Interview: Dennis Lehane, author of WORLD GONE BY

Dennis Lehane’s (right) WORLD GONE BY (Little, Brown) is the concluding volume of the Joe Coughlin trilogy that began with THE GIVEN DAY (2009) and continued with LIVE BY NIGHT (2012). To mark the publication of WORLD GONE BY, I interviewed Dennis for the Irish Examiner in a feature that appeared last weekend. To wit:

Dennis Lehane is rightly regarded as one America’s great contemporary novelists. His debut novel, A Drink Before The War (1994), featuring the private eye duo Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, was the result, he says, of his being “obsessed with writing about the haves and the have-nots. Mainly the have-nots. I’m obsessed with that battle, if you will, that cultural war. And the place which seemed like a welcome home for those types of obsessions about violence and the social questions, the ills of our time, was crime fiction.
  “I wrote A Drink Before The War so fast that part of me said, ‘Wow, you’ve got a comfort level here that you do not have when you’re trying to write much more overtly literary fiction.’ And then,” he laughs, “I went back to writing overtly literary fiction. But I was thinking more and more about crime fiction, and the next thing I wanted to say, and that became Darkness, Take My Hand [1996]. So that’s why I write these stories – it was a way to write about the things that fascinated me the most in our culture, and the crime fiction genre seemed to be tailor-made.”

  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here …
  Dennis Lehane will be in conversation with Declan Hughes at the Irish Writers’ Centre on May 28th.
  Dennis will also appear at the Listowel Writers’ Festival on May 29th.

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 …

Festival: Mountains to Sea

The Mountains to Sea festival runs from March 18-22 this year, and while Irish crime writers are for the most part notable by their absence, there’s a couple of very interesting events you might want to take note of. To wit:

Wednesday March 18th
Jilly Leovy, Ghettoside
In conversation with Declan Hughes

Jilly Leovy’s Ghettoside is true crime like you never heard before, leaving all the crime thrillers and blockbuster TV series for dead, which is how a frightening number of young black Angeleno males end up. Based on a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, this gripping, immersive work of reportage takes the reader onto the streets and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic. Ghettoside provides urgent insights into the origins of such violence, explodes the myths surrounding policing and race, and shows that the only way to fight the epidemic successfully is with justice.

Post-Ferguson, this is the book you have to read to understand the issue of policing black neighbourhoods. Jill Leovy has been a reporter for the LA Times for 20 years, and has been embedded with the LAPD homicide squad on and off since 2002. In 2007 she masterminded and wrote the groundbreaking Homicide Report for the LA Times, ‘an extraordinary blog’ (New Yorker) that documented every one of the 845 murders that took place in LA County that year.

Local author Declan Hughes is well known to festival audiences. Hailed as ‘the best Irish crime novelist of his generation’, his latest novel is All the Things You Are.

Venue: dlr Lexicon / Time: 6.30pm / €10/€8 Concession

Friday March 20th
SJ Watson & Paula Hawkins
Chaired by Sinéad Crowley

How well do we know our family, our closest friends? How well do we really know ourselves? S.J. Watson’s new novel, Second Life, explores identity, lies and secrets in a nail-biting new psychological thriller. Watson’s debut novel, Before I Go To Sleep, became a phenomenal international success. It has now sold over 4 million copies around the world and has been made into a hit Hollywood film starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train has become a publishing sensation before it has even hit the shops with early reviewers anointing it as “the new Gone Girl”. The central conceit is brilliant. Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. Each time it waits at the same signal, overlooking a row of houses. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but now everything’s changed.

Sinéad Crowley is Arts & Media correspondent with RTÉ News. Her debut thriller Can Anybody Help Me? was published in 2014.

Venue: Pavilion Theatre / Time: 6.30pm / €10/€8 Concession

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

Overview: The St Patrick’s Day Rewind

A very happy St Patrick’s Day to one and all, and to celebrate the day that’s in it I thought I’d offer up some of the highlights of Irish crime writing (aka Emerald Noir) from the blog – book reviews, interviews, features, etc. – from the last five years or so. To wit:

An interview with Tana French on the publication of BROKEN HARBOUR
In short, Tana French is one of modern Ireland’s great novelists. Broken Harbour isn’t just a wonderful mystery novel, it’s also the era-defining post-Celtic Tiger novel the Irish literati have been crying out for.

