Synge When You’re Winning: Two More Jack Taylor Movies Based On Ken Bruen’s Novels

Ken Bruen’s fans will be delighted to hear that there are another two Jack Taylor movies coming from TV3 in the next couple of weeks, starting on Sunday night, March 3rd, and starring Iain Glen (right) as the bould Jack. To wit:

Two new films, ‘Jack Taylor: The Dramatist’ and ‘Jack Taylor: The Priest’, which were filmed on location in Galway, will see Iain Glen (Game of Thrones), Nora Jane Noone (Deception) and Killian Scott (Love/Hate) reprise their roles, while Emma Eliza Regan (Love Eternal), Aaron Monaghan (The Other Side of Sleep), and Gavin Drea (What Richard Did) join the cast. The film series, which is based on the novels of Galway writer Ken Bruen, follow ex-garda Taylor, as he takes on cases that the Gardaí won’t. In ‘The Dramatist’, which airs on TV3 on Sunday, audiences catch up with Taylor, who against all odds, is clean and sober. While his mother resides in a retirement home, Taylor is summoned by a jailed drug-dealer who doesn’t believe the death of his younger sister was an accident. When a second murdered girl is found, Taylor receives teasing messages from a killer obsessed with John Millington Synge’s play ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

Going Straight, He Is

Ray Banks is an old friend of Crime Always Pays, although when I say ‘old’ I mean young, hip and thrusting. Or is that young and hip-thrusting? Either way, Ray – author of the very fine novels SATURDAY’S CHILD and SUCKER PUNCH, among others – has a new title available: INSIDE STRAIGHT will be published by Blasted Heath on Thursday, Feburary 28th. Quoth the blurb elves:

Graham Ellis is reliable, efficient, focused – the best pit boss Sovereign Casinos has, even if he does say so himself. But rumours of mental instability, along with the fallout of a particularly bloody night on the tables, relegate him to day shifts at a low-rent Salford club. There he catches the attention of local gangster Barry Pollard, who has every intention of making Graham his inside man and is about to make him an offer he can’t refuse …

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

Crace Notes

I had the very great pleasure of sitting down with Jim Crace a couple of weeks ago, when he was in Dublin to talk about his latest – and last, apparently – novel, HARVEST (Picador). The resulting interview was published in the Irish Examiner on Saturday, and it opened up a lot like this:

Jim Crace is a titan of the modern English novel. From Continent (1986) and The Gift of Stones (1988) on to Quarantine (1997) and The Pesthouse (2007), he has won a slew of literary prizes without ever losing his popular touch. Hailed as the natural heir to William Golding, he has just published his latest novel, Harvest, to universal acclaim.
  When we meet at Dublin’s Brooks Hotel, he suggests that there is ‘a certain icy distance’ to his novels, this on the basis that he is not an autobiographical writer, but in person he is warm and friendly. For a publishing veteran, he is also charmingly direct about the appeal of being a novelist.
  “It’s such fun writing books,” he says. “And it’s a tremendous opportunity to be working in a form that is both mischievous and wise at the same time. I don’t want to sound New Age-y about it, but narrative knows a lot. Fiction has been around for thousands of years and it’s got all sorts of moves. As a writer, you shouldn’t resist them – you should listen out for them, because you can bet it’ll come up with better things than you can come up with.”
  Crace, to be fair, has come up with his fair share. He invented a whole new landmass for his debut, Continent, which won three prizes straight out of the gate.
  “I genuinely was naïve. When I brought out Continent, I thought the best that would happen was that my mum would like it, even if she didn’t read it, and that my cousins would buy it. And then, within about three weeks, it won three of the main prizes – the Guardian prize, the David Higham prize and the Whitbread.” He grins. “And I thought this was the most natural thing in the world.”
  He very modestly credits luck with the best part of his success. “I was lucky in that my natural voice, my ‘singing’ voice as a writer, was a rare one. That’s not to boast about it – it just had this unusual tone. There were plenty of writers around who were just as good as me that didn’t do as well as me, because they were writing conventional books brilliantly, but there were plenty of them around. I was writing books that might have been okay, but they were of their own kind.”
  Perversely, Crace seems much happier talking about the failings in his writing.
 “ I’ve always felt a little bit embarrassed that my books aren’t more autobiographical,” he says. “The reason they’re not, of course, is that I don’t have an autobiographical life. I’ve had a long marriage, a happy childhood, no ill-health, and literature doesn’t like any of those things. Happiness writes white, to use that phrase. But I’ve always felt that somehow or another that this was a failing.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Stephan Talty

