A Critical Juncture

Another day, yet another Irish crime writing debutant. CRITICAL VALUE by DC Gogan comes to my attention via the good works of Bryan Roche over at the Irish Crime Writing Facebook page, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

A research project on homicidal fantasies ...
A murdered woman in the largest university in Ireland ...
Does a psychology student’s thesis hold the key to catching a killer?

Adam Twohig is in his final year of Psychology at University College Dublin. He never settled into the college lifestyle, never plugged into the social scene, and never excelled at his studies. Which is why he’s puzzled when Greg Taylor comes to him looking for help with his thesis.

Greg is studying the homicidal fantasies of UCD students, getting hundreds of written accounts of students’ darkest, murderous desires. When high-profile Entertainments Officer Christine Harvey is savagely murdered, the investigating detective wants access to his data. At first Adam thinks that the police are clutching at straws, but another murder on campus draws him deeper into the investigation.

The secrets buried in Greg’s data force Adam into an unlikely alliance between the Irish police and two FBI agents on the hunt for a serial killer, and put him and his friends in the sights of a murderer whose depravity seems to stand outside everything Adam knows about human psychology.

  Sounds intriguing, not least because it’s been quite a while - when Cormac Millar last deigned to grace us with his presence, basically - since we’ve had a good old-fashioned campus novel.
  What’s most interesting to me, though, is that it’s still only June and I’ve already seen or heard of eleven - now twelve - Irish crime writing debuts. Some are traditionally published, others are e-book only, one - Seamus Scanlon’s - is a collection of short stories; but regardless of format or form, 2012 marks something significant in the development of the Irish crime novel.
  To the best of my knowledge, the list of Irish crime debutants in 2012 runs as follows:

A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS by Conor Brady;
BLOOD FROM A SHADOW by Gerard Cappa;
GHOST TOWN by Michael Clifford;
EL NINO by Mick Donnellan;
CRITICAL VALUE by DC Gogan;
THE FALL by Claire McGowan;
EVEN FLOW by Darragh McManus;
BLOOD RED TURNS DOLLAR GREEN by Paul O'Brien;
THE ISTANBUL PUZZLE by Laurence O’Bryan;
RED RIBBONS by Louise Phillips;
DISAPPEARED by Anthony Quinn;
AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE by Seamus Scanlon.

  If I’ve missed out on anyone, or if you have a novel on the way later in the year, please drop me a line and I’ll include you on the list.
  Meanwhile, Louise Phillips (crimescenewriter@gmail.com) is putting together a series of features on debutant Irish crime writers for the writing.ie site. If you’re a new Irish crime writer, why not drop over to writing.ie and introduce yourself? I’m sure she’d be delighted to hear from you.

Review: THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway

THE NAMELESS DEAD (Macmillan) is the fifth in Brian McGilloway’s Donegal-set series to feature Garda Detective Ben Devlin. He is also the author of a standalone novel, LITTLE GIRL LOST (2011).
  Whilst investigating a tip-off on the small island of Islandmore, in the middle of the River Foyle, the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains discovers the body of a man believed to have been murdered by the IRA some thirty years before. They also turn up a number of other corpses, those of infants, all of whom appear to have suffered from a condition that would have killed them at birth - apart from one, which appears to have been strangled to death.
  Detective Inspector Ben Devlin, operating out of Lifford on the border with Northern Ireland, wants to investigate the death of the strangled infant. Unfortunately, the legislation is crystal-clear: any evidence uncovered by the CLVR cannot lead to prosecution.
  Devlin, a devout Catholic and a family man, refuses to allow the matter to rest, determined that the infant, and those others buried with it, will not be left in the limbo of the nameless dead …
  Brian McGilloway has established a strong reputation in recent years as a thoughtful, intelligent crime novelist whose stories, set on the border - between Lifford and Strabane and the Republic and Northern Ireland, but between old and new Ireland too - are told with a quiet authority.
  One of the most interesting features of his novels is that Devlin is the antithesis of the traditional crime fiction policeman, who tends to be dysfunctional, alcoholic, haunted by demons, and a loner.
  Devlin, by contrast, is a happily married man with a quiet but strong religious faith, who works well as part of a team, and particularly with his peer on the other side of the border, the PSNI’s Jim Hendry. These characteristics feed into how the Devlin novels evolve: Devlin is doggedly in pursuit of rightness and justice not simply as theories or philosophies, but because he believes that it is in their observance that society functions best.
  Naturally, as a policeman, Devlin tends to see society at its worst; as a novelist, McGilloway crafts his stories so that the political is very much personal for Devlin, as various aspects of investigations impact on his own family home, and Devlin is forced to question his own morality. For example, when his daughter is physically assaulted by a teenage thug, everyone - his peers, his daughter, his wife - expects Devlin to break the law in order to revenge his daughter. Can he allow himself do that and still exert moral power in his own home, and in his own conscience?
  What sets THE NAMELESS DEAD apart, however, is its subject matter: the fate of the ‘nameless dead’, the forgotten infants, one of which is murdered, gives the novel an elegiac tone, and a poignant one; there were a number of times when I found myself reading with a lump in my throat.
  The Ian Rankin-esque title is fully deserved: THE NAMELESS DEAD is one of the most insightful and affecting novels you’ll read this year. - Declan Burke

If The Cappa Fits, Wear Him

Chalk up another on the ever lengthening list of Irish crime writers. For lo! Gerard Cappa gets in touch to tip us off about his debut offering, BLOOD FROM A SHADOW, which sounds like a very contemporary thriller indeed. Quoth the blurb elves:

2012. War weary Americans hail the endgame in Iraq and Afghanistan. But al Qaeda must avenge Bin Laden with a new 9/11. And the old enemy, Iran, teases towards nuclear capability. So the war on terror continues, but it must be kept in the shadows now. The Presidential machines cannot allow a mistake, there is an election to be won. Con Maknazpy is weary too, still searching for his own peace. A hero in his native New York’s famous 69th Regiment, he just wants to retreat into the shadows of the streets he knows so well. But Maknazpy is no ordinary man: he has been anointed with destiny. It’s in his blood and in the shadows of his soul. And the ghosts of the past and the future mark out that destiny, in blood. Blood that takes him to Ireland, Rome and Istanbul before he finds his own truth in the shadows of his Yonkers childhood. Maknazpy’s destiny is to be a savior, but can he save himself?

