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 …

Any Port In A Storm

Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR (Hachette Ireland) was reviewed today in the Irish Times by Bernice Harrison, and very well received it was too. What I particularly liked about the review was Bernice’s addendum at the end, which runs thusly:

“There’s a frequent lament that artists have been slow to respond to our economic depression, but the commentators who take this view surely haven’t immersed themselves in the work of our excellent new generation of crime writers, several of whom, including Tana French, set their work very much in the here and now. In BROKEN HARBOUR, as well as delivering a gruesome murder scene and some clever sleuthing, she picks away at the psychological damage the economic meltdown has done behind the glossy front doors of the new suburbia.” - Bernice Harrison, Irish Times

  That’s fair comment, I think. Not every Irish crime writer is interested in pulling up the carpets and writing exposés of our current woe, etc., but a significant number are, and are doing very interesting work.
  Equally interesting, perhaps, is the news that Fintan O’Toole has been appointed Literary Editor at the Irish Times. In an op-ed piece which appeared in the Old Lady in 2009, O’Toole was one of the first of the establishment commentators to recognise that Irish crime writing was saying important things, concluding his piece with the line, ‘In creating an Ireland with no faith in authority and no belief that the bad guys will be vanquished by naming their names, they get closer to reality than most literary fiction has managed.’
  That article is now behind a firewall, but if you can find DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS in a library, the article was republished therein.
  Meanwhile, for the rest of Bernice Harrison’s review of BROKEN HARBOUR, clickety-click here …

  UPDATE: The Observer weighed in on BROKEN HARBOUR yesterday, with the gist running thusly:

“BROKEN HARBOUR is a tale about the different facets of obsession and insanity, and it winds up to a finale that is almost too distressing. The best yet of French’s four excellent thrillers, it leaves its readers – just like the Spains – “throat-deep in terror”.” - Alison Flood

Far Away, As Close

Over the last few years or so we’ve been getting regular communications from New York here at CAP Towers, and specifically from one Seamus Scanlon, each new mail announcing, if a little diffidently, that said Seamus Scanlon has just won another short story competition.
  So it really shouldn’t come as any great surprise to learn that the Cairn Press will be publishing a collection of Seamus Scanlon’s short stories. To wit:

We are happy to announce the forthcoming publication of Seamus Scanlon’s remarkable short story collection, AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE. Due for release in July, 2012, Scanlon’s collection is what can only be described as literary noir. Blood and memory fuel the elegant prosody that meanders between the spartan and the poetic, and the violence of Ireland is something that cannot be left behind.

  Intriguing, no? I met with Seamus Scanlon in September of last year, when a rabble of Irish crime writers toddled over to New York for the launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and were so wonderfully received at Ireland House in NYU. At the time, if memory serves, Seamus was in something of a dilemma; keep writing the short stories he was so obviously good at, but which don’t necessarily sell very well as collections; or abandon the short stories for a novel, a form in which he wasn’t entirely confident of his ability. I’m delighted to see that Cairn Press had the foresight to follow through on Seamus’s natural ability as a short story writer, and not try to shoehorn him into something he isn’t. That said, he recently distinguished himself as a playwright too …
  Anyway, an ARC of AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER BE is on its way to CAP Towers as you read, and as always, I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, clickety-click here for the Kindle-friendly taster, ‘My Beautifully Brash Beastly Belfast’ …

On The Irish Crime Novel and Institutional Cultural Caution

I find myself in a very unusual situation as 2011 draws to a close, because I’ve never before had novels published in consecutive years. Four years separated EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, and it was another four years before ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL landed on bookshelves last year. And yet, if all goes to plan, my fourth novel should arrive some time around the middle of 2012.
  This is, of course, very good news for yours truly, not least because books in consecutive years might create some kind of momentum. Even so, I’m feeling a little bit fraught at the moment. This is partly because there’s still a job of work to be done on the new book, with semi-final revisions due before it goes off to the editor at the end of January, but it’s mainly due to the fact that the new book - formerly known as THE BIG EMPTY, and currently labouring under the working title of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND - is a very different kind of book to AZC.
  As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a novel that has a little fun with straightforward narrative and conventional tropes, being a story in which an author who bears a very strong resemblance to one Declan Burke is confronted by a character from an abandoned novel, said character being a possibly homicidal hospital porter to demands to be rewritten as a more likeable sociopath, and who promises to make the rewrite worthwhile by blowing up the hospital where he works.
  Before it was published, I was worried that AZC might fall between two stools. Those readers who don’t read crime fiction might not have bothered with it, on the basis that it is essentially a crime novel, once you strip away the bells and whistles; and crime fans who prefer their stories told in a straightforward way could well have shrugged and moved on to something more conventional. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the book was, for the very great part, pretty well received, and that most reviewers were happy to champion the more offbeat aspects of the story.
  Of course, that kind of thing can backfire badly. If I can (immodestly) point you towards the Publishers Weekly review, which is the most recent review AZC has received, the reviewer suggests that, “those looking for a highly intellectual version of Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF will be most satisfied.” Which was nice to hear, although my first instinct was to wonder whether the phrase ‘highly intellectual’ wouldn’t put off more people than it might attract.
  The new book, on the other hand, is far more straightforward a story than AZC. It’s a sequel-of-sorts to my first book, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, and features erstwhile ‘research consultant’ (aka freelance journalist and occasional private eye) Harry Rigby, who has recently been released after serving a term in a prison for the criminally insane. And even if Rigby’s killing of this brother at the end of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE makes him, as one character points out, ‘the least private eye in the business, and Rigby is driving a taxi to earn a living as the novel opens, it is to my mind a private eye story, and proceeds within the parameters of that kind of tale.
  So right now I’m a little concerned that those readers who liked ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL for the way it messed around with story and storytelling might be disappointed by the fact that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has very little interest in meta-narrative et al, and aims instead to tell a hard-boiled tale of fatalistic noir. We shall see.
  I’m prompted to wonder about such things by a piece in today’s Irish Times by Mick Heaney, which looks back on the Irish arts world and the way in which, as Heaney says, “2011 felt like a pivotal year, during which Ireland’s cultural landscape started to take on new, as yet unformed, contours.” The piece takes into account film, music, theatre and the visual arts, and has quite a bit to say about literature too.

