“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Val McDermid

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?

If I was a mercenary bitch, I’d say THE DA VINCI CODE. But I’m not, so I’ll go with Reginald Hill’s ON BEULAH HEIGHT. Tender, savage, clever, funny and moving. Beautifully written and immaculately plotted. What’s not to envy?



What fictional character would you most like to have been?

Jim Hawkins. So I could play inside the perfect novel.



Who do you read for guilty pleasures?

I go back to childhood and read the Chalet School books by Elinor M Brent Dyer, and Agatha Christie.



Most satisfying writing moment?

When I figured out a structure that would allow me to tell the story of A PLACE OF EXECUTION. That was a beautiful moment in itself, but it also made me trust myself and not worry that sometimes it takes years to find the right way to tell the story.



The best Irish crime novel is …?

Oh yeah, right. Like I’m going to stick my neck out like that just before I visit Ireland ... That wouldn’t have been too tough a call ten years ago. But now? Seriously, there’s been so much quality crime fiction coming out of Ireland in the past few years it would be invidious to single out any one book. I love youse all. Well, most of youse.



What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?

If you’d just let my throat go ... Thank you. I think Adrian McKinty’s Dead trilogy would make a great sequence of films. But so would many others. What’s more important is that Irish writers keep on writing great books.



Worst / best thing about being a writer?

Working alone. I love my own company but I’m also a very social animal. Sometimes I spend so long with characters I can push around that I forget how to interact properly with real people ...



The pitch for your next book is …?

A woman is going through US airport security with her kid. She sets off the metal detector and while she’s waiting in the perspex box to be patted down and wanded, someone walks up to her kid by the X-ray belt and walks off with him. As she attempts pursuit, she’s thrown to the ground and tasered. When she comes round, the kid is long gone. That’s next year’s book.



Who are you reading right now?

It’s the time of year when I read mostly debut novels so I can put together my wish-list for next year’s Harrogate Festival new blood panel. So I’ve just started the proof of a first novel called TIDELINE by Penny Hancock which is not out till January. I’ve just finished a proof of Stuart Neville’s third novel, STOLEN SOULS, which somehow sneaked into the pile. And I can exclusively reveal that it’s nail-biting, gut-wrenching and nearly made me miss my stop on the train. Next up will be something called ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL by some Irish guy who claims he’s holding my wife, my kid and my dog hostage.



God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?

I’m not as arrogant as people might think I am; I’d read.



The three best words to describe your own writing are …?

I’d rather leave that to other people. Preferably those to whom I have already slipped a £20 note.



Val McDermid’s THE RETRIBUTION is published by Little, Brown. Val will be appearing at the Mountains to Sea Festival, in conversation with Declan Hughes, on Saturday, September 10th. For all the details, clickety-click here …

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: The ‘Blazing Saddles’ Of Crime Fiction, Apparently

It’s been another lively week for our humble tome ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which was very pleased indeed to make its bow before a South African audience, courtesy of the good works of one Mike Nicol over at Crime Beat. Mike, if you haven’t come across him yet, is a very fine writer as well as a chronicler of the South African crime fiction scene; why not drop over and say hello?

  Meanwhile, Michael Shonk was good enough to review AZC for Mystery File, where he threw up a reference that was entirely unexpected. To wit:

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a fine example of comedic crime noir. As I was reading it, I was thinking of Donald Westlake and Parker … this is an author you need to read.” - Mystery File

  Now, there’s no doubt in my mind that AZC was conceived in part as an affectionate homage to the comedy crime caper-cum-heist, of which Donald Westlake is the acknowledged master. And the going does get pretty grim and black in places, so perhaps that’s where the Parker reference comes from. But ‘comedic crime noir’? Is it possible to blend noir and comedy? I know quite a few purists of the former who would violently disagree … That said, I’m pleased as punch to be mentioned in any circumstance in the same breath as Donald Westlake, and I thank you kindly, Mr Shonk.

  Elsewhere, a nifty five-star review popped up on Amazon, which made me laugh out loud, which is the first time I’ve ever laughed at one of my own reviews. To wit:

“As a rule, people who write novels about people who are writing novels (or music, or poetry, or who are painters, or architects or - worst of all - who are cooking nice things) should be hunted down like dogs and slaughtered like pigs. Two sample exceptions to this rule: Flann O’Brien and Declan Burke, whose ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL snatches tar-black laughs from the yawning jaws of wankiness.

“As a rule, people who say they laughed out loud while reading a particular book are lying. One sample exception to this rule: myself, reading this book.

“Burke has applied a crime writer’s deadpan dialogue and sardonic humour to the exalted mystery of artistic creation. But his take on this well-worn theme has none of the fey narcissism you’d expect from a run-of-the-mill author of landfill literary fiction. Instead of numbing us with another tasteful collage of genteel aestheticism and well-concealed swotting, Burke presents the writer’s mind as the scene of a rather botched and messy crime spree, where characters both real and fictional bicker and scheme over who gets the spoils and who gets the blame. The debt to Flann O’Brien is clear - if memory serves, de Selby may even be mentioned at one point - but unlike O’Brien’s coldly brilliant mindscapes, Burke’s creation has a heart as well as a brain.” - Podmax

  ‘Snatches tar-black laughs from the yawning jaws of wankiness’? Sir, you just made my week.

  All of which was fine and dandy-o, but then RTE’s Arena programme weighed in with a review on Monday night. I was out at the time, at John Connolly’s launch for THE BURNING SOUL, so I didn’t get to hear it, which is just as well, as my ego would very probably have gone supernova. You can listen to the full ten-minute piece here if you have the time, but the gist runneth thusly:

“A new Irish absurd, the Blazing Saddles of crime fiction … The illogicality that surrounds us, the double speak and unthink, is very much the secret subject of this book … It’s a novel that is mentally stimulating, entertaining, fun, provocative, original and ambitious.” - Arena, RTE

  ‘The Blazing Saddles of crime fiction’? My cup runneth over …

  Finally, a quick reminder that I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL at the Central Library, the Ilac Centre, in Dublin 1 tomorrow, at 1pm. I’ll be there snatching tar-black laughs from the yawning jaws of wankiness, and if that sounds remotely interesting to you, I’ll see you there …

Ken Bruen’s Cartoons

Ah, bored. Remember being bored? God be with the days when I’d be so bored I’d collapse comatose on the couch and flick through the TV channels just to see if there was anything on that didn’t involve cooking, buying property or Hitler. Halcyon days.

  Boredom’s a bit of a luxury these days, as is TV: about the only TV I watch now is the occasional baseball game on ESPN, Match of the Day on a Saturday night, and a documentary now and again. I got to watch half of a documentary on the Minoans last night, and good stuff it was too, although I stumbled off to bed once they started to get into the really good stuff, i.e., human sacrifice. Not that the human sacrifice bit put me off; more that I wanted to be alert when I come to the second half, so as not to miss the gory details.

