Tuesday, May 29, 2007

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.

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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.