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

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?
That’s a tough one; there are a lot to choose from. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy is one, for sure. It approaches the level of American mythology, the way it examines evil, greed, and violence. Also, CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson, simply because it’s so utterly brilliant and gut-wrenching from the first word. Those two and a lesser-known book called CHEAP TICKET TO HEAVEN by Charlie Smith, about a bank robbing couple on the run through the US. It’s surreal, dark, philosophical, and one of the most unique novels I’ve ever read, crime or not. If I had to pick one, I’d say CHEAP TICKET, because it pushes the limits of the crime novel the furthest.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
This one is easy. Batman. Not that I don’t love my parents, but the ability to kick that much ass on people who really deserve it is pretty tempting. Plus, there’s Catwoman.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I like sports writing about baseball. In another life, if I couldn’t play the game, I’d be a beat writer for the New York Mets.

Most satisfying writing moment?
That live moment when it’s really flowing and you know it’s good. That fleeting, ephemeral high is the best, when you’re free from wondering about the final result of it. Also, I have to say, sending a manuscript to my editor or my agent – knowing it doesn’t have to be letter perfect to impress and that I don’t have write three dozen friggin’ query letters—that’s pretty damn satisfying.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Can I put a vote in for Roddy Doyle’s THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS? There’s a mysterious death and plenty of bad behavior. Maybe not the best, but certainly most underrated, at least in the States. Everyone knows the Barrytown trilogy, but I think the Paula Spencer novels are brilliant.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
CHRISTINE FALLS by Benjamin Black. Very noir. Intriguing story with all kinds of twists, and I think that era in Dublin would make such a compelling setting. The way Black renders it reminds me of Chandler’s L.A. I’d imagine, after the way Dublin’s changed over the past couple of decades, that those days in Dublin seem even further back and more foreign than ever. Might be fun to look closely at them.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Being your own boss. That’s the best and the worst of it. Making all my own hours. In a way, I never have to go to work, but in another way I’m never not at work, either. So I’ve never got nothing to do, but – I never have nothing to do.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A world-weary NYC cocktail waitress sees something she shouldn’t after work one night, putting her and her mother on the wrong side of some very bad people.

Who are you reading right now?
Right now, I’m getting towards the end of Kate Atkinson’s STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG. I’ve got Walter Mosley’s second Leonid Magill novel and a debut novel called LEARNING TO SWIM by Sara J Henry on my TBR pile.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Maybe this is a cop-out, but having published a couple of books already, I’d have to choose read. Not that I don’t feel I have plenty more books in me, but not as many as I would miss if I couldn’t read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sharp, authoritative, efficient. (I hope)

Bill Loehfelm’s THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS is published by Farar, Straus and Giroux

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE ON E: Facts, Figures And Damned Statistics

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I published EIGHTBALL BOOGIE as an ebook a couple of months ago - February 19th, to be precise - making it available on Kindle US and Kindle UK, and also on a number of other formats via Smashwords, with the ebook retailing at $0.99c / £0.86p.
  Ten weeks on, it’s time for an update, and I’m happy to provide sales figures, royalties, and all that guff - although be warned, it’s not an exact science. I probably should have waited until March 1st to upload the book, as the February 19th start-date kind of skews the figures a little. Also, this post is being written on the morning of April 29th, which means it’ll be out by a few copies come midnight on April 30th, but not by enough to influence the general trend.
  Anyway, on with the show:

FEBRUARY

February 19 - 28 Kindle US: 23 copies sold (net royalty $8.05)
February 19 - 28 Kindle UK: 8 copies sold (net royalty £2.08)

Total books sold: 31

MARCH

March 1 - 31 Kindle US: 58 copies sold (net royalty $20.30)
March 1 - 31 Kindle UK: 27 copies sold (net royalty £ 7.02)

Total books sold: 85

APRIL

April 1 - 29 Kindle US: 89 copies sold (net royalty $28.43)
April 1 - 29 Kindle UK: 14 copies sold (net royalty £2.71)

Total books sold: 109

OVERALL FIGURES

February 19 - April 30: total books sold: 225
February 19 - April 30: net royalty (in euro): €50.78

  So they’re the stark figures, which mean that that there’s a modest but pleasingly upward curve on sales, and that I’m currently €50.78 in the black.
  That said, I should point out that I had a new cover designed for the epub book, which cost me nothing, given that the designer, JT Lindroos, was kind enough to do so for the sake of a quid-pro-quo plug on Crime Always Pays. It’s also true that the book had previously been edited, so I didn’t have any editing / proofing costs. It’s also the case that I formatted the book myself, so I need to build in the hourly cost of the formatting (it took me about three hours). Then there’s the amount of time I spent on promoting the release, which included emailing people, responding to very kind offers of interviews, and generally doing various kinds of admin. It’s difficult to put a figure on that kind of time, though, given that a lot of the work was done early in the morning, so that it wasn’t eating into my work-day schedule; let’s just say that if I was to be scrupulous about it, I haven’t broken even yet.
  On the upside, the ebook of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE has received seven five-star reviews to date, and you’ll have to take it on faith that I didn’t post any of those reviews myself, or badger friends and family into doing so. As this is an experiment of sorts, it would defeat the purpose; besides, there’s an ethical line there that I refuse to cross, not least because there’s a singular joy to be had when an unsolicited review pops up from a reader who enjoyed your work.
  On top of all that, the stark figures tell me this: that in the last ten weeks or so, 225 people read my book. Perhaps not all of it, and it would be ludicrous to believe that everyone who read it liked it; but if even a quarter of those people liked it, then there’s a pretty good chance that they’ll tell other people about it. That, to me, is the real investment here. If you’re a writer, it’s nice to think that you might be earning a few bob from your writing; but crucially, fundamentally, it’s far more important to know that people are reading your work, and that a goodly number of those who read the work, like it. Does that smack too much of ego? Perhaps. But I guess that’s the trade-off, that the writer’s ego is stroked, and the reader gets a good return on their investment of time, patience and $0.99c.
  Anyway, and never being one to shirk from making things more difficult than they need to be, and this being an experiment of sorts, I’ve decided to raise the price of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE from $0.99c to $2.99, beginning May 1st. There are a number of reasons for this, and they run thusly.
  First off, there’s a perception abroad that readers simply won’t value a book offered at less than the cost of a second-hand book, and that may well be true. That said, you’d be hard pressed to find even a half-decent second-hand (or ‘pre-loved’) book at €2.99 these days, but that’s an argument for another day.
  Secondly, and assuming I’m not deluding myself, a book that has picked up seven five-star reviews at $0.99c is likely to be just as enjoyable a read at two dollars dearer.
  Thirdly, pricing the book at $2.99 allows me as a writer to avail of a higher royalty return from Amazon’s publishing programme - in other words, the royalty soars from 35% selling at $0.99c to 70% at $2.99. Naturally, this makes perfect sense to me as a writer, particularly if I feel the reader is still getting value for money. Whether the reader / audience / marketplace will agree is another matter entirely.
  We’ll see. This is, as I say, a work-in-progress, an experiment of sorts, and it’s very possible that this time next month, when I publish the latest figures for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, that I’ll be climbing down from $2.99 to $0.99c again, and devising a new cardio work-out for myself designed to burn off all those calories consumed by eating humble pie.
  In the meantime, if you’re a blogger, reader, reviewer, tweeter, or simply fancy helping out, I’d be more than delighted to do any kind of interview, promotion, or whatever you’re having yourself. I can be reached at dbrodb(at)gmail(dot)com, providing I haven’t swanned off to Grand Bahama with that €50.78 royalty cheque burning a hole in my pocket …