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 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas Harris. Never been topped.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett or Travis McGee from the great crime series by John D. MacDonald.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
People Magazine.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When you only have forty minutes to write, but three clean pages come rolling out.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST by Stuart Neville. Such a great concept, and beautifully executed.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
IN THE WOODS by Tana French.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is that you have no one to gossip to all day. Best is freedom.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Abbie Kearney hunts down an escaped serial killer as he takes up where he left off.

Who are you reading right now?
GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn. Masterpiece.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Please don’t ask me that. Jesus. Read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Clean and vivid.

Stephan Talty’s BLACK IRISH is published by Headline.

Read It And Weep

I’m currently reading Mark O’Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS (Transworld Ireland) and hugely enjoying the company of Detective Inspector Leo Woods, who is, to put it mildly, no great respecter of reputations. To wit:

Bloody psychiatrists, Leo thought, useless bastards with their talk of drives and complexes dreamed up by that coke-head fiend Freud. Everything was about sex with those clowns. Except sex. Which was about death.

  Leo Woods is a bleakly, blackly funny character, and has good reason to be, but Mark O’Sullivan has a tasty way with a turn of phrase too:

She felt as though she’d stepped into some ancient mythological world where gods ripped living things to pieces, feasted on them, tossed the bloodied bones aside and returned to their sky, staining it red with dawn. She looked at the distant horizon, barbaric in its roseate beauty.

  CROCODILE TEARS will be published in April. If there’s a better Irish crime fiction debut published this year, I’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

Going Up To Monto

I was very impressed with Kevin McCarthy’s debut, PEELER, a historical crime fiction novel set during the Irish War of Independence. It featured the RIC’s Sean O’Keefe, who returns in the novel’s sequel, IRREGULARS (New Island), which will be published later this year. To wit:

IRREGULARS is set during the Civil War in 1922 and deals with the search for the missing son of one of Monto’s most powerful brothel owners while Free State and Republican death squads stalk the streets and back lanes of Dublin. Sean O’Keefe, recently demobbed from the RIC, is hired to find the boy amid the tumult and terror of a country at war with itself.

  For updates, clickety-click on Kevin McCarthy’s blog.
  For my take on PEELERS, clickety-click here.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE SPIES by Luis Fernando Verissimo

