When A Dud Explodes

How do we love thee, Ruth Dudley Edwards? Let us count the ways … The irascible Ruth Dud (right) is at it again, dissing the chick lit crew in her own inimitable way. Quoth John O’Sullivan, blogging from Magna Cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana:

“Yesterday I arrived in Muncie, Indiana to attend the “Magna Cum Murder” conference of crime, detective, mystery, and thriller writers. My first impression is that writers of murder and mayhem all seem to be extraordinarily pleasant people, both good natured and hospitable. I mentioned this to Ruth Dudley Edwards, author of MURDERING AMERICANS – a thriller set against the background of a politically correct U.S. university …
“Yes, we work out all our enmities and neuroses on the printed page, so we can afford to be nice to each other,” Ruth tells me. “It’s exactly the opposite at the Romantic Writers’ convention. They’re all a lot of backstabbing bitches.”

Pithy, ma’am.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Soldier

There was a comprehensive piece on HIDDEN SOLDIER’S Padraig O’Keefe in last weekend’s Sunday Indo, in which the delectable Ciara Dwyer gave the former Foreign Legionnaire and erstwhile ‘security consultant’ in Iraq the third degree. Here followeth an excerpt:

After six months he got his first posting overseas, in Cambodia. “In the beginning, there was a huge buzz when you were training on a firing range but it’s a different thing when you go to some of the places. The people are suffering and they don’t need you to act the ass-hole. With the rifle you’re carrying, you have the means to end life, so you don’t take it lightly.” In Cambodia, Padraig worked with the engineering section - defusing and removing landmines. After that he was sent to Bosnia, twice. He came across horrific scenes in Sarajevo - helpless orphans and people reduced to living like animals. As it says in the book, “Sarajevo seemed to suck the life out of you. It seemed to be a magnet for the very worst in human behaviour.”

Which seems as good a place as any to quote Winston Churchill, out of context, on the ongoing tragedy that is the Balkans: “The Balkans produce more history than they can consume locally …”

Hooray For Lollywood

’Tis a good time to be an Irish crime writer in Hollywood, people: there’s a veritable raft of projects on various slates right now, some of which are more advanced than others. Ken Bruen’s (right) people are still waiting a final decision from Russell Crowe on a Brant movie, while Ronan Bennett is polishing off a script based on PUBLIC ENEMIES, for Michael Mann, with Leonardo DiCaprio pencilled in for eye candy. Meanwhile, Derek Landy, as regular readers will already know, has been signed up by Warners to fill a Harry Potter-shaped hole for a seven-figure sum to script his own SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT, a contract that includes the opportunity to develop the inevitable computer game to follow. Then there’s Michael Collins, who has been a busy little bee: according to his website, THE RESURRECTIONISTS has come under the watchful eye of John Madden, he of Shakespeare In Love fame, while LOST SOULS is currently being adapted by A Film Monkey Production. As if that wasn’t enough, Collins has also adapted a screenplay for Erick Jonka, Julia, starring Tilda Swinton. Finally, John Connolly (left) reports to CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) that it’ll be a while before THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, to be helmed by John Moore, sees the silver screen, to wit: “THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is some way off. Before that appears, we may see THE NEW DAUGHTER, based on one of my short stories; SANCTUARY, which is based on BAD MEN; and possibly an adaptation of my story THE ERLKING, all of which are at a more advanced stage than THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS.” It’s like we keep telling you, people: crime always pays …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 984: Kyle Mills

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 sure it’s a pure crime novel, but I always wished I’d written Tom Clancy’s CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN. It’s one of the only books I ever read that I felt compelled to immediately read again.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Eric Van Lustbader. Not only are his own books great fun, but I think he’s done a really good job picking up Ludlum’s Bourne character.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Whenever I get one of those rare, really good ideas. Hopefully, it happens in the morning, because I traditionally take the rest of the day off.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I hate to admit it, but I know nothing about the nationalities of the authors I read – even the ones I love. I recently met Lee Child and discovered he wasn’t from Texas. Why I thought he was, I have no idea.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst is having to be creative on someone else’s timetable. The best is being able to work from anywhere.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
An eco-terrorist pumps a hydrocarbon-eating bacteria into major oil fields in an attempt to destroy the world’s petroleum reserves.
Who are you reading right now?
David L. Robbins. I’m just finishing his soon-to-be-released book THE BETRAYAL GAME – a historical novel about America’s attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I shoot for: realistic, large-scale, and even-handed.

Kyle Mills’ DARKNESS FALLS is published by Vanguard Press.

Renaissance Man Of The Week # 247: Anthony Galvin

Irish true crime specialist Anthony Galvin (right), the author of FAMILY FEUD and the forthcoming CONTRACT WITH CONTROVERSY, has turned his hand to fiction with THE GILLI GILLI MAN – and it’s all in a good cause. Hurrah! Galvin is auctioning off the names of the characters in his thriller in order to raise funds for Fighting Blindness, a charity he’s currently fundraising for by making an assault on Everest as you read. No kidding. You can keep an eye on his loot-generating progress here and have a read of THE GILLI GILLI MAN’s first chapter here. Quoth the official press release:

Galvin’s first book, FAMILY FEUD, was top of the best-seller charts for nearly three months, and the most shoplifted book in Irish publishing history. His third book, CONTRACT WITH CONTROVERSY, is due out early in 2008, and publishers expect to sell 500,000 copies in Ireland and the UK alone.

Yes, you read it right – 500,000. He certainly won’t fail for lack of ambition … Oh, and did we mention he’s a magician?

Dark Fiction That Knows No Boundaries

Brian McGilloway is leading a new wave of Irish crime writers into uncharted waters, says Declan Burke
For a man whose crime fiction is all about crossing boundaries, it was unsurprising that Brian McGilloway (right) got the idea for his first novel while walking along the border. Taking his two basset hounds for a stroll along the River Foyle, which divides his Lifford home in the republic from the adjoining town of Strabane in the north, the budding writer’s imagination was caught by the surrounding landscape.