The Neville Will Find Work For Idle Hands To Do

I interviewed Stuart Neville (right) last week, and a very pleasant experience it was too, not least because Stuart is in a very good place these days. Recently married, he’s on the shortlist for tonight’s LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller Book Awards with COLLUSION, a gong he scooped last year for his debut novel, THE TWELVE, aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST. Could he possibly win two years running? It’s a big ask, as they say, particularly given the quality of the opposition: our own Tana French, for FAITHFUL PLACE; Kelli Stanley for CITY OF DRAGONS; Laura Lippman for I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE; and Tom Franklin for CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, which is the best novel I’ve read this year to date (although my current read, IRON HOUSE by John Hart, is running it close).
  Meanwhile, Stuart is also gearing up to the release of his third novel, STOLEN SOULS, which he describes as ‘a much more streamlined, ticking-clock kind of thriller’, influenced by classic ’70s thrillers such as William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN, and the early novels of Thomas Harris. Sounds tasty. For more on STOLEN SOULS, clickety-click here …
  Anyway, I asked Stuart in passing if he’d like to nominate an Irish crime title to recommend to readers, to which he responded thusly:

“The new Gene Kerrigan book, THE RAGE, is absolutely terrific. It captures that sense of Ireland on the down-slope of the rollercoaster, he’s done that very, very well. But also, his journalistic background makes it seem like there’s almost a documentary feel to it. You feel like you could be reading an actual description of a crime in it, as opposed to a fictional crime. It has a real core of authenticity to it. It’s very impressive. I’d hope that the Irish Book Awards win last year, and the CWA nomination, will help raise his profile. He’s a terrific writer.”

  That makes Stuart’s nod the third very positive recommendation for THE RAGE I’ve heard in the last couple of weeks. It isn’t released until June 2nd, but already it seems set to catapult Gene Kerrigan into the stratosphere. Here’s hoping.
  What I love most about Gene Kerrigan’s books, I think, is the ring of authenticity Stuart refers to, which is very probably derived from his years spent as a court reporter. Not for Kerrigan the demonising of criminals, little or otherwise. I never tire of repeating the line Kerrigan used during a conversation on crime writing a few years ago, when he suggested that the typical criminal isn’t all that different to law-abiding folk. “This guy will babysit your kids on a Friday night,” he said, “then go to work on Saturday morning with a gun in his pocket.”
  I always get an image of some uncle-type babysitter driven demented by an unruly brood who refuse to go to bed on time, whose shoulders straighten the next morning as he leaves the house, checking the safety on his Glock before he slouches off, some rough beast, headed for the mean streets to be born again …

UPDATE: Tom Franklin’s CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER won the LA Times’ Book Awards Best Mystery / Thriller last night, and while I’m disappointed on behalf of our own Stuart Neville and Tana French, there’s no disputing the fact that Franklin’s is a wonderful novel. Here’s the review I wrote back in February as part of that month’s Irish Times column:

Set in rural Mississippi, Tom Franklin’s CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER (Macmillan, £11.99, pb) opens with the shooting of small town mechanic Larry Ott, a semi-recluse who has long been suspected of the abduction and murder of a local girl some decades before. Local deputy Silas Jones is reluctant to lead the investigation into the shooting, as he and Larry were childhood friends before an ugly racial incident drove them apart, but the disappearance of another young girl overrules Silas’s personal distaste for the case. Ostensibly a police procedural, Franklin’s third novel deploys the genre’s narrative conventions as a framework for a much deeper exploration of the psychology of small-town America and its recent racist past. Both Larry and Silas are superbly drawn and fully fleshed characters, their personalities and conflict chthonic to rural Mississippi but luminously relevant, in Franklin’s hands, to any locale on the planet. Factor in a mesmerising evocation of rural Mississippi, language of sinuous and shimmering elegance, and a finely tuned ear for the nuances of dialogue, and you have a novel that is an early contender for one of the great novels of the year. - Declan Burke

Now Is The BLOODY WINTER Of Our Discontent

Belfast-based author Andrew Pepper provides the latest title to prove my entirely spurious theory that crime writers are reflecting the upheavals in Irish society. BLOODY WINTER features Pepper’s 19th century detective Pyke, the Irish famine, and an unusual corpse discovered in County Tipperary. Quoth the blurb elves:

A body is discovered in a ditch outside the town of Dundrum in County Tipperary. The local land agent tells Knox, a young Irish policeman with divided loyalties, that it is the body of a vagrant and that the landowner Lord Cornwallis wants the case dealt with swiftly and quietly. The potato crop has failed for a second time and the Irish people are dying in their thousands. However when Knox examines the corpse it is clear that this man died wearing a Saville Row suit. Keeping his investigations secret, it becomes clear to Knox that the stranger came from London. Three months earlier Detective Inspector Pyke receives a letter from the daughter of a family friend. She has married a wealthy industrialist who owns ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil and her son has been kidnapped. Lured by the promise of a substantial fee and wanting to escape the tensions of Scotland Yard, Pyke agrees to go to Wales to investigate. There, he discovers a town riven with social discord following the brutal suppression of a workers strike and the importation of cheap Irish labour. The kidnapping is linked to a group of rebels but Pyke soon begins to suspect the case is not as clear cut as it seems. What are the links between the rebellion in Wales and the unrest in Ireland, and has Pyke finally bitten off more than he can chew?

  Sounds like a belter, although it’d be nice if we had some explanatory guff to flesh out the plot’s bones. But stay! What’s this? Quoth Andrew:  

“Below is some explanatory guff I wrote for Barry Forshaw over in Blighty:

“I knew at the start of the Pyke series that I wanted to write about the famine in Ireland. To do otherwise, to ignore it, when apparently committed to peering through the dark looking-glass at mid-nineteenth century British and Irish life, seemed like an abdication of responsibility. But I didn’t have any idea how such a task might be possible. How readily could the crime novel, which typically concerns itself with individual acts of murder and transgression, speak about the circumstances which led to hunger, destitution and death on such a vast scale? How far might be the idea of crime itself – the breaking of state-sanctioned laws – be unsettled by the state’s complicity in perpetuating, if not directly causing, the misery of so many? And then there was the issue of what to do with my hero, or anti-hero, Pyke, a detective whose unusual methods and dubious morality usually produce answers to the questions his investigations pose. How could such a figure, an Englishman no less, turn up in Ireland in 1847 and end up succeeding despite himself and the odds stacked against him? The very notion seemed to stink of bad faith.
  “From the beginning of BLOODY WINTER, therefore, I had made a decision not to bring Pyke to Ireland or if I did, then to have him play the most marginal of roles. And what more marginal role is there but to be a corpse? For this is the situation that Bloody Winter poses throughout: that the dead body which turns up on a Tipperary estate may be that of my erstwhile detective. And for the young, inexperienced constable who is told to turn a blind eye to the murder, the enquiry can only lead to heartache and failure: his personal failure, aided by official intransigence and the interference of vested interests, mirroring the devastation he sees all around him.
  “But having made these decisions, I needed a reason for Pyke to travel to Ireland in the first place and then I read about the migration of famine-hit Irish men and women in the other direction: to find work in the ironworks of South Wales’s original boom town, Merthyr Tydfil. And Merthyr, a forerunner of Dashiell Hammett’s Personville, a town literally and metaphorically dirtied up by mining and riven by petty criminality and industrial unrest, seemed just the kind of place where Pyke would feel perfectly at home.
  “So it is a kidnapping that first takes Pyke to Merthyr: the son of a wealthy industrialist. But Pyke soon finds out that all is not as it seems and as his suspicions settle on the town’s rich and poor alike, the novel asks what links the events in Ireland and Wales and whether the same system of free trade that has emptied Ireland of its harvest and its people is in fact be responsible for the bloodbath that greets Pyke in Merthyr. And as the young Irish constable quickly discovers, in the face of so much power, and so much needless death, what can one man realistically be expected to do?”