BLOOD FROM A SHADOW is an Irish-American story, and that history and culture is threaded through the tale, but the frame of reference owes as much to more modern influences. Think Jim Thompson, James M Cain and Chester Himes. Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor and Bodyheat. Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects. Where reality is created from confusion and lies, and the hero is always the last to know.

  Sounds like an absolute belter, if it delivers on that set-up. Has anyone out there read it? If so, you know where to find us …

Jeeves? The Luger

The Glebe ‘Cultural Summit’ takes place in Donegal next month, as part of the Earagail Arts Festival, incorporating discussions on books, film and ‘the Next Door Neighbours’ - i.e., the relationship between Ireland and Britain.
  It all takes place at Glebe House and Gallery, a rather lovely little spot on the fringe of Glenveagh National Park. The former home of artist Derek Hill, the house is now maintained as a museum by Heritage Ireland. We were there a couple of weeks ago, and got the guided tour - there’s a Picasso, a Renoir, a beautiful Evie Hone, and much more - although the artist that caught my eye was John Craxton, whose ‘Shepherds Near Knossos’ decorates this post, and about whom you will be hearing more of in my next novel.
  But I digress. Its title apart, which has me instinctively reaching for my Luger, the ‘Glebe Cultural Summit’ has a very nice array of Irish talent on board. Peter Murphy, Mary Costello and Paul Lynch engage in a discussion called ‘New Irish Writing - Post-Boom Narratives’; director Lenny Abrahamson is interviewed in ‘Storytelling on Film’, with a particular stress on the forthcoming What Richard Did, which is adapted from Kevin Power’s very fine novel BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK; and a trio of our finest crime scribes, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes and Paul Charles, take part in ‘The Rise of Irish Crime Fiction’.
  For all the details, and how to book tickets, clickety-click here …

Hark! What Ancient Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

It’s a busy old summer for Jongamin Blanville. As John Banville, he publishes ANCIENT LIGHT next month, on July 5th; meanwhile, the latest Benjamin Black novel, VENGEANCE, has been garnering some very nice reviews indeed. To wit:

“The story is engaging. Instinctively, the reader knows what to expect, and still is surprised. The liquid precision of the writing presents convincing characters. It renders the drama of their lives as strangely matter-of-fact while fully illuminating the forces at work. We are deftly led through a complex entanglement of charged but often spent relationships. There is a blunt empathy with the principal characters that is curiously affecting. Effortlessly, it would seem, and never wanting, Banville’s description of the physical world is superb.” - Philip Davison, Irish Times

“Warring families, spinster sisters, jealous husbands, betrayed wives, wicked step-mothers, identical twins -- these are the stuff of comedy and tragedy from Plautus onwards (and they were not original to him either).
  “The great ‘French polisher of Italian farce’, aka Shakespeare, traded in similar plots. After wringing our hearts with his star-crossed lovers, he rewrote the play as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is not the plot that counts, it is how it is presented.
[Benjamin] Black is a master of presentation. The nudges and the winks, the red herrings and the wool-pullings are all consummately done.” - Gerry Dukes, Irish Independent

  So there you have it. Plautus via Shakespeare, no less, for Benjamin Black. God only knows how ANCIENT LIGHT will be received …

Jane Says

I had an interview with Jane Casey (right) published in the Sunday Business Post a couple of weeks ago - there’s no link, I’m afraid, so I’ve republished the piece in its entirety here. To wit:

It is one of literature’s great tragedies that not every writer can manage to look like a wig-wearing bag.
  “I always get comments about not looking or sounding like a crime writer when I do events,” says Jane Casey. “I haven’t yet managed to find out how I should look and sound. Agatha Christie looked like a bag with a wig on it, after all.
  “It’s not a comment that I mind, much,” she continues. “But I did an event last year where I was reading with three other authors, all male, and I thought that in comparison to them I sounded like I was reading a school project. So maybe I still need to work on the gravitas.”
  THE LAST GIRL is Jane Casey’s fourth novel, and the third to feature her series heroine Maeve Kerrigan. London-born to Irish parents, Maeve is a Detective Constable with the London Metropolitan Murder Squad.
  Born and raised in Ireland, now living in London, Jane got the highest mark in English in her Leaving Certificate year, and received a medal to mark the achievement from Seamus Heaney. She read English at Oxford (where she would read crime novels whilst supposedly writing her thesis on Beowulf in the Bodleian Library) before completing a MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature at Trinity College, Dublin.
  Given her classical education, what was it about the crime novel that drew her to write in the genre?
  “I can’t think of anything more telling about society than what we hold to be criminal acts,” she says. “Crimes occur because of how people live and how they relate to one another, essentially, which is the basis of literature. Go back to the start of literature itself and you find one of the first dramas, Oedipus, is based on the crime of patricide and its aftermath. Within the parameters of the genre you can write about more or less anything because crimes occur at every level of society.
  “Some of the sharpest social commentary can be found in crime novels. I’m not totally sure why it’s seen as being ‘light’ or ‘entertaining’ in comparison with more challenging fiction, because you don’t get much darker than murder.
  “It’s a generous type of literature for a writer,” she says, “because it can include pure tragedy alongside broad humour, or lyrical description followed by brutal dialogue. There are conventions to be observed but there’s no single style of writing that defines the genre. So there’s a freedom there to do what you want.”
  According to those very genre conventions, Maeve Kerrigan, as a young woman in an Old Boys’ world, should be utilising her feminine wiles to stay one step ahead. Time and again, however, Maeve herself is to be found mocking her supposed ‘female intuition’.
  “A large part of Maeve’s survival strategy is her ability to see a put-down coming and dodge it,” says Jane. “She wouldn’t like to think that she’s good at her job because of her female intuition, but then she likes to see herself as one of the boys. She’s young. She hasn’t yet realized that she doesn’t have to fit in with them.”
  Perhaps Maeve Kerrigan aspires to a similar quality of gravitas as Jane Casey when dealing with her male colleagues, but it can be argued that such a character development would hugely diminish Kerrigan’s appeal. Maeve Kerrigan is an ambitious and dedicated policewoman, but she is possessed of an endearingly charming irreverent streak and a wilful refusal to accept arbitrary limitations that is as destructive in her professional life as it is in her personal affairs.
  She is also, and unusually, exercised by the long-term impact of crime on its victims. Married to a criminal barrister, Jane Casey is privy to the harsh realities of the legal system.
  “Victims and their families are really invisible in the legal system,” she says. “The prosecution acts on behalf of the state, not the wronged individual, and the rights of the defendant are considered at all points. It’s a bruising world to encounter. A lot of the characters in THE LAST GIRL have been through the criminal justice system and haven’t seen anything remotely resembling justice.”
  THE LAST GIRL opens with the discovery of the bodies of a mother and daughter in their plush Wimbledon home, both of whom have been stabbed to death. Upstairs lies the unconscious and bloodied form of Philip Kennford, husband and father, and a successful criminal barrister with a reputation for arrogance and sexual predation.
  “There are certain professions that attract charming sociopaths, and the Bar could be one of them,” says Casey. “Barristers are generally delightful to talk to and full of good stories, but they do like to be right all the time and their work involves winning or losing – you don’t get many draws. It’s a challenging, responsible job that demands a certain toughness, which is interesting in itself. I’ve heard tales of barristers behaving extremely badly in their personal and professional lives, but the only sociopath I’ve ever met myself is not a barrister.
  “Obviously,” she adds with a mischievous grin, “Philip Kennford is not based on my husband.”
  Twice nominated in the crime fiction category for the Irish Book Awards, for THE BURNING (2010) and THE RECKONING (2011), Jane Casey is one of the brightest stars in the Irish crime writing firmament. But where some publishers are suggesting that Ireland is not ‘sexy’ enough a setting to market to an international crime reading audience, Casey’s publishers have made a virtue of Maeve Kerrigan’s Irishness, going so far as to include a Personnel File on the inside cover of THE LAST GIRL with her Irish parentage highlighted.
  “My publishers would love me to write a Maeve story set in Ireland,” says Casey. “I wouldn’t do it for the sake of having an Ireland-set book, though. It would have to be the right story.”
  In part, Maeve Kerrigan’s distinctiveness depends on the novels’ London setting.
  “Maeve is a misfit in various ways and one of those is her own sense of estrangement. She doesn’t fit into the very British world of the Metropolitan Police, but she isn’t like someone who’s grown up in Ireland either. I think she does have uniquely Irish qualities, in that she has empathy in bucket-loads and a strong desire to understand the people she encounters through her job, whereas her colleagues tend to take people at face value. She’s also tied to her family very much, whereas - and this is a sweeping generalization - the British don’t seem to have such a sense of obligation to their parents. You have the feeling that Maeve’s parents have made sacrifices for their children, among them leaving Ireland and settling in London, and they expect to be paid back by their children achieving in life. Maeve has chosen a path they don’t understand, probably deliberately, just to get out from under that weight of expectation.
  “Maeve’s background is also important to how she’s perceived by her colleagues. It’s still common for Irish people to be seen as charming but untrustworthy, fundamentally unreliable. So she has all of that prejudice to deal with too.”
  Crime writers too face a certain amount of prejudice: charming books, perhaps, but fundamentally unreliable as literature.
  “There are plenty of very good writers out there who are happy to define themselves as crime writers,” says Casey, “I’m proud of the title myself and I’d be sorry to lose it. But the definition of a crime novel is changing all the time. That boundary between literary writing and crime writing is thin, and the crime-writing community tends to be welcoming to ‘real’ writers who want to try crime. I’m not sure if the same is true going in the other direction …
  “As a genre, it’s probably not valued as highly as it might be, at least in terms of the way it is criticised and discussed in the media. But readers of crime fiction are a sophisticated and discerning lot – pleasing them is enough of a challenge for me. I write the books I want to write.”
  As a former children’s books editor, that includes writing a new Young Adult novel. It also means that a woman who has become a mother since her first novel was published feels fully entitled to adapt her thematic concerns to her new circumstances.
  “The narrator in my first book, THE MISSING (2009), is a young woman who doesn’t understand her mother’s inability to move on after the disappearance of her young son. The character of the mother is one of the most damaged I have created, and yet now I realise I didn’t even get close to conveying the agony you might feel if your child disappeared.
  “I couldn’t write the book now as I did then,” she says, “but that’s probably true of every book by every writer. They’re all the product of your experience. At the moment I don’t think I could write about a child suffering.” Another mischievous grin, a flash of irreverence. “Maybe that means I should tackle it.”

  Jane Casey’s THE LAST GIRL is published by Ebury Press

  This interview was first published in the Sunday Business Post

Review: THE NAMESAKE by Conor Fitzgerald

Commissario Alec Blume returns for a third time in Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE (Bloomsbury, £11.99). Blume is American-born, but has lived in Italy since his teens, which gives him an unusual take on the country: he retains his outsider’s eye for Italy’s beauty and foibles, while at the same time he is embedded enough to be fully aware of its social and cultural intricacies.
  The novel opens with the apparent kidnapping of a teenage girl, and Fitzgerald sets the tone with his very first line: ‘Before we begin,’ said the magistrate, ‘I want you all to know that there is no chance of a happy ending to this story.’
  Shortly afterwards, an insurance agent is found murdered - an insurance agent who has the great misfortune to have the same name as a magistrate who is investigating a high-ranking member of the Ndrangheta, or Calabrian mafia.
  Blume’s own investigations into the case, alongside his subordinate and lover, Caterina, are hampered when he is contacted by one of the many shadowy Italian secret service agencies. It appears that the Ndrangheta is investigating Agazio Curmaci, a Calabrian operating in Germany, and is doing so in tandem with the German secret service. Blume is asked to travel to the south of Italy with a rogue Italian agent who is tracking Curmaci, and who may well be intent on personal vengeance.
  THE NAMESAKE is as much an exploration of the social, cultural and political factors that led to the rise of the Ndrangheta as it is a conventional police procedural, and it is dense with detail about an organisation that is far more secretive than the mafia, yet has vast power and reach. For example, the book suggests that in 2008, when the credit crunch struck Italy with surprising speed, it was to the cash-based organisation the Ndrangheta that the authorities turned for the liquidity required to keep the economy on an even keel.
  There’s a playful quality to the form of this novel, as evolves from a police procedural into something of a spy novel when Blume joins an undercover agent as he penetrates the Calabrian heartland. This may well offend those crime and mystery purists who don’t believe in genre cross-fertilisation, but it works very well in context, particularly as Blume himself is very much a secretive, taciturn and self-possessed operator.
  Exquisitely written in a quietly elegant style, and dotted with nuggets of coal-black humour, THE NAMESAKE is a bold blend of genre conventions that confirms Fitzgerald’s growing reputation as an author whose novels comfortably straddle the increasingly fine line between crime and literary fiction. - Declan Burke

Ford’s Focus

I was in a bit of a bind going in to interview Richard Ford last month. His new novel, CANADA, is reminiscent of his early (and very good) novels, A PIECE OF MY HEART and THE ULTIMATE GOOD LUCK, in that it draws heavily on crime fiction scenarios. In fact, CANADA opens with these lines:

“First I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later …”

  Richard Ford, however, is regarded as a literary author. He’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner. How would he take it if I talked about CANADA as a crime - and thus a genre - novel?
  The answer is that he wasn’t best pleased, although a longer and more accurate answer is that while Richard Ford clearly does not consider CANADA a crime novel, he was gracious and thoughtful in rejecting my suggestion that it was. He’s a very charming guy, actually.
  Anyway, herewith be the interview, which was first published in the Irish Examiner:

IT’S not every day a Pulitzer Prize-winning author makes you coffee. Then again, Richard Ford confounds expectations at every turn.
  Hailed as one of the greatest writers of his generation, Ford has a patrician, almost forbiddingly severe appearance, not unlike that of the actor Christopher Plummer.
  In person, in the private rooms overlooking the tranquil inner sanctum of the quad at Trinity College, where Ford has been a visiting professor teaching on the masters programme in creative writing for the last five years, he is warmly hospitable, bustling around making coffee and apologising, in an accent with a charming Southern twang, for the fact that the coffee comes in “little old lady cups”.
  Indeed, so polite and friendly is this literary titan that it almost feels as if I’m insulting him by suggesting that his latest novel, CANADA, is the longest, most elegant noir novel I’ve ever read.
  Literary novelists don’t usually like to be described as crime authors. But how else to describe a book that begins: “First I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later …”?
  “It was certainly deliberate to try to emphasise the incidents in the book,” he says. “Which is to say, a bank robbery, a kidnapping, an abandonment and then a murder. I didn’t want to write a standard, meditative literary novel, although it is meditative in some ways, but I really did want to write a novel full of incident. Noir? I don’t know about that. But insofar as noir books do advertise that quality of fatalism, in that they often forecast what’s going to happen — yeah, I wanted to do that.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Get Busy Dying

A trumpet-parp please, maestro …
  I’ll be writing about BOOKS TO DIE FOR in greater detail over the next couple of months, but for now I just want to put the word out there: this tasty little confection, edited by John Connolly and I, and about which I am very excited, is due on an Irish / UK / Australian / South African shelf near you on August 30th, and will be debuting on October 2nd, at the Cleveland Bouchercon, in North America. Quoth the blurb elves:

With so many mystery novels to choose from and so many new titles appearing each year, where should the reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems?

In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about themselves and their work as they do about the books that they love, more than 120 authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Christie to Child and Poe to PD James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlow to Peter Wimsey, BOOKS TO DIE FOR brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought . . . I want more!

  So there you have it. If you want to take a wander over to the BOOKS TO DIE FOR website, there’s a section there where you can nominate the novel you think is absolutely indispensable for the great crime fiction canon. Or you could simply drop a note into the comment box below. As always, we’re open for business …

A Towering Achievement

You won’t have noticed, I’m sure, but yours truly and family (typical wife-and-child pose, right) were away last week, soaking up the exotic delights and occasional sightings of sunshine in North Donegal, and very enjoyable it all was too. Hopefully I’ll get time to do a little work on behalf of the Donegal tourist board in the next couple of days, but for now allow me to point you in the direction of some very fine theatre that will be available in Dublin over the next week or so. Joe Joyce gets in touch with this to say:

“My play The Tower is being performed next week as part of the Dublin James Joyce Festival in The New Theatre in Temple Bar. I’d be grateful if you could forward this email to (and/or tweet) anyone who might be interested in what James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty (aka Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan) would have to say to each other now, with a century and more of hindsight.
  “Tom Hickey and Bosco Hogan, directed by Caroline FitzGerald, will be reprising their respective roles as Joyce and Gogarty at lunchtimes, 1pm, from Monday to Friday (18th to 22nd June) and on Saturday (23rd June) at 12.00 noon.”

  As it happens, I reviewed The Tower twice for the Sunday Times over the last decade or so, which means I’m in a position to recommend the experience whole-heartedly. To wit:

The Tower
The ghosts of James Joyce (Tom Hickey) and Oliver St. John Gogarty (Bosco Hogan) return to haunt the Martello Tower in Sandycove, there to bicker about art, their sundered friendship and their respective legacies. Joe Joyce’s two-hander is a tragi-comic piece that occasionally diverts into the realms of the surreal, such as when the terse Joyce and the loquacious Gogarty duet on a croaky version of The Beatles’ Help!. The overall tone is one of bitterness and regret, however: the prissily self-righteous Joyce greets Gogarty as ‘Oliver St. Jesus Gogarty’, and bemoans the latter’s ‘witless witticisms’, while Gogarty berates Joyce for being a parasite who fed on the misery of others, with an insatiable appetite for ‘drink, whores and depravity’. Hickey and Hogan are here reprising their roles from previous productions, and the director, Caroline FitzGerald, is content to allow the pair plough their well-worn furrows. It’s a wise decision, as both actors are comfortable in the skins of their characters, but also highly attuned to the nuances of one another’s performance. The result is that, despite the sedate pace and frequent digressions into deft wordplay, the production crackles with tension as both men strive to establish retrospective vindication of their actions. - Declan Burke

  There’s more information about the play and the other events in the festival at www.thenewtheatre.com.

Advertisement: EIGHTBALL BOOGIE by Declan Burke

‘The future of Irish crime fiction.’ - Ken Bruen

When the wife of a politician keeping the government in power is murdered, Sligo journalist Harry Rigby is first on the scene. There he quickly discovers that he’s out of his depth when it transpires that the woman’s murder is linked to an ex-paramilitary gang’s attempt to seize control of the burgeoning cocaine market in the Irish Northwest. Harry’s ongoing feud with his ex-partner Denise over their young son’s future doesn’t help matters, and then there’s Harry’s ex-con brother Gonzo, back on the streets and mean as a jilted shark …

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE for Kindle UK / Kindle US and Many Other Formats at $2.99

Irish Crime Writing, Unicorns And Other Mythical Beasts

It’s been a funny old week, folks. I posted a couple of pieces in relation to the absence of Irish crime writers at various Irish literary festivals this summer (I use ‘summer’ in the loosest definition of the term, obviously), the gist of said pieces being that Irish crime writers are under-represented at such events, and up with this we shall not put, etc.
  As a result of the modest but positive feedback to the posts, I took myself off to make inquiries (for the most part funding-related) as to how this situation might be rectified next year, this on the basis that if you want something done, you’re best off doing it yourself. Said inquiries were well received, I have to say, and I’d be pretty hopeful, even at this early stage, that there’ll be more Irish writers represented at the various festivals next year.
  But all along, and even while engaging with this process, I was wondering if it’s the right tack to pursue.
  Are Irish crime writers entitled to believe that they have a right to be taking their place at said literary festivals?
  I’ve said it before, and no doubt I’ll be saying it again: there are many very good Irish crime novels being published right now. Given the size of our population, which is roughly that of Greater Chicago, the quantity of quality Irish crime novels is very impressive indeed. And this in itself, surely, says something about the culture from which this relatively new phenomenon springs.
  Are they sufficient reasons to have Irish crime writing represented at literary festivals?
  The glib and self-serving answer is, Yes, of course.
  The honest answer is, I really don’t know.
  It probably goes without saying that I’m hopelessly compromised when it comes to answering this question, given that this blog was initially set up to celebrate the fact that a number of Irish crime writers were producing world-class work.
  I still believe that. But even taking that bias on board, what I’m wondering now, and have been wondering for quite some time, is whether it’s reasonable and / or logical to attempt to encapsulate the work of a number of very good Irish crime writers in the phrase ‘Irish crime writing’.
  Personally, I think I’ve been trying to stuff a lot of square pegs into a single round hole.
  Yes, there are a lot of writers who are Irish who are publishing novels that can be considered crime or mystery fiction, or thrillers, or noir, or a half-dozen variations on all of those terms. That doesn’t automatically equate with ‘a phenomena of Irish crime writing’.
  That suggests to me that I’ve been coming at this idea of literary festivals all wrong - believing, essentially, that ‘Irish crime writing’ should be represented at such festivals by one or more of its practitioners.
  I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t been blundering up a very long blind alley. I’ve discovered some fantastic writers in the process, and read some great books, and made some good friends.
  But a blind alley is a blind alley.
  Meanwhile, out in the meritocracy of the real world, and particularly in the US and the UK, individual Irish crime writers are critically acclaimed best-sellers. This, obviously, is because of their own worth, and not because they are in the vanguard of some notional ‘Irish crime writing’ scene.
  I suppose what I’m asking myself at the moment is whether it’s worth it to continue on doing what I’ve been doing, which can very often feel like banging my head against the brick wall at the end of that blind alley.
  Those funding-related inquiries I mentioned seem as if they’ll pay dividends in a year or so - but the number of hoops I’d have to jump through to make it happen are many and complicated. I’m talking about drawing up mission statements, drafting proposals, arranging for and taking meetings - all of which are a massive drain on time and resources that I really can’t afford.
  My head says that following through on my initial inquiries is probably the smart thing to do. My heart says that it’s a good thing to do.
  My gut says, No.
  My gut is telling me that Crime Always Pays has been running for five years and more at this stage, and that with the best will in the world it delivers very little by way of real worth to the writers I mention here.
  My gut is telling me that the law of diminishing returns is at work here.
  My gut is also very aware that I’ll be starting into a new novel in the very near future, a tricky one that will be very difficult to get right. What I’ll need is time; what I won’t need is distractions.
  So I think I’m going to let the funding-related inquiries slide. The possibilities are there; if anyone is interested in taking the idea(s) further, and wants to contact me privately, I’m more than happy to pass on the contact details.
  In the meantime, I’m off on my holidays. See you back here in a couple of weeks ...

