“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Marnie Riches

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 should have been by me and not that Thomas Harris. Although, if I’d written it, there would have been some terrible swearing and scenes of a sexual nature in it that didn’t necessarily involve cannibalism or fava beans. But still, what a great baddy! Hannibal Lecter was the first villain I had fallen for since Darth Vader.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Probably Lisbeth Salander, who inspired, in no small part, my heroine, George McKenzie. Salander is whizzy with technology and surly. I’m a luddite and loud-mouth. I don’t do silent and smouldering well at all, which Salander does. It’s that Scandinavian vs Celt/Eastern European Mancunian thing. I come from a long line of big-gobbed tough women. We don’t do poise or studied cool. Plus, Salander always seems to have good hair. I’m a middle-aged woman. My hairline is receding. My appendages are hitting the deck. It’s not nice on any level. Anyway, though George McKenzie is young and kickass like Salander, she is gobby like me (although she has a reassuringly hairy head).

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I read an awful lot of children’s fiction – hardly surprising, since I started out as a children’s author. Children’s fiction is written in a sparing and economical way, which gives an adventure novel a real sense of urgency. Middle-grade is my favourite age banding. I love Eoin Colfer, Frank Cottrell-Boyce and the Young Bond series by Charlie Higson and now, Steve Cole.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I’ve spent an entire day, writing one paragraph and trying to get a clever metaphor just right. These are the bits I agonise over, but when I read them back, I think, wow. I can actually write. Then I get the odd one star howler back that says I went off at a tangent or that they had to skip a paragraph because “it got boring”. Those are the clever bits, you one-star-howling berk!!

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Now, I had to take this under advisement, since I can’t claim to have read widely in the Irish crime genre. My friend and book reviewer, Bookwitch, tells me the best crime novels are Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series. I couldn’t specify one in particular and neither would she.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Declan Burke’s Crime Always Pays. It’s a very funny, very visual crime novel. The tight plotting, great dialogue and intriguing characters are all there. Humour and crime translate well to the big screen, as demonstrated by my favourites, In Bruges and The Guard.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing about being a writer is getting that one star howler of a review. There’s always some smart arse who sussed the killer by page ten, or who really couldn’t get any of your characters and thought the whole thing was tedious beyond belief. You can’t quite believe a story that took you years to write – two, in the case of The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die – can be dismissed in a short paragraph. That bit SUCKS, as does watching your book slide back in the Amazon rankings into obscurity. On the bright side, the best bit is ... well, most of it. I love working alone, talking to myself aloud about plot points, allowing my characters to become real to me, picking my nose without fear of discovery, sitting in my pyjama bottoms without fear of fashion or hygiene judgement. All the things you get up to when you’re in a small, enclosed space without supervision and with the aid of alcoholic drink ... Then, realising post-publication that people love what I’ve written and totally get my characters and absolutely didn’t sodding work out who the killer was by page ten. Those are the best bits.

The pitch for your next book is …?
In The Girl Who Broke the Rules – book 2 of the George McKenzie series – the heroine, George, gets to hang out with a grade A perv who equals Hannibal Lecter in both his finesse, his intellectual prowess and his aptitude for murder. George, together with Chief Inspector Paul van den Bergen of the Dutch police, must work out who is committing a string of brutal serial killings, where victims are sliced open and emptied of their innards! There’s sex, drugs and shenanigans in Amsterdam’s red light district. It’s Silence of the Lambs meets Trainspotting!

Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading Jo Nesbo’s The Son right now, along with Angela Marsons’ Silent Scream, but I’ve just finished The Farm by Tom Rob Smith which I enjoyed hugely.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. Sometimes, all the naughty just has to come out.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Gritty, gripping, intelligent. Well, you could swap intelligent for naughty if you’re, you know, a bit funny about the swearing and the nookie and the violence.

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE by Marnie Riches is published by Maze.

