Crime Fiction At The Dublin Writers Festival

I’m very much looking forward to taking part in the Dublin Writers’ Festival this evening, when I’ll be hosting a conversation between Arne Dahl, Sinead Crowley and Brian McGilloway. To wit:

Bestselling Swedish novelist Arne Dahl joins forces with two Irish writers to consider the dark arts of the crime thriller. In such a competitive field, what makes a thriller stand out, and how do you keep the reader turning the pages?
  RTÉ correspondent-turned-crime novelist Sinead Crowley’s debut is attracting all the right buzz. CAN ANYBODY HELP ME? tells the story of a young Dublin mother whose addiction to an online forum leaves her vulnerable to a terrifying killer.
  Brian McGilloway is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin and DS Lucy Black series. His sixth novel, HURT, was published in 2013. Earlier this year he won the Tony Doyle Award for his screenplay Little Emperors.
  Presented in association with Dublin City Public Libraries.

  The event takes place at the Central Library at 6pm on May 19th. For all the details, including how to book your free tickets, clickety-click here …

Dahl A For Murder

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I will, on the evening of May 19th, be hosting a conversation between Brian McGilloway, Sinead Crowley and Arne Dahl as part of the Dublin Writers’ Festival. It should be a terrific evening, and I’m very much looking forward to it. For all the details, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, Arne Dahl – whose latest novel is TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN – will be taking to the stage at Smock Alley on May 18th, when he will take part in a public interview chaired by Brian McGilloway. To wit:

“Arne Dahl combines global intrigue with intelligence, suspense and genuine literary quality.” – Lars Kepler

Chairperson: Brian McGilloway

In recent years Swedish crime drama has swept all before it, and now Arne Dahl has become the latest writer to join the likes of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell on bestseller lists across the globe. His Intercrime series, about an elite team of detectives investigating the dark underbelly of Swedish society, has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide and been made into an award-winning TV series (due to air on TG4 later this year). The English language editions of the first two Intercrime novels were released last year and now Dahl comes to Dublin with the third instalment, TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, which finds the Intercrime team disbanded and their leader forced into early retirement. But when a man is blown up in a high-security prison, and a massacre takes place in a dark suburb, the team is urgently reconvened to face a new and terrifying threat.

Date Sunday 18 May // Time 4pm // Venue Smock Alley Theatre // Tickets €12/ €10 concession

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

Down These Green Streets A Man Must Go …

They say a week is a long time in politics, but a day can be a hell of a time in the writing business too. In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve had one novel rejected by an American publisher; interest expressed in a different novel by another American publisher; and strong interest expressed by an Irish publisher in the non-fiction project DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS. I’ve also moderated a panel of Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy for the Dublin Writers’ Festival, and had my plans for world domination thwarted by Amazon / Kindle (you can’t publish to Kindle unless you have a U.S. bank account - boo). Meanwhile, I’m lightly redrafting a novel I’d kind of forgotten about – this is the one I propose to upload to Kindle – and finding myself pleasantly surprised with it. I might even post the first chapter up hereabouts, just for some feedback … because I really don’t have enough going on right now.

Methinks I need a holiday, folks ...

Semantics, She Wrote

One of the benefits of running a books blog is that you get sent free books all the time, which is absolutely terrific. I received a copy of Aifric Campbell’s THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER last year, when it was first published, but – the demands on everyone’s reading time being what they are – I simply didn’t get around to reading it. Happily, circumstance has forced my hand, as I’m moderating a panel at next week’s Dublin Writers’ Festival, doing my best not to get myself blinded as Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy dazzle their audience.
  Anyway, being the consummate pro that I am (koff), I read THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to have a right good novel-of-ideas to mull over, the kind that you’d read in two days if only you weren’t breaking off to stare out the window every five minutes going, ‘Hmmmm, that’s interesting …’. Example thereof:

“The truth was that creative writers were more qualified to explain humanity than psychiatrists and philosophers. This was what Levi the chemist had eventually realised, that he would have to resort to fiction and poetry to communicate the horror of Auschwitz. The psychologists and psychoanalysts who had staked out their territorial claim knew no more than the great novelists …” – Aifric Campbell, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER

  I’m currently a third of the way through Peter Murphy’s JOHN THE REVELATOR, and enjoying that hugely too. There’s a beautiful narrative voice that puts me in mind of Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, and a whimsical note that suggests a tincture of Flann O’Brien. All of which is most excellent …
  As for Ed O’Loughlin’s NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND, clickety-click here …
  That panel, by the way, takes place next Wednesday, June 3rd, at 6pm at the Project Arts Centre. Tickets are €12 / €10. Of which, sadly, I don’t see a red cent. Boo …
  In other Dublin Writers’ Festival News, the impossibly gorgeous Arlene Hunt moderates a panel composed of Val McDermid and Kate Summerscale on Sunday, June 7th, at 5pm at The Abbey, which is quite posh for crime writers, but there you go. Val McDermid is plugging her latest novel, whatever that happens to be, while Kate Summerscale will be talking about THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER, which I’ve yet to read but I’m hearing great things about … Again, tickets are €12 / €10, which is a bargain for The Abbey. Plus, you get Arlene Hunt, and very possibly Val McDermid on a feminist rant. What more could any red-blooded male want?

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being An Occasional Interweb Bangers and Mash-Up

There was a time when Bloomsday took place on June 16 and was basically a pub crawl with fried kidneys on the side. No more! These days the organisers, bless their cotton socks, have extended Bloomsday so that it runs for the full week it actually takes to wade through Ulysses. Lateral thinking, chaps. The trio to your right are Anthony Cronin, John Ryan and Flann O’Brien, conniving over the schedule for ye firste evere Bloomsday pub crawle way back in 1954 (Paddy Kavanagh just out of picture, stealing pints). If you’re in Dublin tomorrow, beware you don’t get run down by a horde of stately, plump Buck Mulligans. Seriously, Grafton Street gets like Pamplona around tea-time … Still stately, no longer plump, Adrian McKinty of The Bloomsday Dead fame gets a nice big-up over at Page Turner, which runs a nifty Kirkus Review of Dead I Well May Be (“McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer.”) AND the opening chapter from the novel. Value for money, eh? Which reminds us: where the hell is the movie of DIWMB? Last we heard, Anonymous Content had picked it up, with Steve Gaghan on board to adapt and direct. Can anyone out there shed a little light? … The Dublin Writers’ Festival concludes this weekend, with Derek Landy of Skulduggery Pleasant fame yakking it up about his plans for world domination at The Ark, Temple Bar, at 3pm on Sunday. Book ahead, it’ll be a full house … Bad news for Charlie Parker fans: interviewed by The Sacramento Bee, John Connolly says, “I kind of have an idea of how it’s going to end. I don’t think I want to write 30 years of Charlie Parker.” Okay, but what’s the chances Parker returns as a supernatural PI some day? … Finally, Crime Always Pays regular George Zip sends us this two minute version of The Big Lebowski, courtesy of YouTube, in which the dialogue consists almost entirely of for unlawful carnal knowledge. To wit: “Dude, do you have to use so many cusswords?” “What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Or words to that effect. And that’s all for this week, folks – have a very fine weekend and y’all come here now, y’hear?