  Anyway, I may just have to make room in the schedule for some TV on Thursday night, as I discovered whilst roaming through KT McCaffrey’s new blog. Quoth KT:

“I’m looking forward to Ken Bruen’s latest Jack Taylor episode. It’s on TV3 this Thursday at 9.30pm. Should be interesting to see how Bruen’s writing translates to the small screen. This one is called ‘The Pikemen Murders’ and will be shown over two nights.”

  Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly throws its eye over Sir Kenneth’s latest offering, HEADSTONE, with the gist running thusly:

Moments of grace are fleeting in Bruen’s world, and things rapidly head south after Taylor receives a miniature gravestone in the post, courtesy of a group of psychopaths calling themselves “Headstone.” Led by a fanatic recidivist criminal from a previous Taylor case, they target the “weak,” including the handicapped, the mentally ill, and the homeless. Now they have their sights set on Taylor and everyone close to him. That the plot is a tad cartoonish and over-the-top scarcely matters in a remarkable series that at heart is about one man’s reckoning with a lifetime of pain and loss in a rapidly changing Ireland.

  ‘A tad cartoonish’? A tad harsh, no? Especially when it’s the case that Ken Bruen tends to use plot in the way a TV chef might use a wok, a purely functional tool into which are mixed his prime ingredients of character, atmosphere and language.

  Of course, it being a Ken Bruen novel, virtually anything is possible, and without having read it yet, it’s not beyond the bounds of plausibility, given that his previous offering featured the Devil, that the storyline features actual cartoon characters.

  Ken Bruen scripting Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote? I’d buy that for a dollar, not least because I’d imagine that that perpetually irritating overgrown chicken would finally get its comeuppance …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Adrian McKinty, Benjamin Black, Niamh O’Connor

Some reviews for your delectation, O Three Regular Readers, the first batch of which were published in the Sunday Independent earlier this month, and which concentrate on Irish crime offerings. First up, Adrian McKinty’s FALLING GLASS. To wit:

FALLING GLASS is Adrian McKinty’s sixth offering, a thriller in which an underworld enforcer, Killian, is commissioned to track down Rachel, the ex-wife of a wealthy Northern Ireland businessman, who has absconded with his two daughters. Naturally, things do not go smoothly for Killian, for the most part because a ruthless killer, a Russian soldier and veteran of the brutal conflict in Chechnya, is also on the woman’s trail. Framed by an increasingly violent game of one-upmanship, the story hurtles down the tortuously twisting byways of rural Northern Ireland.

  However, a number of elements set FALLING GLASS apart from conventional shoot-’em-up thrillers. McKinty has established himself as a writer who blends riveting plots, a muscular kind of poetry and blackly comic flourishes, investing his fully rounded characters with thoughtful insights that frequently veer off at tangents into something akin to philosophy …

  For the rest, which includes reviews of Benjamin Black’s ELEGY FOR APRIL and Niamh O’Connor’s TAKEN, clickety-click here …

  Elsewhere, the Irish Times published the latest ‘Crime Time’ round-up of new titles two weeks ago, said column containing reviews of the latest offerings from Lynda La Plante, Karin Fossum, John Hart, Stella Rimington and Charles Cumming. I particularly liked Karin Fossum’s THE CALLER and Charles Cumming’s THE TRINITY SIX, with the latter review coming in the wake of the Stella Rimington, and kicking off thusly:

More deserving of the Le Carré comparisons is Charles Cumming’s fifth novel, THE TRINITY SIX. As a young man, Cumming was recruited by MI6, and his experience working for the Secret Intelligence Service is so palpable here that Cumming can at one point even afford to allow his hero, Dr Sam Gaddis, to wander into post-modern territory near the Ferris wheel made famous by Orson Welles in the classic movie ‘The Third Man’ ...

  It’d been years since I’d read a good old-fashioned spy thriller, and THE TRINITY SIX reminded me of how much I used to love them. Good timing, too, with the film adaptation of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY on the way in the next couple of weeks. Anyway, for the rest of the Irish Times column, clickety-click here …

  Meanwhile, if anyone can point me in the direction of some good contemporary spy thrillers, I’d be very grateful indeed …

If We Can Make It There, Etc.

There’s a rather interesting event planned for September 24th at Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, titled ‘Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Fiction’. Unsurprisingly, it features a number of Irish crime writers, and is tied in with the publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and is ‘presented as part of Imagine Ireland, a year-long season of contemporary Irish arts in the US in 2011, an initiative of Culture Ireland’. Quoth the blurb elves:

There’s been a major crimewave in Ireland – come get to the bottom of it on this day-long investigation of the crime fiction genre that has exploded in Ireland in the last fifteen years.

  Seven leading practitioners of Green Noir will visit Glucksman Ireland House at New York University to discuss the angles and the clues, the plots and counterplots, the dark journeys and the struggles for the truth that energize some of the most exciting writing coming out of contemporary Ireland.

  John Connolly, Declan Burke, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Alex Barclay and Colin Bateman will join Professor Ian Campbell Ross and several special guests from among Irish America’s great crime writers.

  Several new books will be launched, including DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, edited by Declan Burke; the new Charlie Parker mystery by John Connolly; the third volume of Stuart Neville’s award-winning Belfast trilogy; and new books by Declan Burke and Colin Bateman.

 

  For all the details, and how to book tickets, clickety-click here ...

  As you can probably imagine, I’m looking forward to this like a Puerto Rican kid to the World Series. Actually, I might even try to get a ball game in while I’m in New York. I’d say Yankees tickets are tough to come by; anyone recommend the Mets?

  The downside to the NY trip is that it means I won’t be able to make Bouchercon in St. Louis, which takes place the weekend previously, and even though I’d already booked my place. Boo, etc. How and ever, and due to the good works of one Erin Mitchell, and the magic of modern technology, it’s possible that I may well be able to ‘attend’ Bouchercon after all. I’ll keep you posted …

  Closer to home, there’s another intriguing series of events planned for the month of September by Dublin’s Central Library as part of the Dublin UNESCO City of Literature celebrations. The series is titled ‘Crime and the City: Crime and Drugs’, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

This is a series of lunchtime talks and readings looking at the broad issues of crime, drugs and crime writing in Dublin and beyond. This series of events brings together writers from fiction and biography with researchers from social sciences to inform, entertain and promote discussion. Events take place over the five Thursdays of September at 1pm in the Central Library, ILAC Centre, Dublin 1.

September 1st - Declan Burke - Crime Author



September 8th - Johnny Connolly - Criminologist



September 15th - John Lonergan - Former Prison Governor



September 22nd - Cormac Millar - Crime Author



September 29th - Paul O’Mahony - Criminologist

Admission is free but booking is advised as space is limited. To book a place at any of the events please contact the Central Library on 01 8734333.