  So there you have it. BLOODY WINTER, as well as being another cracking Pyke mystery and a peek ‘through the dark looking-glass at mid-nineteenth century British and Irish life’, incorporates famine, bad faith, civil unrest, the protection of the wealthy classes’ vested interests and the individual beaten down in face of overwhelming state-sanctioned criminality. Hurrah! If that’s not a novel for our times, then I’ll eat my copy of AN DUANAIRE, with a side order of mouldy black spuds and nettle-leaf salad.

The Girl, The Thief, The Priest And Their Lovers

I read Brian McGilloway’s new standalone, LITTLE GIRL LOST, last week, and a terrific piece of writing it is too. It feels a bit like I’m betraying the very pleasant Inspector Ben Devlin in saying so, but DS Lucy Black, the protagonist of LGL, is potentially a more intriguing character, while the writing is beautifully spare and unadorned. I’ll be reviewing LITTLE GIRL LOST in due course, but the first sighting of a review of the novel appeared in the Irish Independent, with the gist running thusly:

“Brian McGilloway is the author of four critically acclaimed Inspector Devlin police procedurals set in his hometown of Derry. This standalone thriller is cleverly constructed, packed with vibrant and believable characters and admirably free of the clichés of the genre. It confirms him as one of the most original voices in the notably expanding field of Irish crime fiction and this reviewer, for one, would like to read more of DS Lucy Black.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF - currently shortlisted for the Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Fiction Award - was belatedly reviewed in the Irish Times last weekend. To wit:

“Ryan’s absorbing page-turner is a worthy contender,” says Kevin Sweeney. “The mystery at the heart of THE HOLY THIEF is intriguing, with unflinchingly graphic descriptions of torture and murder. But it is Ryan’s details of life in the bad old USSR that make the story so engrossing.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Finally, over at Book Reporter, Joe Hartlaub is impressed with Gerard O’Donovan’s THE PRIEST, a novel which we haven’t really being giving a fair crack of the whip here at CAP Towers:

“THE PRIEST by Gerard O’Donovan comes with advance heralding that would have given the Silver Surfer a run for his money. Having read the book from cover to cover in one sitting, I am here to tell you that the praise is richly deserved … THE PRIEST is an addictive beginning by an author who is positioning himself as a major talent.”

  For the rest, you know what to do …
  So there you have it: three Irish crime writers feeling the lurve. Incidentally, Brian McGilloway will be appearing at No Alibis in Belfast on Friday night to announce the arrival of LITTLE GIRL LOST, where he’ll be joined by some whippersnapper called John Connolly, who may or may not be reading from his latest tome, HELL’S BELLS. For all the details, clickety-click here …

And Quiet Flows The Dan

Published in 1994, as Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ were winding down, and the Celtic Tiger was cranking up, DIVORCING JACK is one of the seminal tracts in the evolution of the modern Irish crime novel. Comfortable in its skin as it embraced and subverted the tropes and conventions of the classic crime novels, the novel was also assured enough to poke fun at some of Ireland’s then sacred cows.
  Its ‘hero’, the self-serving journalist Dan Starkey, featured in a number of Colin Bateman’s subsequent novels, but Dan has been curiously quiet of late. Happily, NINE INCHES, which will be published in September, sees Dan’s return, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Dan Starkey, the ducking and diving hapless investigator, takes centre stage again in this brilliant new novel by the master of comic crime. Radio shock-jock and self-styled people’s champion Jack Caramac is used to courting controversy - but when his four-year-old son is kidnapped for just one hour, and then sent back with a warning note, he knows he may have finally gone too far. Jack has no choice but to turn to Dan Starkey for help. Recently chucked by his long-suffering wife Patricia, Dan has finally given up on journalism and is now providing a boutique, bespoke service for important people with difficult problems. Dan resolves to catch whoever kidnapped Jack’s son - and very soon finds himself in the middle of a violent feud between rival drug gangs, pursued by jealous husbands, unscrupulous property developers and vicious killers as the case spirals ever more out of his control ...

  The Big Question: where has Dan Starkey been all these years? Is it possible the ‘ducking and diving hapless investigator’ has been lying low, perhaps even hiding in plain sight, as a nameless ducking and diving hapless investigator who runs a crime fiction bookstore in Belfast? The answer to this, and many other questions, will not be revealed when NINE INCHES finally arrives.
  As for that title, could it possibly refer to the cranial dimensions of big-brain, clever-clogs Starkey? Or does it refer to a less cerebral measurement? Only time, that perfidiously twittering canary, will tell …

Origins: Russel D. McLean

Being the latest entry in a fitfully irregular series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Russel D. McLean, author of THE GOOD SON.

“It’s fair to say that J McNee is not the man I thought he was when I started writing my debut novel, THE GOOD SON.
  “The protagonist of THE GOOD SON – a Scots private eye who lost his fiancé in a car crash years earlier, who’s learning how to live in the world once again – was created in a moment of anger. He quite literally rose from the ashes of another character.
  “THE GOOD SON had been written for another protagonist. The character was a fellow PI. His name was Sam Bryson. He’d been successful in a series of short stories* I’d written for various markets including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. He was a man with issues, but he was kept stable by a supporting cast that filled in the roles of a family surrounding this “lone wolf” hero.
  “My then-editor wrote to me with a suggestion, “Could we get rid of the supporting cast? There’s too much backstory. The readers won’t know all the history.”
  “To put it mildly, this suggestion irritated me. But it was apparently a deal-breaker. So I went with it in the only way I could. I retired Bryson. Replaced him with an initially nameless narrator. The narrator was nameless not only in an homage to Bill Pronzini’s wonderful Nameless series (which I count among my PI Inspirations) but also in a deliberate jab at the suggestion. They wanted me to give us a character whose backstory was “simple”, I figured the best way to do that was to give him none. To make sure we knew nothing of him off the case.
  “But of course, the world has a funny way of working out.
  “Because the more I wrote about this nameless protagonist, the more he began to slip in hints of something about his life. Sure, he had no real friends or family, but there was a hint that this was something of his own choosing. And suddenly, he was ignoring messages from a woman named “Rachel” who was telling him that “they needed to talk.”
  “But it wasn’t what I thought. Not by a long shot.
  “I allowed myself to loosen up the restrictions, to let this character come into his own. Snippets of dialogue grew into scenes and memories that seemed to make sense of the character’s isolation and barely restrained rage. They gave him a motivation and purpose. The more I took out lines of dialogue that sounded like Sam Bryson, the more I found the new dialogue shaping the attitudes and backstory of this new protagonist.
  “And somewhere along the line, he gained a name.
  “McNee.
  “No first name. He’s stated on several occasions he doesn’t like anyone to use it. Even his fiancée, he claimed, called him McNee.
  “His fiancée, who I soon discovered was not the woman he was avoiding. The mysterious Rachel was his fiancée’s sister. And she wanted to talk to McNee about something that happened before the book opened. Something that gave me the final hook I needed, the final piece of the puzzle that completed McNee as a character for me. That explained the rage I found in his words, the reasons he tried to withdraw from the world.
  “Once I understood him, I was better able to fit him into the book I had written for another character. The novel shaped itself around him, became a means of exploring his character, of helping him to deal with that incident that occurred a few short months before the novel’s opening. The book became even more about him than it had been about Bryson. And, strangely, much stronger for it.
  “McNee began as a strike back at a suggestion I disliked. He evolved beyond that. Became his own person. A unique character. Donna Moore, the author of the incredible OLD DOGS, once said of McNee on her blog that “you don’t know whether to hug him or punch him.”
  “Which means I succeeded, I think, in creating a very human character.” - Russel D. McLean

Russel D. McLean’s THE GOOD SON has just been released in a UK Kindle edition. It is still available in UK paperback edition from Five Leaves Publications.

