Essay: Steve Cavanagh on THE EXECUTIONERS

Steve Cavanagh, author of the forthcoming THE DEFENCE (Orion), has a very nice essay on John D. MacDonald’s THE EXECUTIONERS over at the Murder Room blog. It starts a lot like this:

“First published in 1957 as The Executioners, this classic is one of many standalone novels from one of the greatest mystery writers that has ever lived.
  “Lee Child’s Jack Reacher owes a lot to MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, and Lee has let it be known that he’s a huge fan of MacDonald. He is not alone in that – some of the world’s finest writers look to MacDonald with considerable admiration, writers such as Kingsley Amis, Stephen King and Dean Koontz.
  “In Cape Fear, MacDonald paved the way for one of the most popular thriller formats, one that still dominates the bestseller charts today: take an ordinary family man, put him in an extraordinary situation and watch what happens. This is the modern-day territory of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay …”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Frances di Plino

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?
Can I choose a series of them? The Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels of Dennis Lehane. They have everything – dark, gritty crimes and some wry humour to lighten the read.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Miss Marple. I can just see myself pottering about those lovely villages as I unearth the dark secrets of seemingly innocent residents who turn out to be the murderer next door.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
It isn’t so much who I read, but what I read. Although I am a diehard crime fan – from cosy crime to hardboiled – my secret shame is an enjoyment of the occasional chick lit novel. There, now you’ve made me confess to something that should be between me and my literary conscience!

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing ‘The End’ on CALL IT PRETENDING, the third D.I. Paolo Storey novel. I only ever intended to write one crime novel and was convinced I didn’t have another one in me. SOMEDAY NEVER COMES, the second in the series, was aptly named. It was like running uphill carrying a ton of rocks. Every step hurt, but I forced myself to keep going. Then, as I completed CALL IT PRETENDING, I found already had the plot for book four in mind. I knew then I could trust in myself to write more.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Sheila Bugler’s HUNTING SHADOWS – a fabulous book which I can guarantee will keep you turning the pages even when your brain is screaming out for sleep.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
My vote would go to BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French. It’s a great storyline that would translate well onto the screen.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The damned voices in my head! They never stop. I’ve no sooner finished with one lot of characters than the next lot turn up and start having conversations.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Starved of light, food and water, how many young men will pay the ultimate price for their sins?

Who are you reading right now?
Nearly finished the latest Harlan Coben – I’m having a thing about American crime writers at the moment. I love Michael Connelly, John Lescroat and Dennis Lehane, so I devour their books as soon as they hit the shelves.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
No God would be that cruel. I’d go insane without both in my life.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dark, devious and disturbing.

CALL IT PRETENDING by Frances di Plino is published by Crooked Cat.

Romantic Ireland's Dead And Gone ...

… and living on a ghost estate, apparently. Only sixty more sleeps before Tana French’s latest novel, BROKEN HARBOUR, is published on July 21st, gorgeously eerie cover and all. I’m looking forward to it, I have to say: French is one of those writers blessed with a number of gifts, offering substance by way of an intriguing plot set in the here-and-now of modern Ireland, with her elegant prose providing the style. Quote the back-page elves:

In BROKEN HARBOUR, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.
  Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .

  The novel has already attracted some very nice encomiums. To wit:

“Broken Harbour is better than whatever’s going to win the 2012 Man Booker. It’s better than the novels that are going to win the Costa and Orange prizes, and if it doesn’t win the Gold Dagger for best crime novel, the injustice might drive me to go and sit in a tent for a while, even though I hate camping. Tana French is a genius.” - Sophie Hannah

“I’ve been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. She is, without a doubt, my favourite new mystery writer. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. You’ll see what I mean.” - Harlan Coben

“Tana French is one of those rare novelists who combine a gift for dialogue and characterisation, with suspense, intrigue and fabulous plotting. And she’s a beautiful writer, to boot. A real treat.” - Kate Mosse