An interview with Alan Glynn on the publication of WINTERLAND
“I think that the stuff you ingest as a teenager is the stuff that sticks with you for life,” says Glynn. “When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the biggest influence was movies, and especially the conspiracy thrillers. What they call the ‘paranoid style’ in America – Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, and of course, the great Chinatown … We’re all paranoid now.”

A triptych of reviews of John Connolly’s THE LOVERS, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) and Declan Hughes’ ALL THE DEAD VOICES:
“But then The Lovers, for all that it appears to be an unconventional but genre-friendly take on the classic private eye story, eventually reveals itself to be a rather complex novel, and one that is deliciously ambitious in its exploration of the meanings behind big small words such as love, family, duty and blood.”

“Whether or not Fegan and his ghosts come in time to be seen as a metaphor for Northern Ireland itself, as it internalises and represses its response to its sundering conflicts, remains to be seen. For now, The Twelve is a superb thriller, and one of the first great post-Troubles novels to emerge from Northern Ireland.”

“As with Gene Kerrigan’s recent Dark Times in the City, and Alan Glynn’s forthcoming Winterland, Hughes’s novel subtly explores the extent to which, in Ireland, the supposedly exclusive worlds of crime, business and politics can very often be fluid concepts capable of overlap and lucrative cross-pollination, a place where the fingers that once fumbled in greasy tills are now twitching on triggers.”

A review of Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE
“Students of Irish history will know that Robert McGladdery was the last man to be hanged on Irish soil, a fact that infuses Orchid Blue with a noir-ish sense of fatalism and the inevitability of retribution. That retribution and State-sanctioned revenge are no kind of justice is one of McNamee’s themes here, however, and while the story is strained through an unmistakably noir filter, McNamee couches the tale in a form that is ancient and classical, with McGladdery pursued by Fate and its Furies and Justice Curran a shadowy Thanatos overseeing all.”

A review of Jane Casey’s THE LAST GIRL
On the evidence of THE BURNING and THE LAST GIRL, Maeve Kerrigan seems to me to be an unusually realistic and pragmatic character in the world of genre fiction: competent and skilled, yet riddled with self-doubt and a lack of confidence, she seems to fully inhabit the page. This was a pacy and yet thoughtful read, psychologically acute and fascinating in terms of Maeve’s personal development, particularly in terms of her empathy with the victims of crime.

Eoin Colfer on Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS
“I was expecting standard private-investigator fare, laced with laconic humour, which would have been fine, but what I got was sheer dark poetry.”

A review of Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND
As for the style, McKinty quickly establishes and maintains a pacy narrative, but he does a sight more too. McKinty brings a quality of muscular poetry to his prose, and the opening paragraph quoted above is as good an example as any. He belongs in a select group of crime writers, those you would read for the quality of their prose alone: James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, David Peace, James Ellroy.

  For updates on the latest on all Irish crime writers, just type the author’s name into the search box at the top left of the blog …

Event: ‘Northern Noir’ in Coleraine with Brian McGilloway

Brian McGilloway (right) will host a conversation on ‘Northern Noir’ in Coleraine next Wednesday, February 11th, one of a series of crime writing events planned for library venues around Northern Ireland during the next few weeks. To wit:

Libraries NI has put together a strong line-up of authors events for the coming weeks creating that personal connection for the public to meet popular writers which they admire and appreciate.
  Libraries NI has programmed the ‘NI Author Collection’ showcasing home-grown talent and for lovers of crime fiction the ‘Catch a Crime Writer’ series will be running in mid-February. The up and coming events are listed below.
  This is an occasion to find out what’s behind the story, why it was written, how the artistic, creative and psychological process developed? The aim of these events is to inspire the public to read more and consider novels which they would never have read before. Libraries NI trust that people will be encouraged to visit their local library or even visit a new one and meet a favourite author. It’s a real opportunity to discover what inspires writers, hear their fascinating stories or simply get a preview of the author’s latest book, sprinkled with a little author charm!