Heaney name-checks some established and new names in Irish literary fiction, before having this to say:

“These works suggest Irish literary fiction – the jewel in the crown of Irish writing over the past 20 years – is in a healthy state, but its primacy is quietly being questioned by another, less vaunted, genre.
  “Crime fiction continued to thrive last year, with writers such as John Connolly and Stuart Neville, and newer arrivals such as William Ryan and Conor Fitzgerald, showing how Irish authors can compete in this huge international market.
  “DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, an anthology of home-grown crime writing edited by novelist Declan Burke, showed how such writers can weave contemporary issues and darker themes while maintaining entertainment value. Such work may not have quite the same highbrow appeal as “serious” fiction, but the fact John Banville’s latest volume, A DEATH IN SUMMER, was published under his crime-writing nom de plume, Benjamin Black, is further indication of how the genre has taken centre stage in the public imagination.”

  I’m intrigued by the line about ‘how such writers can weave contemporary issues and darker themes while maintaining entertainment value.’ I’ve gone on record here many times to say that the Irish crime novel is important in terms of how it is documenting the upheaval in Irish society, although it’s interesting that of the five writers Heaney mentions by name, three set their novels outside of Ireland, and one sets his stories in 1950s Ireland. Of the batch mentioned above, only Stuart Neville’s STOLEN SOULS was a contemporary Irish tale.
  I’m also wondering about the primacy of the elements of that line, and whether crime writers are obliged to first create an entertainment, and then invest that entertainment with ‘contemporary issues and darker themes’; or whether the onus is on the crime author to write about ‘contemporary issues and darker themes’, in the process making them entertaining.
  I’m wondering about this because I can write about contemporary issues and dark themes until the cows come home. It’s the making them entertaining bit that keeps me awake at night.
  In terms of the bigger picture, such questions are becoming increasingly important, I think. The Irish crime novel has been in the ‘promising’ phase for quite some time now, without ever fully delivering on that promise and crossing over into the realms of fiction to be taken seriously. This may well be because the crime novel is doomed to be considered entertainment first and foremost, and thus irrelevant in terms of what it has to say about the culture and society from which it springs. Just before Christmas, for example, I had a very interesting conversation with a literary editor of one of the Irish Sunday broadsheets, who said that they’d nominated a certain literary title as their book of the year, this on the basis that it was the only novel they’d read that had something to say about modern Ireland, and even though said novel was set in the past. What was implicit in that statement was that crime novels by the likes of Gene Kerrigan, Niamh O’Connor, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman, Stuart Neville and Alan Glynn, just to mention some high-profile names, were excluded from ‘book of the year’ consideration because they were crime novelists, even though they all had very pertinent things to say about Ireland in 2011.
  Such an attitude, from an ostensibly well-read person who is after all a literary editor, is entirely dispiriting; or would be, if the times weren’t so dramatically a-changing. To quote again from Mick Heaney’s piece:

“Taken separately, these disparate developments in the literary, theatre, music and visual spheres are exciting; viewed together, they can be seen as the first tectonic shifts in a culture as affected by doubt and upheaval as the wider economy. After all, the current cultural climate was essentially shaped during the extended period of turmoil and decline that ran from the oil shocks of 1973 to the chronic recession of the 1980s, which swept away the institutional cultural caution of before.”

  Next year will be a tough one for Ireland Inc., and all who sail in her; and so will the following year, and the year after that. Ireland is not Greece, as our politicians are fond of telling our overlords in Brussels and Frankfurt, this because the Irish are accepting their harsh and unfair economic medicine without taking to the streets, going on strike and burning banks and bondholders alike.

  But if it all looks very placid on the surface, those tectonic plates are shifting. Essentially, there’s a whole new order up for grabs, politically, economically, and in terms of how we speak to ourselves about ourselves.
  Writers, to paraphrase the Chinese saying, always live in interesting times, and the crime novel is perfectly positioned right now to colonise the Irish literary landscape over the next few years, to speak to us all about who we are, how we got here and where we are going.
  Here’s hoping it rises to the challenge of the new cultural climate, as the current institutional caution is swept away.

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: The ‘Publishers Weekly’ Verdict Is In

Well, now. You’ll excuse me, I hope, for running two ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL-related posts in a row, but I woke this morning to a very nice early Christmas present indeed. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, AZC has gone off on its travels to the North American continent; and while the book has received a very gentle handling on this side of the Atlantic, so far at least, I did wonder as to how it might be received in the spiritual home of the hard-boiled crime novel.
  Here’s hoping that the first review sets the tone, because Publishers Weekly has stepped into the breach early, with its verdict running thusly:

In this ambitious meta-thriller from Irish author Burke (THE BIG O), the unnamed narrator, a stand-in for the author, meets a character from an unfinished novel of his, Karlsson, “a hospital porter who assisted old people who wanted to die.” Karlsson, who now likes to be called Billy, is intent on blowing up the hospital with everyone in it, but he has more cerebral concerns. Author and character meet again and again in online chatfests, where they discuss their options, and soon start Sermo Vulgus, a novel-within-the-novel. Should fictional characters live, die, or never be born? Burke sprinkles his way-outside-the-box noir with quotes from Beckett, Bukowski, and other literary names as he explores the nature of writing and the descent of personal darkness. Those looking for a highly intellectual version of Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF will be most satisfied. (Feb.) - Publishers Weekly

  Crikey. Stephen King? ‘Ambitious meta-thriller’? ‘Highly intellectual’? That’s the Christmas ruined for everyone around me. I’ll be bloody insufferable after that little lot …
  Meanwhile, one of the hardest working men in crime fiction, J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet and January Magazine fame, includes DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS in his round-up of the best ‘books—all of which were published this year, but none of which has yet seen print in the States—that would be worth your crossing the Atlantic to buy’ for the Kirkus Reviews blog. Herewith be the gist:

“Using essays, interviews and short stories, DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS seeks to prove the distinctiveness of Irish crime writing (that its DNA, for instance, includes “extra chromosomes for metaphor, legend and wit,” to quote from Michael Connelly’s introduction) at the same time as it makes the case that mysteries concocted by authors who bleed Guinness can be appreciated by readers who live half a world away from the Old Sod.”

  For all of J. Kingston Pierce’s choices, clickety-click here …

I Dreamt I Dwelt In Hallowed Halls

Off I go this morning to the hallowed halls of Trinity College, Dublin (right), where I’ll be sitting down in the company of some unsuspecting students to chat about ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL in particular and Irish crime writing in general. Which should be fun, not least because the occasion will be hosted by Professor Ian Campbell Ross, who wrote the comprehensive introduction to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY. I thought I knew a thing or two about Irish crime writing before I read Professor Ross’s introduction, and reading it confirmed that, yes, I know a thing or maybe two.
  So that’s today’s excursion accounted for, and if I survive the academic grilling, it’s upward and onward to the no less hallowed environs of the National Library on Thursday evening, for the latest instalment of ‘Thrillers and Chillers’. To wit:

Chillers and Thrillers
Does the female writer of crime fiction have an edge over her male counterparts? This question and more will be discussed on Thursday, December 15th by a panel of writers including Alex Barclay, author of BLOOD RUNS COLD, Arlene Hunt, author of the recently published THE CHOSEN, and Declan Burke, a leading crime fiction writer who has also written on the very topic of how women address the crime narrative in a different way to men, and author of the recently published ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL.