  Very nice indeed. Finally, here’s a promo vid in which Tana French makes what appears to be a crime writing queen’s speech to Canada - roll it there, Collette …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Anna Smith

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?
I don’t have one particular crime novel I wish I’d written, because I enjoy a variety of crime – particularly American crime. But anything by Harlan Coben, as I like the way his character Myron Bolitar gets involved in all sorts of scrapes, plus the kind of attitude the character has. I like that style. And I also like anything by Tom Clancy, and the late, great James Crumley.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Impossible to answer that because there are so many brilliant female fictional characters down the years. But the ones who spring to mind as having left a lasting impression are, Sophie Zawistowski, the Polish prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp in SOPHIE’S CHOICE, by William Styron. Incredible character, and when I read that novel for the first time the Sophie character blew me away. Also, the bold Scarlett O’Hara from GONE WITH THE WIND – one of the first women to kick down all the barriers and still be the most amazing woman. And JANE EYRE – all the strength and vulnerability that Charlotte Bronte put into creating that character always makes me feel unworthy, no matter how many times I read the novel or listen to the audio version in the car!

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Any kind of pulp fiction. I would read Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins – anything that’s a bit of escapism and takes me into a world that’s well outside of mine. Or something that would be make me laugh!

Most satisfying writing moment?
For me, the most satisfying writing moment is while I’m revising my script and I read back a chapter I’ve written, and find myself surprised at how it’s ended. That means when I wrote it I was so absorbed in the characters that it almost wrote itself, and I feel like I’m reading it for the first time. Spooky feeling, but I love it.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I haven’t read a lot of Irish crime, but I’m enjoying Stuart Neville’s latest novel STOLEN SOULS. I like his style – very pacy and kind of in-your-face. He can paint a character very quickly in few short sentences.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Stuart Neville’s novels with the Lennon detective character would make a great movie.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best thing about being a writer is freedom to express yourself once you’ve got a character up and running and finding that it’s caught fire with the reader. And when you’re writing a novel, you sit down and look at the blank page of the next chapter and it feels as though these characters you’ve created are waiting to see what they’re going to do next. My characters are very real to me and I love living with them! I don’t have a worst thing about being a writer. I love everything about it, because creating characters and storylines is what makes me tick. I’d have nowhere to go in my life if I didn’t write. Sad, but true!

The pitch for your next book is …?
My next book is called REFUGE and is about refugees in Glasgow who are going missing under very mysterious circumstances, and the journalist character Rosie Gilmour is getting stuck into the investigation. I’m using my experience as a frontline reporter in troublespots all over the world to make the story feel real, and to help create characters with big backstories, who find themselves in Glasgow during a time when the city seems to have refugee fatigue. A lot of the novel is set in Glasgow as I like to retain that with all my novels as it’s my stomping ground. But it’s important to me to take Rosie out of the city and give her big stories all over the world, which is what I did. This investigation takes her to Bosnia, Belgrade and Kosovo, and it’s a ripping story that moves at such an incredible pace it was even hard for me to keep up with it!

Who are you reading right now?
Right now I’m reading a book by Natasha Cooper, called OUT OF THE DARK – very classy and a gripping story.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
If God appeared and says I can only write or read – it would be write. Every time. Writing is about more than putting words on the screen. I write in my head all the time, because I live in my imagination, and so much of what I see I always look further at it, creating characters and stories all the time. If I couldn’t write, I couldn’t think. I’m very lucky.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Compelling. Moving. Tense.

Anna Smith’s TO TELL THE TRUTH is published by Quercus.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: CJ West

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?
THE DA VINCI CODE. It’s not necessarily a crime novel, but it would give me the freedom to write about any subject I chose for the rest of my career. I don’t strive to be recognized as a literary genius. I enjoy entertaining people and I think THE DA VINCI CODE did that better than any modern book.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond. He’s everything we want a hero to be and even though he pushes the limits of reason, we gladly follow along on his adventures. He also has an air of civility even in the most heated battle. I’d like to think I’d be so gentlemanly in his circumstances.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
My writing qualifies as a guilty pleasure, but I feel no guilt in reading every thriller or mystery author I discover. I find that I can learn something from whichever writer I pick up. I do really enjoy Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. I’ve read so many of their books, that I don’t think I could learn more from their style of writing. I read them because I know I’m going to enjoy the book front to back. Lately I’ve been sprinkling in more non-fiction.