  A few of the highlights:

Wednesday 11th February at 7:30pm
Coleraine Library
‘Northern Noir’, hosted by Brian McGilloway, and including Eoin McNamee, Stuart Neville and Steve Cavanagh

Thursday 26th February at 6:45pm
Belfast Central Library
An audience with Declan Hughes

  The programme also includes Anne Cleeves, Michael Ridpath and Louise Phillips. For all the details, clickety-click here …

News: Irish Crime Fiction at Trinity College

There’s a fascinating course on Irish crime fiction being taught in Trinity College these days, under the aegis of Professor Chris Morash and Dr Brian Cliff, titled – with breathtaking simplicity – ‘Irish Crime Fiction’. To wit:

“‘The detective novel’, wrote Walter Benjamin, ‘has become an instrument of social criticism’. This new co-taught seminar will explore perhaps the fastest-growing area of contemporary Irish literature, the Irish crime novel, considering its roots, its emphasis on crisis and change in a society, and its ability to distil and magnify a society’s obsessions. For these reasons, studies of Irish crime fiction are on the cusp of becoming a key strand in the study of contemporary Irish culture, here and abroad.”

  Authors under scrutiny include John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Tana French, Arlene Hunt, Benjamin Black, Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville, with DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS playing its humble part as one of the establishing texts.
  For more, clickety-click here …

Event: Nordic Noir / Celtic Crime

The Irish Writers’ Centre hosts ‘Nordic Noir / Celtic Crime’ tomorrow evening, Thursday 20th November, at 7pm. The featured speakers are Thomas Enger, Sinéad Crowley (right) & Declan Hughes. To wit:

Join us for a panel discussion with Scandinavian and Irish crime fiction writers for what’s likely to be the final Battle of Clontarf millennial celebrations. Our line-up includes Thomas Enger (Norway) and Arts and Media Correspondent with RTÉ news Sinéad Crowley (Ireland) and Leif Ekle, culture expert, freelance journalist and broadcaster with Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK.

Declan Hughes (Ireland) will chair the panel and up for discussion are the different processes in writing crime fiction and exploring how culture, geographical location and gender influence the process.

Free Event, suggested donation €5

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

All Decs On Hand

There has been, over the years, an occasional confusion between (or conflation of) Declan Hughes and Declan Burke, which will surely only be worsened by the fact that our current offerings – ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE and CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, respectively – are both published by Severn House as part of the ‘Celtic Crime’ imprint. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I’m quite pleased about this, because it means that I’m occasionally mistaken for a very good writer indeed.
  Anyway, in the interests of adding to the confusion, I’ll be appearing with Declan Hughes at the Dalkey Book Festival next month. The gist, according to the good people at the DBF, runs thusly:

There has never been so much interest in Irish crime writing and we are thrilled to have two of the best here for you this year.
  In an event called ‘Emerald Noir’, two of Ireland’s best crime writers, Declan Hughes and Declan Burke, take you through their favourite writers and discuss their own books in the context of current Irish crime fiction.

  The event takes place at The Masonic Hall at 12.30pm, Saturday 21st June. For all the details, including how to book tickets, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Lisa Alber

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?
This may sound perverse, but I’d love to channel the darkness that burbles around inside Gillian Flynn. She’s wicked! Have you seen photos of her? Looks like she bakes pies for homeless people. Any of her novels will do: SHARP OBJECTS, DARK PLACES, or GONE GIRL.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Fictional characters go through too many hardships and conflicts before their happy endings. I’m too lazy for all that. There’s gotta be a sidekick out there who lives a charmed life and is only around enough to support the hero. That’s more my speed. Anyone got any ideas for me?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
DA VINCI CODE-type thrillers are my guilty pleasures because I love all that Catholic Church conspiracy stuff. I also like pseudo-scientific symbology stuff that incorporates our greatest myths into the story lines. I just finished a thriller centred around the Amazons. Fun stuff.