  So there you have it. For all the details on the ‘Thrillers and Chillers’ evening, which takes place at 8pm on Thursday, December 15th at the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, just clickety-click here …

A Drop Of The Hard Stuff

Is it just me, or are more and more of the top class crime authors coming into Dublin these days? In the last couple of months I’ve got to interview Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Robert Harris, Lynda LaPlante, Liza Marklund and Lee Child, and today I’m off to have a chat with Michael Connelly, who’s currently doing the rounds to mark the publication of his latest Harry Bosch novel, THE DROP. Quoth the blurb elves:

Harry Bosch is facing the end of the line. He’s been put on the DROP - Deferred Retirement Option Plan - and given three years before his retirement is enforced. Seeing the end of the mission coming, he’s anxious for cases. He doesn’t have to wait long. First a cold case gets a DNA hit for a rape and murder which points the finger at a 29-year-old convicted rapist who was only eight at the time of the murder. Then a city councilman’s son is found dead - fallen or pushed from a hotel window - and he insists on Bosch taking the case despite the two men’s history of enmity. The cases are unrelated but they twist around each other like the double helix of a DNA strand. One leads to the discovery of a killer operating in the city for as many as three decades; the other to a deep political conspiracy that reached back into the dark history of the police department.

  I read THE DROP during the week, by the way, and superb stuff it is, too.
  I have to say, it’s a pretty nice buzz sitting down with top class writers. It’s not universal, by any means, but my experience has been that the better a writer is, and the more successful, then the nicer a human being they tend to be. Not that that should matter, really - all that really matters is whether they’re producing good books - but it does.
  I’m particularly fond of Michael Connelly, even before I meet him, not only because he qualifies as an Irish crime writer under FIFA’s grandparent ruling, but because he agreed to write the Foreword to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS (Liberties Press), which was pretty damn sweet.
  Anyway, Michael Connelly will be doing a book-signing event in Eason’s on O’Connell Street, Dublin, on Saturday, October 29th, at 12.30pm. Why not drop along, say hello and treat yourself to one of the finest crime novels of the year?

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: Destined To Become A Cult Classic, Apparently

You’ll forgive me again for indulging myself (again), I hope, but it’s been another fine week for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, with a number of flattering reviews popping up on the world wide web. First off, Kevin McCarthy - a very fine author in his own right - was good enough to take the time to post his thoughts to Amazon, in the latest five-star review for said tome. To wit:

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is that rarest of things - a novel that makes you stop and think and scramble to finish at the same time … I generally cannot abide novels about men (it’s always men) writing novels, but ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL takes that tired premise, shoves a tank of Silene gas right up its you-know-what and sets the detonator. A novel of ideas as well as a first-rate thriller, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL sees Burke stretching the crime thriller genre until it snaps and then sewing it back together with some of the finest prose and funniest dialogue you’ll encounter this year. I can’t recommend this book enough. Destined to be a cult classic.” - Kevin McCarthy

  I thank you kindly, sir. And then there was Marleen, over at More Than A Reading Journal:

“I know I’ve said it before, but this is most definitely a book unlike any I’ve read in the past … All the blurbs about this book describe it as being “laugh-out-loud funny”, “full of the blackest humour” and “outrageously funny”. I, however, didn’t get the humour in this book. I found the story to be original, disturbing, thought-provoking and inventive.” - Marleen, More Than A Reading Journal

  Funny, schmunny, right?
  Finally, uber-blogger and short story writer Paul D Brazill gave AZC a fair wind and calm seas over at Mean Streets, the gist running thusly:

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is in the same capable hands that created the classic comic crime double header of THE BIG O and CRIME ALWAYS PAYS. The hands of a master storyteller. And with those hands, Declan Burke has crafted an exciting, hilarious, thoughtful and moving story that will surely stand up to - and deserve - a lot of re-reading. I’ve read a lot of cracking novels this year but ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is my favourite. And it could well be yours, too.” - Paul D Brazill, Mean Streets

  As if all that wasn’t enough - and really, when is enough ever enough - there were also a couple of very nice mentions for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, the first coming courtesy of Laura Root at Euro Crime:

“DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS is an excellent, varied collection of essays and short stories, looking at Irish crime fiction in both its historical and present day context, with much of interest to anyone interested in modern day Ireland and its cultural life. It is very much a book to dip into, rather than to read straight through in one setting. The authors by and large convey their wealth of knowledge in a highly readable, enjoyable style, and it's a great idea to include short stories in this compilation, as a nice counterpoint to the various analyses of Irish fiction.” - Laura Root, Euro Crime

  We thank you kindly, ma’am. And Jon L. Breen at Mystery Scene Magazine was also impressed, his review kicking off in a vein like this:

“This is one of the most entertaining, informative, and critically astute recent books on crime and mystery fiction, all from an Irish point of view and written in variants of that eloquent and melodic national prose style.” - Jon L. Breen, Mystery Scene Magazine

  So there you have it. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL and DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS - good vibes all round, and yours truly set up for a very pleasant weekend indeed. I sincerely hope yours is just as good …

On Combining Surrealism With The Best Of Noir Fiction

I do own more than one shirt, I swear. It just seems to be the case that, as happened last Friday night at the Mysterious Bookstore in New York (right), as I said a few words of thanks to everyone involved in bringing DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS to fruition, and particularly John Connolly, I’m always wearing the blue-striped affair whenever someone points a camera in my direction.
  As to what I was doing up a ladder, well, your guess is as good as mine.
  That pic comes courtesy of a fine piece by Peter McDermott in the Irish Echo, by the way, in which he gives a good overview of the events of the GREEN STREETS-inspired symposium on Irish crime writing hosted by Ireland House at NYU last weekend. For more, clickety-click here; and feel free to scroll down this page too …
  Elsewhere, it’s been a good week for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. First off, The Crime of It All posted a very nice review indeed, with the gist running thusly:

“ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL challenges the perceived limitations of the crime fiction genre as much as the perceived limitations of Ireland’s current financial woes. Dreamlike and invigorating, it combines surrealism with the best of noir fiction in an enthralling reminiscence of Flann O’Brien’s AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS … Burke’s writing is sharp, funny, and excruciatingly honest … a genuinely original and inventive novel, and its brevity leaves the reader wanting more, more Declan Burke. After all, the man has crafted a clever, personal, and charming story, a testament to the prize worthy of the best of Irish crime fiction.” - Conor Tannam, The Crime of It All