One to Watch: BARLOW BY THE BOOK by John McAllister

John McAllister introduced Station Sergeant Barlow in 2011 in THE STATION SERGEANT, and Barlow – as the title suggests – returns in BARLOW BY THE BOOK (Portnoy Publishing). To wit:

Station Sergeant Barlow is back, but if he thought life was going to return to normal after his last case, he couldn't have been more wrong. Barlow’s house is bombed, and he is suspended from duty on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. His problems mount when his schizophrenic wife is released unexpectedly from the mental institution and he learns the truth about her traumatic childhood; while his daughter, Vera, is shot during a robbery. He is under strict orders not to interfere in the ongoing investigations, but shooting Vera has made it personal …

  BARLOW BY THE BOOK will be published in July. For more, clickety-click here …

News: Jane Casey Wins the Mary Higgins Clark Award

Hearty congratulations to Jane Casey, who won the Mary Higgins Clark Award last night for THE STRANGER YOU KNOW (Minotaur Books) (the announcement was made during the ongoing Mystery Writers of America / Edgar Awards season). As those in the know will, y’know, know, THE STRANGER YOU KNOW features Jane’s series heroine Maeve Kerrigan, the London-based police detective who is one of the most compellingly drawn protagonists in contemporary crime fiction. Jane has been shortlisted for a number of awards in the past, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first time she has taken home the prize, and it’s fully deserved.
  Meanwhile, Stuart Neville will go head-to-head with some real heavyweights tonight – Karin Slaughter, Stephen King, Ian Rankin – when the Edgar Award for Best Novel is announced. Can he make it an Irish double? Only that most notorious of tittle-tattlers – time – will tell …

News: A New Departure for William Ryan

William Ryan (right) has published a series of very good novels set in Stalin’s Russia featuring Captain Korolev, the endlessly conflicted police detective operating in an almost Kafkaesque milieu, the most recent of which was THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT (2013). His forthcoming novel – as yet unnamed – is also an historical crime novel, although one with a rather different setting. Quoth William:

“Firstly, many apologies for not having given more regular updates on the project I’ve been working on – a novel set in 1945 Germany – although, the truth is, it’s been a bit of a struggle. The good news, however, is that it’s now largely written and from here on it will be mostly tweaking. It will be published next year by Macmillan in the UK and, as for other countries – I’ll update you when I hear.
  “What is it about? Well, a few years ago I came across some photographs which were collected together by an SS officer called Karl Hoecker in late 1944/early 1945. Hoecker was an adjutant to the Commandant of Auschwitz and the photographs, taken between June 1944 and January 1945, feature some of the worst of the Nazi War criminals, including Mengele, Baer and Hoess, in relaxed social situations. Many of the photographs were taken at the Sola Hut in a village about 20 kilometers away from Auschwitz where, it seems, the SS officers went for weekends or short leaves. The hut overlooks a lake in the Sola mountains in what is now Poland but was then, albeit temporarily, Germany. It’s a beautiful location and the people in the photographs often seem to be having a good time – which is quite shocking given that hundreds of thousands of people were being murdered nearby during this period. And the people in the photographs are the murderers.”

  For the rest of this piece, and a sample read of the first two chapters, clickety-click here …

Publication: I AM IN BLOOD by Joe Murphy

The author of DEAD DOGS (2012), Joe Murphy returns to the fray with I AM IN BLOOD (Brandon), a Gothic-flavoured tale with an ominous Shakespearian title. Quoth the blurb elves:

A multi-layered, Gothic tale of obsession and bloodshed set in modern-day and Victorian Dublin.
  Present day: Seventeen-year-old Nathan Jacob’s interest in real-life crime leads him to a series of horrific murders committed in Dublin’s red-light district, The Monto, in the late nineteenth century. As he delves deeper into this grisly mystery, someone – something – begins to speak to him through the pages of time. Something half-formed and dark; something that draws Nathan and his bloodline back to Victorian Dublin and the horrors that took place there.
  1890: Sergeant George Frohmell of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is under pressure. His beloved, bedraggled city has become the hunting ground for a faceless monster, a creature that preys on the poor and vulnerable, leaving them butchered in back alleys. As the death toll increases and the violence moves ever nearer to his own heart, Frohmell must find his man – or lose everything.

  I AM IN BLOOD will be published on April 30th.