Most satisfying writing moment?
The “a-ha.” You know when you’re writing along, maybe it’s not going well, but you’re slapping down the words anyhow (knowing you’ll have a helluva rewrite later), and then somehow, you lose sense of yourself and time and the world around you, and then later you come to and an hour has passed and you can’t remember what you wrote exactly, but you know it’s something grand? Yeah, that. That’s what I love. It’s rare, but the potential is always there. Also, the a-ha moment when you’re writing along and all of a sudden a fantastic idea comes to you out of nowhere -- a plot twist or character revelation -- and you feel so euphoric, the best high ever, that you jump out of your chair and do a little jig that causes your cat to tear out of the room? Yeah, that too.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I’m still in Irish-crime-novel discovery mode! Some of the obvious recommendations for people like me who aren’t as well-read as they could be are Tana French and Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) – and you too. Immediate curiosity has me leaning toward checking out Arlene Hunt, Adrian McKinty, Declan Hughes, and Bartholomew Gill (although he’s Irish-American) next.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Benjamin Black’s first mystery, CHRISTINE FALLS, would make a fabulous movie. I picture something stylized, gritty, atmospheric, and filmed in a limited palette (neo-noir Mulholland Drive comes to mind). The way the central mystery about dead Christine slowly circles in on the starring detective’s family baggage is great. Plus, it’s got Catholic Church stuff in it. Like I said above, I can’t get enough of that.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Right now, the worst thing about being a novelist is my need for a day J-O-B. It’s a creative energy sucker, that’s for sure. I struggle to find energy to get the fiction writing in--before work, after work, on weekends. I’m the kind of person who needs long swaths of down time to stay centred and to rejuvenate. The best things are the ‘a-ha’ moments I described above.

The pitch for your next book is ...?
My debut novel, KILMOON, just came out. It’s set in County Clare, the first in a series.

“Family secrets, betrayal, and vengeance from beyond the grave … Merrit Chase is about to meet her long-lost father. Californian Merrit Chase travels to Ireland to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a manipulative game that began thirty years previously. When she discovers that the matchmaker’s treacherous past is at the heart of the chaos, she must decide how far she will go to save him from himself—and to get what she wants, a family.”

I’m working on the second novel in the series, for the moment called Grey Man. Things get personal, oh so personal, when a teenage boy dies and disaster hits Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern’s family as a result.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m trying out an author I’ve never read before: James Barney, THE JOSHUA STONE. Another in the realm of guilty pleasures because it features secret government experiments and voodoo science.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I could give up writing if I had to (it’s freaking hard work!), but never reading. Reading goes along with those long swaths of down time I require.

The three best words to describe your own writing are ...?
Atmospheric, multi-layered, and intricate.

KILMOON is Lisa Alber’s debut novel.

Winter Wonderland

As I understand it, John Connolly’s THE WOLF IN WINTER topped the bestseller charts in Ireland and the UK while I was away on holidays, which is marvellous news but not entirely surprising – to my mind, THE WOLF IN WINTER is one of the finest of John Connolly’s books to date. I was particularly impressed by its ambition, as you might guess from this snippet from an Irish Examiner interview published last week:

THE WOLF IN WINTER finds Charlie Parker investigating the disappearance of a young woman and the apparent murder of her father, a homeless man who lives on the streets of Portland in Maine. Far from resting on his laurels, the 46-year-old author has blended a novel of social conscience into his traditional private eye tale, and also explores themes of ancient and contemporary spirituality.
  “It’s because I enjoy doing it,” says John when I ask why it is that he seems so restlessly self-challenging. “I love what I do, and if you love what you do you take a kind of craftsman’s pride in wanting to produce the best work possible. I know that there are writers who object to that word ‘craft’, who say that a book is art or it’s nothing. But I don’t get to decide what’s art and what isn’t. That’s a function of time as much as anything else. And all art is a function of craft. You work with craft and if you’re lucky there’s a moment of transcendence and you produce something that just slips past that barrier, whatever it may be, and becomes something slightly greater than its parts. But you don’t get to decide those things. All you can do is sit down each time and write the best book you can.”