“I was out walking the dogs along the by-pass in Strabane, and there’s a bank that runs down towards the river, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s a cracking place to dump a body.’ Which is obviously such a weird thought to have, although it’s okay if you’re writing a book,” says McGilloway. “And then I thought, what if the body was dumped right on the border? And that was the opening premise. But the story I started writing and the one I ended up writing are two totally different things.”

If McGilloway’s first novel, Borderlands, was triggered by his surroundings, the writer has benefited from the changing landscape of Irish crime fiction. He is part of a new wave of Irish crime novelists, one that includes Tana French, Gene Kerrigan, Ingrid Black and Declan Hughes. All have recently published novels that featured hard-nosed pragmatists ostensibly engaged in the pursuit of truth and justice but who are defined by their ability to accommodate moral compromise: McGilloway has signed a five-book deal with Macmillan for a series based around his flawed protagonist, Inspector Benedict Devlin. But if his novel is set along the border, McGilloway is not hung up on it: like that of his peers, McGilloway’s fiction is rooted in a contemporary, post-ceasefire Ireland. Indeed, the Derry-born teacher and novelist believes the current growth in home-grown, gritty fiction owes much to the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the emergence of criminality shorn of political legitimacy.

“When the Troubles were about, there was no need for crime fiction because you had enough on your doorstep to be afraid of. Now that the Troubles have ended, people are now looking around for what else they can be afraid of. So now it’s drugs and burglary and murder, serial killers and rapists.”

Accordingly, Borderlands begins with a suitably grisly moment, much as McGilloway first conceived: the discovery of a young woman’s naked body in an ill-defined area between Lifford in Co. Donegal and Strabane in Co. Tyrone. As a result, the gardaí and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are called in, with garda detective Devlin driving the investigation. McGilloway’s fictional creation fits in with the cynical, self-compromising antiheroes of the new Irish crime writing, who are appearing at a time when confidence in the gardaí, judiciary and politicians is at a new low. More to the point, McGilloway realised Donegal made for a fertile setting for his ambivalent character.

“The name Borderlands, my wife came up with that, because I couldn’t come up with a title,” McGilloway laughs. “But there are other borders drawn. I realised Devlin wasn’t going to be completely strait-laced, he wasn’t going to be one hundred per cent legal or moral all the time. That’s something that comes out much more strongly in the second book, when he starts to do things he maybe shouldn’t be doing. The accusations against the Guards in Donegal [in the Morris tribunal] – that’s really where the idea for Devlin came from.”

But if McGilloway’s fiction owes much to the dirty linen of contemporary Ireland, he cannot entirely leave behind the border country’s contentious past. “I think that Irish books tend to completely ignore the Troubles or else they’re obsessed with the Troubles. I don’t know if there’s any need to be either way,” he says. And it is telling that while his story is free of political baggage, McGilloway’s antennae prevented him from basing his hero in his home town.

“I had thought about setting it in Derry, but I didn’t,” he says. “One reason, which is slightly political, is that if it was set in Derry, [Devlin] would have been a PSNI officer. And the difficulty with that was that people would be looking to see how I was presenting the PSNI. There seemed to be too much opportunity for people who would look for the political.”

It is hardly surprising that McGilloway should think in such a way. Still teaching in Derry but living in Lifford, the author has long been steeped in the absurdities and contradictions of the border:

“My brother was going out with a girl who was living on the border, and they paid their electric in the north and their TV licence in the south. It’s just ludicrous.”

There was little such confusion when it came to finding his creative path, however.

“I’d always had an interest in writing, and then after I finished my degree I got very interested in crime fiction –I read a massive amount over a couple of years. And it just seemed to be a natural progression to write crime.”

But McGilloway, who is married with young children, had few illusions about the financial rewards that supposedly come with the genre.

“Nobody, unless you’re insane, sits down to write their first book thinking, ‘I’m writing this to support my family,’” he says.

Instead, he plumped for Pan-Macmillan’s new-writing scheme, which offered no advance, but got him published. It has paid off: Borderlands was shortlisted for a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger award for a debut novel, and along with McGilloway’s five-book deal with Macmillan, he has also been signed by St Martin’s Press in America. For all that, the author still realises he is still on a learning curve: “As you get a wee bit more confident, you realise you can build things up a little more slowly.” While the new crop of writers demonstrate a sophisticated awareness of their literary heritage, however, they are also prone to gauche excess: McGilloway suggests that traditional crime fiction, with its emphasis on nuanced investigation, is struggling to sustain the interest of an audience with an appetite for extreme violence.

“Right now there’s a movement towards violence for the sake of violence, it’s become the new pornography. In Borderlands, while it seems like there’s a lot of killing going on, there’s only three violent deaths.”

Nevertheless, McGilloway – and his peers – are marked by a certainty that the new crime writing taps into the reality of a modern Ireland in which narratives of criminality are all too plausible. Meanwhile, brash young Irish writers are shrugging off a literary heritage in which crime fiction was always the grubby urchin: even the Man Booker prize-winner John Banville has developed a crime sideline under the non de plume Benjamin Black. And ever looking to cross boundaries, McGilloway’s choice of his favourite literary writer is indicative of where the new wave is looking to for inspiration.

“I really like [the American novelist] James Lee Burke (right),” he says. “I was asked recently, ‘Who are your favourite crime writers and who are your favourite literary writers?’ Well actually, James Lee Burke is both. The best crime writers should be both. There’s no reason why they can’t be.”

Borderlands is published by Macmillan

This article was first published in the Sunday Times

Do The Write Thing

It's like we keep telling you, people: crime always pays. There’s a pretty decent Irish crime fiction representation at next Saturday's writers’ day at Dublin City Library – Garbhan Downey (right), Mia Gallagher and Paul Kilduff are all offering their two cents, alongside Eoin McHugh (publisher at Transworld) and Patricia Deevy (Editorial Director, Penguin Ireland), among others. The idea is to take aspiring scribblers through every stage of the writing process, from page-blackening to finding an agent, self-promotion and securing a publisher. The details runneth thusly:

The Font Literary Agency, in association with Dublin City Libraries, hosts From Inspiration to Publication: A Day for Writers this coming Saturday, November 3, at Dublin City Library, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 1, kicking off at 10am. Admission is €5 for the entire day, and it’s payable on the door, although it is advisable to book ahead.

