tries to get his bearings in a Belfast so politically stable and yet so redolent of the evil in its violent past that he can’t wait to get out of town" - as does Ken Bruen for Priest: "You can’t expect much in the way of conventional sleuthing from this tormented hero, but there’s music in his lament for the corruption of innocence and the loss of faith." Gorgeous. And while we're on the topic of Bruen, here's an interview in Village you might have missed from last year, in which he goes all wibbly-wobbly-wonder about the prospects for Irish crime fiction: "I think if the world survives another five or 10 years, crime fiction will be huge here in Ireland. It'll be the new chick lit, God forgive me." The boy Bruen in day-glo pink covers? Mmmmmkay ...

Lost Classics # 113: The Polling of the Dead by John M. Kelly

"But you know damned well who will be the gainers in the end. Not the politicians like myself, who have to pike the dung. The real winners will be the suffering Irish people. For once." A timely number, given that the Irish nation is charging off to the polls to vote early and often tomorrow, John M. Kelly's (right) The Polling of the Dead (1993) is a cracking thriller a la Ross Macdonald which incorporates ex-Nazi fugitives from justice as part of its backstory. Set in 1960s Dublin, it's a first-person narration by a political Mr Fixit, Redmond Byrne, who goes in search of answers when his friend and Opposition candidate, Daithi Flood, is found dead at the bottom of a rubbish chute in the run-up to polling day. Beautifully written - as you might expect from a man who also wrote A Short History of Western Legal Theory (OUP) and the standard work on the Irish Constitution - it also showcases a Sahara-dry wit and an appreciation of Chandler, Macdonald et al, all delivered in a salty Irish vernacular. Discovered after his untimely death in 1991, this was the former Cabinet Minister and Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach's second venture into crime fiction (he published Matters of Honour (1964) as 'John Boyle'), and deserves an immediate reprint. Over to you, publishing folk ...

The Ultimate Good Spoof: Richard Ford Graces The Bored, Sorry, Boards

As part of the 'Abbey Talks ...' season, Richard Ford (right) will swing by The Abbey on June 6 to do a reading, shoot the shit about scribbling and very probably the plug the bejasus out of his latest, The Lay of the Land. We'll be there, if only to gag Critical Mick's inevitable heckling, and also to ask why the hell ol' Fordie doesn't write more novels along the lines of The Ultimate Good Luck and quit bugging us with all that meaningful shite about sportswriters and their mid-life crises. Tickets come free but you'll need to book in advance: 01 - 8787222.

Et Tu, Carson? Betrayal Hits The Streets

A busy, busy time for Paul Carson, folks: not only has he just released Betrayal - 'a fast-paced, white-knuckle thriller', according to the publisher's blurbio, about a chief medical officer kidnapped as part of an international conspiracy centring on the prison where he works - but Ambush (2003) has been sold Stateside, to Daniela Rapp at St Martin's. And so off Ambush goes, soaring its merry way through the ether with Critical Mick's words wafting beneath its wings, to wit: "Rather than getting trapped in economy class with a book no more savory than airline food, Critical Mick says pick up Gene Kerrigan's The Midnight Choir, Hugo Hamilton's Headbanger, or maybe Alex Barclay's Darkhouse. Or Paul Carson's Cold Steel - all more filling and tasty than Ambush." Mmmmkay, not quite the reaction we were looking for. Why not read an extract from Ambush and make up your own minds, folks?

Guns, Gams And Gratitude: Dashiell Hammett Remembered

"I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of," Dashiell Hammett once said, but there's a writer or twenty over at January Magazine who begs to differ. "I think there is the truth of the streets in Hammett that Chandler never got to," says Ed Gorman, somewhat controversially, while, "the writing pummelled me," says our own Ken Bruen of his first Hammett experience, The Dain Curse. Others contributing include George Pelecanos, Bill Crider, Peter Robinson and Ray Banks, who likes to think of Hammett "as one of the first great growlers of crime fiction." Which is nice ...