*which are soon to be collected in an e-edition of their very own

Fare Thee Well, Then, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL …

… I knew thee well. It’s a Red Letter day, folks. One of those days that means nothing to anyone else, in the grand scheme of things - no deals were struck, no books were signed, no fortunes were made. It’s the day when I finally put to bed the final draft of my latest book, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (mocked-up cover, right), tucked it up tight under its blankets, to sleep, perchance to dream.
  It’s a fine feeling indeed, one of accomplishment and satisfaction, of having gone the distance, run the race. That feeling won’t last long, I know - this moment is the eye of the storm, the real-but-false period of calm. If previous experiences of finishing a book are anything to go by, soon enough the bliss will give way to exhaustion, the satisfaction to doubt, and I’ll go into a slump, a kind of cold turkey withdrawal. As soon as I send the book to the publisher - and by ‘as soon’ I mean within minutes - all my mind’s eye will be able to see is the mistakes, the gaffes, the missteps, and we’ll be back into the storm again. Still, at least we have the safety-net of the proofs to come, even if, right now, the very idea of reading a single line of it again is enough to turn my stomach.
  The fact that the redraft coincided with receiving the proofs for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS didn’t help matters much, but now they’re both done and dusted (if not yet polished), and it feels like I’ve lost about two stone in weight, most of it around the shoulders.
  Anyway, that’s it. Stick a fork in my ass, I’m done. Done with writing for the foreseeable future. No more rising at 5am to snatch a couple of hours before the day begins. No more staring bleary-eyed at a screen at 11.30pm, proofing the precious / pathetic few words I managed to scratch out before dawn. No more feeling guilty for not writing, or feeling guilty for writing and stealing time away from my family. No more the corrosive decision, made every day, of whether to write (fiction) for love or (journalism) for money. No more doubts and second-guessing myself for six months at least, and a fortnight in Cyprus to come next month. Yea, verily, my cup runneth over …
  So - is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL any good? I honestly can’t say. I’m still too close to it, obviously, to have any kind of perspective; besides, it’s not typical of my previous books. It’s not a conventional story, it’s not typically a crime novel, or any other kind of novel either, so I really don’t have much to measure it against.
  I did get a huge boost at the start of last week, which arrived at the perfect time, given that I was in the throes of self-doubt and comma-fiddling, when Melissa Hill got in touch. As with all the other big-ups for the book (scroll down, left), Melissa Hill is an author: she writes women’s fiction as Melissa Hill, and has recently published, with her husband, a crime novel under the pseudonym Casey Hill. The gist of her verdict ran thusly:

“Declan Burke has broken the mould with ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is actually very cool indeed. Funny, inventive and hugely entertaining crime fiction - I guarantee you’ll love it.” - Melissa Hill

  Very pleasant it was to receive, as you might appreciate, and very grateful I am too. I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  Here’s the thing, though - the story, which is essentially about a hospital porter bent on blowing up the hospital where he works, is framed by a conversation between the book’s author and said porter, as they redraft the story into what they hope will be a commercial prospect that will see the character of the porter liberated from the limbo of non-publication.
  In other words, it’s entirely possible that readers who are writers will like the book more than readers who aren’t writers. So there’s that to worry about.
  But I’ll worry about it anon. Today is the writing equivalent of that lazy, yawny, stretchy time between sleep and waking on a Bank Holiday morning, when nothing seems real and everything seems possible. Hell, there’s even a rumour, courtesy of my publisher and his sojourn to the London Book Fair, that an American publisher - very well regarded, although it would be impolite to name names - is taking a long, hard look at AZC.
  So there you have it. The book is done. Time to put myself to bed, tucked up tight beneath the blankets, to sleep, perchance to dream …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: BULLFIGHTING by Roddy Doyle

The BULLFIGHTING collection has an unusually pervasive theme. The stories all concern themselves with middle-aged men coming to terms with the limitations of their lives. There are no publication dates given for the individual stories, eight of which were first published in the ‘New Yorker’, while the remaining six stories were published in a variety of Irish and UK publications. They all appear, however, to be written relatively recently. Certainly they are for the most part timely, in that the physical, spiritual and emotional diminishment of the protagonists’ seem to chime with Ireland’s economic downturn.
  All of the stories concern themselves with men in their forties and fifties, all of whom are struggling to understand their place in a rapidly changing world.
  In some cases, as in ‘Animals’, George is struggling to cope with the fact that his kids are now fully grown, thus leaching his life of the meaning of being a parent. In ‘Funerals’, a middle-aged man grasping after meaning in his life ferries his aged parents to funerals, only to discover that they - or the mother, at least - is regressing to childhood. In some of the stories, such as ‘The Photograph’, a man ponders on the way in which communication with his wife has dwindled away to be replaced by virtual silence.
  These three variations on the theme of quietly observed mid-life crises are repeated throughout. That’s not to say that the collection is necessarily repetitive - personally, and despite the surface similarities, I found most of the stories intriguing in their own right, and some of them very moving.
  The backdrop to most of the stories is Ireland’s economic downturn, which chimes with the sense of ‘redundancy’ most of the men seem to experience. In some of the stories, such as ‘Animals’, Doyle makes it explicit that the main character, George, is unemployed as a result of the downturn. In other places, he harks back to a previous generation that also experienced recession and austerity.
  While Doyle’s characters often offer flashes of bitterness at their ‘redundancy’ as men, now that their children are reared, there’s very little by way of anger or rage. Most of the characters appear to be aiming, consciously or otherwise, for an acceptance of their status, as it’s easier to accept the status quo than it is to gird their loins for a battle that might rejuvenate their lives, or might shatter them entirely.
  ‘Blood’ is a story that is the exception to this rule; in fact, it’s an exception to most of the stories in the collection. In ‘Blood’, the male character develops a sudden compulsion to eat raw meat, and to drink blood. While he initially attempts to rationalise his desire as a biological manifestation of his creeping middle-age and growing appreciation of his being surplus to requirements (the character has had a vasectomy), all logic goes out the window when he finds himself biting the head off one of “the next-door neighbours’ recession hens”:

“There were three of them, scrabbling around in the garden. He hated them, the whole idea of them. The world economy wobbled and the middle classes immediately started growing their own spuds and carrots, buying their own chickens, and denying they had property portfolios in Eastern Europe. And they stopped talking to him because he’d become the enemy, and evil, because he worked in a bank. The shiftless bitch next door could pretend she was busy all day looking after the hens. Well, she’d have one less to look after because he was over the wall.”

  The language used here - ‘hated’, ‘evil’, ‘enemy’, ‘shiftless bitch’ - is notably stronger than elsewhere in the collection, while the story itself has a quality of the absurd (“He wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf.”) that borders on fantasy, a quality that is in marked contrast to the muted realism of the other stories. Amid the quiet desperation and acceptance of the other stories, if feels as if Doyle is lashing out at Ireland’s quiescent acceptance of the new status quo.
  In terms of style, Doyle’s language here is very stark, very direct, and almost harks back to the early days of the ‘Barrytown Trilogy’. Despite the conversational tone of the stories, which are for the most part delivered as internal monologues, Doyle employs a style that is stark, precise and unambiguous. There are very few poetic flourishes, which would have been incongruous given that the characters are for the most part working-class Dubliners.
  By the same token, the vernacular Doyle employs when writing dialogue has a kind of brusque lyricism to it, especially in the title story, in which four men, drinking buddies, decide to take a holiday in the south of Spain. From ‘Bullfighting’, pg 189:

- Is that a bruise?
- Varicose vein.
- Lovely.
- You can show it to whatever young one you pick up tonight in town.
- I’ll tell yeh. Show a bird your varicose veins and she’ll be on you like a fuckin’ barnacle.