Set in contemporary Brazil, THE SPIES (Picador) is told in the first-person by an unnamed narrator who works as an editor in a downmarket Brazilian publishing house. The editor began working with the publishing house in a bid to get his own novel – a spy novel – published, but has since accepted his limitations as a writer. He has also accepted his lot in life: he is doomed to a life of heavy drinking and a loveless marriage to Julinha.
  One day he receives a short manuscript from a writer who lives in the small Brazilian town of Frondosa and calls herself ‘Ariadne’. The manuscript details how Ariadne is trapped in a loveless marriage of her own, by a man who killed her ‘Secret Lover’. Once Ariadne has told her tale, she will commit suicide.
  Excited by the concept, the editor asks to see more, and also requests a photograph of the author. More of the manuscript duly arrives, along with a photograph of a beautiful young woman.
  Determined to rescue Ariadne from her fate, the editor conspires with his friends. One by one his friends are dispatched to Frondosa as undercover agents to find out what they can discover about Ariadne …
  THE SPIES is chock-a-block with references to crime and mystery authors. The most explicit is John Le Carré, as the editor – who announces in the opening line that he is a literary graduate – quotes Le Carré on a number of occasions as he puts into play his ‘Operation Theseus’.
  Other crime fiction authors mentioned included Simenon and Chandler, while there are also more oblique references to Edgar Allan Poe.
  One crime / mystery author not mentioned explicitly in THE SPIES, oddly enough, is Ian Fleming. This is odd because Fleming’s very first James Bond novel, DR NO, is a modern retelling of the ‘Theseus and the Minotaur’ story, relocated to the Caribbean and given a spy novel flavouring.
  Having said all that, while Verissimo appears to be quite genuine in his appreciation of the crime and mystery authors mentioned, the book as a whole plays out as a farce. Which is to say, there is definitely homage being paid to individual writers, but THE SPIES reads like a loving spoof of the crime novel.
  Overall, the tone of the novel is one of absurd comedy. It opens with the line, “I’m a literature graduate and I drink heavily,” as if one necessarily prompted the other; and that quality of dark humour continues throughout.
  The high seriousness with which the editor treats his quest is also quite funny, not least because he refuses to be swayed by any facts. For example, he believes in the beginning that ‘Ariadne’ is a pseudonym taken from Greek mythology, and that the manuscript he has been sent is a piece of string designed to guide him to her through the labyrinth. When it becomes clear that Ariadne is in fact the woman’s real name, he is not at all deterred; he simply recalibrates his quest, decides that it must be fate that her real name is Ariadne, and presses on regardless.
  Meanwhile, as the editor – ‘a literature graduate’, no less – is tying himself up in knots over imagined Greek mythology references, the more astute reader will be aware that Ariadne is in fact plagiarising one of the most famous pieces of literature of the 20th century.
  It’s reasonable to ask why Verissimo is engaged in this kind of literary cross-pollination, and as far as I can make out, he’s making the double point that literary authors shouldn’t take themselves as seriously as they do, while non-literary authors – or genre authors – should be taken a bit more seriously than they are. Having said that, it’s notable that Verissimo tends to quote and / or reference crime and mystery authors who are regarded as among the finest of their kind – Chandler, Simenon, Le Carré. There are no references here to James Patterson, for example.
  In terms of narrative playfulness, Verissimo is also engaged in folding the story back on itself. The editor consciously takes on the part of a fictional creation when he decides to become a spymaster investigating Ariadne; he looks to works of fiction for his inspiration when devising his plans. Here he appears to be asking the readers to decide for themselves as to what is real and what isn’t when it comes to reading fiction, a gambit he makes explicit on page 69:

  “If anything should happen to you, who should I contact?”
  “What could possibly happen to me?” And he added, when he was already halfway out the door, “Isn’t this all just a fiction?”

  In a sense, Verissimo is here challenging the reader as to how much he or she cares about the characters. If it’s ‘all just a fiction’, why should we care about the characters we encounter in books?
  I hugely enjoyed THE SPIES. At 169 pages it lacks the full impact of a novel, and dedicated fans of the crime / mystery spy thriller may feel cheated by the fact that Verissimo is playing with the conventions of the spy novel rather than writing a straightforward novel. For readers who enjoy a wider range of reading, however, THE SPIES is a real joy. Blending conventions from genre fiction, literary fiction, meta-fiction and Greek mythology, it’s a wonderfully funny commentary on the novel itself, as well as an entertaining tale about the dysfunctional nature of the creative process. – Declan Burke

THE SPIES by Luis Fernando Verissimo is published by Picador.