Review: GHOST TOWN by Michael Clifford

A venal solicitor, a woman scorned, a gangland boss, a desperate ex-con, a tabloid journalist: from the very beginning of Michael Clifford’s GHOST TOWN (Hachette Books Ireland), it’s clear that happy endings will be at a premium.
  This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Clifford’s work. A political journalist with the Sunday Times and Irish Examiner, he has also written and co-authored a number of non-fiction titles about the less edifying aspects of Irish political life in the last decade.
  The large cast of criminally-inclined protagonists who constantly butt heads here is reminiscent of an Elmore Leonard novel, although GHOST TOWN isn’t written in Leonard’s laconic, blackly humorous style. Clifford’s prose is direct and unadorned, as you might expect from a working journalist, the lack of frills and relentless narrative momentum suggesting the work of Michael Connelly.
  If there’s one novelist GHOST TOWN evokes more than any other, however, it’s Clifford’s peer, the author and journalist Gene Kerrigan. The comparison is most valid in terms of Clifford’s ability to draw characters, and particularly those we might be inclined to class as villains, in a more fully rounded way than is often the case in mainstream crime fiction. While it might be stretching the point to suggest that Clifford sympathises with those who flout and break the law, there’s no doubt that he is aware, and is keen to make the reader aware, of the extent to which crime’s roots are buried in an individual’s environment.
  The character of Joshua ‘The Dancer’ Molloy, for example, who is in many ways the novel’s fulcrum and main metaphor, was a superb prospect as a footballer in his early teens, but later succumbed to the easy money offered by a toxic version of ambition that seeps into the fabric of Dublin’s deprived housing estates. An ex-con and recovering alcoholic whose twin goals in life are to stay alive another day and be reunited with his young son, Molloy is a fragile, pitiable but ultimately defiant avatar for a modern Ireland that is still trying to find its feet after being forced to kick its addiction to cheap credit.
  Indeed, so relevant is it to Ireland’s current woes, many of which were self-inflicted, GHOST TOWN could well be set next week. Pitched against the backdrop of the recession and the ongoing seismic shudders of the burst property bubble, this is a timely tale in which - as is the case with Tana French’s forthcoming BROKEN HARBOUR - the ‘ghost estates’ that blight Ireland physically and psychologically are crumbling momunents to greed and hubris.
  In fact, the novel’s arc can be traced through its various properties. Opening on a west Dublin housing estate haunted by the victims of successive governments’ laissez faire policies, diverting through a coveted mansion in the prosperous suburbs of south Dublin secured on the promise of a property boom on a paradisical West African coastline, and climaxing on an upmarket ‘ghost estate’ where the unfinished villa-style buildings rot from neglect, the novel implicitly suggests that the various criminals who populate his pages, despite their delusions of grandeur, are little more than toys in a vast game of doll’s house.
  But who is it that plays with the dolls? And will they ever truly answer for their actions?
  Great crime fiction is honour-bound to tell the truth of its time and place, to expose the culture’s flaws and failings. On that basis, GHOST TOWN is a very fine addition to the canon of Irish crime fiction. - Declan Burke

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

A quick post today, in response to yesterday’s comments on the idea of a coordinated ‘branding’ of Irish crime fiction (see post below), in which Irish writers band together to promote Irish crime writing according to a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ philosophy. Great to see such positive feedback, by the way.
  I’ll try to answer some of the questions posed insofar as I have any answers, which I mostly don’t.
  Re: Bill Ryan’s suggestion about a ‘modest subscription’. That may be workable, certainly, but I for one would feel very uncomfortable to be in receipt of other people’s money, particularly when I know only too well the extent to which, for many, and yours truly included, the writing game is already an expensive hobby.
  I’ll post again tomorrow on this topic, when I have a bit of time to flesh out some ideas, but for now let me say that it would be possible to put into place a low-level / beta version of what I’m thinking about that wouldn’t require funding, apart from a commitment of a little time from each writer, if the interest is there. And going by the reaction to yesterday’s post, the interest is certainly there.
  Rob asks if I have comparative websites in mind. The answer is not really, but a collaborative blog such as Do Some Damage might make a good starting point.
  In terms of the possibility of official funding, I really have no idea as to whether such would be possible, and particularly in such straitened times. That said, and given the extent to which Irish crime writing is an all-island affair, it may be possible to speak with Arts Councils on either side of the border, and also to tap into funding for cross-border cultural initiatives. I have my doubts, but we’ll see.
  If anyone wants to contribute thoughts or suggestions, the comments box is open …