  The men here are unapologetically urban, reliably stolid and relatively inarticulate when it comes to expressing emotion. That said, and despite the unadorned style, there’s no mistaking Doyle’s affection for his characters. There is a sense that he is celebrating their ability to endure despite their circumstances, to absorb the slings and arrows without complaint.
  In fact, as the collection progresses, there’s a real sense that what Doyle is celebrating is the quality of forbearance and fortitude summed up by the Beckettian mantra of ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’. Few of the characters are educated enough, or self-aware, to be conscious of this philosophy, but it does permeate the collection.
  These are not men of the conventional literary mid-life crisis, who are lampooned for their obsession with younger women and fast cars. Neither are they privy to the epiphanies common in the Irish short story. They may glimpse an epiphany, as the unnamed character does at the end of ‘The Joke’, but it’s rare that they act upon it.
  In the same way as THE COMMITMENTS was considered a radical departure in the way it gave contemporary working-class Dubliners a literary voice in their own vernacular, BULLFIGHTING does the same for the invisible demographic of plodding male survivors who carry on with their lives, uncomplaining.
  Overall, and as someone who isn’t as a rule drawn to the short story form, I thoroughly enjoyed BULLFIGHTING. Perhaps it’s the fact that the repetition of the theme made the collection seem like an experimental novel, but that’s to err on the whimsical side. There really isn’t a bum note in the entire collection. Even ‘Blood’, which could very easily have gone off the rails, is a beautifully modulated piece.
  Ultimately, Doyle has presented us with a collection of stories that really do run the emotional gamut from A-Z. There were times when I found myself grinning wryly, other times when I was laughing aloud, and more than once I was genuinely moved to tears. Most important of all, perhaps, I was always in that very delightful place between envy and admiration of a writer who is obviously in total control of all his gifts. - Declan Burke

Mind THE GAP

As all Three Regular Readers will know, I have a particular weakness for novels which aren’t crime novels per se, but which beg, borrow or steal from the crime genre. On first appearances, one such novel is Paul Soye’s THE BOY IN THE GAP, recently published by Liberties Press, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Paul Soye’s debut novel, THE BOY IN THE GAP, is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel. It is full of mysterious local and familial secrets, capturing the claustrophobia of small town life and its petty judgements. An angry mob assembles outside a town courthouse; something terrible has happened. Jack Sammon is the local man accused of the crime in his village, and has become a figure of universal hate in the community. THE BOY IN THE GAP charts Jack’s childhood and family experiences, and it is through these episodes poignant, funny and heart-wrenching that the novel attempts to explain, or at least suggest, why Jack may have committed the crime. He befriends a local eccentric, Irene, who reveals to him secrets about his family. These revelations that act as the catalyst for Jack’s violent actions, for which he now stands trial. Reminiscent of Pat McCabe in its dark humour and McGahern in its detailed evocation of small town dynamics, THE BOY IN THE GAP is a striking debut.

  I’ve read the first few pages, by the way, and already it’s shaping up to be a cracker.
  Meanwhile, if anyone wants to share their personal favourites vis-à-vis novels that weren’t written as crime novels, but could well be if you squinted at them, the comment box is open. My starter for ten is THE BUTCHER BOY by Pat McCabe.

A Cheap Shortcut To E-Oblivion

He’s an award-winning author and an agent, and he self-publishes his own ebooks, but it may be coming time for some enterprising publisher to employ Allan Guthrie as a commissioning editor. Allan was one of the contributors, along with Stephen Leather, Susanne O’Leary and Victorine Lieske, to a feature I had published in the Irish Times yesterday on the subject of epublishing, where he suggested that the publishing industry is missing a trick in not utilising the new technology to its own advantage. To wit:

“I find it odd,” says Guthrie, “that at a time when ebook sales are escalating, more publishers aren’t setting up ebook-only imprints and acquiring titles for those new lines like there’s no tomorrow. It seems like a no-brainer to me that you could put out cheap digital editions first, see what flies, and produce paper versions of the more successful ones (and print on demand for the others). So to me it seems that digital and print can be complementary. But then, I’m not a publisher. At least, not of anyone other than myself.”

  For the rest of the feature, clickety-click here …
  There’s a podcast that dovetails with the feature, in which yours truly, Anna Carey and Fintan O’Toole chat about epublishing and the future of genre publishing in Ireland. Both Anna and Fintan make the same point about epublishing, as did a number of people who contacted me from the publishing industry in the wake of the feature’s publication, which is that epublishing isn’t as simple as it looks, particularly in terms of the need for an editor. With which point I agree wholeheartedly - my own ebook, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, was a previously published title which benefited from having an editor. I’d further suggest that an editor isn’t the only requirement: if you’re going to successful at self-publishing as an e-author, you’ll need (among other things, including a bloody good book) a professional to design your cover, another to format / typeset the work, and you’ll also need to invest heavily (time or money) in promotion. In other words, readers are fully entitled to expect the same quality from their ebooks as they would from a conventionally published title. Any writer who believes epublishing is a cheap shortcut to getting published is taking a cheap shortcut to oblivion.
  For that podcast, clickety-click here …

Are There Any Sherpas In The Building?

It’s one of those weeks, folks - a something’s-gotta-give week. Apologies to anyone dropping by in the hope of finding the usual semi-demented ramblings, but my cup overfloweth right now, and any nuggets of time I can mine from Mt Workload are being devoted to a final rewrite / redraft of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which should have been with the publisher last week. Bear with me, and normal-ish service should resume in a couple of days. I thank you kindly for your patience …

The Kindleness Of Strangers

I’ve been faffing about on the fringes of the ebook revolution for a while now, and slowly realising that there are benefits to digital books that aren’t immediately apparent. One such benefit is that books that are out of print - such as a personal favourite of mine, Adrian McKinty’s DEAD I WELL MAY BE - not only come available again, but will remain published for the foreseeable future, and in theory at least, forever. The fact that the mainstream publishing industry allowed as fine a novel as DEAD I WELL MAY BE fall out of print in the first place is not only a disgrace, but something of an indictment of its shortcomings.
  Anyway, I thought I’d offer a quick round-up of some Irish crime titles now available on ebook. The list is by no means exhaustive, and is intended as no more than a sample: if you’re an Irish crime writer and you’d like your own (or most recent) title added to the list, just drop me a line with the link enclosed.
  The list:

DEAD I WELL MAY BE, Adrian McKinty
CITY OF LOST GIRLS, Declan Hughes
THE WHISPERERS, John Connolly
TIME OF DEATH, Alex Barclay
CROSS, Ken Bruen
FALLING GLASS, Adrian McKinty
LIMITLESS (aka THE DARK FIELDS), Alan Glynn
THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR, Gene Kerrigan
PEELER, Kevin McCarthy
LITTLE GIRL LOST, Brian McGilloway
THE COURIER, Ava McCarthy
PERIL, Ruby Barnes
ANOTHER LIFE, John J. Gaynard
ORCHID BLUE, Eoin McNamee

  By the way, I’ve also started a discussion group on Amazon, specialising in Irish Crime and Mystery Novels - if you’re a writer who fancies adding your own title(s) to the list, clickety-click here …
  Finally, my own Kindle adventures continue, as the publication of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE as an ebook has given rise to a number of readers’ reviews on Amazon, but also reviews elsewhere. Over at Not New For Long, Seana Graham was kind enough to say the following:

“Emulating a master like Chandler is a risky thing and you not only have to have guts, you’ve got to have a gift. And Burke’s got it. Everyone’s going to have their favourite line or ten by the time they get through with this one.”