  With which, as you can imagine, I was well pleased. For the rest, clickety-click here. But stay! For lo, there’s more, this courtesy of The Dubliner magazine:

“We’re into a self-conscious world of meta-fiction, somewhere between Muriel Sparks’ THE COMFORTERS, Bret Easton Ellis’ LUNAR PARK, and of course, the inevitable comparison, which John Banville makes on the front cover blurb, Flann O’Brien … It’s a measure of Burke’s achievement in this funny and clever book that he can stand comparison to these three. Meta-fiction is a high-wire act requiring wit and style, or it falls flat. Burke has both … the book is witty, philosophical and a page-turning crime thriller.” - Bridget Hourican, The Dubliner

  I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  Meanwhile, and equally good news for yours truly, was the confirmation that I’ll be taking part in a two-hander event with Alan Glynn next Thursday evening, October 6th, at The Rathgar Bookshop, kick-off for 7.30pm. The bad news is that there’s a €4 cover charge; the good news is, there’ll be wine served. And if my previous experience of the Rathgar Bookshop is any guide, the wine will flow until cups overfloweth. Even better news is that Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND is a smashing piece of work in the classic ‘paranoid thriller’ mould. If you’re in the vicinity, and in the mood for a glass of wine (or three) and a conversation about good books, please drop by for a chat …

A Fairytale of New York

I walked out of my hotel in Manhattan on Friday morning to find myself in an Alan Glynn novel. A damp, muggy morning, with the upper reaches of the Chase Manhattan building (right) around the corner swaddled in cloud, and tempting it was to believe that the building was a totem for capitalism, its vaulting ambition being claimed by spectral apparitions descending on Manhattan. The impression of being in an Alan Glynn novel was only confirmed when you strolled along the street and turned right into Wall Street, which was cordoned off and patrolled by the NYPD, this due to the ‘Take Wall Street’ protests. I ate a breakfast of champions of a short stack of pancakes and a strawberry shake and watched a flash mob of protestors chant, sing and drum their way towards the cordons, hedged about and trailed by New York’s finest, the protestors filming the cops filming them, and all as suitably claustrophobic, ironic and paranoid a fairytale about the clash between capitalism and democracy as you could wish for. Or maybe I was just hallucinating after spending a night at the bar in the company of unnamed Irish writers, during which - I can only surmise - I was strapped to said bar against my will and force-fed White Russians.
  Said writers and myself were in New York, of course, to mark the US publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and a very fine time was had at the Mysterious Bookstore on Friday evening, where we were hosted in very hospitable fashion. An absolutely wonderful bookstore; if you find yourself in New York, make your way to Warren Street and inhale. The line-up of Irish writers was (l-r): John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Colin Bateman, Professor Ian Campbell Ross and Stuart Neville.

  A fine body of men, certainly, although even a cursory glance will tell you that the actually fine bodies belonged to the ladies, who brought a badly needed soupcon of glamour to the occasion.
  We’ll draw a discreet veil over the post-Mysterious Bookstore shenanigans, and fail miserably in our duty to identify the writer who managed to get trapped in the doors of a subway train, to be rescued with no little derring-do by Captain Bateman, and move on to Saturday, when Ireland House at NYU hosted said writers in a series of panels and events dedicated to exploring the current boom in Irish crime writing. John Waters of Ireland House was in wonderful form, cheerleading GREEN STREETS in particular and the Irish crime novel in particular in charismatic fashion, ably assisted by Irish crime fiction’s leading agent provocateur, one Joe Long, a man among men, and the hidden engine behind the Ireland House symposium. It was slightly surreal for yours truly to listen to various academics not only take GREEN STREETS seriously, but to spin their own theories off its central premise, and marvellous it was too to be introduced to the semi-legendary Professor Joe Lee, and be able to make a presentation to him on behalf of Liberties Press and the assembled writers.
  All in all, a terrific day, and one in which some very interesting ideas were bandied about. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that day’s events just yet.
  As for the rest, well, what happens in Noo Yoik stays in Noo Yoik. Suffice to say that wine flowed, the veritas surfaced, and I now know - even though I don’t want to - what a ‘barse’ is. Cheers, Stuart. I may never sleep peacefully again.
  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Mysterious Bookstore, and at Ireland House, NYU, and especially to the inimitable Clair Lamb, who was brilliant above and beyond the call of duty.

Mysteriouser And Mysteriouser ...

All going well - which isn’t always the case for yours truly when it comes to airports - I’ll be in New York as you’re reading this, all sweaty-palmed with excitement at the prospect of wandering along to the Mysterious Bookshop at 6pm, there to join with John Connolly, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Stuart Neville, Alex Barclay, Colin Bateman and Professor Ian Ross as the quasi-mythical Otto Penzler hosts a coteries of Irish crime writers who may or may not be the first wave of what might prove to be a tsunami of Irish crime writers breaking on US shores. For all the details of what should prove to be a very enjoyable evening indeed, clickety-click here …
  The following day, as I’ve mentioned before, said writers will be joined by their Irish-American peers Pete Hamill and Peter Quinn as John Waters hosts a day-long symposium on the Irish crime novel at Ireland House, NYU. I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time now, particularly as it will mark the official launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS in the North American territory. There’s a terrific day’s schedule lined up - again, for all the details, clickety-click here …
  And that’s pretty much it for now. In theory I’d like to blog about the events as they happen, but I may well be self-sabotaged by the desperate need for sleep whenever I’m not actually talking or eating. It’s been a hell of a six months, what with two books being published, and juggling all that goes with that with a day-job, all the while trying to write a new novel. Still, a weekend like the one in prospect makes all the long hours worthwhile, especially as it’ll be spent in some very fine company indeed. Normal-ish service will very probably be resumed on Monday, jet-lag permitting; until then, folks, I’m outta here …