And The Last Shall Be The First, And The First Shall Be The Last

The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that the post yesterday, which mentioned various authors vis-à-vis the crime writing gong at the Irish Book Awards later this year, omitted to mention Jane Casey, despite the fact that (a) she has a very strong contender for 2012 in the third Maeve Kerrigan offering, THE LAST GIRL, and (b) she has been shortlisted two years running now.
  As it happens, I met with the London-based Jane Casey in Dublin last week to interview her about THE LAST GIRL, and asked - a little presumptuously, yes, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be shortlisted again - if she was looking forward to coming over for the IBA bunfight again. Quoth Jane:

“It’s the best night out so I’d love to, even if I wasn’t nominated. There are just so many good writers out there in the crime category. I think some of them would be justified in picketing the awards dinner if I was nominated for a third year running.”

  Heh. I love the idea that any group of Irish writers would be so organised as to coordinate anything as complex as a picket.
  Actually, now that I mention it … I’ve been mulling over the notion of putting together a website (i.e., a properly funded operation, as opposed to this half-assed blog) that would coordinate a proactive ‘branding’ of Irish crime writing to the world, much in the same way as (unfortunate analogy alert) Bord Bia coordinates and promotes the efforts of a wide range of diverse food producers.
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’m rather fond of the Irish crime novel, and believe that there are a number of world-class Irish crime writers. I also believe that one of the reasons that Irish crime writing hasn’t made the international impact that Scandinavian writing has, for example, is because the Irish crime novel is a far less homogenous beast than that of its Nordic counterpart. There’s no Scandinavian equivalent of the comic capers of Colin Bateman, Ruth Dudley Edwards or Eoin Colfer, for example, or the historical novels of Cora Harrison, Conor Brady, Benjamin Black and Kevin McCarthy; or the foreign-set novels written by William Ryan, Laurence O’Bryan and Conor Fitzgerald; the post-modern shenanigans of Ken Bruen; or the genre-blending of John Connolly.
  I could go on, but the point is made: on the face of it, attempting to ‘brand’ even those few writers would be akin to minding mice at crossroads.
  The flip side of that, of course, is that ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’ should be positive things, particularly for readers who are always on the look-out for something new.
  Could it be done? Would it be a commercially viable project? Do writers have any interest in being ‘branded’ or tarred with the same brush? Should it be every man and woman for him and herself? It would need to be funded, of course, but I don’t know if the Arts Council even has a fund for such a project; and whether, in these straitened times, it would find itself in a position to do so, even if the spirit were willing.
  If anyone has any thoughts, the comment box is open …

Her Loss, Our Gain

It feels like it’s been aaaaaaaages since we’ve seen an Alex Barclay novel, but fear not: for lo! BLOOD LOSS is on the way, and scheduled to touch down on a bookshelf near you on October 25th. Quoth the blurb elves:

FBI agent Ren Bryce takes on her most heart-wrenching case yet when a father’s work places his young daughter in terrible danger…
  Every year Mark and Erica Whaley take a trip to Colorado to celebrate their wedding anniversary. This year they have more cause than ever to celebrate – they’ve finally been granted overnight access with Laurie, Mark’s 11-year-old daughter from his previous marriage.
  But their relaxing family break is shattered when they return from dinner in the hotel to find both Laurie and her 16-year-old babysitter, Shelby, missing.
  Special Agent Ren Bryce will need to be at the top of her game to unravel the bizarre circumstances around this particular kidnapping. For it soon emerges that Mark has an awful lot to hide.
  But Ren has her own battles to fight. Without a psychologist since hers was killed four months previously, she knows she’s headed for a manic episode, and she’s not sure she wants to stop it.
  The lives of two young girls are in Ren’s hands. But she might need to save herself before she can save them.

  It strikes me that a release date of October 25th is leaving it rather fine if BLOOD LOSS is to be considered for the Irish Book Awards, which return this year to the RDS on November 22nd, especially given that Alex Barclay is a previous winner of the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award (BLOOD RUNS COLD, 2009).
  Mind you, it’s going to be a tough year again for the Crime Fiction gong, with or without Alex Barclay, and even if two other recent winners, Alan Glynn and Gene Kerrigan, don’t publish this year.
  Naturally, Liberties Press will be tossing my own book-shaped hat, aka SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, into the ring for consideration, but I think I’d be rather more surprised this year than last if SH garnered a shortlist nomination.
  In terms of actual winners, though, it’s very hard to see past BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French, the release of which in July will be less a publication and more an event. Critically acclaimed and best-selling, and already the recipient of numerous prizes, I’d be very surprised if Tana French doesn’t scoop the IBA Crime Fiction Award this year.
  If anyone is to upset the appletart, Brian McGilloway stands a very good chance with his very good THE NAMELESS DEAD, which is as strong a crime novel as I’ve read so far this year. Elsewhere, TORN by Casey Hill comes on like a crowd-pleasing serial killer / CSI story, before delivering a brutal sucker-punch; A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS by Conor Brady and GHOST TOWN by Michael Clifford represent are both very strong debuts (and may both be shortlisted in the Best Newcomer of the Year category instead); Conor Fitzgerald’s THE NAMESAKE is up to his usual excellent standard; and it’s highly unlikely that John Connolly’s THE WRATH OF ANGELS won’t be up to his usual impressive snuff. And then there’s VENGEANCE by Benjamin Black, HEADSTONE by Ken Bruen, and TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT by Niamh O’Connor … and the blackest of dark horses, THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty.
  All told, it’ll make a hell of a line-up.