  Meanwhile, Glenna at Various Random Thoughts had this to say:

“Declan Burke nails it, with a sense of humour to boot. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE is dark, edgy, fast paced and funny with a protagonist that isn’t perfect, but will do anything he has to do to do what needs to be done.”

  I thank you kindly, ladies. Your reward will be in heaven, if not before.

When In Rome, Giggle Your Socks Off

I started Conor Fitzgerald’s THE FATAL TOUCH the other night (gorgeous cover, right), which is set in the Eternal City, and even at this early stage it’s evident that the novel is more assured than Fitzgerald’s very fine debut, THE DOGS OF ROME. That assurance manifests itself in a laconic sense of humour that knowingly undermines the crime novel’s tropes, as offered by Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Commissioner Blume:

When Grattapaglia had gone, Blume leaned back and turned his face up to the sun. “I need a job that allows me to drink coffee, eat pastries, and soak up the morning warmth. A job without people like Grattapaglia. I’d keep the dead bodies and crime victims, though. I wouldn’t have any perspective on life without them. So, what’s your impression so far?”

  And again, as Blume contemplates a locked door:

“We could go in from this side, or go back and enter through that green door. I have some picklocks in the tactical bag.”
  Blume patiently worked at the tumbler lock on the door. “Almost have it,” he said after five minutes. “I’m a bit out of practice.”
  Three minutes later he pulled out a crowbar from the same bag, stuck it into the wood frame next to the strike plate, and hurled his body against the door.

  Good, clean fun it is too, and THE FATAL TOUCH has put a wry smile on my face with virtually every page. If the rest lives up to the promise of the first 60 pages or so, it’ll be one of the finest crime novels of the year.

It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Soul

It won’t be published until October, but already Stuart Neville’s STOLEN SOULS is shaping up to be one of the novels to watch out for in 2011. The winner of the LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller award in 2009 with his debut THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, and in the running for the same gong this year for COLLUSION, Neville’s third novel comes freighted with expectation. Mind you, the blurb elves suggest that STOLEN SOULS will deliver. To wit:

Detective Inspector Jack Lennon of the Belfast Police has watched the developing cooperation between Northern Ireland’s Loyalist gangs and immigrant Lithuanian criminals with unease. The Lithuanians traffic women from Eastern Europe and Asia for the Loyalists’ brothels, and they’re all making big money in spite of the recession that has stopped Northern Ireland’s peace boom in its tracks. Lennon has a more intimate knowledge of the city’s brothels than he’ll ever admit, but the surge in trafficked girls makes him question his lifestyle, especially considering he has his daughter, Ellen, to care for now.
  When a Lithuanian trafficker turns up dead on Christmas Eve with a shard of glass embedded in his throat, Lennon’s plans to spend the holiday with Ellen are put in jeopardy. The dead man was the younger brother of a ruthless Lithuanian crime boss, Arturas Strazdas, and the young Ukrainian woman who killed him has escaped her captors. Now Strazdas holds the Loyalists responsible and won’t let up until everyone involved has paid. A bloody gang war erupts across the city.
  Meanwhile, somewhere in Belfast, Galya, the Ukrainian girl, is running for her life, alone and scared, clinging to the darkest corners as the frozen streets empty for the holiday. Galya’s captors told her how the police deal with illegal immigrants, that she is a criminal in a foreign land, and the law will not help her. And now she is also a murderer. She cannot be discovered by anyone, not the cops, not the gang who held her prisoner. There is only one person she can go to: a man she met on her first day as a prostitute, a friend who gave her a crucifix and an address to run to if she ever got away. He’d saved four prostitutes before her, he’s told her, and she can be his fifth. But when Galya arrives at the address, she finds something more evil than she had ever imagined.

  Sounds like a cracker. Mind you, I was putting the final proofs for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS to bed this week, and while proofing Neville’s contribution, a short story entitled ‘The Craftsman’, it struck me that, as propulsive as he is as a thriller writer, it’s in the quieter moments, the emotional connections, that Neville truly excels. I can’t say much more than that or I’ll spoil the story; suffice to say that beneath the bearded, hard-boiled exterior Neville presents to the world, there lurks the soul of a poet. And, if the subtleties that underpin ‘The Craftsman’ is a measure of how Neville has developed as a writer since the publication of COLLUSION, then STOLEN SOULS promises to outstrip his previous novels by some distance. It’s a tantalising prospect.

Laughing All The Way To The Bank

The Independent carried an interview with Eoin Colfer on Sunday, to celebrate the forthcoming PLUGGED, Eoin’s first foray into adult crime fiction. A nice piece it is, too, although there was one line that jarred. To wit:

The book is unusual because it’s funny, although Colfer says he originally tried to write it straight. “He was initially very much the implacable hero, in the Lee Marvin type, out for revenge, no messing around. But I couldn’t sustain it. It just felt like I was trying to write someone else’s book. Then one joke got in, and then another one. Initially the character wasn’t the brightest guy, but then I started to leak in a bit of psychology and he became more knowing and aware of his own foibles, so I had to go back and change it all and make it much funnier.” He is full of ideas for future adventures, but adds: “It’s a very fickle world. The public might decide there’s already a funny crime writer so we don’t want you.”

  All of which suggests that PLUGGED won’t be entirely unlike the Parker novels rewritten Carl Hiassen - I haven’t read it yet, but that should be rectified in the next couple of weeks or so (the book is officially published on May 12).
  The line that jarred, though - ‘The book is unusual because it’s funny …’ Not to cast asparagus on Susie Mesure’s research for the piece, but there are at least four Irish authors writing comedy crime fiction, among them Colin ‘Nine Inch’ Bateman, Garbhan ‘Girth Unknown’ Downey and Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley Edwards. Broaden it out to the international stage, and (off the top of my head) you have the aforementioned Carl Hiassen, Christopher Brookmyre, Donald Westlake, Simon Brett, Alexander McCall Smith, Chris Ewan, Jasper Fforde, Christopher Fowler and LC Tyler. In fact, there are so many comedy writers that Bristol’s Crimefest has a dedicated ‘Last Laugh’ award.
  That said, humour is a very subjective thing. I think Elmore Leonard is a very funny writer. Sara Gran’s forthcoming CITY OF THE DEAD is a comic masterpiece. James Patterson, of course, is the funniest writer alive.
  Anyway, niggling aside, I’m pretty sure that (a) PLUGGED will be very funny, and (b) the public will find room in their hearts for another funny crime writer, especially one who’s earned his licks with the Artemis Fowl series.
  Over to you, folks. Any comic crime writers I’ve missed?

The Bonfire Of The Inanities

As I’ve said before on these pages, I’m not really exercised by book covers, but every now and again one comes along that catches the eye. The UK cover of THE BURNING SOUL - to be published on both sides of the pond on September 1st - comes courtesy of its author, John Connolly, and is definitely one such eye-catcher: at first glance, it put me in mind of both ‘The Children of the Corn’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. Meanwhile, the blurb elves are wittering thusly:

Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor’s Bay, but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall. He is being tormented by anonymous messages, haunting reminders of his past crime, and he wants private detective Charlie Parker to make it stop. But another 14-year-old girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor’s Bay, and the missing girl’s family has its own secrets to protect. Now Parker must unravel a web of deceit involving the police, the FBI, a doomed mobster named Tommy Morris, and Randall Haight himself. Because Randall Haight is telling lies …