Crime Always Pays: 400,000 Not Out

Barring unforeseen disaster, at some point today, or more probably tomorrow, Crime Always Pays will pass the 400,000 hits mark, and begin its Sisyphean journey towards the magical half-million. A rather small hill of beans, I know, in the grander scheme of things, and I’d trade them all for a milking cow, or a beanstalk, or even a flunky called Jack who might wander forth and bring home a goose that lays golden eggs. Or even one golden egg. Or just an egg.
  Anyway, I wanted to mark the moment not to blow any trumpets (although I might let loose with a kazoo-parp as the hit-counter ticks past the mark), but to celebrate the blog and what - or who, more importantly - it represents. When it all kicked off about four and a half years ago, Irish crime writing was still very much a niche-niche genre - to be honest, I thought I’d be lucky if I found myself talking about twenty or so writers, past and present. As it happened, I was extraordinarily lucky, in that I started CAP (to plug THE BIG O, at the time) just as Irish writers started churning out top quality crime fiction in astonishing quantity and quality. I was also very lucky in that some of the top Irish writers at the time - in particular John Connolly and Ken Bruen - were more than happy to play along, and lend their considerable reputations to the gig by taking part in various blog posts I suggested; as a result, CAP was picked up by a whole host of like-minded people in the wider crime writing and reading community, and we were off and running.
  Four and a half years later, there’s been a lot of highs and lows. As all Three Regular Readers (who were obviously very busy hitting the repeat button) will already know, I’ve downed tools on CAP on a couple of occasions, unable to keep up with various other demands, most of them related to labour that pays in more than love. Mostly, though, it’s been highs. For starters, and probably most importantly, I’ve met so many terrific people through CAP that I really couldn’t start to count them, and some of my best friends these days originated on these pages. When all is said and done, and in accepting that we’re all here because we love books, these are the things that truly matter.
  Other personal highs include seeing THE BIG O get published in the US, not least because so many people were good enough to play their part in creating a word-of-mouth buzz that eventually proved irresistible; the publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which was a direct and logical follow-on from CAP; and seeing ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL finally emerge from its purgatory to sit on a shelf as an actual book, having first debuted in public on these pages and received such strong support and goodwill that it would have been churlish not to pursue its publication to the bitter end.
  There’s also the fact that CAP has - by default, almost - put me in a position whereby I tend to catch new Irish crime writers at an early stage, and thus get that wonderful buzz of ‘discovering’ new writers, a buzz that’s only really matched by the thrill of being able to let the world at large know about the latest sensation that’s on its way.
  It’s a total coincidence, of course, but a timely one, that the 400,000 hits mark will be passed this week, and very probably on the day I fly out to New York in the company of some very fine Irish crime writers - Colin Bateman, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Alex Barclay - for a symposium on Irish crime fiction to be hosted by Ireland House at NYU, which will also be attended by John Connolly and Stuart Neville, who are currently at large in the US and very probably terrorising unsuspecting bystanders. Very nice it’ll be too to spend a weekend in such august company, especially for the purpose of bigging up the Irish crime novel in general and specifically DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS; and particularly as it was a Dublin dinner in the company of two men, John Waters and Joe Long, when I first got the glimmer of the idea that became GREEN STREETS. All kinds of synchronicity, then, will be sparking in New York this weekend; if you’re going to be in the vicinity, feel free to drop by and say hi. All the details can be found here …
  Finally, I’m going to mark the 400,000 mark with a very humble offering, being a threefer of signed copies of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, THE BIG O and ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL to the person who drops a comment in the box closest to the ticking-over moment. If, as is highly unlikely, it appears that there’s something of a tie, I’ll put the names in a hat and draw the winner.
  Until then, I thank you all for your support, kindness and encouragement over the last four and a half years, and here’s to another four and a half years to come …

On Taking Pride In Prejudice

I’m not saying that John Boland is a crap reviewer, necessarily, and he’s as entitled to his opinion as the next man, but it’s worth pointing out that he took a pop at Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND in the Irish Independent a couple of weeks ago on the basis that it was longer, more ambitious and more geographically diverse than the books he liked to read as a younger man. No, seriously. The review is here …
  This week he takes a swipe at DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, opening up thusly:

Both critically and commercially, Irish crime writing has never had it so good and Irish crime authors have benefited from the boom it’s been enjoying over the last decade or so.
  Why, then, do so many of them whinge about not being taken seriously -- or, at least, not as seriously as they take themselves?
  In his editor’s note at the start of this ragbag of essays and stories by various Irish crime writers, Declan Burke concedes that it may be “stretching a point” to suggest they are “prophets without honour in their own country”, but he goes on to stretch it anyway -- finding it “a little bit odd” and “not a little unfortunate” that they’re “more celebrated outside of Ireland than they are at home”.
  Is this true? I thought they were doing pretty well for themselves here.
  Clearly, though, it rankles with some of them that they’re treated like second-class authors …

  Now, I know it’s the done thing to just take your lumps when you get a bad review, brush it off and get on with it. But what actually rankles is when someone reviews a book according to preconceived notions, or an agenda, and deliberately misreads the text in order to prove their point.
  Because here’s the thing, John - Irish crime authors are more celebrated outside of Ireland than they are at home. If you’d like a little proof, just dig out the ‘Emerald Noir’ documentary Val McDermid put together for BBC 4 last February, celebrating the rise and rise of Irish crime writing - maybe I missed it, but I can’t remember a similar radio doc being made for Irish radio. Or click on this link here, which will tell you all you need to know about how New York University is hosting a symposium this coming weekend on Irish crime writing - again, I might have missed it, but I don’t think any of the Irish universities have marked the coming of age of the Irish crime novel in a similar way. If you need still more proof, take the time to dig out all the awards that Irish crime writers have been nominated for in the last decade in America, home of the hardboiled crime novel, the most recent example of which was the LA Times’ Crime Novel of the Year award earlier this year, when a shortlist of five writers was made of three American writers and two Irish, Stuart Neville and Tana French. Or, if you choose, just take a look at the Irish Top Ten fiction lists over the last year alone, where you’ll find plenty of crime writers hitting the Top Ten, but very few Irish crime writers. Or there was last month’s announcement that both Benjamin Black and Casey Hill will have their novels adapted for TV in the UK. Perhaps Irish broadcasters were trampled underfoot in the stampede to bring those writers’ to the small screen, but suffice to say that both series will be broadcast courtesy of the UK, not Ireland.
  Yes, John, Irish crime writers are ‘doing pretty well for themselves’ (one guy, I think his name is Alan Glynn, even had his novel THE DARK FIELDS adapted as a major Hollywood movie earlier this year). The fact remains, though, that Irish crime writers are more celebrated outside of Ireland than at home.
  I was also a little taken aback by the snide tone of Boland’s review. To wit:

Some of these are comic, and all the more so for not being meant that way, as in Tana French’s argument that crime writing has become the genre that “examines the tensions and fears of a society” and that it’s also “where the crucial issues of any nation’s identity get explored”. So, not just French, but Balzac, too.

  Laugh? I nearly emigrated. Interesting, of course, that in his rush to deploy a piss-poor pun on Tana French’s name that any self-respecting crime writer would baulk at, John Boland cites Balzac rather than any of the heavyweight contemporary Irish literary writers. As fine a writer as he is, Balzac is hardly a poster-boy for how the modern novel, Irish or otherwise, engages with current concerns.
  But stay! Because John has a word or two to say on that topic too:

Yes, the ills of today’s post-boom Ireland form the backdrop to many recent crime novels but the plot remains the key thing, and while seedy politicians and venal developers feature in these stories, their roles are seldom more than decoratively expedient -- gaudily drawn villains in tales that are much less interested in (or capable of) exploring the roots of our current malaise than in working towards the tense denouement demanded by a tried-and-trusted formula.