Most satisfying writing moment?
I went to a Christmas party with a group of people I didn’t know well. I was leaving a room and a guy grabbed me by the sleeve and asked if I was CJ West. When he learned that I was, he started raving about SIN & VENGEANCE and didn’t stop for over an hour. At my next event, he bought 16 copies for friends and family.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’m only about 16% Irish, so my books don’t count. I’ll have to turn that around and say that my favourite Irish writer is Casey Sherman from Cape Cod.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
I love everything about being a writer. If there is one thing I’d rather not have to worry about, that would be marketing and selling books. Being a writer allows me to enjoy the solitude of working alone uninterrupted for much of the time and still allows me to get out and see people at events and book signings. I enjoy the stages of every book from concept, to drafting, to meeting readers. My favourite part of the process is the early creative work on any book. Creating characters and plotting books keeps me up late into the night and I can do it for weeks on end. The excitement consumes me and I don’t need anything else except food and a little sleep. Of course my kids have different ideas ...

The pitch for your next book is …?
I’m writing the next book in the Randy Black series. For those who haven’t started, you can get the first book, SIN & VENGEANCE, for free as an e-book on my website. In this new book Randy meets Gretchen Greene, a young woman who has discovered something that will change the world. Unfortunately, very powerful people don’t want this discovery to come to light. As Randy does his best to save Gretchen, he discovers that the two of them couldn’t disagree more about the nature of creation.

Who are you reading right now?
BEN FRANKLIN: AN AMERICAN LIFE, Walter Isaacson; THE INNOCENT, Harlan Coben; THE ACRONYM, Rebecca Lerwill; MOMENT OF TRUTH, Lisa Scottoline.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I would write and try and figure out how to satisfy my desire to learn about the world in some other way. I’m compelled to write and would probably explode if I couldn’t.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Intense, unpredictable, realistic.

CJ West’s A DEMON AWAITS is available now.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Geraldine McMenamin

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?
I can’t honestly say that I read a lot of crime novels so this is a difficult question for me to answer. I watch a bit of crime on TV but mostly I can tell where the plot is going and it gets a little predictable. The last crime novel I read was a Harlan Coben one, TELL NO ONE, but I thought it had a disappointing and not very plausible ending. I didn’t particularly intend for THE SAME CLOTH to be a crime novel, it just came out that way. I think it’s more of a ‘journey’ novel but not in the travel journey sense. Is that a genre?

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Will in THE SUBTLE KNIFE (Philip Pullman). I love the notion of being able to enter a parallel universe. The idea that one small detail can change your whole destiny absolutely fascinates me and the concept of being able to switch between one reality and another at will is, to me, a true adventure.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t think any reading is guilty but some publications are just a sheer waste of time. Irish Property supplements did take up a lot of my ‘pleasurable’ reading but unfortunately they are now rather thin in terms of content. Occasionally I read ‘Buy and Sell’ which is absolutely fascinating and sometimes hilarious when you get to the small pieces of junk that people try and sell. More of that this year no doubt!

Most satisfying writing moment?
Definitely when I finished THE SAME CLOTH. I had no idea how I was going to tie all the subplots in together and the narrative is quite complex so I was very pleased when it all worked out to a plausible finale.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I am trying to be diplomatic here so it would have to be THE BIG O.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’m not trying to be diplomatic here so I will say mine. Most people who have read THE SAME CLOTH say ‘that would make a great movie’ without any prompting and it does rely largely on a visual element. I think the fact that I have worked in property for a number of years and have been able to accurately enmesh houses into people’s lives has somehow struck a chord that would work very well on film.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is isolation. You have to motivate yourself constantly to keep going and this is okay when you get some sort of recognition but very difficult when you don’t. I have found it, so far, to be a very tough business to crack. I know that it can be a different experience for everyone but this has been mine to date. The best thing is the sense of achievement you get when you write something that you truly believe is good and flows well, although, in truth, this is short-lived satisfaction. Looking back on my work, particularly writing that I did some time ago, I always want to adjust/edit/improve it. To me, a piece is never finished, perfection is elusive, flawlessness is indefinable and writing so subjective that ultimately faultlessness is intangible. I am not sure if there is much of a ‘choice’ element when it comes to writing. If you are a writer then you need to write. It’s a creative part of you that will not go away. There is something indescribable that happens to you when that creative element of your personality is expressed. It’s a release, a freeing, an intellectual deliverance that is completely personal, your own and unshareable. That’s the good bit!

The pitch for your next book is …?
It is a mystery again, this time told with two voices, which I think will give me more scope than THE SAME CLOTH, which is told in the first person, present tense. The subject matter concerns a rich property fund manager and his dodgy past. I think it will be topical!

Who are you reading right now?
REDEMPTION FALLS by Joseph O’Connor and THE BIG O. I usually read two books at the same time and then read nothing but newspapers in-between!

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write for sure. I have probably covered this answer in the ‘best thing’ about writing above.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Succinct, gripping, reflective.

THE SAME CLOTH is Geraldine McMenamin’s debut novel.

Yep, It’s Another ‘Dear Genre’ Letter

John Connolly reviewed Irvine Welsh’s latest novel CRIME for the Irish Times today (Saturday), making the following point in the process:

Genre conventions offer literary writers both significant advantages (structure, momentum and, frankly, the promise of some hard cash in return for increased sales) and potential pitfalls, the latter usually a result of their failure to take the genre in question seriously. Occasionally, though, their literary credentials liberate such writers from the expectations that readers might have of a more mainstream genre novel, allowing them to create something startlingly different while remaining, for the most part, within the structures of their adopted form.

  Maybe it’s just that I don’t read enough but my most recent experiences of literary authors writing crime – Benjamin Black’s THE LEMUR and Sebastian Faulks’ DEVIL MAY CARE – have resulted in anything but ‘startlingly different’. THE LEMUR, in point of fact, is hugely enjoyable because Black is poking fun at the genre’s tropes, but it’s by no means a radical departure for crime fiction. DEVIL MAY CARE, on the other hand, is utter tripe.
  The last time I read a terrific novel from a literary author writing crime fiction was JULIUS WINSOME by Gerard Donovan. And Donovan would probably explode into a million literary pieces if he heard we were describing his novel as crime fiction.
  Elsewhere in today’s crime-packed Irish Times, Vincent Banville returns – hurrah! – with a Crime File round-up that includes the latest offerings from Jeffrey Deaver, Harlan Coben, Patricia Cornwell, Michele Giuttari, Sue Grafton, Camilla Lackberg and Karin Fossum. Giuttari’s A DEATH IN TUSCANY has been winking at yours truly from near the top of Mt. TBR for some weeks now, and Banville’s review (“a long, absorbing and entertaining read set in a most exotic location”) sends it straight to the summit.
  The Big Question – when will we get to read another Vincent Banville novel? Only time, that notoriously prevaricating doity rat, will tell …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 2009: Andrew Taylor

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?
I’d like to say CRIME AND PUNISHMENT or THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY but (to be brutally honest) the one I’d really, really, really like to have written is my next one.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I’m delighted to say that guilt and reading don’t go together for writers. Or not for this one. My tastes are catholic. I work on the assumption that everything I read must in some way feed into the great creative mulch from which my own novels spring like constipated bog monsters in very slow motion. Most satisfying writing moment?
When a book is going well. It’s like being God on a good day (see below).
The best Irish crime novel is …?
This is a difficult one for an author who labours under the disadvantage of being only half Irish ... At first I thought almost anything by the humane, satirical and eminently clubbable Ruth Dudley Edwards (if pressed I’d say MATRICIDE AT ST MARTHA’S is my favourite). I enjoy Declan Hughes too – he’s going places. But the one I keep coming back to, time and again, is Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN, which does what all great novels ought to make you do: it makes you think, and much else. It’s also got my favourite all-time, all genre fictional ending. Longman’s (who had published AT SWIM TWO BIRDS) turned the book down in 1940. “We realize,” they wrote with infinite snootiness, “the author’s ability but think that he should become less fantastic and in this new novel he is more so.” It wasn’t published until 1967, after O’Brien’s death, and then only because of the persistence of an Irish publisher, Timothy O’Keefe.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Writing / writing. Trite but true.
The pitch for your next novel is …?
Set in the 1930s, BLEEDING HEART SQUARE is partly based on a celebrated real-life Victorian murder case with links to my grandmother’s family. The novel deals with a young woman who flees from her abusive aristocratic husband to an uncertain refuge with her unknown father. He drinks his life away in a place where, according to legend, the devil once danced and tore out the heart of a beautiful woman. Now someone is sending raw (and sometimes rotting) hearts in the post and the British Union of Fascists are out on the streets. A seedy plain-clothes policeman haunts the square, detecting his nightmares. An unemployed journalist wants to win back the woman he loves but she seems to care more for a public-school communist with large private income. And no one has seen the woman who owns the house in Bleeding Heart Square for more than four years.
Who are you reading right now?
Tobias Smollett’s THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHREY CLINKER and Harlan Coben’s new one, HOLD TIGHT. An interesting combination. There’s pleasure in reading more than one thing at once. They interact – in my case, most recently, with Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, a book weighed down with too much hype, but much of it is justified.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
First I say to him, You bastard. But of course it would have to be writing, if I couldn’t find a way to change God’s mind. As God Himself knows, it’s much more fun to create.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Not there yet.

Andrew Taylor’s BLEEDING HEART SQUARE is published on May 29

Whoever You Tell, Tell No One

A gentle reminder, people, that Harlan Coben (right) is choppering into Belfast tomorrow evening (July 19) to do his funky thang promoting The Woods courtesy of Norn Iron’s finest crime fiction outlet, No Alibis – Harlan will be participating in a Q&A at Queen’s Film Theatre after a screening of the rather fine French movie Tell No One (Ne Le Dis A Personne), based on his novel. Grab him while you can, because he’ll be choppering straight out again, headed for the Theakston’s Old Peculier crime writing festival at Harrogate, which runs from the 19th to the 22nd. And while we’re on the subject, it’s still not too late to vote for Allan Guthrie’s rather fine Two Way Split, short-listed for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, if you slide on over here. Vote early and often, people: you know it makes sense …

One Of These Kids Is Doing His Eoin Thing

He’s taken some stick for his fictionalised take on the death of the Princess of Wails, aka ‘Spencer’, but an unrepentant Eoin McNamee (right) is at Belfast’s premier crime fiction outlet No Alibis tomorrow night to celebrate the launch of 12:33: A Parisian Summer. We’ll be the reprobates up the front a-squealing and throwing our knickers and praying for one of those smouldering glances … Oh, and while we’re on the subject – 12:33 was among a whole mess of '10th anniversary of the death of Princess Di' books reviewed by The Observer last Sunday, although quite what the reviewer was trying to say still eludes us. Like ducks staring at thunder, we are, and that’s on a good day. Back to No Alibis – not only is Harlan Coben choppering in to Belfast’s finest crime blah-de-blah on July 19, he’ll be doing a Q&A at Queen’s Film Theatre after a screening of the rather fine French movie Tell No One (Ne Le Dis A Personne) based on his novel. Book early, book often, people …