One Is Not Amused

Have you heard the one about the Irish author who wasn’t qualified to talk about his own novels? Quoth the Belfast Telegraph:

He’s a crime writer of renown, and his books have been on Queen’s University’s curriculum.
  Yet in a twist that Kafka would have been proud of, Colin Bateman has been left baffled after the university ruled him out of lecturing in creative writing — because he doesn’t have a degree.
  The Bangor author recently applied for a post as a lecturer in creative writing at the university.
  Bateman, who currently teaches creative writing at the South Eastern Regional College, received a letter on Wednesday telling him he was not getting an interview.
  When the author, recently listed in a Top 50 Crime Writers of all-time poll, queried this, he was advised that staff are bound by job specifications and as he does not have a degree, he could not be shortlisted for interview.
  He has branded the decision to refuse him an interview for the post as “ridiculous” and “crazy”.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Personally, my greatest fear is that Bateman - already, sans first name, half-adrift in the culture, and whose latest series features a ‘Man With No Name’ masquerading as the owner of the No Alibis crime fiction store in Belfast - will take the decision so badly that his identity with be reabsorbed into whence it came, thus creating a rift in the space-time continuum into which will be sucked Queens University. That, or he’ll write some kind of post-modern comic novel about, y’know, some author who isn’t qualified to tell people about his own books, and is thus obliged to hoik out ye olde blunderbuss and go on the rampage.
  Either way, it won’t be pretty. If you want to add your voice to the protest against Queen’s University’s decision, or just want to join in the general mischief-making merriment, clickety-click here …

Origins: KILLER REELS by Rob Kitchin

Editor’s Note: Now and again, although not nearly half often enough, I step to one side here at CAP and let a proper writer do the talking. The ‘series’ is called Origins, and allows a writer to explain the original idea for a story, character, setting, etc. This week: Rob Kitchin, author of KILLER REELS.

Jimmy Kiley’s stars are only ever one hit wonders…

“The initial spark for KILLER REELS was the hook - a killer would show a video of the death of his previous victim to the star of the next. After than it was simply a case of imagining who the movie-maker was, the reason why the stars were selected, and determining how the previous victim died and how the next would meet his or her maker.
  “The whole lot dropped quickly into place and the first story, ‘King Canute’, was drafted in a couple of hours, unleashing the ruthless criminal, Jimmy Kiley, onto Dublin’s north side. The story and characters almost seemed to write themselves and I was both fascinated and deplored by Kiley’s inventive imagination.
  “As a keen amateur movie maker, Kiley sees no reason why he shouldn’t mix his own brand of law with his hobby. He views himself as a director: guiding his stars and crafting scenes. He’s calm, collected, ambitious and street smart. He pays attention to detail. He believes in loyalty to people and place and despite his wealth and power he still lives in a corporation house in the same area in which he grew up and he cohabits with his long term partner. His reputation for calculated violence precedes him and he expects to be respected and obeyed as a matter of course. He invariably is. Those that fail to do so suffer the consequences. And their downfall is recorded for posterity.
  “Kiley has two ambitions. To become the criminal leader for the whole city and to make a full length feature film. He’s well on the way to achieving both. And whilst he tries for the first, using the opportunity to create a series of interlinked short films, he gains valuable real-world training for the second. The result is twelve Kiley films where his hapless victims become one hit wonders. And the price for viewing Kiley’s private collection is to star in the next.
  “KILLER REELS documents Kiley’s movie-making and his rise to the top of Dublin’s underworld. It’s gritty, urban, Irish noir. Violent and menacing, but not gory. Tight, taut stories that pack a punch.” - Rob Kitchin

Some Like It Cold Cold

You’ll have to wait until November, unfortunately, but it’s all kind of good news that Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND will be published in North America by Seventh Street Books, a Prometheus imprint under the steady hand of editor Dan Mayer. Quoth the blurb elves:

For Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, the Troubles are only just beginning ...

Northern Ireland. Spring 1981. Hunger strikes. Bombings. Assassinations. Sky high unemployment. Endemic rioting. Everyone who can is getting out. This is a society teetering on the edge of chaos and the brink of civil war. Amid the madness, Detective Sergeant Duffy is dealing with two cases: what may be Northern Ireland’s first ever serial killer and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder. It’s no easy job - especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA, but last seen discussing business with one of their sworn enemies in the UVF. For Duffy, though, there’s no question of which side he’s on - because as a Catholic policeman, nobody trusts him. Fast-paced, evocative and brutal, THE COLD COLD GROUND is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles - and a cop treading a thin, thin line.

  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I loved THE COLD COLD GROUND; even though Sean Duffy is pencilled in to appear in a trilogy, I have a gut feeling that there’s a lot more miles in him than that.
  Here’s a review of THE COLD COLD GROUND, which references David Peace, Eoin McNamee, James Ellroy and James Lee Burke. While you’re at it, here’s an interview with Adrian McKinty I had published in the Irish Examiner back in March.