Essay: ‘The Irresistible Rise of Irish Crime Fiction’

There’s a very nice essay on the rise – irresistible, it seems – of Irish crime fiction over at the 746 Books blog, which provides a concise appraisal of the last decade or so in Irish crime writing. Sample quote:

“What Ireland couldn’t offer pre-Celtic Tiger, pre-Stormont was anonymity. The country was too small, too parochial with a lack of big cities. With the economic growth of the boom all that changed and suddenly cities were booming and immigration was on the rise. It was possible to be a stranger in Ireland, to go unnoticed. With the crash came a growing distrust in politicians and those in power and coupled with a lack of faith in the Catholic Church, the old hierarchies were being disassembled and the lines between good and bad were being blurred even more. Society was no longer a hierarchy of authority with the priests and the politicians at the top. The gangsters were as likely to be in expensive offices as on the streets. Society had been shaken up and that makes for great subject matter for crime writers.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, Claire Coughlan contributes a very nice piece to the Irish Times’ ‘In Praise Of’ series celebrating Irish women writers, with a short but heartfelt paean to Tana French. You’ll find it here.

I Will Arise And Go Now, And Go To Innisfree …

J. Sydney Jones (right), author of REQUIEM IN VIENNA and THE EMPTY MIRROR, was kind enough to host an interview with yours truly over at his blog, Scene of the Crime. The gist of Sydney’s interviews concern themselves with settings, and how a particular setting influences a novel. I talked mostly about my home town, Sligo, the setting for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG EMPTY. To wit:

“Historically, Sligo town is a fascinating place. There are records of the ancient Greeks trading at Sligo port; Sligo Abbey was founded in 1252. It’s an old town, then, and the centre of the town reflects that: the streets are narrow, and there are plenty of interesting alleyways down which a man might wander who is not himself mean. The modern town incorporates many sprawling suburbs, some of which are more salubrious than others, which again makes for an interesting juxtaposition. In certain parts of Sligo, literally crossing the road can make the difference between real estate selling for €80,000 and €400,000. That in itself creates a certain tension.
  “There’s a saying in the West of Ireland that the Celtic Tiger never learned in swim, which is why it never crossed the Shannon into Connacht (said Tiger, presumably, being too dim to use one of the many bridges that cross the Shannon). Sligo was one of those towns that didn’t benefit hugely from the boom years, although it has transformed itself in the last decade or so. Today it’s a brash, progressive place – you can sip your café mocha on the remodelled riverfront with the best of them – but there is a sense that many of the changes are superficial, and you don’t have to go very far from the centre of town before you notice the shabby and threadbare corners, the boarded-up shop-fronts. All in all, I find it a fascinating place – but then, I’m biased. I love it.”

  Not that you’d know it from the excerpt Sydney posts from THE BIG EMPTY, a Harry Rigby private eye novel of mine currently out under consideration. To wit:

It was better out in the suburbs, and it was mostly all suburbs, but the town was a heart-attack of concrete and chrome. Old streets, high and narrow, arteries that had thickened and gnarled so the traffic trickled or didn’t move at all. The light a frozen glare shot with greens and reds, blinking pink neon, fluorescent blues. Boom-boom blasting from rolled-down windows, the deep bass pulsing out muscles of sound.
  On a bad night it took fifteen minutes to crawl the two hundred yards along Castle Street into Grafton Street. The mob shuffling out of the chippers wore hoodies over baggy denims, the dragging hems frayed. Night of the Living McDead. The girls in cropped tops over bulging bellies with hipster jeans showcasing cheese-cutter thongs. In case someone might think they weren’t wearing any underwear at all, maybe.
  I skipped O’Connell Street, heading east along John Street, turning north down Adelaide and then west at the new bridge onto Lynn’s Dock, a grapefruit moon hanging low above the quays. Finn playing The Northern Pikes, Place That’s Insane. On along Ballast Quay to the docks proper, a spit of land jutting out into the sea, maybe forty acres of crumbling warehouse facing open water. Behind the warehouses lay a marshy jungle of weeds. Once in a while there was talk of turning it into a nature preserve, a bird sanctuary, but no one ever did anything about it. The birds came and went anyway.
  Down at the breakwater the Port Authority building was nine stories of black concrete, a finger flipping the bird to the town. Sligo’s Ozymandias, our monument to hubris, built back in the ’60s when Lemass had all boats on a rising tide and the docks were buzzing, a North Atlantic entry point for Polish coal, Norwegian pine, Jamaican sugar, Australian wool. Oil tankers moored down at the deepwater. Russians slipped ashore and never went to sea again. The first African, a Nigerian, was a celebrity. They called him Paddy Dubh and he never had to pay when he bought a pint of stout.
  Then the ’70s slithered in. Crude oil went through the roof. The coal stopped coming, then the sugar. The channel silted up. Paddy had to buy his own stout. Things got so bad the Industrial Development Authority had to buy the PA building and then lease back two of the nine stories to the Port Authority. Even that was a farce, the IDA loaning the PA the money to pay the lease.
  Then the ’80s, a good decade to be a weed or a rat. Everyone forgot about the docks, or tried to …”

  For the interview in its entirety, clickety-click here ...