The Monday Review

The Crime Always Pays elves are still a little wonky from celebrating Derek Landy’s win at the Richard and Judy Kids’ Books bunfight with their patented Elf-Wonking Juice, so what better way to kick off the review than with a few big-ups for SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT, to wit: “This novel is funny, action-packed, sarcastic, and impressive in the way the story unfolds. Reminds me of Harry Potter in many aspects,” says Mordistheve over ye olde Live Journal. There’s a certain Reading Fool who agrees: “What a thoroughly fun read this book is! And I do believe there’ll be more where this one came from, which is truly cause for cheering.” Huzzah, indeed. “As a novel JULIUS WINSOME is constructed and written extremely well, with each chapter journeying you through Julius’s mental states which alternate from grief to anger to detached madness … The story ends like it begins, mysterious and quaint. It really is a lovely piece of writing,” reckons Brienne Burnett of Gerard Donovan’s mini-epic at The Program … It’s not due until next month but they’re already starting to filter in for Benny Blanco’s THE SILVER SWAN, to wit: “Sadly this year Michael Dibdin, the creator of the wonderful Aurelio Zen and that tantalising blend of Italian society, crime and politics, died leaving a huge hole in crime fiction. I think that Black and Quirke are filling that gap with this wholly gripping account of the shady, priest-ridden and blithely corrupt society of mid- 20th century Dublin,” says Tom Rosenthal at the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun Times likes the audio of CHRISTINE FALLS: “This is one of those rare occurrences when actor/narrator and prose suit each other so perfectly that the CD’s cost seems a small price to pay for the value of the performance.” Coolio. Onward to the inevitable John Connolly hup-yas: “Connolly writes convincingly of thugs, criminals and the supernatural, and Parker is a classic character who walks straight and tall like someone from the old west, and the reader knows all will be well once he arrives in town. THE UNQUIET just won’t let you put it down as the plot careers across the pages like a runaway train. Excellent!” burbles Mark Timlin of the Independent on Sunday, via Waterstones, where you'll also find that the Independent is no less impressed: “Connolly’s books are shot through with bitter poetry, and couched in prose as elegant as most literary fiction ... there’s the sweeping canvas, more ambitious than most British-set crime thrillers. However, all of this is not the overriding reason why Connolly has risen above most of his peers. It’s because Connolly’s work has raised the stakes, beyond the quotidian concerns of most crime novels, into a grandiose conflict between the forces of good and evil, with religion and the paranormal stirred into the heady brew.” Mmmm, gorgeous. A hop, skip and jump across the electronic highway to Amazon for Laura Mullen’s big-up for Sean Moncrieff’s THE HISTORY OF THINGS, the gist of which runneth thusly: “This book is a complete revelation to me … The description of his father’s death was really beautiful – it brought tears to my eyes – and his various relationships were really well handled. I hope he writes much, much more.” As for Andrew Pepper, he’s got a brand new VBF in Skelde at Book Crossing: “THE LAST DAYS OF NEWGATE is a gripping, darkly atmospheric story with a fantastic, pragmatic – and reluctantly heroic – hero.” Over at the Mail on Sunday, Geoffrey Wansell assesses the nine millionth Jack Higgins offering, THE KILLING GROUND: “Dillon remains as cynical, dangerous and ferocious as he always was, but with a trace of Irish philosophy and wry humour that made him one of the most interesting action-heroes of the 1990s … The only flaw is that sometimes the action is so breathless, with the characters appearing so quickly, that it can take a little time to catch up.” Finally, a flurry of Ken Bruen, whose AMMUNITION is still garnering serious big-ups, to wit: “Fast-paced, short, sharp sentences, brutally funny, brutally violent, noir that is pitch black, a sheer ride that thrills. Inspector Brant scares the bejeezus outta me,” quavers Bob the Wordless at Why Can’t I Write?, while Harriet Klausner pitches in with “The seventh Brant police procedural is a terrific action-packed thriller, but even with the return of Vixen, it is the avenging inspector who makes the mean streets of London meaner and more fun for fans of Mr Bruen, the heir to Mr McBain’s police station tales.” Lovely. But we’ll leave the last word this week to Bill Crider: “Some people prefer Ken Bruen’s novels about Jack Taylor, nothing wrong with that, but for me it’s Brant and his mates of the Southeast London Police Squad … I find them fast, furious, and hilarious.” And yon Bill, he knows of what he speaks …

Havoc In Its 51st Year

Some writers are born to great plots; others have great plots thrust upon them. If Ronan Bennett (right) – author of Havoc In Its Third Year, and interviewed in The Guardian to promote his current offering, ZUGZWANG – ever runs out of story ideas he could always turn his hand to autobiography, to wit:

Bennett was born in 1956 and raised in Belfast by his Catholic mother; his Protestant father left home when his son was a few years old. Bennett went to St Mary’s Christian Brothers school on the Lower Falls Road, where he became politically active as he experienced what he later referred to as the “endemic violence and hatred” of Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. After his spell in Long Kesh, he left for England, where his friends were “voluble, if unsophisticated, young enemies of the state”: activists, anarchists, revolutionary socialists. “I squatted,” he recalls. “I worked in a bookies ... I went to Paris and hung around with Chilean refugees ... I demonstrated, talked a lot of bollocks and wrote articles I would never want to re-read now.” Before long, he was arrested again. Police raided his Bayswater flat and found a copy of THE ANARCHIST COOKBOOK, along with wigs, false moustaches, balaclavas and false documents. Bennett was accused of leading a terrorist gang and charged with the legendary offence of “conspiring to commit crimes unknown against persons unknown in places unknown”. He spent 20 months on remand, sometimes in solitary confinement. At his 14-week trial at the Old Bailey - which became notorious as the “anarchists’ trial” and the “persons unknown trial” - Bennett took the unusual decision to defend himself. “I really enjoyed it and would have enjoyed it even more had I known we would be acquitted. The judge let me sit with the advocates, so it was Michael Mansfield, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Robertson and me. They were in full legal gear, I was in T-shirt and jeans.”