To The Castle Born

I had an interview with Alex Barclay published in the Irish Times yesterday to mark the arrival of her new YA novel, CURSE OF KINGS (HarperCollins Children’s Books). It goes a lot like this:

It’s fair to say that Alex Barclay’s reputation precedes her. Formerly a fashion journalist, the Irish crime writer burst onto the international crime writing scene in 2006 with the bestseller Dark House, a novel celebrated for its exploration of the brutal aspects of human nature. The 39-year-old has subsequently published four more adult crime novels, but her new offering, Curse of Kings, is an epic quest written for young adults.
  “I was a little concerned about someone not buying a book for their child because it’s written by a crime writer,” says Alex. “And everyone said, ‘No, crime writers who write even darker stuff than you write for children too.’ So that,” she laughs, “is kind of reassuring.”
  Subtitled ‘The Trials of Oland Born’, Curse of Kings tells the tale of 14-year-old Oland, factotum to the evil Villius Ren, usurper of the good King Micah of the Kingdom of Decressian. Humiliated and abused on a daily basis, Oland finally snaps and sets out on the journey that will, a mysterious letter informs him, lead him to his destiny.
  Alex cites her childhood reading of Enid Blyton as the strongest influence on Curse of Kings.
  “My favourite books of hers would have been The Enchanted Wood and The Faraway Tree series. In terms of what stayed with me, it’s very definitely mysteries and secrets and exotic locations. I recently found some of my ‘early writings’, from between the ages of four and nine, they were all in our attic at home – what a laugh! But sure enough, they were all stories about caves, and secret things far away, and mysterious people acting strange.
  “This book was probably written for myself, aged 14,” she continues. “The escapism and the strangeness of it all would have been amazing to me then, but the magical elements would have been great too. I just love, as a reader, not questioning that kind of fantasy. And as a writer, that’s great – it’s not rooted in the ‘gritty realism’ of crime fiction, you just have to let go and not question it all too much. I would never have questioned it as a child, and I think I’ve never lost that ability.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Weekly Round-Up

Okay, so this is what we’ll try to do. Instead of having time-sapping daily-ish updates here at Crime Always Pays, we’ll run a weekly update of news, reviews, interviews and possibly – if the occasion demands – ewes.
  If you’re an Irish crime writer and you have a book / launch / ewe etc. forthcoming, please feel free to drop me a line at dbrodb[at]gmail.com.
  And so to the Weekly Update:

Via the good works of Mick Halpin over at the Irish Crime Writing Facebook page, we hear that Ken Bruen (right, as noirishly re-imagined by fellow Irish crime scribe KT McCaffrey) will read at the Irish Writers’ Centre as part of its ‘Lunchtime Readings’ programme. The reading will take place on Friday, February 22nd, and all the details are here.

Norn Iron-born author Seth Patrick will publish a debut title, REVIVER (Tor), in June, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Revivers. Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise. Twelve years after the first reviver came to light, they have become accepted by an uneasy public. The testimony of the dead is permitted in courtrooms across the world. Forensic revival is a routine part of police investigation. In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Something is watching. Waiting. His superiors tell him it was only in his mind, a product of stress. Jonah is not so certain. Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered, and Jonah finds himself getting dragged into the hunt for answers. Working with Harker’s daughter Annabel, he’s determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon they uncover long-hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a threat that if not stopped in time, will put all of humanity in danger . . .

There’s another crime fiction debut available right now, WHITE BONES (Head of Zeus), albeit a ‘debut’ from the bestselling horror author Graham Masterton. To wit:

One wet November morning, a field on Meagher’s Farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women. In this part of Ireland, unmarked graves are common. But these bones date to 1915, long before the Troubles. What’s more, these bones bear the marks of a meticulous executioner. These women were almost certainly skinned alive. Detective Katie Maguire, of the Cork Garda, is used to dead bodies. But this is wholesale butchery. Her team think these long-dead women are a waste of police time. Katie is determined to give them justice. And then a young American tourist goes missing, and her bones, carefully stripped of flesh, are discovered on the same farm. With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, Katie must solve a decades-old ritualistic murder before this terrifying killer strikes again.

Elsewhere, there was very good news for Stuart Neville when it was announced that the movie version of THE TWELVE will star Pierce Brosnan:

Presales on a big-screen adaptation of Stuart Neville’s (right) revenge thriller novel The Twelve, penned by CBS late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson and Ted Mulkerin and starring Pierce Brosnan, will begin at the European Film Market … It is to be directed by Terry Loan and produced by Ferguson, Steve Clark-Hall (Sherlock Holmes), Beau St. Clair (The Thomas Crown Affair), Rebecca Tucker and Jonathan Loughran and is scheduled to shoot at the end of 2013.