  ‘But the plot remains the key thing …’ Here’s a question: Since when did ‘plot’ become such a dirty word in literature? Has literary fiction disappeared so far up its own fundament that a good plot is now fair game for sneering at?
  As for crime fiction being ‘tales that are much less interested in (or capable of) exploring the roots of our current malaise than in working towards the tense denouement demanded by a tried-and-trusted formula’, well, where to start?
  I suppose we could start by pointing out that, broadly speaking, the classic three-act drama of order-chaos-order (the latter featuring redemption / retribution / catharsis) has been with us since the Classical Greeks, and by those lights is indeed a ‘tried-and-trusted formula’. We could also ask, in all sincerity, where the literary novels ‘exploring the roots of our current malaise’ are, and what the literary writers have to offer in this regard that the crime writers don’t, the vast majority of literary authors being no more or less blessed with penetrating economic insights than their crime-writing brethren, or the vast majority of economists, for that matter.
  I could go on, but the review is here if you want to read it, and I’ve a busy afternoon ahead, what with that Ph.D in Economics to study for, that overview of the use of dramatic momentum in Classic Greek tragedy to brush up on, and that essay I have to write for Book Reviewing 101: ‘Taking Pride In Prejudice’.
  Gosh, it really is all go when you’re an Irish crime writer …

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice To See A Work Of Pulp Win The Booker Prize?”

Erm, no. Allen Barra penned a mildly controversial piece for The Daily Beast earlier this week, suggesting that Benjamin Black, the alter-ego of John Banville (right), should win the Booker Prize. Herewith be the gist:

“One reason, I think, that critics are giddy over Black is that—let’s just say it—he’s more fun to read than Banville. (Well, some of Banville.) THE SEA is as exquisite as an Irish mist, but I won’t read DOCTOR COPERNICUS, KEPLER, and THE NEWTON LETTER again for all the whiskey in Quirke’s favourite pub. Another reason is that Benjamin Black’s territory is a new one for critics who regard themselves as “serious.” I suspect most of them have never dipped into the sordid but seductive world of Irish crime fiction—Patrick McGinley, for instance, or Ken Bruen, who is direct enough about his debt to Chandler to title a book DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS and whose detective, Jack Taylor, is so dissipated he makes Quirke seem like “a parfait genteel knight.” Banville might take it as an insult, though I think Black would not, that the Quirke novels are as good as anything produced by his contemporaries.
  “In 2006, when Banville accepted the Booker Prize for THE SEA—and, to be clear, if they had asked me, I would have voted for it—he made his famous statement, “It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize.” The egoism expressed in this statement bothers me not at all, but the deliberate tossing about of the phrase “work of art” makes me think that the man who used it was a pretentious prig who could do with a cheap thrill or two. Perhaps there is a difference between John Banville and Benjamin Black; if so, I think I prefer the latter. Black is Banville to be sure, and as Groucho said, outside of the improvement, you can’t tell the difference.
  “Wouldn’t it be nice to see a work of pulp win the Booker Prize?”

  A couple of things about all that:
  One, a work of pulp will never win the Booker Prize, because the Booker Prize isn’t awarded for pulp. It’s like suggesting that a pole-vaulter should win the gold medal for the javelin, because they’re both Olympic sports and involve running for a bit with a big stick and then letting go. The Booker Prize is what it is; I honestly don’t get this obsession some crime fiction writers and readers have with a crime novel winning it. To me it suggests an inferiority complex, that crime fiction will only be fully validated when it wins a literary prize. The truth is, if you want to win the Booker Prize, or be in with a chance of winning it, at least, then write the kind of book that tends to win the Booker Prize. And yes, I know that there’s great excitement about the fact that AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker (along with Patrick DeWitt’s western SISTERS AND BROTHERS), and happy days for AD Miller if the book wins. Would it change the way people read and write crime fiction? Should it? Isn’t one of the attractions of crime fiction that it’s the half-breed outlaw of the publishing world? It is for me, at least. Do I want or need to see the kind of stories I like to write and read receive some kind of belated pat on the head as they pass through the gilded pillars into the whited sepulchre? Because - and it gives me no great pleasure to say this - literary fiction is on its knees. And not just in terms of sales - how often have we read the latest in an interminable series of ‘the novel is dead’ eulogies, in which some writer we’ve never heard of laments the fact that the literary novel has disappeared up its own fundament? The fact of the matter is, the literary novel is a vampire, a beautiful but dead shell which requires regular infusions of new blood in order to maintain the illusion of vitality, sucking up inspiration from the genres it purports to despise. Maybe crime fiction and AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS is just the latest victim, who knows. And really, who cares?
  Secondly, and as all Three Regular Readers will be aware, Ken Bruen has yet to write a book called DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, although he did contribute a short story to the collection of essays, interviews and short fictions published by Liberties Press earlier this year.
  Thirdly, John Banville is as entitled to a sense of humour as anyone else, and his ‘It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize’ comment was as much mischief as it was any kind of qualitative judgement on previous winners.
  As to whether Benjamin Black is as good, or better, a writer than John Banville, well, that’s a matter of opinion, and mine is that Banville is the better writer by some distance. But one thing is certain: Benny Blanco don’t write no pulp, in either guise.

If We Can Make It There, Etc.

There’s a rather interesting event planned for September 24th at Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, titled ‘Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Fiction’. Unsurprisingly, it features a number of Irish crime writers, and is tied in with the publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and is ‘presented as part of Imagine Ireland, a year-long season of contemporary Irish arts in the US in 2011, an initiative of Culture Ireland’. Quoth the blurb elves:

There’s been a major crimewave in Ireland – come get to the bottom of it on this day-long investigation of the crime fiction genre that has exploded in Ireland in the last fifteen years.

  Seven leading practitioners of Green Noir will visit Glucksman Ireland House at New York University to discuss the angles and the clues, the plots and counterplots, the dark journeys and the struggles for the truth that energize some of the most exciting writing coming out of contemporary Ireland.

  John Connolly, Declan Burke, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Alex Barclay and Colin Bateman will join Professor Ian Campbell Ross and several special guests from among Irish America’s great crime writers.

  Several new books will be launched, including DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, edited by Declan Burke; the new Charlie Parker mystery by John Connolly; the third volume of Stuart Neville’s award-winning Belfast trilogy; and new books by Declan Burke and Colin Bateman.

 

  For all the details, and how to book tickets, clickety-click here ...