Beware all enterprises that require new clothes, quoth HD Thoreau ...

Irish Crime Fiction And The Mysterious Case Of The Cloak Of Invisibility

The Sunday Independent runs a piece today titled “Crime pays, but it can still be murder if you’re an Irish writer”, in which ‘Alison Walsh turns detective to solve the mystery of why the world’s biggest genre is so poorly rated here’. Quoth Alison:

“Steve MacDonogh [of Brandon Books] says the level of praise for Ken Bruen, who won a Shamus, American crime-writing’s most prestigious award, is “quite muted. There have been some good reviews. But you couldn’t say that he is a writer who is celebrated here the way he is celebrated in the States.” The same might apply to the much-praised Declan Hughes, author of THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD, also winner of a Shamus, for Best First Novel 2007. Perhaps the parish-gossip element of true crime, cannily pumped up by the Irish tabloids, is more appealing to our small market.”

Which sounds vaguely not unlike something we stumbled across on the interweb a couple of weeks back, the gist of which runneth thusly:

“So why the disconnect between Irish crime writers and an Irish audience? You could argue that an Irish generation reared during the hedonistic years of the Celtic Tiger has no stomach for reading about corrupt politicians, Tiger kidnappings, paedophile priests and gangland killings. You don’t get many murder-rapes in chick lit. Fair enough, except the true crime genre is one of the fastest-growing niches in Irish publishing today … Meanwhile, newspaper headlines are full of innocent bystanders gunned down by hired killers, and the taoiseach takes the stand again and again to explain financial irregularities. And maybe crime fatigue is the problem. Where the crime writers are busy telling us where it all went wrong, chick lit is still promising it’ll all turn out Mr Right. One crew is flogging hair-shirts, the other comfort pillows. No contest on the easier sale. Prophets are never recognised in their own country. Profits generally are.”

Meanwhile, anyone interested in investigating why Irish crime fiction isn’t as popular in Ireland as it should be can do the math. Of the 23 authors mentioned in the Sindo’s piece on Irish crime writers, only four – Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, Benjamin Black and Declan Hughes – are actually Irish. Erm, hello?

The Geography Of Murder

The Penguin interweb thingy is hosting a fascinating essay by Ingrid Black to mark the publication of THE JUDAS HEART, in which the delectable Ms Black (right) delves into the dark art of ‘geographical profiling’ as a tool for tracking killers, to wit:

“The obsession with geography which inevitably grips any crime writer who claims a city as their own and tries to stamp their own personality on it is not mere self-indulgence or authorly vanity, though. It’s an essential counterpart to what the killer, that invisible and unknown protagonist who haunts the pages of every crime novel – the ghost in the machine of the narrative, as it were – does too. The only person who knows the city as well as the detective is the perpetrator. They match their knowledge of the city one against another. Killers have an intimate and profound relationship with landscape. Think of Jack the Ripper, the Moors Murderers, the Green River Killer, or Moscow’s so-called “Chessboard Killer” who lured all his 50-plus victims to Bitsevsky Park in the city after dark. What strange synchronicity must they all have felt to those dangerous places? Mapping the connections between an offender and the space through which he moves and in which he operates is the ultimate aim of geographical profiling, which, whilst lesser known than the psychological profiling made famous in such films as Silence Of The Lambs, is increasingly being used by police to identify possible suspects.”

So – the Big Question: which fictional killer do you – yes, YOU! – most closely associate with his or her killing ground?

But Lo! What Fresh Skulduggery Is This?

Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah! As not-quite-predicted here on Monday by the Crime Always Pays elves, Derek Landy’s SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT nabbed a gong on the one-off special Richard and Judy Kids’ Books show on Channel 4 last night, securing a joint first place in the ‘Confident Reading’ section. Given that the show has had ‘the Oprah effect’ on adults’ books, with titles featured selling in excess of 25 million copies in 2004 alone, expect to see SKULDUGGERY on a metaphorical Wonkavator in the coming weeks as it soars upward and outward through the glass ceiling into super-sellerdom. Hurrah! Could it happen to a nicer chap? Wethinks not …

Why I Write # 276: Eoin Colfer

“Once I get a story in my head, it circles round and round in there repeating on itself, like a demented endless row-row-row your boat until I can get it down on paper and give myself some closure. For me, stories are unfinished business that need to be given their due and made real. And characters are worse, they are not as easy to exorcise. You come up with a character, say a teenage criminal mastermind, and then for years you have nowhere to put him. You try to shoehorn him into whatever you have going on, but it’s not right and you both know it. So after a few years you have a light opera’s worth of characters haunting the space behind your eyeballs, distracting you when you’re trying to type. But then that sweet moment comes when your mind twists a few jigsaw pieces around and you see it so clearly and get a shiver down your spine and know that this is where the little bastard belongs. I love those moments. I’ve had about three.
“Of course, the money is nice too ...”

Eoin Colfer’s ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LOST COLONY is available in all good bookshops.

“Why The Hell Have We Been Ignoring …” # 213: Walter Keady

Maybe it’s that the radar is on the fritz, and maybe – more likely – the radar-manning elves have been sneaking hits off HR Pufnstuf’s hookah, but we’ve totally overlooked Walter Keady’s THE DOWRY, which was released last year to a veritable torrent of big-ups and hup-yas. Quoth Publishers Weekly:

“The young people of Coshlawn Crann in rural Ireland simply aren’t marrying and properly propagating in the hardscrabble post-war 1946. It’s all about the economy, and Father Donovan isn’t above using the power of his collar to lean on two locals who can get something done: rich skinflint farmer Tom McDermott and publican Austin Glynn (some of whose wealth comes from bank robberies long ago in the Bronx). Tom’s older son, Martin, the town Lothario, soon finds himself engaged to Austin’s daughter, Aideen, a good-hearted girl with a face ‘like the back of a bus.’ Biking home from popping the question, Martin runs into Barney Murphy’s donkey on the bridge, tumbles into the river and is believed drowned. He quickly decides to stay dead and slips off to London — where he soon wearies of actually having to work and starts dreaming about Aideen’s dowry. Ex-priest Keady (THE ALTRUIST) writes with authority about matters of the church. He’s also a sharp plotter, and his characters shine: from Brideen Conway, the comely schoolteacher Father Donovan loves a little too much, to strap-happy schoolmaster Alphonsus Finnerty, who secretly writes romances as ‘Laura Devon.’ The multiple happy endings may be inevitable, but they’re earned.”