And while we’re talking good news, here’s a nice, insightful take on Gene Kerrigan’s THE RAGE by John Powers over at NPR.

Finally, I remain to be convinced by ‘book trailers’ as an effective method of promotion, but here’s a very neat and tidy example of same for Peter Wilben’s new Joe Grace series:

Whither The Radical Crime Novel?

Yes, I know I said I’d be taking a break from blogging, but (a) this came via a request from the winningly handsome Andrew Pepper (right), and (b) it sounds like a cracking opportunity for any crime writer out there with a ‘radical’ crime novel in their drawer. To wit:

THEMED PHD STUDENTSHIP AWARDS, COMMENCING SEPTEMBER 2013

The School of English, Queen’s University Belfast, is pleased to announce A CREATIVE WRITING DOCTORAL STUDENTSHIP in ‘RADICAL CRIME FICTION’ commencing in September 2013.

Supervisors: Dr Andrew Pepper (English) and Dr Dominique Jeannerod (French)

Applications for this award must be submitted through the Queen’s online application system (on the prospective students’ portal) before the closing date of FRIDAY 22nd February, 2013. Applications are similar to those invited for ‘open’ PhD studentships, but applicants are not required to upload a description of the intended thesis. Applicants for this ‘themed’ awards should supply, instead of the thesis description, a personal statement (maximum 1500 words) outlining the distinctive contribution they could make to the research for the thesis.

Informal enquiries are very welcome and should be directed to Dr. Andrew Pepper (a.pepper@qub.ac.uk) or to the School’s Director of PG Education: Dr Adrian Streete (a.streete@qub.ac.uk).

Project Description:
This project is a hybrid creative-critical one that involves writing a ‘radical’ crime novel and critically reflecting on what radical crime fiction is, whether such a thing, in fact, exists and whether a popular genre, especially one typically concerned with the activities of the state and the production of order, can ever be considered radical. Its starting point lies in the rise to prominence of a particular kind of formally disruptive and politically leftist crime novel across the U.S. and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. by Chester Himes, Jean-Patrick Manchette) and the relative decline of such work in the contemporary era. The issue of whether crime stories are able to further radical political agendas and if so what is the relationship between political agitation and formal and/or aesthetic innovation, will be addressed through creative practice and critical reflection. At the heart of the project is the question of how creativity is deployed in the contemporary era and what its relationship to commercial enterprise is. Rather than assuming that this relationship is harmonious and mutually reinforcing, however, this project considers whether it is possible to write and produce a radical crime novel in today’s commercial environment and by the same logic why so much crime fiction is so derivative and predictable, The intention, then, is to imagine a more disruptive and antagonistic relationship between art and the marketplace but to do so in the form of a creative piece that, crucially, still conforms to at least some of our assumptions about what a crime novel is.

Qualifications:
Candidates will be expected to demonstrate a history of research and/or publication in creative writing. Demonstrable experience of writing or researching crime fiction is considered desirable but not essential.

Eligibility: UK residents.

Closing date for applications: Friday 22nd February, 2013

Important Note: Please state on the on-line application form that you are applying for the Creative Writing themed Studentship in ‘Radical Crime Fiction’ in the School of English and provide a supporting statement (1500 words maximum) outlining the distinctive contribution you could make to the project.