One To Watch: A MAD AND WONDERFUL THING by Mark Mulholland

Set during the Troubles, A MAD AND WONDERFUL THING (Scribe Publications) is the debut novel from Mark Mulholland, and will be published on May 8th. Quoth the blurb elves:

In this passionate and heart-wrenching debut novel by Irish writer Mark Mulholland, we meet Johnny Donnelly - an intense young man who is in love with books, with his country, and with the beautiful Cora Flannery. But in his dark and secret other life he shoots British soldiers: he is an IRA sniper. How can this be? As his two worlds inevitably move towards a dramatic collision, Johnny takes us on a journey through the history, legends, and landscapes of his beloved Ireland. In the end, Johnny has to make sense of his inheritance and his life, and he does so in a riveting, redemptive, and unforgettable climax. Told in Johnny’s unique voice, and peopled by a cast of extraordinary characters, A Mad and Wonderful Thing tells its tale lightly, but pulls a heavy load. It takes us beyond the charming, familiar, and often funny experiences of everyday life to the forces that bind people together, and that set them against each other - and to the profound consequences of the choices that they make.

  As reported in the Irish Times last week, the book has already been optioned for film due to the enthusiastic support of one Liam Neeson. For the full report, clickety-click here …

Pre-Publication: EVEN THE DEAD by Benjamin Black

EVEN THE DEAD is the seventh title from Benjamin Black – aka, of course, Benny Blanco – to feature the Dublin-based pathologist Quirke. Quoth the blurb elves:

Every web has a spider sitting at the centre of it. Pathologist Quirke is back working in the city morgue, watching over Dublin’s dead. When a body is found in a burnt-out car, Quirke is called in to verify the apparent suicide of an up-and-coming civil servant. But Quirke can’t shake a suspicion of foul play. The only witness has vanished, every trace of her wiped away. Piecing together her disappearance, Quirke finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of Dublin’s elite - secret societies and high church politics, corrupt politicians and men with money to lose. When the trail eventually leads to Quirke’s own family, the past and present collide. But crimes of the past are supposed to stay hidden, and Quirke has shaken the web. Now he must wait to see what comes running out.

  EVEN THE DEAD is published on May 28th.

News: CRIME ALWAYS PAYS Shortlisted for Goldsboro Award at Crimefest

As you might imagine, I’m absolutely delighted that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS (Severn House) has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award; as the title suggests, the award is given for comic / humorous crime fiction, and as such is something of a rarity. And the Three Regular Readers will know, of course, that I have a soft spot for this particular award because I’ve previously managed to win it, improbably enough. Anyway, the Crimefest blurb runneth thusly:

GOLDSBORO LAST LAUGH AWARD

The Goldsboro Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel first published in the British Isles in 2014. The £500 prize is sponsored by Goldsboro Books, the UK’s largest specialist in signed and/or first edition books. The winner also receives a Bristol Blue Glass vase.

The nominees are:

– Lawrence Block for The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Orion Publishing Group)
– Declan Burke for Crime Always Pays (Severn House Publishers)
– Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May – The Bleeding Heart (Bantam/Transworld)
– Shane Kuhn for Kill Your Boss (Little, Brown Book Group)
– Chris Pavone for The Accident (Faber & Faber)
– L. C. Tyler for Crooked Herring (Allison & Busby)

Eligible titles were submitted by publishers for the longlist, and a team of British crime fiction reviewers voted to establish the shortlist and the winning title.

CRIMEFEST annually presents a number of awards at its Gala Dinner which in 2015 will be held on Saturday, 16 May.

  The very best of luck to all the nominees, and may the funniest man win.
  For all the details on all of the Crimefest awards, including the eDunnit and Audible awards, clickety-click here …

One to Watch: THE BONES OF IT by Kelly Creighton

There’s one half of Karen Perry and also Frank Golden, and now Kelly Creighton is the latest Irish poet to publish crime fiction. The Northern Ireland author publishes THE BONES OF IT (Liberties Press) next month, with the blurb running thusly:

A psychological crime thriller set in present day County Down. Twenty-two-year-old Scott McAuley, son of ex-paramilitary Duke McAuley, pens diary entries. When Scott is ousted from his politics degree course for joyriding, he returns home to live with Duke for the first time in his memory. When Scott was a baby, Duke was imprisoned for the murders of two young Catholic men, and Scott’s grandmother, Isla, became his guardian. Scott finds it difficult living with Duke now, and even more so when he starts getting paranoid that Duke is secretly seeing his ex-girlfriend.