Mmmm, lovely. But lo! There’s more! Booklist chips in with “A vivid, easy-reading period piece,” while Mr and Mrs Kirkus reckon that “[T]his winning effort from former priest Keady ... can be forgiven its clichés. Charming Celtic comedy of manners.” Hurrah! But there’s more! “Keady’s folksy, conspiratorial tone is truly irresistible,” proclaimed the Washington Post, while the Library Journal believes that “Keady is a refreshing new voice in Irish fiction.” Crikey! It’s a cozy Celtic crime frenzy, people …

Et Tu, Brute

A hat-tip to Euro Crime for pointing us in the direction of a smashing interview with Gerard Donovan over at The Book Depository, during which the author of JULIUS WINSOME discourses at length on practically every subject under the sun bar his preferred grassy knoll theory. Our favourite snippet, regarding the brutal reality into which the human ‘moral compass’ is set, runneth thusly:

MT: Your character Julius lives in cabin in the Maine woods with only his dog for company: is that an existence that part of you envies?
GD: “I do lead an existence similar to the lead character’s, on a farm in the woods with a dog and books, though not nearly as many. What interests me thematically in the novel is what kind of moral compass we have as humans, or more directly, what kind of moral compass I have. What would people really do if a beloved dog or indeed companion of any kind were shot and they could exact revenge without legal consequences? This is a question that haunts me. The answer is that I don’t have a moral compass aside from the basic agreements regarding normal behaviour I hold with other humans, but, as I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t quite trust fiction that showcases characters who in the end demonstrate what good people they are. Where is the border between grief and revenge? And who stops at that border, and who continues beyond? Julius Winsome continues, using increasingly archaic English as the violence continues. I envy him that, I envy his ability to pursue, I envy his complete preparation to bring violence ruthlessly to those who have practiced it themselves.”

We’re thinking Vin Diesel for the movie. Any other suggestions?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 679: Maxim Jakubowski

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?
DARK RIDE by Kent Harrington. It combines the right amount of noir thrills and erotic tension I seek in my own books.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Most French contemporary erotica written by women. Such a strong area of writing right now.
Most satisfying writing moment?
The moment a new novel or even a short story reaches the top of the hill and the downpart of the writing almost happens of its own accord.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series (once it’s collected into a single volume, of course; sorry, I cheated ...).
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Any of the Connolly Charlie Parker books, as long as they get both the right screenwriter and director.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is constant knowledge of my own imperfections and laziness holding me back. Best is that sense of achievement when it’s on the printed page (and the inner glow when I get fan letters from Italian female readers who’ve felt deeply affected by my writing – it’s happened three times and all Italian!!!).
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Cornell Woolrich meets THE STORY OF O meets LOLITA meets anyone else along that road to nowhere.
Who are you reading right now?
Have just started Mo Hayder’s next book, RITUAL.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Romantically personal, noir, erotic. Oops, that's 4 words.

PARIS NOIR, edited by His Eminence Maxim Jabukowski, is published on November 1.

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

This week’s competition comes courtesy of those wonderfully helpful and generous folk at Penguin (hi, Katya), who are giving away three copies of Ingrid Black’s latest novel in the Saxon series, THE JUDAS HEART, which is officially released on Thursday, November 25. To be in with a chance of winning your gratis copy, just answer the following idiotic question:

Is Ingrid Black …?
(a) Benjamin Black’s daughter;
(b) Benjamin Black’s mother;
(c) Neither, you moron, they’re both pseudonyms.

If you think you know the answer, drop us a mail at dbrodb(at)gmail.com, putting ‘Neither, you moron’ in the subject line, before noon on Monday 29. Bon chance, mes amis …

The Embiggened O # 962: Laugh? We Almost Emigrated

Happy days are here again, particularly for Maxine Clarke over at Euro Crime, who – it would seem – had a good strong quaff of giggle juice before she read our humble offering, THE BIG O. The gist of the review runneth thusly:

“THE BIG O is a fast-paced and very funny book … I don’t often laugh out loud when reading, but I found this book hilarious … Comedy capers are hard to pull off. Most of them spiral out of control or lose their freshness after a few chapters. That isn’t the case here: Burke effortlessly ratchets up the tension, rings the changes of the perceptions of reality between the characters, provides an element of farce, a few choice set-pieces, some neat observations of domestic minutiae, and keeps the laughs coming.”

All of which is entirely lovely, although if we’re honest we’ll point out at this stage that we were actually aiming to write a bleak tale of perversely life-affirming existential deprivation, a la Sam Beckett. Ah well, maybe we’ll get it right next time …

Paul Charles: Number 2 With A Bullet!

A couple of interesting snippets from Verbal’s interview with Paul Charles (right), who’s currently getting plenty of much-deserved oxygen for THE DUST OF DEATH. First up is Paul’s thoughts on plotting, or the lack of, to wit:

Surprisingly, Charles is never sure when he begins a book how it is going to turn out. “That’s part of the buzz for me. Finding out what happens. If I knew whodunnit beforehand I don’t think I would write them at all. It’s more exciting not to know. My method is to ‘find’ the body along with my detective and then go off on his journey with him to work out what happened. I go into his life, just like the reader, and meet all the people he meets and draw conclusions, some erroneous at the start, from those meetings. To be honest, I can’t actually remember writing the first line, or starting the book. It’s a kind of organic process. I mull the idea over for a while and then it comes.”