  For all the Dublin / UNESCO details, clickety-click here …

  I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL next Thursday, concentrating on the parts of it that deal with drugs and the use and abuse of same, both illegal and legal, and then getting into a Q&A with the audience, possibly about my cavalier attitude - in fiction, at least - to drugs and the use and abuse of same, both illegal and legal. If you can make it along, it’d be great to see you there …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: John McAllister

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 REDEMPTION FACTORY by Sam Millar. Not only is it a great story, the book taught me how to depict life in the raw.



What fictional character would you most like to have been?

All fictional characters are screwed up in some way, which is what makes them human and interesting. I like my own screw-ups. A friend wanted to cure one of them once and I told him to mind his own business, that that screw up was part of me. But if you insist, the main character in the Dick Francis novel, TO THE HILT. I can’t find the book to give you the character’s name.



Who do you read for guilty pleasures?

Mostly I read thrillers but sometimes I get what I can only describe as a dry feeling in my soul. Then I tend to read something really literary. Quite often it’s a book by Jennifer Johnston.



Most satisfying writing moment?

I think whey you push yourself away from the desk and know you’ve done a satisfying amount of creative work that day.



The best Irish crime novel is …?

That’s not a fair question. I’d have trouble deciding who is my favourite Irish crime novelist, let alone novel. The best thing to do is to take the anthology REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED (Morrigan Books, 2010). Open it at the list of contributors and throw a dart. You could hardly go wrong.



What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?

What about John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE? The book has a great atmospheric feel about it that could be easily transferred onto the screen.



Worst / best thing about being a writer?

The worst thing is probably six o’clock in the morning when I am crawling out of bed to get the day started. The best thing is when a story or novel is published. You are standing in front of a crowd reading an excerpt and suddenly you know the listeners are so enthralled you could literally hear a pin drop. Unless my late mother in law was there. Then all I could hear was her saying to her neighbour, ‘I can’t hear him? Can you hear him?’ And there’s me wanting to shout, ‘Would you wear your bloody hearing aid?’



The pitch for your next book is …?

My novels are usually thrillers but my short stories are based on social issues. One such story has evolved into a novel, which is due out next year. Title still to be firmed up. However, the book is about a Catholic priest who turns up at his new parish with his (female) partner. I’ve just got back the reader’s report so things are at an early stage at this point.



Who are you reading right now?

I’ve just finished Glenn Meade’s latest novel THE SECOND MESSIAH. It’s a good chase / shoot them up read, and the shenanigans of cardinals at the Vatican are very believable. I’ve just started a first novel, THE SURVIVOR by Sean Slater. Sean is a Vancouver police officer. It has started very well



God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?

Write. I could do a memoir slagging off God for being so unreasonable, then he might reconsider.



The three best words to describe your own writing are …?

Enjoyable, literate (as opposed to literature) educational (no big drums).



John McAllister’s LINE OF FLIGHT has just been re-issued on Kindle.

Free The Connolly One!

There’s a very strong risk that I’m going to turn into some kind of boy who cried wolf, given that I have a tendency on these pages to describe THE LATEST NOVEL by A.N. Other Irish Author as his / her best yet. Two things about that: one, there’s not a lot else I can say if it’s the case - as I believe it is - that a goodly number of Irish crime writers are consistently upping their game with each passing book. Secondly, and with the caveat that I’m still only halfway through THE BURNING SOUL, John Connolly’s latest is an absolute stonker so far. A bittersweet paean to the state of Maine by way of an elegiac quality of poetry, flashes of Chandleresque homage, a riveting plot about child abduction against a backdrop of the murder of a young girl some two decades previously, all laced with Charlie Parker’s sulphurous wit - all of Connolly’s trademarks are here, along with a sense of coiled, tensile power bursting to escape the story’s seams. I’ve always been a fan of Connolly’s work, and made no secret of it; but this feels different, and in my (rarely) humble opinion, something of a step up onto another level.

  Of course, John Connolly was good enough to launch my own humble tome a couple of weeks back, so feel free to dismiss all of the above as log-rolling. It will be your loss, though.

  Anyway, THE BURNING SOUL will be officially launched in Eason’s, O’Connell Street in Dublin on August 29th, and all the details can be found here. Given the demand, the event is likely to be oversubscribed, but a little birdie informs me that free tickets - yep, that’s a recession-friendly free - can be booked in advance by emailing info@hbgi.ie. The evening’s entertainment will centre on a public interview with - unsurprisingly - John Connolly, conducted by our very own Arlene Hunt, which should make for a fairly lively conversation. I’m officially taking bets now as to which of the pair will manage to pack in the most indiscreet revelations …

A Blume By Any Other Name

I was mightily impressed with Conor Fitzgerald’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME, when it appeared last year. Domiciled in Rome for the past few decades, Fitzgerald writes about Commissario Alec Blume, an American-born, Rome-based police detective who has the insider’s track on Italian crime and an outsider’s eye for the good, bad and ugly in Italian life. A terrific thriller, THE DOGS OF ROME was notable for the elegance of its language, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to learn that Conor Fitzgerald is a pseudonym for Conor Deane, who is the son of the noted Irish poet, Seamus Deane.

  THE DOGS OF ROME, by the way, was last week shortlisted for a John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger by the Crime Writers’ Association.

  I sat down with Conor Fitzgerald a few weeks ago to interview him for the Sunday Independent, this to mark the publication of the second Alec Blume novel, THE FATAL TOUCH, and a very pleasant couple of hours it proved too. First let me say that, as fine a novel as THE DOGS OF ROME is, THE FATAL TOUCH represents something of a leap forward for Fitzgerald, even if it is only his second offering. My review of it is here, with the gist running thusly:

“Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.”

  Marilyn Stasio, writing in the New York Times, liked it too; clickety-click here for more …

  Anyway, what was particularly interesting about the interview, for me at least, was Conor Fitzgerald’s comment on how his writing career was influenced by his father, the poet - although not necessarily in the way you might expect. To wit:

“My father’s an extremely clever man, he really is,” says Conor, “but at some stage in his life he decided that the only things that were really interesting were detective novels and football […] In the pre-Amazon days, he used to send me books in the post. With poetry, for example, he’d always say, ‘This guy is very good, but ...’ and he’d make some observation, which could be political, or academic, literary, or simply in bad taste. With the crime novels, he’d just say, ‘This is brilliant’.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Gorgeous George And Me

Marshal Zeringue is one of the most tireless supporters of books and writers of all stripes and none, most famously with his Page 69 Test, and more recently for Writers Read and My Book, The Movie. My most recent contribution to Marshal’s roster of heroes and villains consists of my take on the My Book, My Movie casting of the hypothetical adaptation of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which starts out by asserting that only the multi-talented human rights advocate ‘Gorgeous George’ Clooney (one for the ladies, right) could play the part of the fictional ‘Declan Burke’ of AZC, and gets progressively more deluded / deranged from there. For all the details, clickety-click here …

  Elsewhere in AZC-related flummery, the good folk at Liberties Press were kind enough to upload a video of John Connolly mostly lying through this back teeth as he very kindly launched our humble tome on August 10th. Now, the vid starts off with the Dark Lord saying that he doesn’t usually do this kind of thing, for a variety of reasons; if I’d known that beforehand, I wouldn’t have asked him to do the honours, not least because I hate being put on the spot like that myself. True to form, however, JC not only did the honours, but did us and ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL proud in the process. Roll it there, Collette …

  Meanwhile, over at Seana Graham’s interweb lair, Not New For Long, there’s an impressively forensic review of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. It’s always nice when someone takes the time to read your book (and I’m still at the stage where I’m always surprised that someone has done so), but it’s particularly pleasing when said reader engages with the book in the kind of comprehensive fashion Seana has. It’s not the kind of review that lends itself to pull-out blurb-style quotes, but I am very impressed with the fact that Seana has managed to pack in references to Flann O’Brien, Dante, Mephistopheles, Adrian McKinty and James Joyce’s eye-patch. For all the skinny, clickety-click here …

  Finally, a quick word on my trek across the border to Norn Iron, and specifically to No Alibis, where David Torrans hosted a double-hander of yours truly and the aforementioned Adrian McKinty last Thursday night. A very enjoyable evening it was, too, with much scurrilous scuttlebutt being passed off as ‘insights into writing’ (koff), very little of which I could reproduce here without running the risk of being sued into oblivion (and which proved tame enough, as it happens, by comparison with the post-gig conversation carried out over the course and under the influence of a number of Pimms afterwards). Anyway, the good denizens of Belfast and surroundings came out in force, including a number of scribes, among them Stuart Neville, David Park, Andrew Pepper and Gerard Brennan. It was slightly unsettling that Stuart Neville chose to sit in the front row, particularly as the man is a runaway bestseller these days, but we survived the grilling nonetheless, and terrific fun it all was. Incidentally, for those of you in the general vicinity of Belfast, John Connolly and Alan Glynn will also be appearing at No Alibis, on September 1st, to promote THE BURNING SOUL and BLOODLAND, respectively. Should be a cracking night …

Bloodymarvellousland; and Gordon Burn

I mentioned during the week on ye olde Twittere that I’d finished Alan Glynn’s latest offering, BLOODLAND, suggesting that he really should have gone for broke and titled it BLOODYMARVELLOUSLAND. Which is to say, I thought it was terrific, a synthesis of the best elements of his previous offerings, THE DARK FIELDS and WINTERLAND. I’ll be reviewing said tome in due course, so I’ll say no more about it for now, except to say that it’s likely to be one of the finest crime novels published this year, and a very fine example of the classic conspiracy thriller.

  All of which is by way of a preamble to pointing you towards a nifty little piece Alan penned for The Huffington Post last week, in which he speculates on the rise of a new sub-genre, ‘pulp faction’. To wit:

In LIBRA, Don DeLillo’s imagined Oswald and Ruby are so convincing, so forensically delineated, that it almost feels like time travel. Other writers - James Ellroy, Eoin McNamee, David Peace - have done this, too, filtered real events through their fictional prisms, and to equally electrifying effect. But a different approach again was taken in 2008 by the late Gordon Burn in his stunning BORN YESTERDAY, which had the subtitle, ‘The News as a Novel’. In presenting us with the events of summer 2007, Burn makes nothing up. Rather, he conjures it all into a kaleidoscope, a surrealistic canvas of connections, a mediated meditation. With the events of summer 2011 now drifting by, it’s hard not to speculate what Burn might have done with the hacking scandal - with Murdoch, Brooks, Cameron, Sean Hoare, Milly Dowler, The Hour, the sidelined debt crisis, the sidelined famine . . . Oslo . . . Amy . . .

  For the rest of the piece, clickety-click here …

  This isn’t the first time the name of Gordon Burn has popped up on these pages, by the way, and if he’s good enough for Alan Glynn and David Peace, then he’s certainly good enough for me. If anyone else out there has anything further to offer on Gordon Burn, I’m all ears.

  Meanwhile, BORN YESTERDAY was recently released as an e-book. You can find all the details here …

Landy Ho!

I do like the subtitle / strap-line to Derek Landy’s latest Skulduggery Pleasant novel, DEATH BRINGER, which runs thusly: ‘Kicking Evil Very Hard in the Face’. Nice.

  Skulduggery Pleasant, of course, is the dead / undead / skeletal private eye who takes on all comers in the battle between Good and Evil, aided and abetted by his feisty sidekick, Valkyrie. At least, that was the story in the first book in the series, SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT, which established Derek Landy as a genre-busting writer of YA crime novels par excellence, and which I thoroughly enjoyed, not least for its subversive black humour.

  I’ve been busy in the intervening couple of years, so I haven’t really been keeping track of Skulduggery Pleasant, but it would appear that I’ve been nowhere as busy as Derek Landy, whose DEATH BRINGER is the sixth in the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Yep, sixth. Quoth the blurb elves:

The sixth instalment in the historic, hysterical and horrific Skulduggery Pleasant series. Think you’ve seen anything yet? You haven’t. Because the Death Bringer is about to rise … The Necromancers no longer need Valkyrie to be their Death Bringer, and that’s a Good Thing. There’s just one catch. There’s a reason the Necromancers don’t need her any more. And that’s because they’ve found their Death Bringer already, the person who will dissolve the doors between life and death. And that’s a Very, Very Bad Thing …

  So there you have it. Given the way my mind works, and that Skulduggery Pleasant and Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl tend to play both sides of the Good / Evil line, I can’t help wondering who would triumph in a YA literary smack-down. Hell, I may even toddle along to the Mountains to Sea Festival on Sunday, September 11, when Derek Landy will be holding forth on all things Pleasant and Skulduggerish, and ask that very question. For all the details on the event, clickety-click here …

La Hunt For Red-Letter October

Good news for modern man, and one woman in particular: Arlene Hunt’s latest offering, THE CHOSEN, is on its way. Interestingly, it’s not the latest in Arlene’s series of Sarah & John stories: it’s a standalone, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

On a scorching summer day Jessie Conway, a teacher at Rockville High, notices a car driving slowly around the school grounds. Twenty minutes later Jessie is fighting for her life and the town of Rockville is plunged into a living nightmare. But for Jessie the horror is just beginning. Traumatized and hounded by the media, she retreats to her home and tries to rebuild her shattered life. Meanwhile, Caleb Switch is bored. A skilled and diligent killer, his recent selections have disappointed him. When he loses a target through haste he is furious and begins to doubt his abilities. That is until he turns his attention to Jessie Conway, hero teacher. Struggling to hold on to her marriage and her sanity, Jessie has no idea that she has become The Chosen.

  Appetite whetted? Yes? Well, this little encomium should sharpen it even further:

“A taut, sharp, gripping re-imagining of the serial killer novel.” - Tana French

  Nice. Most interesting of all, I think, is that THE CHOSEN marks something of a radical departure for Arlene, given that the novel will be released by her own publishing company, Portnoy Publishing. For all the skinny on that, clickety-click here …

  THE CHOSEN is due on a shelf near you on October 17th, which will, given the cover, be an appropriately red-letter day for both Arlene and independent Irish publishing. But hey, why wait? Feel free to pre-order your copy here …

Absolute Zero Cool: ‘Serious As The World Series’, Apparently

It’s been a very strange week, folks. The good vibes for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL have continued to seep in through the ether, with which I am well pleased, as you can imagine, particularly as the Irish Times and Irish Independent were so generous in their reviews last weekend (sample AZC cover blushing furiously, right). It’s also gratifying to see a book that took so long to get published, mainly because many publishers made the decision that readers wouldn’t ‘get’ the story, receive so many early positive reviews.

  For my part, I don’t ‘get’ why so many publishers felt that readers wouldn’t ‘get’ the book. AZC is a pretty straightforward story, a black comedy about a hospital porter who decides to blow up ‘his’ hospital. Yes, it pokes a bit of fun at literary conventions of all stripes, but that class of a malarkey is almost as old as the novel itself, the classic example being our old friend Tristram Shandy, the first volumes of which were first published in 1759. Yes, it’s fair to say, as Rob Kitchin does in his review over at The Blue House, that ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL won’t be for everybody; but then, what book is? But the assumption made by publishers that readers aren’t interested / smart enough / self-challenging enough to read anything that doesn’t conform to exactly everything they’ve read in the past is to my mind lazy at best, and prejudiced at worst.

  Anyway, on to the reviews that have popped up on the interweb in the last few days. First up, the aforementioned Rob Kitchin over at The View From the Blue House, a fine author himself and a reader who has proved himself a quietly astute observer of the crime novel over the last couple of years*. Quoth Rob:

“Satire and high art meets screwball noir … The result is a very clever book, that’s at once fun and challenging. The prose and plot has been honed within an inch of its life, full of lovely turns of phrases, philosophical depth and keen observational insight … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL takes the crime genre and its many tropes and stereotypes and throws them out the window. It’s a genuinely unique tale … Five stars all the way for me.” - Rob Kitchin

  Meanwhile, Malcolm Berry, also an author, has this to say at his interweb lair The Foulks Rebellion:

“My point is, there is room for that, and there is increasing room for super-consciousness, post-rational literature -- particularly in our post-rational world -- along the lines of Woyzeck, Bertold Brecht, Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, and others. Most recently, Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. My kind of book. Maybe it could be called Gonzolit. Serious as the World Series, clean as Van Gogh’s ear surgery, worthy of our times.” - Malcolm Berry

  ‘Serious as the World Series’? Now that’s what I call a cover blurb …

  Finally, fellow Irish scribe Frank McGrath was good enough to post his review of AZC to the Amazon.com Kindle page, where the gist of his spake runs thusly:

“This is not a ‘crime’ book in the normal sense of having a detective, a killer and an easy to follow plot. It is a stunningly beautiful and achingly funny work which probes the type of existential questions raised by works like NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Dostoyevsky, and works by Sartre, Camus (THE PLAGUE), Kafka, and Ireland’s Beckett and Flann O’Brien.” - Frank McGrath

  Now, those three gentlemen bandy around some fairly heavyweight names, but the one word which keeps popping up, and which I’m most delighted about is, ‘fun’. Because you can be as serious as you want about writing books, in terms of the craft and whatever it is you have to say, but ultimately, if a book isn’t enjoyable to read, what’s the point? Life’s too short to spend grinding through some eminently worthy but excruciating dull text.

  Finally, a quick reminder to any Belfast readers out there that I’ll be appearing at No Alibis this evening, at 6pm, in the company of Adrian McKinty. Being honest, and unless I win the lottery between now and 6pm, the double-hander with McKinty will be the highlight of my week. See you there …

  * Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?



UPDATE: Frank McGrath’s kind words appear to have disappeared from the Amazon page since yesterday. Um, Frank? Any ideas? Anyone?

Soul Trader

As anyone who has attended any of his events will attest, John Connolly is something of a one-man three-ring circus when it comes to his public appearances. Which makes for a refreshing change from when most writers, yours truly included, step into the limelight, and the ‘entertainment’ generally runs as follows: “Thanks for coming, cough, mumble, insert-name-of-book-here, rhubarb, the support of my wife / husband, cough, erm, ah, copies to be signed, I thank you all.” Connolly, on the other hand, looks born to a life treading the boards when he takes centre-stage, although as with most things writing-related, I’d imagine that it’s years of hard graft that makes it all look so easy and comfortable.

  Anyway, the point behind that preamble is that John Connolly will be appearing at Eason’s on O’Connell Street, Dublin, on August 29th, for a public interview, the purpose of which is to officially launch his latest Charlie Parker tome, THE BURNING SOUL. Quoth the blurb elves:

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 . . .

  There’s no word yet as to who will be conducting the interview, by the way, although it’s probably fair to say, and with all due respect, that it doesn’t really matter. The event is free, by the way, although I’d imagine that it’ll be heavily booked in advance; my advice is to book early, and book often …

  For those of you residing in Norn Iron, by the way, John Connolly will be appearing at No Alibis a couple of days later, on September 1st, in tandem with Alan Glynn, who launches BLOODLAND later in the month, on September 13th, in the Gutter Bookshop. More of which anon, although given that I’m about 60 pages short of finishing BLOODLAND, let me just say that it’s Alan Glynn’s finest novel yet, which isn’t bad going considering his previous offerings were the excellent THE DARK FIELDS and WINTERLAND. Put it in your diary now; it should be a cracking night …

  As mentioned previously on these pages, by the way, the launch of THE BURNING SOUL kicks off a very impressive run of Irish crime offerings, from the likes of Alan Glynn, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville and Ava McCarthy. For more, clickety-click here …

A Name To Be Reckoned With

There’s been some very nice reviews of Jane Casey’s THE RECKONING over the last couple of weekends, which have only served to whet my appetite. I’ve been looking forward to THE RECKONING ever since I finished THE BURNING, Jane’s second novel, with which I was mightily impressed when I read it late last year. And Jane’s debut novel, THE MISSING, was shortlisted for the Irish Crime Fiction Novel of the Year.

  Anyway, first out of the traps was Kevin Sweeney in the Irish Times, who - after a very odd preamble designed to establish his ‘credentials’ (i.e., crime fiction is virtually all schlock writing) - had this to say two weeks ago:

“THE RECKONING, the third novel in a series about a rookie female Irish homicide detective in London, stands out from the pack as both a twisty, well-crafted mystery and as a humanistic portrait of an ambitious professional with a strong moral centre.” - Kevin Sweeney

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

  Meanwhile, over at the Irish Independent last weekend, Irish crime fiction’s best friend, aka Myles McWeeney, pitched up with this two cents:

“How Maeve [Kerrigan] faces these challenges makes for a satisfyingly tension-filled, page-rifling read that comes with the added bonus of beautifully realised characters and elegant prose. THE RECKONING is Jane Casey’s third Maeve Kerrigan novel in less than two years, and with it she moves effortlessly into the pantheon of top Irish female crime writers, a list that includes Tana French, Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt and Niamh O’Connor.” - Myles McWeeney

  For the rest, you know what to do …

  So there you have it. Jane Casey’s THE RECKONING. Another major Irish talent to be - oh yes! - reckoned with …

How Cool It Was, How Cool …

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for rattling on about ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL yet again, but there has been a flurry of activity - by my standards, at least - surrounding the book since it launched last Wednesday, when Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes and Alan Glynn (right, righter and rightest) were among those to make it along to the Gutter Bookshop (and yes, that is the Dark Lord, aka John Connolly, skulking menacingly in the background).

  First up, there were two very interesting reviews indeed on Saturday, from the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. If I’m perfectly honest, I’m still a little bit stunned by the reaction; you do hope for decent reviews (well, any reviews at all, really) when your book appears, but those two were far beyond anything I’d let myself hope for. Sample quote: “ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL isn’t quite like anything you’ve ever read, in any genre.” For the full skinny, clickety-click here …

  Also on Saturday, the Evening Herald was good enough to publish an interview with yours truly, which was terrific in itself, but had the added bonus of being published under the header ‘Paint It Black’, which just so happens to be my favourite Stones track. Coincidence? I think so. For the interview, clickety-click here …

  Another interview, this one of the radio variety, comes courtesy of the good folk at RTE’s Arena programme, which was actually broadcast on the night of the book’s launch. Sean Rocks asks the questions, and the considerably-less-than-dulcet tones of yours truly can be heard doing their best not to make a complete hames of answering. One click takes you there …

  Meanwhile, the team at writing.ie hosts yet another interview with me, and thanks kindly to them. That interview, by the way, comes with a bonus of offering the opportunity to win a free copy of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. For the interview, click here; if you want to bypass my blatherings and go straight for the freebie, clickety-click here …

  Lastly, but by no means leastly, the venerable Dana King conducts an interview with a difference over at One Bite At A Time, which opens up with allegations of a SWAT team arriving to break up the AZC launch on Wednesday night, and goes downhill rapidly from there. If you’re interested, you know what to do …

You, Me And Ireland’s Answer To James Ellroy

Recently described as ‘Ireland’s more accessible answer to James Ellroy’ by Laura Wilson at The Guardian, Adrian McKinty (right) makes a rare appearance on these shores next Thursday evening at the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. To wit:

No Alibis are very pleased to invite you to celebrate the launch of Declan Burke’s latest novel, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and FALLING GLASS, the latest novel from Adrian McKinty, in the shop on Thursday 18th August at 6:00 PM.

  Adrian McKinty, as all Three Regular Readers will be well aware, is a firm favourite on these pages, mainly because he has a very good habit of writing very good books. The latest is FALLING GLASS, which I reviewed recently on Crime Always Pays; his previous offering, FIFTY GRAND, was longlisted earlier this summer for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In short, the man is a terrific writer, and given that he currently resides on the other side of the planet, the No Alibis gig is a welcome opportunity to hear him read in person.

  Doing his manly best to play Falstaff to McKinty’s Prince Hal will be yours truly, and delighted and humbled I most certainly am to be invited to the hallowed halls of No Alibis to celebrate the launch of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. David Torrans, the legendary and possibly even semi-mythic owner of No Alibis, was good enough to micro-manage the Northern Ireland launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS a couple of months ago, this in conjunction with the Belfast Literary Festival. A terrific evening it was, too, not least because I got to meet David Peace, although the one disappointment for me was that the event wasn’t actually held in No Alibis. I’d twice stood outside a closed No Alibis prior to that evening, not unlike a book-nerd Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, pretty much pawing at the glass frontage and drooling at the very fine offerings within. On the evening of the GREEN STREETS launch, I finally got to step inside the door; a very pleasant experience, even if we were all very quickly whisked away to the GREEN STREETS event.

  Anyway, it’ll be nice to actually do a gig at No Alibis. There’s a rites-of-passage aspect to it, or a kind of anointing; you’re no one, really, in this Irish crime writing game until your weedy voice has strained for profundity under the No Alibis rafters. The fact that it’ll happen in the company of Adrian McKinty isn’t so much a bonus as a gift.

  Tickets are free, by the way, and all the booking details can be found here …

Billy The Id Rides Again

Well, it can only go downhill from here. The launch of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL during the week was terrific fun, and this morning the first print reviews hove into sight, injecting yet another blast of adrenaline into what has already been something of a hi-octane week. First off, Kevin Power over at the Irish Times, under the very cute headline, ‘The Metafictional Adventures of Billy the Id’:

“Thus begins a fascinating hybrid of MISERY, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, and who knows what else … There’s a thematic richness, and a level of stylistic control, to ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL that makes it soar. Far from being ‘just’ a cleverly postmodern crime novel, this book is, among other things, a meditation on the writing life; a parable about terrorism; a bleak satire of the Irish healthcare system; and a fable about life, death and family responsibility … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL isn’t quite like anything else you’ve read, in any genre. It’s clever, intimate, passionate, and funny: altogether a wonderful achievement.” - Irish Times

  Stephen King, Flann O’Brien and John Fowles? Those burbling sounds you hear are yours truly trying to mumble my thanks whilst struggling to cope with being about two fathoms out of my depth. For the full review, clickety-click here …

  Meanwhile, over at the Irish Independent, Edel Coffey is in equally generous mood. To wit:

“What is most refreshing about Burke’s book is its ambition. It is rare that a so-called genre book attempts to wrest free of its constraints and do something entirely different. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a genre-buster. Clever, funny, challenging, surreal, unexpected and entirely original.” - Irish Independent

  For the full review, clickety-click here …

  So there you have it. I genuinely don’t know what to say to all that, and it’s probably best if I say nowt - people in shock do tend to say the daftest things. For your usual ration of garrulous non sequiturs, tune back in tomorrow, by which time normal service should have resumed …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Johnny Shaw

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?

It’s a tie between THE LAST GOOD KISS by James Crumley and THE LONG-LEGGED FLY by James Sallis. THE LAST GOOD KISS was one of the first books that showed me that a crime novel could have a grounded emotional story and still be fun. And as far as Sallis goes, you might as well put every book up there. Jim Sallis (he said I could call him Jim and I have the email to prove it) is truly in his own league.



What fictional character would you most like to have been?

My favorite characters aren’t people I’d want to be. They’re too messed up or violent or flawed. Great characters like Lew Griffin, Nick Stefanos, Cal Innes, Jack Carter, Hoke Moseley, etc., just don’t have fulfilling lives. So I guess I’m going to have to go with Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. At the very least, sociopaths can just get more done in the course of a day.



Who do you read for guilty pleasures?

You’re interviewing a guy who still buys Iron Maiden albums the day they come out. In terms of pleasures, I’m not capable of guilt. However, I will admit to a soft spot for men’s serial adventures of the ’70s & ’80s. And I’m not talking the A-list books like The Executioner, Remo Williams, or Nick Carter. I really dig the second and third tier characters like The Pusher, The Revenger, The Penetrator, and The Butcher. I mean, how can you go wrong with a book starring The Swamp Master (set in a post-apocalyptic Cajun hell—Look it up!)? I’m actually in the process of setting up an online magazine devoted to new short stories in the same vein as these characters. It’s called BLOOD & TACOS. Retro, but with new characters and new stories. As well as, reviews of some of the original paperbacks.



Most satisfying writing moment?

Writing a really great pub quiz question. I used to write pub quizzes on the side for fun and money. A good question was answerable, but required some thought on the part of the player. Sadly, it’s probably my best writing medium. Here is one of my best questions: What Academy Award-winning movie’s title is a homonym for two different sounds made by asses? (The answer is at the bottom)



The best Irish crime novel is …?

I’m sure that half the people you interview give this answer, but I’m going to have to go with THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (I believe it was titled THE TWELVE over there) by Stuart Neville. It’s just a damn good book.



What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?

Adrian McKinty’s DEAD I WELL MAY BE. The pace and scope lends itself to a movie. It’s action-driven with just enough character to keep it grounded. The scenes are very cinematic and as you read, you can just see the whole thing. McKinty writes a mean violence.



Worst / best thing about being a writer?

The best and worst thing about writing is that I have no one to complain to. While I have real-life problems just like anyone else, the problems that come with writing are enviable in comparison. If the worst part of my day is that I wrote a bunch of crap pages or some reviewer didn’t like my book or I’m pissy about some marketing thing, then that’s a good day. I’ve had real problems, and brother, writing ain’t one of them.



The pitch for your next book is …?

A dying man might ask for anything: forgiveness, a compassionate ear, a cold glass of water. Jimmy Veeder's father asked him for a Mexican prostitute. DOVE SEASON: A JIMMY VEEDER FIASCO is a contemporary crime novel set on both sides of the Mexican border. It has been twelve years since Jimmy set foot in the desert. But as his father's cancer spreads, Jimmy returns to share what little time they have left. He never expected to be sent into the Mexicali underworld in search of a hooker named Yolanda. With the help of an erratic-at-best childhood friend and too much beer, Jimmy stumbles among the violent, the exploited and the corrupted. The investigation and the events that follow ultimately force Jimmy to confront family secrets and question everything he held to be true about his father.



Who are you reading right now?

I’m just starting Charlie Williams’ BOOZE AND BURN (originally published as FAGS AND LAGER), the second Royston Blake book. We have the same publisher, so I was stoked (chuffed, for your readers) to get advance copies. After that, depending on reading obligations, I’ve got I WAS LOOKING FOR A STREET by Charles Willeford and KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED by Craig Johnson on the top of the stack.



God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?

Read. Reading is pleasure. Writing is work.



The three best words to describe your own writing are …?

“Drinky. Fighty. Fun.” Oh, and the answer to the quiz question is: Braveheart (Bray-Fart).



Johnny Shaw’s DOVE SEASON is published by Amazon Encore.

ZERO Plus One

It’s all gone a bit Declan Burke on these pages for the last couple of weeks, for which I must apologise to the Three Regular Readers - please bear with me, and normal-ish service will be resumed. But then, it’s not often I get to publish a book, or more accurately have one published on my behalf, which is what officially occurred last night at the Gutter Bookshop in Dublin, when Liberties Press released ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL into the wild.

  A very nice night it was too, and no one had an eye out, at least not to the best of my knowledge. The big revelation of the night was that John Connolly, when he hits form, lies not only through his teeth but through every pore of his body. That said, it was very nice to hear the very nice things he said as he launched our humble offering, especially as the Gutter Bookshop was thronged with friends and family who might have been a tad concerned that this whole writing malarkey was a complete waste of time. For me, at least. Anyway, the Dark Lord was joined by others of the Irish writing fraternity, past, present and future, including Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Alan Glynn, Joe Joyce, Gene Kerrigan, Frank McGrath, John Kelly, Rob Kitchen, Alan Monaghan, Seamus Smyth, Ed O’Loughlin, KT McCaffrey and John Banville. The cockles of my heart were fairly toasted by the time it was all over, and heartfelt thanks to everyone who turned out to lend their support.

  What’s rare is wonderful, which makes the publication of one of my books particularly wonderful, to yours truly if no one else. That said, the good vibes emanating from a room full of family and friends made the evening even more special. An evening to treasure, absolutely, and thanks to everyone from far and near who sent texts, emails, tweets and all manner of communications to wish us well. You were there in spirit, folks.

  I’ve had quite a few queries about the availability of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL in e-format, by the way, and last night also marked the official launch of the e-friendly version of the book. For those of you interested, the links are here:

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL e-book on Amazon.uk



ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL e-book on Amazon.us

  So there you have it: AZC, very shortly to alight on a shelf near you. All we can do now is wish it a bon voyage, a fair wind and gentle beachings …

On Doing It For The Kids

There’s a scene in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie in which - spoiler alert - the main character, the hyper-intelligent chimpanzee Caesar (played by Andy Serkis), speaks. It’s a dramatic moment, as you can imagine, although I did think the filmmakers were over-egging the pudding unnecessarily: language and speech separates humans from every other species on the planet, but verbal communication isn’t a function of intelligence only; it also depends on physical evolution, and the development of the vocal tract, which took a couple of million years in the pre-human species.

  What’s undeniable, though, is the crucial importance of speech, language and storytelling to the human race. Not long ago, an Irish Minister for Education made a pronouncement along the lines of a child deprived of books and storytelling is in effect an abused child. The words he used were a bit strong, I think, but I agree with the sentiment: every child should be exposed to books, language and storytelling from as early an age as possible. At its most basic level, a mastery of communication is essential to function in the world. For those to take to it, however, and thrive on words and stories, it’s a doorway into another world entirely, and a way of seeing the world - and in theory infinite worlds - in a whole new dimension.

  And so Lily and I trotted off to our local library a few weeks ago for the very first time, and delighted I was to discover that being three years old was no bar on her joining the library; indeed, there’s no minimum age at all. Lily has loved books for quite a while now (any kind of storytelling, actually; she’s as happy watching a princess movie on TV as she is reading), although it does make her a little sad that Daddy’s books are ‘broken’ - i.e., that they’re all words, and no pictures ...

  I have no idea of how far Lily’s love of books and stories will take her. Maybe it’s just a phase she’s going through, and she’ll grow out of it. But it’s only in retrospect that I realised that my own home was fairly stuffed with books when I was a child, and that reading stories, and being told stories, was so commonplace as to be unremarkable at the time. Part of me wishes that she engages so fully with books, language and stories that she grows up to write her own, because to my mind there’s no finer way to waste your life; although part of me, too, hopes she doesn’t, because there can be a lot of lonely heartbreak involved. Still, on this day, which is a Red Letter Day for yours truly, with my latest tome being officially launched, all I can say is that books matter far more than whether or not one more writer or less gets his book published. What matters more than anything, I think, is that the wonderful world of words and language and stories is made available to our kids. Sweet dreams, Boopster …

ZERO Minus One

The Big Day dawns tomorrow, said day being the launch date of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and yea, verily, I’m bricking it. Hard to say why, really; at this stage, the book is what it is, and no amount of fretting is going to make it a better book. Also, anyone who turns up to the launch is very likely to be there in support mode, and anyway there’s a strict policy of no little boys allowed, lest one of them starts shouting about the emperor and his radical sartorial minimalism.

  No, it’ll all be okay on the night, once I get past the speechifying part. The idea of rambling aloud about AZC in front of a group of peers, friends and family is bowel-loosening enough, but the bit where I’ll be obliged to read some of AZC aloud? The horror, the horror …

  Anyway, there’s been a few nice snippets of promo on the interweb over the last week, quite apart from all the very generous folk who were good enough to plug the book’s publication. First up is The Sligo Champion, my hometown paper of record, who ran a short interview with yours truly, which can be found here. That’s a particularly nice buzz because, apart from having a poem published in a school magazine, my first experience of being published was in the Sligo Champion, for which I wrote up reports of junior football matches from the age of 16 onwards, a task only slightly complicated by the fact that I was generally playing in the games I wrote about.

  Meanwhile, Marshal Zeringue was good enough to ask me to submit ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL to the Page 69 Test, in which an author looks at pg 69 of his or her tome, and asks if it’s representative of the rest of the novel. A nifty notion, and you can find the results here …

  Over at Pulp Pusher, the rather fine Scottish writer and sex god Tony Black was kind enough to ask me to contribute to the ongoing series, ‘Every Day I Write the Book’, in which a writer details his experience of writing over a particular week. Somehow Steven Hawking, the Blue Nile and a serial killer stalking himself across multiple parallel universes got into the mix. You can find the results here …

  Elsewhere, Writing.ie is currently hosting an extract from AZC, said extract comprising what in most books would consist of the first chapter, even if AZC resolutely refuses to conform to such bourgeois concepts as ‘chapters’. If you’d like a flavour of what AZC is all about, feel free to clickety-click here …

  And that’s about it. The launch, by the way, for those of you who aren’t the Three Regular Readers, takes place in the Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin, at 6.30pm on Wednesday, August 10th. All are welcome, and John Connolly has agreed to give the event a scintilla of respectability by saying a few words before AZC is finally unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

  As for the book itself, well, the jacket copy runs thusly:

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” – John Banville, author of THE SEA



Who in their right mind would want to blow up a hospital?

  “Close it down, blow it up – what’s the difference?”

  Billy Karlsson needs to get real. Literally. A hospital porter with a sideline in euthanasia, Billy is a character trapped in the purgatory of an abandoned novel. Deranged by logic, driven beyond sanity, Billy makes his final stand: if killing old people won’t cut the mustard, the whole hospital will have to go up in flames.

  Only his creator can stop him now, the author who abandoned Billy to his half-life limbo, in which Billy schemes to do whatever it takes to get himself published, or be damned . . .



“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is unlike anything else you’ll read this year … Laugh-out-loud funny … This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone … a feat of extraordinary alchemy.” – Ken Bruen, author of AMERICAN SKIN

A Joke Before The War

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I interviewed Dennis Lehane in a public Q&A at Eason’s in Dublin, and terrific fun it was, too. Earlier that morning, I also sat down with Lehane over breakfast, interviewing him for the Irish Times. The result kicks off thusly:

If anyone is still wondering whether Ireland is closer to Boston or Berlin, Dennis Lehane suggests that a certain kind of black humour provides the answer.
  “Boston’s Irish,” says Lehane, the Boston-born son of a Cork father and Galway mother. “Irish-American, okay, but Irish. So the Boston humour, it’s the sense that you might just want to comment on the fact that the world’s going to screw you, just before the world screws you. That makes it easier.”
  Raised in South Boston, Lehane is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of THE GIVEN DAY (2008), MYSTIC RIVER (2001) and SHUTTER ISLAND (2003). The latter two novels were successfully adapted for the screen by Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, respectively, while Ben Affleck directed Lehane’s GONE, BABY, GONE. That book was one of a series of novels featuring private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, the most recent of which is 2011’s MOONLIGHT MILE.
  Over breakfast at the Merrion Hotel, Lehane is a warmly engaging font of anecdotes and forthright opinions, his no-nonsense approach to the craft of writing echoed in his considered responses and unaffectedly flat Boston vowels. For a man who has achieved at the age of 45 the kind of success most writers can only dream of, Lehane’s roots remain firmly buried in South Boston, his Irish heritage and particularly that sense of gallows humour.
  “My wife’s Italian, okay?” he says. “And she just doesn’t understand our people at all (laughs). It’s the Irish thing of, y’know, we’re not going to talk to a psychologist about our problems, we’re just going to make a joke and move on. Because it ain’t getting better. Whereas my wife will sit there and talk with her family, usually with their hands, about a situation for hours. And then she’ll be like, ‘Honey, what do you think about it?’ ‘Well, what I thought about it five hours ago.’ (laughs) I think what I love about where I grew up is that the people were terribly funny. And in a very caustic, off-hand way. And Patrick [Kenzie] has that sense of humour. The reason I was really happy to go back to Patrick and Angie with MOONLIGHT MILE was I missed telling jokes. I’d gone ten years without telling jokes in the work.”

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