  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, Declan Hughes reviewed THE WOLF IN WINTER for the Irish Times, and a very fine piece it is too. You’ll find it here …

The Celts Are Coming: aka ‘Celtic Crime’

The good people at Severn House are publishing a number of Irish and Scottish authors under the banner of ‘Celtic Crime’, which – given that I am one of said authors – seems a rather nifty idea to me. The writers involved include Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison, Anna Sweeney, Caro Ramsey, Lin Anderson and Russel D. McLean.
  For more info on any (and, indeed, all) of those writers, clickety-click here …

Hardboiled Cool

I came across a very nice round-up of ‘hardboiled Irish crime fiction’ over at Off the Shelf the other day, which – I was very pleased to discover – included my very own ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. To wit:

A fictional version of writer Burke is confronted by a character from an unfinished novel. Karlsson, the now-corporeal character, is irked at the limbo he has been left in. Burke is under pressure from his publisher to submit his next manuscript, but Karlsson is alternately charming and cheeky, and Burke agrees to let him write his own story. This gripping tale subverts the crime genre’s grand tradition of liberal sadism. Not only an example of Irish crime writing at its best; it is an innovative, self-reflexive piece that turns every convention of crime fiction on its head.

  The piece also includes novels by Gene Kerrigan, Tana French, Alan Glynn, Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen, Stuart Neville and Declan Hughes. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Declan Hughes: All The Things He Is

Get out the red carpet. Declan Hughes - award-winning playwright, creator of the brilliant Ed Loy private eye series and 2014’s International Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin - returns to the crime writing fray early next year with ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE (Severn House), a standalone thriller set in Madison, Wisconsin. To wit:

Danny Brogan burned his future wife’s family to death when he was eleven years old ...
  Knocking on forty, with her youthful dreams of being an actress in dust, there’s no doubt in her mind suburban wife and mother of two Clare Taylor has settled. A wild week in Chicago may have shaken things up a bit, but as she turns her key in her Madison, Wisconsin home on the eve of Halloween, she knows that what happened with her ex-boyfriend was nothing more than a distraction, that this is where her life is.
  Except it’s all gone. The furniture gone, the house stripped, her husband Danny, her daughters, all gone; no message, no note, nothing. Outside in the dark, searching for a sign, she steps in one: the eviscerated body of the family dog.
  By dawn the next morning, her (as far as she knew, mortgage-free) home has been foreclosed against, one of Danny’s childhood friends lies dead in her backyard, and Clare is caught up in a nightmare that began with her husband on Halloween night, 1976, and that reaches its terrifying climax thirty five years later.
  ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE explores the dark paradox at the heart of the American Dream: that you can change, and become whoever you decide to be – but that your past is always out there, waiting. No matter how far you run, you can’t escape it – but if things work out, and love abides, maybe you don’t need to. Maybe, at last, you can become who you always were, who you’d always dreamed you’d be.

  ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE will be published in February.

The Trinity Report

I had a terrific time at the Irish Crime Fiction Festival at Trinity College over the weekend, and I didn’t even get to see half of it. The most enjoyable – albeit nerve-wracking – experience was chairing the paradoxically titled ‘Irish Crime Fiction Abroad’ panel in the Edmund Burke theatre on Saturday morning, with said panel comprised of (l-r, above) John Connolly, Jane Casey, Arlene Hunt, Alan Glynn and Conor Fitzgerald (pic courtesy of @paysan). The conversation ranged through issues such as place, identity and language, all in the context of how an Irish writer adapts his or her storytelling to another culture and society. I was too involved to have any sense of how it was all received, of course, but for my own part I found it utterly fascinating.
  It was terrific, too, to be in Trinity and meet – even for the briefest of chats – so many people all on the same wavelength. Joe Long and Seth Kavanagh, all the way from NYC; Michael Russell; Sue Condon; Paul Charles; Conor Brady; Kevin McCarthy; Eoin McNamee; Stuart Neville; Stephen Mearns; Sean Farrell; Michael Clifford; Rob Kitchin; Declan Hughes; Critical Mick; and Bob Johnston, all the way from the Gutter Bookshop.
  I had to leave at lunchtime on Saturday, due to work commitments so I missed out on the Saturday afternoon panel (and seeing Brian McGilloway, Niamh O’Connor, Gene Kerrigan and Louise Phillips); and I also missed out on John Connolly interviewing Michael Connelly, which I imagine was the weekend’s highlight. A real pity that, but needs must.
  Even so, it looked to me like the festival was a triumph, and a tribute to the fantastic efforts of Dr Brian Cliff, Professor John Waters of Glucksman House at NYC, and that tireless champion of all things Irish crime writing, John Connolly. Hearty congratulations to all involved, and here’s hoping the Trinity Irish crime writing event becomes a regular feature of the Irish literary scene.

Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival

UPDATE: Ahead of ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’, which begins today at Trinity College in Dublin, I found myself last night fondly remembering the symposium at NYU in 2011 in the company of some of Irish crime writing’s finest. The details remain hazy, possibly because I found myself caught up in an Alan Glynn novel …

For all the details on the Trinity College festival, clickety-click here …

Derry’s Killer Books

Brian McGilloway is curating the ‘Killer Books’ event in Derry next month, which takes place under the aegis of the City of Culture 2013 and runs from November 1st to November 3rd. Brian took to Facebook a couple of days back to give a flavour of the event, which runs a lot like this:

“I’m hugely excited to be curating Killer Books at the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, supported by Easons, from 1-3rd Nov. Guest authors include Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville, Claire McGowan, Declan Burke, Declan Hughes, Louise Phillips, William Ryan, John McAllister, Gerard Brennan, Andrew Pepper, Alan Glynn, Arlene Hunt, Paul Charles, Dave Barclay, Garbhan Downey, Des Doherty and more. I’ll also be launching HURT on Friday 1st in the Verbal Arts at 7pm. There will also be CSI demonstrations, Victorian murder tours of the city walls, story telling, special kids events and much, much more.”

  For details on how to book tickets, etc., contact the Verbal Arts Centre on 02871 266946.

A Tangled Web They Weave

The good people at WritersWebTV get in touch to announce the details of their latest wheeze, ‘Crime Pays: Writing Crime Fiction’, which goes live on October 30th. To wit:

Best-selling crime authors Ken Bruen (right), Jane Casey, Declan Hughes and Niamh O’Connor will be joining WritersWebTV on October 30th, ready to arm aspiring authors with all the best writing tips, tricks and methods at the upcoming workshop, Crime Pays: Writing Crime Fiction.
  Multi-award-winning Ken Bruen – the author of the Jack Taylor series which has become a TV hit starring Iain Glen – will talk through writing great hook-lines and how to develop characters across a series. Jane Casey, author of the Maeve Kerrigan series of crime novels will guide participants through the basics of narrative and plot. Declan Hughes – author of the Ed Loy PI series – rigorously plans his writing and he’ll be giving his insights on how to plan for your novel while being open to new sources of inspiration. Niamh O’Connor, one of Ireland’s leading crime journalists, will lead us through the research process and crack the code of juggling family, writing and a day job.
  This free-to-watch-live, online workshop will cover all aspects of crime fiction and viewers will be able to interact with those in studio to help them develop their skills. WritersWebTV has developed a world-first innovation in online education for writers by providing live-streamed interactive workshops to a global audience, featuring Irish and international best-selling writers and industry professionals.
The one-day workshops are streamed live from a multi-camera broadcast studio in Dublin. Bestselling authors interact with an in-studio audience of aspiring writers, who present their work for critique. Online viewers can communicate with those in the studio using Twitter, Facebook or email. They can ask a question, take part in a workshop exercise, comment online and benefit from on-screen feedback from the authors in-studio.
  Led by experienced workshop facilitator Vanessa O’Loughlin, founder of writing.ie, the panel will consider the key elements of fiction writing and furnish viewers with tips, advice and actionable insights to help them improve their writing and get it on the path to publication.
  Upcoming courses include Crime Pays: Writing Crime Fiction on Wednesday, October 30th, and Getting Published on Saturday, November 9th, with plans in motion for courses in 2014.
  Viewers can watch the full one-day workshops for free when they watch them live. If they want to download a workshop or watch it later, they can pay to keep the course.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