Marvellous. Heading off at something of a tangent takes us from the sublime to the ridiculous via the American Billboard chart, Verbal then tosses in a lovely piece of trivia.

During the early 1970s Charles was manager, lyricist, roadie, sound-engineer and agent for the Belfast band Fruupp, who were signed to Dawn Records and worked around the UK for several years. Sheba’s Song, one of Charles’s songs from that period (co-written with band member John Mason) has just been sampled and covered by America Rap artist Talib Kweli with Nora Jones guesting on vocals. Eardrum, the album which the song appears on, went to number 2 in America’s Billboard chart this month.

Paul Charles, eh? He’s a little bit rock, a little bit roll, a little bit rap-sample champ. It’ll take a nation of millions to hold him back now …

The Life Of Brian II: This Time It’s Personal

Not content with having a bright ‘n’ shiny website, Brian McGilloway has gone and got himself one of them there newfangled blogging contraptions, courtesy of Macmillan New Writing, the first post of which runneth thusly:

“Hi all – Just thought I should introduce myself: I’m Brian McGilloway and my first novel, BORDERLANDS, was published by MNW in April this year. The follow-up, GALLOWS LANE, will be published on April 4th 2008 alongside the Pan paperback of BORDERLANDS. I’m currently writing the third Inspector Devlin novel, BLEED A RIVER DEEP, which I suspect will feature prominently in future posts on writing and the drafting process.
The Devlin books are being given a series look for the launch in April and now seems as good a time as any to unveil the first of the new covers – this one for the pb edition of BORDERLANDS. Hope you like it ...
And, in between times, Inspector Devlin makes an appearance in a new short story called The Lost Child, which will be broadcast on Friday 2nd November at 3.30pm on BBC Radio 4.”

Go on – scoot over there and leave a comment. It can get lonely out here in the deepest, darkest blogosphere …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 694: Mia Gallagher

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 LONG GOODBYE by Raymond Chandler.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
John Connolly, John Grisham, Jonathan Kellerman, Lee Child, Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, The Preacher graphic novels, any graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, Robert Jordan (fantasy), Marian Keyes.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Reaching the end of a chapter when it’s finally right.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Tough question, there are so many good ones. I recently read Declan Hughes’ THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD and loved it. Very Ed McBain. Claire Kilroy’s TENDERWIRE is also brilliant; not strictly genre crime, but a wonderful tale of suspense and loss. And Cormac Millar’s AN IRISH SOLUTION featured a bad boy villain who I fell completely in love with.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I'd love to see Declan Hughes’ psychopath Podge in the flesh. The Irish actor Owen Roe would play him really well if he squeaked up his voice. If Hollywood did it they could cast Joe Pesci.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Not being able to write / writing.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Still working on it. Something about war, guilt, shame and families.
Who are you reading right now?
A sci-fi writer called Stephen Baxter. His book EVOLUTION is a fictional journey through major evolutionary periods in the earth’s history. Incredible and surprisingly readable. Like a mixture of Meercat Manor and The Sopranos.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Playful. Visceral. Edgy.

Mia Gallagher’s HELLFIRE is available in all good bookshops.

Quote Of The Day # 367: Gabriel Zaid

Hell, we knew life is short, but this – which arrives via Eoin Purcell’s excellent blog – is ridiculous, to wit:

“If not a single book were published from this moment on, it would still take 250,000 years for us to acquaint ourselves with those books already written.” Gabriel Zaid, SO MANY BOOKS

Crikey! 250,000 years? And there we were thinking we could afford to lay off one of the Sherpa-elves currently helping us ascend to the summit of our tottering TBR pile. Guess the Sherpa-elves are back on double-time …

A Burrening Passion

“This charming book could be the start of a million-selling series,” reckoned the Evening Herald in its review of Cora Harrison’s MY LADY JUDGE, and the impending release of the novel on audio, with Caroline Lennon narrating, suggests that the Herald got it spot-on. For those of you wondering what the fuss is all about, here’s the skinny from the blurb elves:

In the sixteenth century, as it is now, the Burren, on the western seaboard of Ireland, was a land of grey stone forts, fields of rich green grass and swirling mountain terraces. It was also home to an independent kingdom that lived peacefully by the ancient Brehon laws of their forebears. On the first eve of May, 1509, hundreds of people from the Burren climbed the gouged-out limestone terraces of Mullaghmore Mountain to celebrate the great May Day festival, lighting a bonfire and singing and dancing through the night, then returning through the grey dawn to the safety of their homes. But one man did not come back down the steeply spiralling path. His body lay exposed to the ravens and wolves on the bare, lonely mountain for two nights ... and no one spoke of him, or told what they had seen. And when Mara, a woman appointed by King Turlough Don O’Brien to be judge and lawgiver to the stony kingdom, came to investigate, she was met with a wall of silence ...

Erm, maybe it’s just us, but practically every Irish woman we’ve ever met has been a ‘judge and lawgiver’. Or is it just us? Answers on the back of used €20 notes to the usual address …

The Embiggened O # 1,012: “Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’ / Keep Those Logs A-Rollin’ …”

This week’s big-up for our humble offering THE BIG O comes with a public health warning, people: Adrian McKinty (right), who pens the honey-sweet words below, is a mate of Crime Always Pays’ Grand Vizier Declan Burke, and McKinty’s novels – DEAD I WELL MAY BE and THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD in particular – have been getting serious hup-yas around these-here parts in recent times. The big question: are we guilty of blatant ‘log-rolling’ (as Detectives Beyond Borders’ Peter Rozovsky so delicately puts it), or is there an outside chance the reviews are actually worth the electronic paper they’re printed on? YOU decide! Meanwhile, here’s McKinty’s verdict:

“Declan Burke’s crime writing is fast, furious and funny, but this is more than just genre fiction: Burke is a high satirist in the tradition of Waugh and Kingsley Amis and his stories pulse with all the contradictions of contemporary Ireland. Burke has a deep respect for and understanding of the classic traditions of the hardboiled school but he never forgets that his first duty is to give us a damn good read. A must for fans of Ken Bruen, Michael Connolly and Eoin McNamee.” – Adrian McKinty, author of THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD

Adrian? Ta very much, sir. And while you’re there, there’s an itch just between my shoulder blades I can’t quite reach. Any chance you’d give my back another scratch? Cheers.