Crime Always Pays: It’s All Me-Me-Me-Me-Me …

Here we go again …
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’ve tried on a number of occasions to back away from Crime Always Pays. Or to reduce the amount of time I spend updating the blog, at least. Not that it takes up that much time, really – but these days, time is probably the most precious resource, and every little helps.
  Anyway, there are a few reasons as to why I’m going to make another effort to scale back on the daily updates. One is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep tabs on all the Irish crime writers, not least because they seem to be coming up like mushrooms. There was a time when I could make a fair fist of reading most of the Irish crime novels published in any given year; of late, there’s been two or three debut writers appearing every month, and that’s just the debutants.
  Given that most of my reading time nowadays is taken up with books that I’ve been commissioned to read, for review or interview, etc., I really don’t have a lot of reading time to left over to pursue my own interests. Like virtually everyone reading this post, I’d imagine, I have a to-be-read pile that’s in grievous danger of toppling over and doing someone a serious damage were they to be strolling by at an inopportune moment.
  It’s also the case that the blog – or the time spent updating it – is becoming a little counter-intuitive. The whole point of it, apart from bringing Irish crime writers to the attention of anyone who logs on here, is to generate a little awareness among the on-line reading community of my own books. Of course, the more I blog, the less I’m writing. And while we’re all in the business of selling books once they’re written, and while ‘selling books’ can be a very enjoyable pursuit in itself, given the extent to which you get to engage with a whole host of strangers, the point of the exercise, once you winnow out all the non-essentials, is to write. By which I mean, writing for its own sake, for the simple pleasure of moving words around and making them fit as best they can.
  Right now it feels like a very long time since I’ve been fully engaged as a writer.
  Meanwhile, I’m a little bit worried that all of the above is just an excuse, that the reason I’m not writing has nothing to do with time, or the lack of it, but because I’m dreading the process of starting a new book. At this stage, with four or five books under my belt, I’m fairly confident that once I get over some kind of hump that it’ll all start to happen; but right now that hump looks a lot like the north face of the Eiger, and – as always – I have this perverse instinct telling me that I should be able to clear it in one jump, from a standing start. I’ve even resorted to the old tactic of telling myself that if I can only get this one written, and written well, that that will be it – I’ll be happy then, I can stop writing for good.
  Anyway, that’s the general gist as to why things will be slowing down around these here parts. I will be updating the blog as we go along, but I’m afraid there’ll be quite a bit of me-me-me involved; for those of you who prefer more general updates on Irish crime writing, there’s always the Irish Crime Fiction Facebook page to peruse.
  Oh, and one last thing before I go – I’ll be hosting a Crime Writing course at the Irish Writers’ Centre over the next couple of months, which kicks off next Wednesday, February 6th, at 6.30pm. If you’re interested, all the details are here.

To Care Or Not To Care, That Is The Question

The most recent Amazon review for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE runs like this:

“Attempt at slick writing in the style of Mickey Spillane, doesn’t quite pull it off. Hope to see more sophisticated, streamlined writing in future. Shows promise but local research insufficient for subject matter.” (three stars) – Frances Heneghan

  10 things about that:
  1. I hadn’t read a single Mickey Spillane novel before writing EIGHTBALL, and I’ve only read two since, the second to confirm that my dislike of Mickey Spillane’s writing wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction.
  2. I too hope to see ‘more sophisticated, streamlined writing’ from myself in the future, providing a particular story requires it. If the story demands a more rough ‘n’ tumble approach, then that’s what it’ll get.
  3. The ‘local research’ for EIGHTBALL entailed living in the place where it’s set for over two decades. Maybe I should have spent three.
  4. Three stars feels about right for a debut novel that throws the proverbial kitchen sink at a Ray Chandler homage. On my bad days, of which there are many, this being one, three stars feels like it errs on the generous side.
  5. On my good days, of course, I wouldn’t care what anyone thinks about EIGHTBALL, positive or negative, because I’d be (a) writing something new or (b) basking in the glow of having written something new.
  6. Unfortunately, not caring is not a good thing, because every writer worth his or her salt writes for readers, hoping to fire their imaginations, emotions, reactions. Which makes writing a psychological high-wire act of sorts: you do care about what readers think of your stories, but you can’t afford to care too much or otherwise you’ll lose your balance and topple off. And there’s no safety net.
  7. This is a very odd and potentially destabilising way to live your life.
  8. Still, on a cold and blustery day like today, it beats shovelling wet cement on a building site.
  9. Or does it?
  10. God bless you, Frances Heneghan, for caring enough about books and reading to post a review to Amazon.