  As you can probably imagine, I’m looking forward to this like a Puerto Rican kid to the World Series. Actually, I might even try to get a ball game in while I’m in New York. I’d say Yankees tickets are tough to come by; anyone recommend the Mets?

  The downside to the NY trip is that it means I won’t be able to make Bouchercon in St. Louis, which takes place the weekend previously, and even though I’d already booked my place. Boo, etc. How and ever, and due to the good works of one Erin Mitchell, and the magic of modern technology, it’s possible that I may well be able to ‘attend’ Bouchercon after all. I’ll keep you posted …

  Closer to home, there’s another intriguing series of events planned for the month of September by Dublin’s Central Library as part of the Dublin UNESCO City of Literature celebrations. The series is titled ‘Crime and the City: Crime and Drugs’, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

This is a series of lunchtime talks and readings looking at the broad issues of crime, drugs and crime writing in Dublin and beyond. This series of events brings together writers from fiction and biography with researchers from social sciences to inform, entertain and promote discussion. Events take place over the five Thursdays of September at 1pm in the Central Library, ILAC Centre, Dublin 1.

September 1st - Declan Burke - Crime Author



September 8th - Johnny Connolly - Criminologist



September 15th - John Lonergan - Former Prison Governor



September 22nd - Cormac Millar - Crime Author



September 29th - Paul O’Mahony - Criminologist

Admission is free but booking is advised as space is limited. To book a place at any of the events please contact the Central Library on 01 8734333.

  For all the Dublin / UNESCO details, clickety-click here …

  I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL next Thursday, concentrating on the parts of it that deal with drugs and the use and abuse of same, both illegal and legal, and then getting into a Q&A with the audience, possibly about my cavalier attitude - in fiction, at least - to drugs and the use and abuse of same, both illegal and legal. If you can make it along, it’d be great to see you there …

Down These Clean Streets A Man Must Go …

The reviews for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS continue to trickle in, said tome being a collection of essays, interviews and short fiction by Irish writers on the phenomenon that is Irish crime writing. The latest comes courtesy of Michael Malone over at Crime Squad, with the gist running thusly:

“It is by turns discursive, instructive and entertaining, and is never less than fascinating. This needs to be in every crime writing fan’s library.” - Crime Squad

  We thank you kindly, sir. For the full review, clickety-click here and scroll down …
  Elsewhere, and continuing in a similar vein, I recently read the forthcoming DEAD SHARP, a collection of interviews compiled by Len Wanner with a number of Scottish crime writers, including Ian Rankin, Louise Welsh, Karen Campbell, Paul Johnston and Allan Guthrie. A very fine collection it is, too, although I’ll keep my powder dry for the moment, as I’ll be reviewing it in due course. For more, clickety-click here …
  Also forthcoming, although not until January, is another intriguing prospect: DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE, an investigation into Scandinavian crime writing by Barry Forshaw. Quoth the blurb elves:

DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE is a celebration and analysis of Scandinavian crime fiction, one of the most successful literary genres. Barry Forshaw, the UK’s principal expert on crime fiction, discusses books, films and TV adaptations, from Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s influential Martin Beck series through Henning Mankell’s Wallander to Stieg Larsson’s demolition of the Swedish Social Democratic ideal in the publishing phenomenon THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. In intelligent but accessible fashion, the book examines the massive commercial appeal of the field along with Nordic cultural differences from Iceland to Norway. Including unique interview material with writers, publishers and translators, this is the perfect reader’s guide to the hottest strand of crime fiction today, here examined both as a literary form and as an index to the societies it reflects. Includes Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, Håkan Nesser, Karin Fossum, Camilla Läckberg, Liza Marklund, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Matti Joensuu and many others.

  Personally, and while I quite like DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE, I’d have thought a book about Scandinavian crime fiction should have been called DOWN THESE CLEAN STREETS. But that’s just me …

DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS

Published by Liberties Press, DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY is a collection of essays, articles, short stories and interviews by Irish crime writers on the subject of the phenomenal rise of Irish crime fiction.

  Contributors include John Connolly, John Banville, Tana French, Eoin McNamee, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, Alan Glynn, Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen, Jane Casey, Gene Kerrigan, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Brian McGilloway, Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison, Paul Charles, Colin Bateman, Alex Barclay, and many more. Michael Connelly provides the foreword.

  To purchase a copy at the Liberties Press website, please click here.



  Praise for DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS:

“An admirably thorough compendium … It’s everything you want to know about (Irish) crime fiction, its roots and varied influences, but it also offers a vivid insight into the dark heart of modern Ireland.” - Alison Walsh, Sunday Independent



“Notable for its compelling and accessible history of crime fiction in Ireland … an obligatory title for serious fans of Irish crime fiction - and there’s also enough here to hold the interest of the casual reader.” - Alex Meehan, Sunday Business Post



“An anthology … filled with brilliant ideas and surprising points of view, an examination of Irish crime literature by those who now write it, packed with verve and humour that sparkles, a treasure chest of emerald noir.” - Richard L. Pangburn



“[A] compelling new collection of essays, interviews and fiction from an unrivalled collection of crime writers ... An enticing cyanide-laced confection of everything from comic capers to urban noir.” - The Newsletter



“A fascinating collection … a timely and insightful examination of a homegrown literary scene that has quietly produced a formidable canon of work.” - Hot Press



“It is by turns discursive, instructive and entertaining, and is never less than fascinating. This needs to be in every crime writing fan’s library.” - Crime Squad

A 51st State of Mind

When I was putting together DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, I thought Declan Hughes would be a shoo-in for an essay on the history of the crime narrative in Irish theatre. Dec Hughes was, of course, a critically acclaimed playwright before he turned to writing the Ed Loy series of novels, and there are many - yours truly among them - who hope that he might yet be persuaded to return to the craft, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with his writing novels.
  Anyway, Dec Hughes declined to write about the Irish theatre and crime, preferring instead to pen an essay on the American influence - and particularly the troika of Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald - on the contemporary Irish crime novel, and fascinating reading it makes too. The essay is up on Scribd, with the opening running a lot like this:

Irish Hard-boiled Crime: A 51st State of Mind
By Declan Hughes

Irish people can be especially prone to magical thinking, to put it at its kindest. We seem extremely reluctant to relinquish our belief in phenomena that neither experience nor reason will justify. The most notable and poignant example of this is our relentless credulity regarding the existence and quality of the Irish Summer.
  Although year after year, a solitary sunny day is followed by unending weeks of overcast skies and squally rain, hope springs infernal. In my case, this belief, or “superstition”, took root when I was thirteen, during the (genuinely) long hot summer of 1976. Every morning I would assemble a lunch and spend the day on Whiterock beach in Dalkey, alone or with friends. I swam and read and looked longingly at girls in bikinis and wondered how that, and everything else, was going to go. And that’s pretty much how I spent my subsequent teenage summers, often in delusional defiance of the weather. I never got a job, because I didn’t drink back then, could get all the books I needed from the library, experienced a certain amount of success in finding out more about those mysterious bikini-wearing creatures, and didn’t want anything else money could buy as much as I wanted to be on the beach and in the sea, even if the rain fell and an east wind tested your faith in the Irish summer to the limit.
  There was music in the air during that time, of course, and for all that punk rock had happened and post punk followed in its wake, and for all that I had developed a ferociously puritanical line in rock snobbery which permitted me to like virtually nobody except the Clash and Bruce Springsteen (which was convenient, since I could barely afford their records, let alone anyone else’s), the soundtrack I still associate with Whiterock during those years was the Eagles’ Hotel California. (You didn’t have to buy Hotel California: in the late ’70s in South Dublin, it played for free from every shop doorway and bedroom window). Cowboy boots and flared Levis and plaid and cheesecloth shirts and droopy moustaches and long hair were the order of the day for the half-generation ahead of me, and their musk of patchouli oil and dope smoke seemed like an intoxicating promise, a hazy benediction from alluring adepts of a laid-back cult I longed to join. The cult did not just dream of America, and more specifically, California; it seemed to believe it was already living there. And as I gazed out to sea on whichever blue sky day I could find or recall, I knew I was worthy of confirmation in their faith, for that was where I believed I was living too. The Ireland that presented itself to us day-to-day in the ’70s was still run by priests and nuns and decrepit old bogmen in tweed suits, and claimed by murderous bigots intent on shooting and bombing everyone who disagreed with them into a fantasy vision of the glorious republican past; nobody who dreamt of truth, beauty, youth and love could tolerate either as a reality ...

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, those of you who missed the podcast of Declan Hughes and your humble scribe shooting the breeze about GREEN STREETS on RTE’s Arena programme should clickety-click here …

UPDATE: Richard L. Pangburn reviews DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS over at Little Known Gems, suggesting that the book is, “An anthology … filled with brilliant ideas and surprising points of view, an examination of Irish crime literature by those who now write it, packed with verve and humour that sparkles, a treasure chest of emerald noir.” With which we are very well pleased. We thank you kindly, sir …
  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Conor Fitzgerald: Start Spreading The News

If you can make it there, you’re going to make it, period. It’s always nice to see the cream rise to the top, and such was the case over the weekend, when Conor Fitzgerald’s very fine novel THE FATAL TOUCH was reviewed in the New York Times. To wit:

Some Americans abroad fantasize about lingering in Paris to paint or jumping ship in Jamaica to become beach bums. Conor Fitzgerald had a better idea in his first novel, THE DOGS OF ROME, when he allowed his ex-pat hero, Alec Blume, to put down roots in Rome as a homicide cop. A free-spirited maverick, Commissario Blume returns in THE FATAL TOUCH (Bloomsbury, $25) to investigate the death of an old tramp, a notorious brawler and a drunk, assumed to have been killed during a mugging. But this routine case takes a tricky turn once Blume, whose parents were art historians, determines that this was no mugging and that the victim was really a skilled forger with clients in high places. Although an organized crime angle injects an element of danger into the investigation, there’s more pleasure to be had from Fitzgerald’s commentary on the victim’s dodgy trade, including fascinating technical instruction for “forgers, interpreters, emulators, admirers and genuine artists.” - Marilyn Stasio

  Very nice indeed. In fact the ‘victim’s dodgy trade’, which Fitzgerald offers courtesy of a memoir written by said victim, the art forger Henry Treacy, could very easily have spun off into a novel itself, and one that wouldn’t be dissimilar in tone and content to John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, had Freddie Montgomery traded in ripping of famous artists as opposed to murder. I very much liked THE FATAL TOUCH too, with the gist of my review running thusly:

“Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.” - Declan Burke

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, I had a hugely enjoyable chat with the very generous Ben LeRoy of Tyrus Books yesterday, which he recorded and has since posted as a podcast. The general thrust of the chat had to do with DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS and my forthcoming ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, but it’s a pretty general chat, and incorporates crime writing of all stripes, with a strong flavour of Irish crime fiction. If you’re interested, clickety-click here …
  Finally, although staying with GREEN STREETS, Tony Black was good enough to post his memories of the launch of said tome over at Pulp Pusher, although by the time the pic at right was taken in the Turk’s Head, it was all over bar the screaming, and plenty of that there was too. Quoth Tony:

“Mr Bruen was on particularly sparkling form, dropping a request for the assembled to reveal their life’s regrets! Don’t think I’m detailing those here: what goes on in the Turk’s Head stays in the Turk’s Head. Particularly nice to see Ken again, though, because the last time we met (the London launch of CROSS) I was an unpublished wannabe and he couldn’t have been more effusive in his encouragement. Hollywood success hasn’t changed him a bit. Luvly fellah.”

  Amen to that. For the rest of Tony’s reminisces, clickety-click here …

More GREEN STREETS Reviews: Yay! (And Nay. From Fay)

Another day, another review for GREEN STREETS. Well, two to be precise. Over in the Sunday Independent, Alison Walsh offers two thumbs up. To wit:

“In DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY, editor Declan Burke puts a shape on the story of Irish crime writing in an admirably thorough compendium of essays, interviews and short fiction. It’s everything you want to know about (Irish) crime fiction, its roots and varied influences, but it also offers a vivid insight into the dark heart of modern Ireland.” - Alison Walsh

  We thank you kindly, ma’am. For the rest, clickety-click here …
  As for the ‘Nay’, that came courtesy of Liam Fay over in the Culture section of the Irish edition of the Sunday Times (no link, as the ST is behind a paywall). If you were here yesterday, you’d have seen a piece I wrote defending the book against the slings and arrows of the review, but really, life’s too short for that class of a malarkey, and I’m getting too old. If the man didn’t like the book, then the man didn’t like the book. End of story.

UPDATE:

  I didn’t want to upload the review until such time as I had a link, but Alex Meehan of the Sunday Business Post weighed in with yet another fine review of GREEN STREETS yesterday, with the gist running thusly:

“DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS is notable for its compelling and accessible history of crime fiction in Ireland. This is an obligatory title for serious fans of Irish crime fiction - and there’s also enough here to hold the interest of the casual reader.” - Alex Meehan

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Not a bad weekend, then, with big-ups from the Irish Times, Sunday Independent and the Sunday Business Post. As for Liam Fay, well, maybe we’ll tickle his fancy a bit more next time out …