Pleasant Valley Monday

We told you ages ago about Derek Landy’s hook-up with the Richard and Judy Show’s Best Kids’ Books bunfight, and now it’s coming time to start chucking around the custard-topped muffins. Yep, the awards will be announced this coming Thursday at 8pm on Channel 4 (UK), with the terrific SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT nominated in the ‘Confident Reading’ section. If you happen to find yourself near a TV today around 3.30pm (GMT), you can catch Derek having a chin-wag with Richard and Judy on Channel 4, where he’ll no doubt be explaining how he came to (ahem) flesh out the bare bones of his skeletal hero. And if you can’t get to a TV, check out the promo vid below – we’re loving the tag-line “He’s Coming. A Little Thing Like Death Won’t Stop Him …”

The Monday Review

The Bruen / Starr combo has been beeping Mostly Fiction’s not inconsiderable jeep recently, to wit: “While writers Ken Bruen’s and Jason Starr’s collaboration in BUST is a farcical comic success, with plenty of dark humour and quite an ensemble of screwy characters, the result is a fascinating, enjoyable read,” reckons Hagen Baye, before continuing with “SLIDE is another masterful writing effort by these two skilled (and uninhibited) writers, who know how to create and bring to life bizarre characters and unusual plots … this is another outrageous, out-of-control, comic success of Bruen’s and Starr’s.” Lovely. Upward and onward to MURDERING AMERICANS, and Mary Elizabeth Devine is impressed over at Reviewing the Evidence: “First let me say that my role models are the Red Queen from Alice’s adventures in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS and Baroness Jack Troutbeck from Ruth Dudley Edwards’ series. The Baroness is so deliciously politically incorrect that she makes Maggie Thatcher look like Mary Poppins.” Crikey! Yet more big-ups for John Connolly, to wit: “THE UNQUIET introduces its plot and characters, and then steps back and lets everything unfold neatly. It is a bit more of a linear tale than THE BLACK ANGEL was, and everything seems to jibe more evenly. Almost like the story wrote itself, actually,” gushes Bookins via Amazon reviews, where you’ll also find this - “The story is still dark, gruesome, at times scary and has a large body count. But it is also atmospheric, lyrical and completely enthralling.” – and a host of others. Meanwhile, over at Tonight, Roland Solomon is somewhat more restrained: “Well-crafted and well-paced, with a contemporary theme of child abuse and paedophilia. Connolly’s writing has more depth and beauty than the average quick-read of the genre.” The Builder’s Book Site quite likes Gerard Donovan’s JULIUS WINSOME: “It’s a brilliant meditation on revenge that completely draws the reader into Julius’ orbit and has one alternately rooting for and against his tragic quest. Ignore the terrible cover art, this is a book worth savouring.” As for Paul Charles’ THE DUST OF DEATH, Alan Geary at the Nottingham Evening Post is predicting, erm, tourist trips: “This is a page-turner: you do actually want to know whodunit and why … The scenery in Donegal is breath-taking so perhaps in a decade there’ll be tourist trips to Starrett Country.” Finally, recent Shamus winner Declan Hughes gets the huppiest of hup-yas from Hell Notes for THE COLOUR OF BLOOD, to wit: “Irish Noir is a genre all to itself, with a dark, horrific side that keeps readers coming back for more. If you’d like a taste, Declan Hughes is the place to start.” Don’t let anyone tell you size doesn’t matter, people – Dec is the man who put the ‘huge’ into Hughes …

“Cop That!” Cop Tops Copper In Plod-Popping Plot!

Pay attention, folks, this could get confusing. Okay, so Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS, featuring Inspector Devlin of the Gardai, is set in north Donegal, around the town of Lifford. And Paul Charles’ THE DUST OF DEATH, the first of a new series starring Inspector Starrett, is set in Ramelton, not much more than a good kick in the arse – as they say in Donegal – from Lifford. With us so far? Good. Now, THE DUST OF DEATH opens with a crucifixion, an unusual enough happening in Donegal, or so you might think – except GALLOW’S LANE, the second in McGilloway’s Inspector Devlin series, also kicks off with a crucifixion. Things get a bit complicated from here on in, though: GALLOW’S LANE finishes up with a metaphorical and literal bang when a car-bomb explodes outside the Garda station in Ramelton, the conflagration taking out the, erm, new Garda Inspector. Hey, you think McGilloway is trying to tell Paul Charles something? Quoth Brian:

“It was actually one of my colleagues suggested I put Inspector Starrett in the next Devlin book and kill him off at the end. Tempting ... so long as Paul Charles doesn’t think of it first.”

Lawks! Coppers in tit-for-tat car bombs? Whatever happened to Darby O’Gill and the Little People, eh? Aye, we were hungry but happy back then …

Why I Write # 194: Sam Millar

“‘From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer,’ said George Orwell in his essay, Why I Write. And there you have it in a nutshell: why I write. I write because it’s the only good thing I’m good at. Of course, people who’ve read my books might say I’m not even good at that … I can’t paint landscapes or do heart transplants, and jigsaw puzzles are beyond me. Writing is the only bare-knuckle craft I’ve ever shown any particular ability in. Creating characters from a naked canvas is almost god-like, and depending on my mood swings, I can, just like god, inflict terrible retribution on them, sometimes even horrible deaths. And get away with it. Sweet. Where else would you get this dark satisfaction? I write because I want to prove the rejection letters wrong. I write that one day a stranger might stop me in the street and tell me he/she read my latest novel – and loved it. Even if the critics despised it. But most of all I write because I love to …”

Sam Millar’s Bloodstorm will be published in spring 2008.