And Into The Riverbank We Dived

I was in the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge yesterday, where I hosted a conversation between Brian McGilloway and Declan Hughes for the Kildare Readers Festival, which was – no, really – a lot more lively than the picture suggests. Brian read an excerpt from HURT, which will be published later this month, a follow-up to the Lucy Black novel LITTLE GIRL LOST (which has sold in excess of a very impressive 300,000 e-book copies). Declan, meanwhile, read an intriguing taster from his forthcoming novel, ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, which will be published next February. A departure from his Ed Loy series of private eye novels, it’s a domestic suspense novel set in the US.

  All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable event. The Kildare Readers Festival is always meticulously organised, hosted in a beautiful setting at the Riverbank, and the hospitality is superb. I bumped into Louise Phillips, who had been speaking at an earlier event, and also Niamh Boyce, who told me that she’d taken part in a writer’s workshop in Castlecomer in Kilkenny many moons ago, co-hosted by myself and Garbhan Downey. I was relieved, to be honest, to learn that I hadn’t put her off writing entirely; indeed, Niamh was holding a copy of THE HERBALIST, her debut novel, which was published earlier this year to a veritable chorus of critical acclaim. Happy days.
  That’s it for public appearances in October, but November is shaping up to be a busy month. Brian McGilloway curates ‘Killer Books’ in Derry on the first weekend of the month, and ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’ takes place at Trinity College on November 22nd / 23rd. I’ll also be hosting a public interview with Scott Turow at Smock Alley on November 11th, which should be a real treat. If you can make it along to any of those, I’d love to see you there …

And So To Kildare …

It’s off to Kildare for yours truly on Saturday, October 12th, to take part in the Kildare Readers’ Festival in the company of Declan Hughes (right) and Brian McGilloway. I’m really looking forward to it – Declan and Brian are two very smart guys when it comes to talking about books, and never fail to entertain.
  Declan Hughes is the author of five novels in the Ed Loy series, Dublin-set private eye stories reminiscent of the style of the classic gumshoe tales of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. His most recent offering is CITY OF LOST GIRLS.

  Brian McGilloway (right) first came to our attention with his Inspector Ben Devlin series of police procedurals, which are set on the border between Donegal and Northern Ireland. He has also published LITTLE GIRL LOST, featuring DS Lucy Black. HURT, the sequel to that book, will be published in November.
  The event takes place at the Riverbank Arts Centre at 3.30pm on Saturday, October 12th. Admission is free. For all the details on how to book your tickets, etc., clickety-click here …

Irish Noir: The Radio Series

‘Irish Noir’ is a new four-part radio series from RTE which begins on Saturday, September 14th. Presented by John Kelly (right), it features contributions ‘from the biggest names in our country’s crime writing scene’, and your humble correspondent. To wit:

Irish Noir is the story of Irish Crime fiction. From its gothic origins, through the fast paced storylines provided by Celtic Tiger excess – and right up to the bleak fictional landscape inspired by Austerity Ireland.

In the last 15 years, Irish crime writing has experienced a renaissance in popularity comparable to the Scandinavian and Scottish crime writing scenes. But before that, Irish crime writing was in the doldrums. Irish Noir is a major new four-part series presented by John Kelly, which will explore why it took so long for this popular genre to get a comfortable footing in this country. To what extent did politics and history play a part? And did the enormous success of Irish literary giants like Joyce and Beckett cloud the ambitions of writers who might have naturally had more hard-boiled aspirations ...? In other words, did we turn our literary noses up at crime fiction?

This will be a must-listen series for all bookworms, featuring contributions from the biggest names in our country’s crime writing scene – John Connolly, John Banville, Tana French, Declan Burke, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, and Stuart Neville to name but a few ...

Irish Noir was made in conjunction with the BAI’s Sound and Vision fund. It starts on RTE Radio 1 at 7pm on Saturday September 14th.

  To listen in, clickety-click here …