  Sounds like a cracker. Suddenly September seems a long, long way away …
  Meanwhile, given my well-deserved reputation for reading way too much into far too little, it’s incumbent upon me to posit a theory about THE BURNING SOUL as a metaphor for Ireland’s economic collapse. If we say that Randall Haight represents the banks and their dirty secrets, for example, and the murdered 14-year-old girl the innocent Irish tax-payer, then perhaps our hero Charlie Parker is entering the financial labyrinth (aka the ‘web of deceit’) on our behalf to face down the demons, ultimately to emerge, bloodied but unbowed, to advise the government that the only way to deal with €100 billion debt placed on Ireland’s already buckling shoulders is to burn the soul-sucking bondholders to the floor, aka, the bonfire of the inanities.
  Too much? Erm, yes. But again, at the risk of reading too much into such things, it’s interesting to take a look at the titles of recent and forthcoming Irish crime titles in the context of all that has happened here over the last 12 months or so. To wit: THE BURNING SOUL (John Connolly); THE BURNING (Jane Casey); THE RAGE (Gene Kerrigan); THE FATAL TOUCH (Conor Fitzgerald); FALLING GLASS (Adrian McKinty); PLUGGED (Eoin Colfer); TAKEN (Niamh O’Connor); BLOODLAND (Alan Glynn); STOLEN SOULS (Stuart Neville); BROKEN HARBOUR (Tana French); LITTLE GIRL LOST (Brian McGilloway).
  Now, not all of those novels are even set in Ireland, and to the best of my knowledge, none of them explicitly deal with how Irish people are being punished for the sins of profligate European bankers. Still, there’s a lot of broken, bloody, lost, burning, angry souls in there …

If The Name Fitz, Wear It

I was away last weekend, engaged in fifth wedding anniversary-related shenanigans, so I didn’t get to see Saturday’s Irish Times’ books pages until yesterday. Some very good stuff there was, too, starting with Arminta Wallace’s piece on how crime fiction set in Italy (albeit courtesy of non-Italian writers) is about to steal the limelight away from its Scandinavian counterpart. Among the writers interviewed was Conor Fitzgerald, whose THE FATAL TOUCH is published round about now. Quoth Conor:

“The Scandinavians have a good society with a nasty underbelly. In Italy it’s almost the reverse; they know they have a bad society. Usually detective fiction is about setting the world to rights, so if you place it in Italy you’ve got a problem. Crimes do not get solved; court cases never finish.”

  Wallace, by the way, also tells us that ‘Conor Fitzgerald’ is a pseudonym, and reveals the name of the author’s father, who is a famous Irish poet (hint: it’s not Seamus Heaney). For the scoop, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, Ed O’Loughlin’s very fine sophomore novel, TOPLOADER, was reviewed by David Park, with the gist running thusly:

“O’Louglin’s writing is consistently impressive in his descriptions of the imposition of military might and its human consequences. He is also skilled at capturing the nightmarish, terrorised topography inside the zone and the conditions that the inhabitants have to endure.”

  Park was less impressed with the comic aspects of the novel, which is a little bit odd, given that TOPLOADER is a comic novel in the vein of DR STRANGELOVE - dark and tragic, certainly, but always attuned to the absurdities of the ‘war on terror’. For what it’s worth, I read TOPLOADER with a sloppy grin pasted to my face throughout. If you remain unconvinced that the comic novel can be simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, then I recommend you read TOPLOADER.
  For the rest of the review, clickety-click here …
  Finally, Max McGuinness reviewed Hadrien Laroche’s THE LAST GENET: A WRITER IN REVOLT, which details Jean Genet’s political activism in the latter stages of his life, when he went out to bat for organisations such as the Black Panthers, the PLO and the Red Army Faction. I went through a phase of gorging on Jean Genet some years ago now, and enjoyed the vicarious wallowing in the gutter that reading Genet offers, although I wouldn’t be in any great hurry to re-read any of the novels. That said, I have a biography, THE IMAGINATION OF JEAN GENET by Joseph McMahon, sitting on the shelves, and I might be tempted to crack it open if I ever again get to the point where I have the luxury of simply reading for fun.
  Anyway, for the review of THE LAST GENET, clickety-click here …

A Good Think, Interrupted

I tuned in late to the Masters last night, long after Rory McIlroy (right) had blown his four-shot lead at the start of the day, but just in time to watch Rory disintegrate in considerable style as he took the long way home, hacking his way through the undergrowth of the more remote parts of Augusta’s back nine. Commiserations to Rory, although it’s hard to feel truly sorry for him - if you’re good enough to establish a four-shot lead going into the last day of the Masters, then you’re good, period.
  Back in the days when I used to swing a golf club, in the process exploring the more exotic flora of whatever course I was on, I used to call that ‘value for money’. People did try to persuade me that the point of the exercise was to take the minimum number of shots to get around, but investing good money in a set of clubs and not using them as often as possible made no sense to me.
  I don’t golf anymore. I like the game, but I can’t be doing with all the bullshit that has to be negotiated between the car park and the first tee. Plus, it’s a time-consuming sport. Besides, writing is a much more exquisite form of self-torture. If golf is a good walk spoiled, as Mark Twain suggested, then writing is all too often a good think interrupted.
  It occurred to me last night, and not for the first time, that golf and writing have much in common. The pursuit of an impossible excellence, for one. How the finest difference in intent and execution can result in triumph or disaster. One of Rory McIlroy’s drives last night was perhaps only a millimetre off when club struck ball, for example, but that put it two feet off its trajectory when the ball hit a tree branch, and the branch deflected the ball a couple of hundred yards away from where it should have been.
  At the time, Rory was a shot clear of a chasing pack which included Tiger Woods, and such competition brings with it its own pressures. Ultimately, though, when Rory stood over that shot, or any of his shots, he wasn’t competing against anyone but himself. He was competing with the limits of his skill, his facility for grace under pressure, his ability to keep his inner demons at bay whilst maintaining an outward façade of calm efficiency.
  In the end, Rory lost his battle with himself, which will probably be the most disappointing thing for him when he wakes up this morning. To be beaten by a better golfer is one thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. To be beaten by yourself, though, sabotaged from within, that’s a whole different issue.
  Most writers I know are prone to self-sabotage, most of it connected to the nebulous concept of confidence. They might have just written a brilliant book, but when it comes to starting the next one, they can’t remember how it’s done. And there’s no point in telling yourself that if you’ve done it once, you can do it again - there’s always the possibility that the last time was a fluke. Hell, even I hit a hole-in-one once. But I could stand on the same tee from now until Judgement Day, swinging the club in exactly the same way, and never hit that hole-in-one again.
  In the more extreme versions, some writers - yours truly being one example - go through this every day.
  All of which is a roundabout way of saying that confidence plays a huge part in the writing process. And it’s nice, on those occasions when you find yourself ankle-deep in the rough, and possibly out-of-bounds, to get a shot of confidence, aka a positive review. Seana Graham, a long-time friend of Irish crime writing, who blogs over at Confessions of Ignorance, provided such a shot in the arm this weekend, when she posted a reader’s review of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE on Amazon, with the gist running thusly:

“THE BIG O could justly be called an Elmore Leonard style caper book, with a madcap carnival of characters keeping the action going. Though EIGHTBALL BOOGIE could never be accused of being less than lively, and plot-wise it is probably just as complicated, the story is perhaps a bit more grounded in the character of its protagonist, one Harry Rigby. Rigby’s got all the usual P.I. problems - women trouble, cop trouble, and smart mouth trouble. Unlike some similar protagonists I’ve read recently, I’m not all together convinced that he’s a good guy. But he does have one core value, and that’s protecting his son Ben. Trace that through, and you’ll see that everything he does is motivated by that one objective. Everything.
  “In one aspect, anyway, this book is a straight up homage to Raymond Chandler, and of course it’s a brave thing to offer yourself up for comparison to an American master of detective fiction. But in my book, Burke is up to it. There are countless throwaway lines that show the same kind of spark of cleverness, and I think the first one where I realized I should slow down and start paying better attention was: “Conway lived two miles out of town, the house only three drainpipes short of a mansion.” This is the kind of book that fans will love to dig such nuggets out of, but why should I spoil your pleasure by revealing more?
  “There are many plot twists in this story, and some of them I did manage to see coming. But there is one great piece of finesse that figures in towards the end, and I admired it immensely. I think there is something in this one for everyone, though I will say that as with much Irish crime fiction I’ve read, there was one moment of brutality that was a bit beyond my tolerance level. Well, make that two.
  “But hey, if you’re going to read Irish crime fiction, you’re going to have to get used to this stuff.” - Seana Graham