  THE BONES OF IT is published on May 15.

Launch: THE ORGANISED CRIMINAL by Jarlath Gregory

Declan Hughes will launch Jarlath Gregory’s THE ORGANISED CRIMINAL (Liberties Press) on Thursday, April 23rd. The event takes place at 6.30pm at The Liquor Rooms, 5 Wellington Quay, Dublin 2. Quoth the blurb elves:

Spiked with black humour throughout, The Organised Criminal introduces us to Jay O’Reilly reluctantly returning to his family home. A childhood steeped in dysfunction with his family of criminals made him determined never to return, despite his attempts to leave the past behind, comes home to bid a final farewell to his recently-departed cousin Duncan. Though Jay likes to think he’s turned his back on his community, his lost past still holds a bleak fascination for him. His father, a well-known smuggler in the city with a wealthy, far-reaching empire, comes to him with a proposal. As Jay contemplates the job offer he reacquaints himself with the place and the family he left, only to find that it is exactly as hard, cold and unwelcoming as he remembered. With the anxieties and troubles of Northern Ireland as a back drop, Jay’s story becomes one of fear, family ties and self-worth. When the truth behind his father’s offer is finally revealed, Jay faces the primal struggle between familial bonds and moral obligations.

  For more on Jarlath Gregory, clickety-click here …

News: Dennis Lehane for Listowel Writers’ Festival

Dennis Lehane (right) will appear at the Listowel Writers’ Festival on Friday, May 29th. Dennis publishes WORLD GONE BY (Little, Brown) early next month, the third in the historical crime trilogy that began with THE GIVEN DAY (2009) and continued with LIVE BY NIGHT (2012). Quoth the Festival:

Dennis Lehane grew up in Boston. His novels have been translated into more than 30 languages and have become international bestsellers and include Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Darkness Take My Hand and Moonlight Mile. His most recent work World Gone By, a psychologically and morally complex novel set in World War II was published March 2015. Three of his novels - Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island - have been adapted into award-winning films.
  Lehane was a staff writer on the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and is a writer-producer on the fourth season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. His film The Drop features James Gandolfini in his last movie role. It has recently been reported in the press that Dennis has been approached to adapt the Irish crime drama Love/Hate for a US cable television network.
  Dennis Lehane will be interviewed by music and arts journalist Jim Carroll.

  For all the details, including how to book your ticket, clickety-click here …

Review: A SONG OF SHADOWS by John Connolly

The 13th novel in the Charlie Parker series, John Connolly’s A Song of Shadows (Hodder & Stoughton, €22.50) opens in Maine’s remote coastal town of Boreas. Recuperating from grievous wounds sustained in his previous outing, A Wolf in Winter (2014) – Parker was declared clinically dead before being resuscitated – the private investigator is drawn into a bizarre case when an obsessive Nazi-hunter is discovered dead on a nearby beach. No stranger to evil, and still coming to terms with his experience of another realm about which “he still had questions, but no doubts,” Parker finds himself immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust, and determined that this particular evil will not thrive on his watch. Connolly has been engaged for some years now in gradually refining the supernatural and horror tropes that gave the Parker novels their distinctive identity, and A Song of Shadows, blending the language of myth and New Testament into a hardboiled tale, marks a significant shift in Parker’s metamorphosis into an explicitly Christ-like figure (“This one bleeds from the palms,” observes one of his foes). That notion has been explored before, most notably by Ross Macdonald and James Lee Burke, and while A Song of Shadows more than earns the right to be judged in such company, Connolly further appears to be breaking new ground, not least in terms of Parker’s haunting relationships with his daughters, one dead and one living. It’s a fabulous piece of work, in both senses of the word, from one of contemporary fiction’s great storytellers. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.

