“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jane Casey

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?
Margery Allingham’s THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE. It’s very old-fashioned but quite brilliant – a hunt for a vicious killer through foggy post-war London, peopled with maimed survivors of the conflict. You have to read it in one sitting. The tension is almost unbearable.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Dorothy L. Sayers’ Harriet Vane (without having to stand trial for murder, preferably).

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Young adult fiction. I used to work as a commissioning editor in children’s publishing and I’m proud of buying a few YA books that did very nicely. I missed out on a few that I regret to this day! I love how intense teenagers are about their lives and relationships; YA fiction is just brilliant when it’s done well. I still won’t read it in public, though.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing my second book, THE BURNING. I was on the phone to my editor while sitting on the floor of my living room, typing with one hand and trying to distract my then seven-month-old son with the other. The last-minute changes were nail-biting but necessary, and clicking on ‘save’ was a beautiful moment.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I love John Banville’s Benjamin Black novels – CHRISTINE FALLS, if I must pick.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE. All those ghosts are crying out to be put on film.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing is spending your working life in a world of your own creation, with characters that you love. The worst thing is that your working life is your life. I don’t know how to switch off that part of my brain so I never truly relax, even between books. But I’d be lying if I said I hated that.

The pitch for your next book is …?
DC Maeve Kerrigan returns to hunt for a killer preying on convicted paedophiles.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m re-reading THE MURDER FARM by a German writer, Andrea Maria Schenkel. It’s very short, very assured, utterly compelling and original. It was her first book, which is just extraordinary.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. I would get bored with only my own thoughts and ideas to entertain me. And I could always think about what I’d write if I was allowed. I had my first novel in my head for about two years before I ever typed a sentence, so I’m used to it!

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dark and light.

Jane Casey’s THE BURNING is published by Ebury Press.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ ‘Crime Beat’ Round-Up

Being a shorter-than-usual version of the ‘Crime Beat’ round-up in the Irish Times, due to circumstances that were largely beyond my control, not that my control is ever all that controlled. Anyhoo, herewith be the truncated column:

German author Andrea Maria Schenkel’s BUNKER (Quercus, £12.99) is a chilling tale of a woman’s abduction and incarceration. What makes the tale so compelling is that Schenkel isn’t content to simply ratchet up the tension with a conventional will-she-escape tale. Instead, Schenkel offers parallel narratives, from captor and abductor, both delivered for the most part in internal monologues, interspersing both with a third-person account of a nameless victim arriving to an emergency ward on the point of death. It’s a clever and wholly believable strategy, as Schenkel delves into both characters’ memories to excavate a complex and interlocking labyrinth of motive and guilt.
  Henning Mankell’s DANIEL (Harvill Secker, £12.99) is another unusual crime novel. Set in 1875, it follows entomologist Hans Bengler to the Kalahari Desert, where he ‘adopts’ a young native, the sole survivor of a massacre. Naming the boy Daniel, Bengler takes him back to Sweden, where the child’s inability to adjust to his new surroundings eventually results in tragedy. A psychological study of alienation and its consequences, Mankell’s tale lacks the pace, punch and body count of his more conventional crime tales, and may disappoint fans of the traditional mystery / thriller genre. Furthermore, the character of Daniel never fully rings true: a sullen naïf when the plot suits, he is nonetheless phenomenally successful at mastering the Swedish language and gives voice to implausibly profound yearnings in one so young.
  Val McDermid also ploughs something of a new furrow with her latest novel, TRICK OF THE DARK (Little, Brown, £18.99). Renowned for her gory murders, McDermid offers a more genteel story than usual when disgraced clinical psychologist Charlie Flint is asked by her former Oxford tutor to discreetly investigate the suspicious circumstances of the death of her son-in-law on the day of his wedding. McDermid, too, employs a neat narrative conceit in allowing the chief suspect for the man’s death to offer a first-person account of events by way of a memoir she is writing, although aficionados of the genre, expecting twists and turns, might deduce that too much is being pinned on one suspect. That said, McDermid writes a fluid, compelling novel of manners underpinned by a believable mystery plot, and Charlie Flint is a fascinating addition to the canon of intrepid female investigators.
  Meanwhile, the rather-less-than-intrepid Mystery Man returns in the third of Colin Bateman’s new series of novels, DR YES (Headline, £14.99). The nameless hero, who owns the Belfast crime fiction bookstore No Alibis, is reluctantly dragged into yet another caffeine-fuelled adventure when legendary Northern Irish crime novelist Augustine Wogan commits suicide after alleging that a famous plastic surgeon - the eponymous villain - has murdered his wife. Bateman delights in undermining the crime tropes, making his ‘hero’ a cowardly neurotic who detects his way through the mostly self-inspired mayhem by taking his cues from the classics of the genre. Here Mystery Man meets - but fails to recognise - his first bona fide femme fatale in Pearl Knecklass, crime fiction fan and receptionist to Dr Yes, who may or may not be party to the real-or-imagined murder. Written with obvious affection for the genre, yet always ready to pounce on its clichés (Dr Yes fillets the current craze for serial murderers), the Mystery Man novels are page-turning whodunits with the bonus of a slyly subversive commentary on the contemporary crime novel.

  This review first appeared in the Irish Times.