  All of which is very nice indeed, and I thank you kindly, ma’am. Do I honestly believe that THE BIG O is entitled to be mentioned in the same breath as Elmore Leonard, or EIGHTBALL BOOGIE compared with Raymond Chandler? No, I don’t. But such references go a long way towards bolstering a fragile confidence, tantalising whispers that suggest if I stay the course, and keep doing what I do, that some day, somehow, I’ll write a book that does deserve such exalted company. Even if it does turn out to be a fluke.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY by Gary Shteyngart

SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY is a dystopian sci-fi novel (is there any other kind?) set in the near future, and as such is a satire on contemporary American obsessions. It opens in Rome in the very near future, where Lenny Abramov, the story’s hero, is attending an orgy. Lenny is in Rome in pursuit of High Net Worth Individuals, hoping to sell them on the idea of Indefinite Life Extension, a service provided by the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation.
  Lenny meets Eunice Park, an American-Korean student living in Rome, and falls for her immediately. Soon after, Lenny returns to New York, where we discover that the United States is in a state of terminal decline. At war in Venezuela, the US is indebted to China, and is ruled by the quasi-fascist Bipartisan Party led by the hated Rubenstein.
  Lenny’s ambitions are two-fold. He wants to earn enough money to become a High Net Worth Individual, and thus avail of Indefinite Life Extension. He also wants to marry Eunice Park.
  The novel’s opening chapter comes courtesy of Lenny’s diary, in which he records his fears and concerns, his hopes and desires. Lenny’s is not the only story being told, however. The reader is given access to Eunice’s ‘Globalteen’ account, in which we are offered her emails to her sister, Sally, her mother Chung Won, and her best friend, Jenny Kang, aka Grillbitch.
  Thus the story proceeds with Lenny telling us about the declining economic and political situation in New York, and his burgeoning romance with Eunice; we then get Eunice’s take on the same events, which is often radically different to Lenny’s.
  Lenny is an ambitious, shallow, naïve 39-year-old. His infatuation with Eunice, who is roughly half his age, bears all the hallmarks of a mid-life crisis. Obsessed with youth, his credit balance and maintaining the illusion of normality as normal life crumbles around him, Lenny is very much a product of his time, when consumerism and patriotism amount to more or less the same thing.
  Lenny does appear to be slightly more thoughtful than his circle of friends, however. He is genuinely in love with Eunice, and wants nothing more than to be allowed to take care of her. Despite his conflicted relationship with his Russian-Jewish parents, he is constantly seeking their approval. Lenny also has a love of books, or ‘old print media’, which marks him out as something of a subversive in a society that has only contempt for any information that is not streamed on the ‘Globalteen network’ (aka the internet) and condensed into easily digestible data packets.
  Shteyngart makes much of Lenny’s Russian-Jewish background, but also presents Lenny as an Everyman, his naivety manifesting itself as a curiosity that in turn allows the reader to explore the nooks and crannies of his brave new world. He should be a likeable protagonist, but Lenny is too passive a hero to generate much sympathy. It makes sense, according to the book’s logic, that Lenny - and his entire generation - should be passive, conditioned as they are to be constantly receptive to information overload. By the same token, Lenny would have been a much more interesting character had he taken the decision to kick against the pricks much earlier in the story.
  Eunice is roughly half Lenny’s age, a young woman who is entirely immersed in the shallowness of her culture. An obsessive on-line shopper, she is emotionally stunted, dazzled by surface appearance and prospective mates’ credit rating. It’s to her own credit that Eunice gradually comes to appreciate Lenny’s subtle virtues, not least of which is that Lenny loves her for who she is, not what she represents.
  Eunice’s background is every bit as complicated as Lenny’s. One of two daughters in an immigrant Korean family, she has grown up with one foot in the liberal, consumerist society of the United States, and her other foot firmly shackled by her family’s conservative values. Her family life is further complicated by the fact that her father is physically abusive, and her mother is deeply religious. Starved of genuine affection, reluctant to trust men beyond physical engaging with them, she slowly responds to Lenny’s overtures.
  Meanwhile, Joshie Goldmann is Lenny’s boss at the Post-Human Services division of Staatling-Wapachung, a sprawling corporation that also houses a military division. Joshie is the living embodiment of the Indefinite Life Extension programme; although a father figure to Lenny, and a friend of almost 20 years standing, Joshie appears physically to be 20 years younger than Lenny. Joshie rules the Post-Human Services division with a benign dictator’s tender touch, espousing hippy-like mantras in order to motivate his staff.
  The America Lenny lives in is embroiled in a doomed land-war in Venezuela; Shteyngart never explicitly states the war is for oil, but we can take it for granted that that is the motive. Meanwhile, disgruntled veterans of the war, denied their promised bonus when they return to the States, foment dissent against the Bipartisan Party that rules the US. This dissent eventually boils over into outright conflict, when the veterans of New York, many of whom live homeless in Central Park, are attacked by the National Guard, and a state of emergency declared.
  Shteyngart also emphasises the current US obsession with the illusion of eternal youth, exaggerating it into a desire to live forever via the Indefinite Life Extension programme. The obsession with technology is also lampooned, as most people own an ‘apparat’, which appears to be an advance version of today’s hand-held devices (at one point, when Lenny takes out his out-moded apparat, he is sneered at by a younger co-worker, who asks if his apparat is an iPhone). The cult of celebrity and the desire for 15 minutes of fame is also lampooned, as most of Lenny’s ‘Media’ friends appear to stream their own on-line shows. Consumerism has become something of a philosophy in Lenny’s America; strangers can point their apparats at you to discover your credit rating, while credit poles on the street will also flash your credit details as you pass by.
  On a darker note, the two-party democratic system currently operating in America has morphed into a one-party government, which is quasi-fascist in tone, and issues declarations reminiscent of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984.
  Shteyngart employs a lively style, a variety of ‘teen-speak’ which is perfectly pitched to reflect the shallowness of the culture. The prose is slightly more formal when Lenny addresses his diary, but Eunice’s accounts are peppered with sexual slang, acronyms and an abrasively crude form of affection.
  He also employs a narrative structure that is initially interesting, in that he presents the reader with Lenny’s diary account of events, and then offers a contrasting take on those events - personal, political - from Eunice’s perspective. Once the pattern is established, however, it very quickly becomes predictable, and even monotonous.   Overall, the novel is an interesting contemporary equivalent to Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD or George Orwell’s 1984, or Michael Chabon’s THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION, as it offers a jaundiced view of a near future where our modern obsessions could well lead us.
  Despite Shteyngart’s use of familiar technology, however, there is little that is fresh or new here - in its appraisal of a conservative and quasi-fascist future, the novel’s liberal angst is predictably conservative.
  Shteyngart’s lively use of language makes the novel an enjoyable read on a page-turning basis, but in terms of the big picture, the novel is more concerned with reacting to current trends rather than devising a future philosophy. There’s a self-limiting aspect to the story that is perfectly in tune with Lenny’s passive personality, and with the internal logic of the world Shteyngart has created, but that self-limiting aspect also means that the novel lacks the grand ambitions of the great sci-fi novels.
  I’d recommend SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY to anyone interested in dabbling in contemporary sci-fi, but connoisseurs of the genre might find it a little disappointing. - Declan Burke