Event: The Franco-Irish Literary Festival

The 16th Franco-Irish Literary Festival takes place from April 24th – 26th, with the theme this year Crime Fiction / Festival du polar:

“The sustained popularity of the crime novel has long shown that the genre cannot be dismissed as second-class literature. From the early works of Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century, to the recent TV series The Fall, by way of the French literary collection “Le Masque”, launched in 1927, the crime novel has always moved with the times, and today, in its many different forms, its reach extends across all layer of society. In the 1970s, the slang term “polar” was coined in France. Initially referring to the crime film genre, the term was soon universally adopted to describe the crime novel. The “polar”, this multifaceted and seldom anodyne genre, period-specific and bearing witness to all the power of the pen, is surely every bit as enigmatic and complex as the crimes and mysteries it presents to its readers.”

  Contributing authors include Stuart Neville, Sinead Crowley, John Banville and Cormac Millar on the Irish side, while France is represented by Hervé Le Corre, Chantal Pelletier, Jean-Bernard Pouy and Didier Daeninckx. The weekend will also incorporate a Crime Fiction Masterclass at the Irish Writers’ Centre hosted by Jean-Bernard Pouy.
  The events take place in Dublin Castle and at Alliance Française. For all the details on the scheduling, and how to book places, clickety-click here …

One To Watch: A LITTLE MORE FREE by John McFetridge

I’ve been a fan of John McFetridge’s for quite a few years now, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance reading copy of his forthcoming A LITTLE MORE FREE (ECW Press). It’s the second novel to feature Montreal-based police constable Eddie Dougherty, and it’s an absolute cracker. Quoth the blurb elves:

Montreal, Labour Day weekend, 1972. The city is getting ready to host the first game in the legendary Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. Three men set fire to a nightclub and Constable Eddie Dougherty witnesses the deaths of 37 people. The Museum of Fine Arts is robbed and two million dollars’ worth of paintings are stolen. Against the backdrop of these historic events, Dougherty discovers the body of a murdered young man on Mount Royal. As he tries to prove he has the stuff to become a detective, he is drawn into the world of American draft dodgers and deserters, class politics, and organized crime.

  The bad news? A LITTLE MORE FREE won’t be published until September. Still, it’ll be worth waiting for, and in the meantime you can catch up on John’s previous offerings. To keep up to date on future developments, wander on over to John’s blog …

News: THE LOST AND THE BLIND by Declan Burke

As the more eagle-eyed of the Three Regular Readers may have noted, I was away on holidays / vacation / the lam (delete as appropriate) for the first couple of weeks in April, a period which coincided with the US publication of THE LOST AND THE BLIND.
  If it’s okay with you, there’s one or three things I’d like to bring to your attention:

The Kindle publication of THE LOST AND THE BLIND;

Some very positive Amazon reviews in the UK and US for THE LOST AND THE BLIND;

An interview published by the RTE Ten website;

My ‘What Writers Are Reading’ offering, courtesy of the inestimable Marshal Zeringue;

A very nice review from that tireless champion of Irish crime writers, the Bookwitch;

And, finally, the delightful news that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS has been longlisted – in a list of 30 books, admittedly – for the Goldsboro Award for Comedy Crime Fiction, the winner of which will be announced at the Bristol Crimefest.

  So there you have it. I really should go away more often, shouldn’t I?

News: Eoin McNamee Shortlisted for Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year

Hearty congratulations to Eoin McNamee, whose BLUE IS THE NIGHT has been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. Eoin is nominated alongside David Butler, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Patrick O’Keeffe and Eibhear Walshe, and the winner will be announced on May 29th, during Listowel Writers’ Week. For all the details, clickety-click here …
  I reviewed BLUE IS THE NIGHT a couple of weeks ago: “a beguiling, gripping tale that deserves to be considered a masterpiece of Irish noir fiction, regardless of whether its hue is black or the darkest blue.” For the full review, clickety-click here …

Review: KILLING WAYS by Alex Barclay

Ren Bryce, the Denver-based FBI agent with the ‘Safe Streets’ programme, returns in Alex Barclay’s seventh novel, Killing Ways (Harper Collins, €16.99). A particularly vicious serial killer is targeting women in Denver, but Ren, bi-polar and off her meds in order to stay sharp, may not be the best person to lead the investigation. There’s a raw intimacy to Barclay’s portrayal of Ren Bryce, given that we’re privy to the self-torturing Ren’s unfiltered thought process, an intimacy that becomes all the more charged when we discover that she is chasing the killer who first appeared in Barclay’s debut, Dark House (2005). The most remarkable aspect of the novel, however, is the degree to which Barclay forces the reader to consider the consequences of brutal murder – indeed, there’s an element of horror in the brutal poetry that describes not only the victims’ remains, but the reasons why the killer is possessed of such savagery. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.