Like Slaughterers To The Lamb

Googling yourself, like an on-line version of eavesdropping at the keyhole, can be a chastening experience, which is why I tend to keep it to the minimum. By the same token, Googling yourself can throw up some interesting snippets, such as Clair Lamb’s recent piece for Books and Authors, titled ‘Where Green Meets Red: The Golden Age of Irish Crime Writing’. Basically, it’s a list of the hottest contemporary Irish crime writers, and great was the excitement when I realised I’d come in third. Then I noticed the first two writers were Colin Bateman and Ken Bruen, and that the list was alphabetical. Oh well. To wit:

3) Declan Burke is a journalist and reviewer who has published two critically-acclaimed crime novels: Eightball Boogie (2004), which introduced Dublin PI Harry Rigby, and The Big O, a caper novel that drew comparisons with Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. The Big O, in particular, has great fun with the rampant greed and suspended rules of life during the Celtic Tiger years. In addition to writing his own books, Burke maintains a blog that is the single best online source of news about Irish crime fiction.

  The only appropriate response to that is, ‘Gee, shucks.’ For the rest of the Top Ten, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, during my Google-esque perambulations, I also stumbled across this little chunk-a-love from the University of Minnesota:

Ireland may have a long and distinguished literary heritage, but in one major area, crime fiction, its contribution has been mysteriously lacking ... until recently. This course offers a snapshot of contemporary Irish crime fiction as a form practiced by serious writers, from the hard-boiled to the historical, from psychological thrillers to police procedurals. Discuss the development of Irish crime fiction, particularly the disparate social and cultural influences that have left their stamp on the genre. You will answer questions such as: What is it that makes these crime novels Irish? Is it the setting, the writer’s voice, or the characters? What part has Irish history played in the development of crime fiction, and how does placing a story in Ireland add layers of meaning to the events in each novel? In three monthly sessions structured like a book club, you will read in advance and be ready to discuss: (May 6) The Big O by Declan Burke, a fast-paced comic crime caper, described as “Elmore Leonard with a hard Irish edge”, and The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes, about a private eye who comes back to Ireland to bury his mother; (May 27) The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville, in which an IRA assassin lives with the ghosts of all 12 people he’s murdered, and Borderlands by Brian McGilloway, a police procedural set in the border lands between Northern Ireland and the Republic; and (June 3) My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison, a historical mystery.

  Thank you kindly, U of M. This is very probably the only time in my life (adjusts monocle) that I’ll be described as a ‘serious writer’ …

Those About To Write The Shop-And-Fuck Novel, We Salute You

Yours truly had a piece in the Sunday Independent yesterday about the current explosion in Irish crime fiction, the idea being to promote next weekend’s Books 2008 Irish crime writing series. Here’s one reason:

Perversely, the influence of chick lit can’t be discounted as a factor in the emergence of crime fiction. The shop-and-fuck novels might be criticised for skating along the surface of the Celtic Tiger, and charting the new Irish obsession with vacant consumerism, but their best-selling status gave a huge boost to genre fiction in a country that has traditionally been more concerned with literary issues. Where chick lit celebrated the gaudy delights of the Celtic Tiger, crime fiction proposes to penetrate to its dark heart, which is likely to get a lot darker now that the recession has kicked in and that big fat pie starts to shrink.

  In the interests of openness, transparency and plagiarism accusations, I should say that I ripped that off from a quote John Connolly gave me for another article I’ve written on the same subject for the Evening Herald, which will appear later this week. Turning a buck writing about Irish crime fiction – who’d a thunk it, eh?

No Country For Grand Men

Crumbs! No sooner had the dust settled on the entirely unnecessary ‘Great Post-Troubles Norn Iron Novel’ baloohaha than Joseph O’Connor, in the context of reviewing Gerard Donovan’s collection of short stories COUNTRY OF THE GRAND, starts banging on about the ‘Great Post-Celtic Tiger Novel’ over at The Guardian, to wit:

“Some of Ireland’s wisest literary commentators have been troubled in recent times by a reticence they perceive among the country’s writers of fiction on the matter of the new prosperity. The novelists have told us nothing – thus runs the argument. An Irish Amis has proved reluctant to appear.
  “Like most debating stances, it obscures as much as it reveals, but its assumptions are more enlightening than its conclusions. Mass-market fiction, the historical novel, the thriller, the crime novel and other incarnations of genre-based storytelling have not been judged worthy of critical notice, no matter their level of engagement with the now deceased Celtic Tiger. Where is our Bret Easton Ellis? Our BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES?”

  In the prevailing spirit of self-biggery-uppery, as modelled by Master Bateman when he voted for I PREDICT A RIOT during the halcyon days of the GTPNIN debate, I’m going to say that blowing up a hospital is a metaphor for deconstructing the Celtic Tiger, and in particular the way Ireland shot its economic boom in the foot (or paw, if you will), because that’s the kind of malarkey the literary types who decide these things seem to like, although I may not be entirely serious in doing so on the basis that novels lauded as ‘the Great [Insert Your Own Pet Obsession Here] Novel’ generally tend to be anything but because they’re too busy trying to disguise the self-aggrandizing promotion of half-baked theories therein. Or is it just me?