Reasons To Be Cheerful-ish # 221: Michael Collins

Never blummin’ happy, those writers. A couple of weeks back we had Claire Kilroy pouting about TENDERWIRE being marketed as a (heaven forfend) thriller, a sulk only slightly ameliorated by the fact that the delectable Ms Kilroy has the most potent pout since Scarlett realised Rhett didn’t give a damn. Now the devastating mean ‘n’ moody Michael Collins (right) is moaning, via the New Zealand Herald, that his most recent release is being touted as a murder mystery, to wit:

Which is why it rankles with the US-based author that his eighth and most challenging novel, THE SECRET LIFE OF ROBERT E. PENDLETON, was marketed in the US as a crime novel titled DEATH OF A WRITER. “To position it that way, you run into readers who are expecting a standard murder mystery,” says Collins. Even among critics, he laments, “there was a measuring of it against how a regular crime novel would play itself out. There were numerous levels of different issues in the novel, but they were the ones least addressed.”

Fair enough, sir. But really, if you’re going to devote a significant chunk of your story to a murder mystery, and reap the narrative benefits such a plot-strand offers, then it’s a little disingenuous to protest when readers tend to focus on it. Plus, in the pouting stakes, you’re more Rhett than Scarlett. We humbly suggest the stoical mean ‘n’ moody approach might be more beneficial in the long run …

“Cheque, Mate?”

The hup-yas are popping up like shrooms in an autumn evening’s dusk for Ronan Bennett’s chess-inspired ZUGZWANG, to the extent that The Guardian – which originally published the novel as a series – has run a quick compilation for those of you who don’t have time to trawl the review pages. To wit:

“This classy, literate thriller is about chess, psychoanalysis, Russian skulduggery, history, mystery, romance - and more,” wrote Kate Saunders in the Times, reviewing ZUGZWANG by Ronan Bennett, which features a long game of chess between the psychiatrist narrator, Dr Otto Spethmann, and RM Kopelzon, a Polish violinist. “The book includes diagrams of the Spethmann-Kopelzon game which gives it an extra dimension for chess buffs,” said Matthew J Reisz in the Independent on Sunday. “Yet one needs to know nothing of ‘mysterious rook moves’ or the Maróczy Bind to enjoy this atmospheric, ingenious and perfectly paced novel.” “Action of a more dramatic kind flows as the story reaches a crescendo of dizzying complexity,” wrote Carola Groom in the Financial Times.

Hark! Is that the merry sound of tills we hear a-ching-chinging? From checkmate to cheque’s mate in six easy moves, it’s no mean feat …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 746: Tom Galvin

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 POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE – brief, violent but very credible and I just love the sense of divine justice in that tale. You can empathise with the characters deeply despite their actions and you realise that when it comes to human emotions, searching for textbook ‘motives’ in crime is redundant.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
With time in such short supply I tend to choose books carefully and either decide to see them through or drop them quickly if I’m not interested. I used to read a lot of Stephen King for guilty pleasures, does he count? Apart from that I’d whiz through a copy of whatever celeb gossip magazine is on the shelf while waiting at the till, then scoff at the whole notion of celebrity.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Just getting published is enough … I think. Then you realise it’s only the start. That you then have to go out and hound everyone and everything to ensure it gets attention, on the shelf, in the papers, etc. So actually, I’m still waiting for that real moment of satisfaction.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Here’s where my ignorance of crime writing shows. I am not the most avid of crime fiction readers and have skimmed the classics. But I do intend picking up Declan Hughes’ THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD. I saw he won a prize for crime writing at a convention in Anchorage Alaska. I stayed there for one very weird night a few years ago on my way to Skagway and I just think I should read it. It’s got rave reviews.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above for that answer. I’m not familiar enough. Although I do recall reading Joseph O’Connor’s THE SALESMAN many years back and it read like a movie script – bang, bang, bang. Often wonder why that was never taken up. Revenge is motive that writers see through to the end in books because it’s such a strong one. O’Connor had the courage to pull back, which is what struck me at the time.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The self-pity, the selfishness. You expect people in your circle to be as besotted with your work as you are. They fail to understand that your writing is an obsession and that when you put your foot on the floor in the morning it’s the first thought that enters your head. How can they and why should they care? There is no switching off for a writer. It’s a life sentence and you’re on your own with it.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
I haven’t come to it yet as I’m still reworking two old ones. But I had been toying with a modern take on the Book of Job: a good man has it all taken from him by a God with a dark sense of humour. As he winds up on the shit-heap, he still maintains that life is good and God is great. The Fisher King had a stab at that notion but went a bid wobbly. I still think it modern society there is room for such a tale. I’d be tempted to be more of a Karamazov than a Job though.
Who are you reading right now?
Just finished A MIGHTY HEART by Marianne Pearl. It was repackaged for the European movie release and is a heart-wrenching read and something of a guilty one also. You know the outcome but are still gripped by the drama in the story. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m not sure whether I want to witness Angelina Jolie look exasperated for 90-odd minutes. Why they couldn’t find an actress more suited to Marianne Pearl’s complexion is mind-boggling, rather than getting Jolie to don a wig and gallons of fake tan. I’m in the middle of Andrew Meir’s BLACK EARTH, about modern Russia – a brilliant read. And by the locker is Martin Amis’ HOUSE OF MEETINGS, which I’m looking forward to.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Almost getting there.

Tom Galvin’s THERE’S AN EGG IN MY SOUP is available in all good bookshops.

Sething The World Alight

If you’ve never wondered what the dulcet tones of Crime Always Pays’ Grand Vizier Declan Burke sound like, we really can’t blame you (we’re reliably informed that he sounds not unlike a cement mixer learning German). Check it out for yourself over at Seth Harwood’s funky podcasting site, where the Grand Vizier entirely spoils the penultimate episode of Seth’s JACK PALMS II: THIS IS LIFE by croaking out the intro in a dull brogue monotone. If you’re not up to speed on ye olde podcasting, never fear – the novel is due to be published on Sunday March 16, 2008 (i.e., Palm Sunday). Check out the full details here, and get involved in the great ‘Shake ’em Down’ scam …