Blog: Crime Fiction Ireland

There’s a very good chance you’re already familiar with Crime Fiction Ireland, a new (or new to me, at least) blog that pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin. Edited by Lucy Dalton, the blog covers crime and mystery fiction of all hues, TV and film, provides author profiles and a ‘What’s On’ slot, and also offers a Short Fiction selection. To be honest, it’s what Crime Always Pays would be if I had about three heads and sixteen hands … or would have been, I should say, because now that Crime Fiction Ireland is on the case, I’m kicking back, hanging up the blogger’s equivalent of the quill, and enjoying the show. If I was you, I’d get over to Crime Fiction Ireland right now, bookmark it, and never come back here again. Toodle-pip …

Review: DEADLY INTENT by Anna Sweeney

One of the reasons why Irish crime writing took so long to develop as a body of work is that Ireland lacked the kind of large, anonymous urban settings where crime fiction tends to thrive. In the era before the Celtic Tiger, in an Ireland long characterised by its squinting windows, the identity of a murderer was often known even before the gardaí arrived on the scene, which rather undermined the suspense element of a ‘whodunit’. There were exceptions, of course – we can go all the way back to Gerald Griffin’s The Collegians (1829), or more recently Patrick McGinley’s superb Bogmail (1978) – but for the most part it took a very brave writer to place an Irish murder mystery in a rural setting.
  The rise of Irish crime fiction has redrafted the parameters, of course, to the point where Anna Sweeney can set her debut novel Deadly Intent (Severn House) on the Beara Peninsula and hardly raise an eyebrow (the novel was originally published as gaeilge as Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2010). The story opens with the discovery of an unconscious woman on a remote hiking trail; her name is Maureen, and she is a guest at Nessa McDermott’s country house Cnoc Meala (Honey Hill). Ambitious young garda Redmond Joyce (“clean-scrubbed and shiny”) is keen to solve the crime as a ticket away from the easy-going pace of life in southwest Ireland to the more adrenaline-charged environs of a big city posting, but soon the entire community is shocked to discover that Maureen’s alleged attacker, millionaire businessman Oscar Malden, has been brutally killed. As a media feeding frenzy descends on Beara, and the gardaí begin to wonder why Nessa’s husband Patrick has departed the country for Malawi at this crucial time, Nessa – herself a former investigative journalist – sets out to discover the truth behind Oscar Malden’s murder.
  What transpires is a murder mystery that firmly inhabits the ‘cosy’ end of the crime fiction spectrum. “Jack makes it all sound like a James Bond film,” observes one of Nessa’s friends about a tabloid hack making hay from the tragic events, but the country house, the idyllic rural backdrop and Nessa’s status as an amateur detective suggest that Deadly Intent is a charming throwback to the ‘Golden Age’ of 1930s mystery fiction. That said, the story is highly contemporary: one sub-plot involves a Russian ship and its crew abandoned by its owners in a nearby port, while drug smuggling on the southwest coast also features, as does illegal international arms dealing.
  One of the novel’s most striking features, unsurprisingly, is its use of the dramatic landscape, which is vividly sketched by Sweeney: “Behind them, Beara’s great backbone of the Caha mountains stretched out along the peninsula. Ahead of them … the dark waters of Lake Glanmore in the embrace of shapely hills; beyond it, a quilted blanket of fertile farmland and abundant hedges; and on neighbouring Iveragh peninsula across the slender rim of the bay, the tip of Carrantouhil, the country’s highest mountain, rising up to the clouds above the muscular shoulders of the Reeks.”
  As beautifully written as it is, there is perhaps a little too much by way of descriptive digression in Deadly Intent, and Nessa’s roundabout way of investigating the murder – which has, admittedly, the ring of truth; in rural Ireland, as with the Beara’s topography, the quickest route between two points is rarely a straight line – nevertheless slows down the main narrative and the central investigation. Those with patience will be rewarded, however, by a mystery with plenty of twists and turns, and one that is entirely faithful to its time and place. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner.