Review: EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng

I reviewed Celeste Ng’s EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU earlier this month in the Irish Times crime fiction column, a book that reminded me in many ways of Megan Abbott’s THE END OF EVERYTHING, which is one of the best novels I’ve read in the last decade or so. The review of Celeste’s book runs a lot like this:

Opening in 1977 in Middlewood, Ohio, Celeste Ing’s debut Everything I Never Told You (Black Friars) begins with a dramatic declaration: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” The 16-year-old Chinese-American daughter of James and Marilyn Lee, Lydia is discovered drowned in a local lake, but as the police investigation proceeds it remains unclear as to whether Lydia died as a result of murder, suicide or a tragic accident. Indeed, rather than advance the plot to the point where a motive and perpetrator are revealed, Celeste Ing is far more interested in exploring who Lydia Lee really was behind the various masks she wore to deceive her parents, her siblings and her high school friends. Ethnicity and assimilation (or the lack of it) is crucial to Lydia’s story: James Lee is a Chinese-American professor of American culture who has spent his entire life trying to blend in to a society that instinctively labels him as an outsider, while her mother, Marilyn, was frustrated in her youth in her ambition to become a doctor, and channels her aspirations through her daughter. What emerges is a heartbreaking portrait of a teenage girl struggling to cope with unbearable and conflicting pressures brought to bear by her parents, while also trying to deal with the more prosaic but no less difficult issues of adolescence, in a story that brings to mind Megan Abbott’s subversive take on the crime novel. Ranging back and forth from the 1970s to the 1950s – when James and Marilyn first met, and the seeds of Lydia’s tragedy were first sown – Everything I Never Told You is an affecting, compelling tale of quiet desperation. ~ Declan Burke

  For the rest of the column, which includes the current offerings from Paula Hawkins, Harri Nykänen and Rob Kitchin, clickety-click here …

Interview: Sheila Bugler

The author of HUNTING SHADOWS and THE WAITING GAME, Shelia Bugler (right) is interviewed over at the Words With Jam ezine. An excerpt:

“As someone with a particular interest in flawed female characters, I’d love to have written any one of Gillian Flynn’s marvellous novels. Or anything by Megan Abbott – I am a huge fan of her work. I recently read This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash and was in awe for days afterwards. It’s a stunning novel. Tana French’s latest The Secret Place is another brilliant piece of crime fiction. If I could ever write a book that compares to any of those authors, I’d be really happy.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Review: TAMPA by Alissa Nutting

Celeste Price, the narrator of Alissa Nutting’s debut novel Tampa (Faber & Faber, €14.99), is a high school English teacher in Florida. Married to a local police officer, Celeste is friendly, helpful and dedicated in her vocation. Respectability personified, she harbours a dark secret: Celeste has made it her life’s work to put herself in a position where she can prey sexually on 14-year-old boys. It’s a chilling tale in many respects, not least because Celeste suffers no crisis of conscience about her deviant behaviour and the effect it might have on the young men she targets, but it’s very difficult for the reader to dislike Celeste herself. Her first-person voice is charming, self-deprecating and witty, the amiable tone drawing the reluctantly complicit reader deeper and deeper into her immorality. There are echoes of Humbert Humbert and Tom Ripley to be heard here, and also Jim Thompson’s charming psychopath Lou Ford (Celeste’s husband is called Ford), but Nutting’s reinvention of the taboo-breaking femme fatale results in a self-determining female protagonist reminiscent of those created in recent years by Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott. That said, Celeste Price is a unique creation and Tampa is a singular tale. It may well be the most challenging crime novel you’ll read all year. – Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the monthly crime fiction column in the Irish Times. Also reviewed were the latest offerings from Jo Nesbo, Nele Neuhaus and Joe Joyce.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sheila Bugler

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?
So many! It’s an ever-increasing list. I am a huge fan of US author Megan Abbott and if I could have written even one of her novels I’d be pretty happy. I’ve just read a wonderful novel by Stephan Talty called BLACK IRISH, which I read and really wished I’d written. It’s bloody good.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Again, how do I choose just one? These questions are tough! Possibly Nick Carraway, the narrator in THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I never feel guilty about reading and I’ll read anything that takes my fancy. Obviously I read a huge amount of crime fiction. I also love so-called literary fiction (I’ve just finished James Salter’s LIGHT YEARS. Please, please read it if you haven’t already. It’s the most wonderful, moving book). And I’m a huge fan of Marian Keyes. Chick lit or whatever you call it, her writing rings all my bells.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Ooh, good question. And my answer is going to sound horribly pretentious. For me, the best moment - and I don’t think this will change - was the moment I found my ‘voice’ as a writer. Writers bang on about voice a bit and I’d be hard-pushed to define what it is, exactly. Except I know when it works, not just for me but I can see it in other writing too. I can remember - exactly - the moment I found my own voice. I knew, from that moment on, that I could do this.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
It would have to be THE GUARDS. I think with Jack Taylor, Ken Bruen invented a new type of Irish noir. What a bloody brilliant writer. I also adore the Max series he’s written with Jason Starr for Hard Case Crime. Demented and hilarious.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Joe Murphy’s wonderful novel DEAD DOGS would make a fantastic movie. I adore this book. What a talented writer.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: it’s so damn all-consuming and means you don’t do anything else properly. Best: it’s the best thing in the world and I can’t imagine that I’d ever want to do anything else.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s called WATCH OVER YOU. It’s a sequel to HUNTING SHADOWS and it’s a dark, twisted tale about dark, twisted females. My type of book.

Who are you reading right now?
Ah ... Philip Kerr’s amazing Berlin Noir trilogy. Perfect prose. Reading it is the greatest pleasure.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
The obvious answer is f*** off but you can’t print that, right? If I really had to choose, I’d have to ditch the writing. I couldn’t live without reading.

The three best words to describe your own writing are...?
Empathic, angry, matriarchic.

Sheila Bugler’s HUNTING SHADOWS is published by Brandon.

Mc vs Mc: The Spinetingler Awards

I find myself in something of a bind courtesy of the good folks at Spinetingler Magazine. Their annual Award nominees have just been announced, and John McFetridge and Adrian McKinty have been pitched in against one another in the ‘Rising Star / Legend’ category in what amounts to a (koff) duel nomination. The trouble being, you’re only allowed to vote for one nominee in each category. So – vote for McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND, or McFetridge’s TUMBLIN’ DICE? Hmmmm. I may need to consult the chicken entrails on this one.
  It’s a tough category, by the way. To wit:

The 2013 Spinetingler Award Best Novel: Rising Star/Legend

Capture by Roger Smith
The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
Kings of Cool by Don Winslow
Lake Country by Sean Doolittle
The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli
Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
Tumblin’ Dice by John McFetridge
What it Was by George Pelecanos

  The very best of luck to all involved. For the full list of categories and nominees in the Spinetingler Awards, clickety-click here …

30 Shades of Great: The Best Books Of 2012

It’s that time of the year again, folks, where I tell you what I read this year, and you tell me, this on the basis - presumably - that it’s marginally more interesting than telling one another about our dreams. That said, it’s always nice to be able to talk about good books, and I read a reasonable number of good books during 2012 - roughly a quarter of what I read would be worth reading again, I think. Oh, and as you’ll notice, some of the books below weren’t published in 2012; some were re-reads, others I was reading for the first time. Either way, they’re great books. And now, on with the show …

January
THE SILVER STAIN by Paul Johnston. A very fine private eye novel set on Crete. Fact: those nine words are my recipe for the perfect book.

February
THE GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye. A very impressive debut. Historical crime novel, incorporating the earliest incarnation of the NYPD. Great period detail.

HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander. Pitch-black comedy about a man who discovers Anne Frank living in his attic, typing out her memoir. Probably the funniest book I read all year.

March

THE IRON WILL OF SHOESHINE CATS by Hesh Kestin. Set in New York in the 1960s, and concerned with a most unlikely Jewish mobster, Shoeshine Cats. Actually, this was the funniest book I read all year.

April
THE NAMESAKE by Conor Fitzgerald. I think Conor Fitzgerald could be the greatest of the current generation of Irish crime writers. This is the third of his Rome-set police procedurals. It’s brilliant.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER LIFE by Leif GW Persson. I’ve been getting a bit bored with the rather homogenous Scandinavian crime scene of late, but Persson is doing something very interesting. Highly recommended.

May
A LILY OF THE FIELD by John Lawton. I’ve always been a sucker for a great spy novel and this is a great spy novel, with the added bonus of a backdrop of classical music. Marvellous.

I HEAR THE SIRENS IN THE STREET by Adrian McKinty. I read this one as a manuscript, which means I won’t be able to review it when it comes out in January. A pity, because Adrian McKinty is the reason Conor Fitzgerald isn’t the best of the current generation of Irish crime writers.

DARE ME by Megan Abbott. THE END OF EVERYTHING was my favourite novel of 2011; this is set in the murderous world of cheerleading, and delivers some of the most fascinating characters of 2012.

THE NAMELESS DEAD by Brian McGilloway. I’ve liked Inspector Ben Devlin more with each passing novel, but THE NAMELESS DEAD is a powerful novel with real emotional depth. If I was only allowed to re-read one Irish crime novel from 2012, this would be it.

THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach. Along with spy novels, I’m also a sucker for baseball novels. Chad Harbach’s debut is much more than a baseball novel, but any book with a genius shortstop as its central character is jake with me. My most purely enjoyable read of the year, I think.

June
HHhH by Laurent Binet. A fascinating exploration of the attempted assassination of uber-Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, this is also an intriguing examination of the author’s right to tell a story, and the extent to which he or she should depend on the cobwebs of memory. Wonderful stuff.

BROKEN HARBOUR by Tana French. A marvellous police procedural, this also doubled up as a heartbreaking take on the human cost of the Irish economic bust. Also the most frightening book I read all year.

July
BLOOD LOSS by Alex Barclay. On the one hand a compelling police procedural set in a Colorado skiing town, on the other a fascinating glimpse into a damaged mind that is fully aware it is damaged.

Edge of the seat stuff, this.

HAWTHORN & CHILD by Keith Ridgway. I’m still not fully sure why I liked this so much, although I suspect it’s because Ridgway took a very risky / adventurous plunge in terms of narrative. Akin to a contemporary Beckett, I think.

August
BRENNER AND GOD by Wolf Haas. What I loved about this Austrian-set tale of the abduction of an infant was the narrator’s voice - quirkily omniscient, and yet with a real whisper-in-the-ear quality. A very difficult style to pull off, but Haas does it beautifully.

LIVE BY NIGHT by Dennis Lehane. The second part of the trilogy that began with THE GIVEN DAY, and while I prefer the first, LIVE BY NIGHT is a vividly delivered epic tale. Wonderful.

THE MYSTERY OF MERCY CLOSE by Marian Keyes. My very first Marian Keyes novel turned out to be a private eye tale, which was nice, but what makes this stand out is its harrowingly accurate depiction of depression. Hilarious and gut-wrenching, often in the space of the same paragraph.

September
CREOLLE BELLE by James Lee Burke. The Robicheaux plots might be starting to repeat themselves a little bit by now, but when you can write as beautifully, and poignantly, as Burke, who cares?

October
TELEGRAPH AVENUE by Michael Chabon. A fabulous fantasy about America’s potential as a cultural melting-pot, I loved this for the self-mockery of its high-flown language.

MORTALITY by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens writes about dying as he’s dying. Stunning, heartbreaking, uplifting.

RATLINES by Stuart Neville. By all accounts the first of a trilogy, this spy novel set in Ireland in 1963 has it all: intrigue, twists, pace, power.

PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR by Artemis Cooper. If you read this biography thinking it was a novel, you’d never believe it. Fermor packed about seven lives into his ninety-odd years, and Cooper does him full justice.

November
GONE AGAIN by Doug Johnstone. Not due until next March, I think, but one of the best paranoid thrillers I’ve read since the last time I closed an Alan Glynn book.

STANDING IN A DEAD MAN’S GRAVE by Ian Rankin. Rebus is back. Let me say that again: Rebus is back. ’Nuff said.

December

THE BLACK BOX by Michael Connelly. There’s an elegiac quality creeping into Connelly’s Bosch novels I hadn’t noticed before, and which gives the books an added heft that they were brilliant without. Superb.

SMONK by Tom Franklin. CROOKED LETTER blew me away when I read it a couple of years ago; I read HELL AT THE BREECH last year, and just finished SMONK. Reminiscent of early Cormac McCarthy, but funnier.

  So there you have it. If you want to let us all know what your favourite books in 2012 were, feel free to leave a comment in the box below, or a link to your own list on your blog, website, etc.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Paul Johnston

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?
It changes on a daily basis - today, Michael Dibdin’s DEAD LAGOON. (Sorry, Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP, James Ellroy’s WHITE JAZZ, Ian Rankin’s BLACK AND BLUE, Robert Wilson’s A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON, James Lee Burke’s IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH THE CONFEDERATE DEAD - best title award, and John Connolly’s THE KILLING KIND.)

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
It would have been Sherlock H, but he’s been debased by modern revamps. So how about the Continental Op, with fewer pounds and more hair?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
*Inhales deeply* Tolkien.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing THE LAST RED DEATH (2003), my novel about terrorism in Greece. I’d been feeling like shit and it turned out I had a very nasty cancer (called ‘Thatcher’). Nearly didn’t see publication day...

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Aha! I won’t embarrass you by saying ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (oops, I just did), so I’ll go for Eoin McNamee’s RESURRECTION MAN.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Well, they screwed up RESURRECTION MAN big time. I think Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND fits the bill.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The blank page or screen/ the last hours of writing a novel, when everything - unbelievably - comes together.

The pitch for your next book is …?
THE GREEN LADY - Athens 2004: the Olympic Games, the eyes of the world, and a major industrialist’s daughter goes missing. Think Persephone, Hades and all hell breaking loose around PI Alex Mavros ...

Who are you reading right now?
David Lodge’s A MAN OF PARTS, about H.G. Wells - disappointingly little about the great SF books, mainly because ‘HG’ wasn’t shagging anything that moved when he wrote them. Crime novels I’ve read recently are Peter May’s THE BLACKHOUSE (over-rated), Christa Faust’s MONEY SHOT (not as revealing about the making of porn movies as I’d hoped ), Tony Black’s TRUTH LIES BLEEDING (good), Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN (excellent) and Joyce Carol Oates’ ZOMBIE (the last word on serial killers and squirm-inducing, in a good way).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God? Who s/he? Anyway, obviously ‘write’. Then I could read what I’d written, thus sneakily defeating your conundrum.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Political, fast-paced, violent. (Oh, and on the grounds that no one expects the Irish Inquisition, deep.)

Paul Johnston’s THE SILVER STAIN is published by Crème de la Crime.

CAPNYA: Or, The Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award!

A trumpet-parp please, maestro. The votes are in, the counts have been tallied, the hanging chads ignored, and the winner emerges triumphant. The short-list consisted of THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly, THE RAGE by Gene Kerrigan and FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty, and - ta-da! - it’s FALLING GLASS that wins the hardly-coveted-at-all Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award!
  Now all I need to do is come up with some kind of trophy to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, it’s a hearty congrats to Adrian McKinty, not least, as I’ve said before, because 2011 was yet another very fine year for Irish crime writing. Incidentally, FALLING GLASS has already secured the significantly-more-coveted Audible.com Best Mystery / Thriller of the Year. Which just goes to prove that the readers of this blog, if not its host, have impeccably good taste …
  I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised, by the way, if McKinty’s forthcoming tome, THE COLD COLD GROUND, doesn’t feature on a number of 2012’s Best Of lists. It’s due in January, and I’ve already gone on the record about it on these pages, with the gist running thusly:

“The hunger strikes mark the bleakest period of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’, and it’s entirely fitting that Adrian McKinty should be the writer to plunge into that darkest of hearts. It’s a rare author who can write so beautifully about such a poisonous atmosphere, but McKinty’s prose is a master-class in vicious poise as he explores the apparent contradictions that underpin Ulster’s self-loathing. Be in no doubt that this novel is a masterpiece: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great ‘Troubles’ novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written THE COLD COLD GROUND.”

  Very pleased I was, not to mention a little gobsmacked, to see a line from that little lot quoted on the back cover blurb of THE COLD COLD GROUND when it fell through my letterbox last Monday morning. But don’t take my word for it. The various blurbs also feature Stuart Neville (“A razor-sharp thriller with style, courage and dark-as-night wit … brilliant”) and Brian McGilloway (“A brilliant piece of work which does for Northern Ireland what [David] Peace’s Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire”).
  So there you have it. THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …
  As for my own favourite novels of the year, well, 2011 was a year in which I was fairly spoiled. They are, in roughly the order I read them:

THE TERROR OF LIVING by Urban Waite;
CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin;
THE GLASS RAINBOW by James Lee Burke;
CITY OF THE DEAD by Sara Gran;
THE TROUBLED MAN by Henning Mankell;
THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald;
THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X by Keigo Higashino;
THE CALLER by Karin Fossum;
FALLING GLASS by Adrian McKinty;
THE WATCHERS by Jon Steele;
LASTING DAMAGE by Sophie Hannah;
BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn;
THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly;
THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott;
A SINGLE SHOT by Matthew F. Jones;
DADDY’S GIRL by Margie Orford;

  Winnowing those down for the purpose of picking my overall favourite, I find myself stuck on three titles:

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin;
THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly;
THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott;

  Trust me, on this much at least: blow your book token vouchers on those three titles, and you won’t be disappointed.
  Finally, it’s over to you, dear reader. What was your favourite crime title of the year? The comment box is now open …

Less Is Moore

With all the hoo-hah over the Irish Book Awards, it very nearly snuck under my radar that Bloomsbury is in the process of reissuing a series of Brian Moore’s novels, including NO OTHER LIFE, THE MAGICIAN’S WIFE and I AM MARY DUNNE. Of chief interest to crime fans will be THE STATEMENT, which was originally published in 1995, and about which the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

Condemned to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, Pierre Brossard has lived in the shadows for more than forty years. Now, at last, his past is threatening to catch up with him. A new breed of government officials is determined to break decades of silence and expose the crimes of Vichy. Under the harsh glare of the Provencal sun, Brossard is forced to abandon the monastery where he has been hiding and turn to old friends for support - but can he really outrun his past?

  Brian Moore, who was born in Northern Ireland and emigrated to Canada in 1948, cut his teeth as an author writing crime novels, under the pseudonyms Bernard Mara and Michael Bryan. Frequently and favourably compared to Graham Greene, Moore was, like Greene, disposed towards writing both literary titles and more thriller-style tales. His best books, in my opinion, combined his gift for language and a serious moral investigation with a stripped-back, less-is-more narrative - the ideal crime thriller, in other words, as in the case of Moore’s political thrillers, LIES OF SILENCE and THE COLOUR OF BLOOD.
  I picked up a copy of THE STATEMENT in a second-hand bookshop in Dun Laoghaire yesterday, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in, just as soon as I get all the work-related reading on the shelf out of the way. Which means, I suppose, that THE STATEMENT will be this Christmas’s reading treat, although I’d already lined up some Charles McCarry, Megan Abbott, Daniel Woodrell and James Sallis for that particular indulgence …

You Can’t Spell Megan Without, Um, Mega

Before I read THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbott was one of those writers I’d been meaning to get to for a couple of years - fair to say, I think, that her reputation (BURY ME DEEP, QUEENPIN) precedes her. Anyway, THE END OF EVERYTHING more than matched my expectations; actually, it’ll probably be my favourite read of the year. Here’s a short review from this month’s Irish Times’ crime fiction column, which was published last Saturday:

Megan Abbott’s THE END OF EVERYTHING (Picador, £7.99) is another unusual offering, a novel about the abduction of a pubescent girl by a male neighbour as seen through the eyes of Lizzie, the best friend of the abducted girl. This is Abbott’s fifth novel, and it’s a superb piece of characterisation, which is given an added dimension courtesy of Lizzie’s entirely frank account of her growing sexual obsession with the father of the abducted girl. It’s an unsettling tale, as the reader is torn between Lizzie’s endearing naivety and her beautifully detailed reminiscing about her idyllic suburban life, and the darkness that lurks behind the apparently normal facades of her neighbourhood, which Lizzie insists on probing. Laced with poetic asides, and shot through with black humour and a bleak acceptance of the dangers that accompany a young woman’s puberty, THE END OF EVERYTHING is one of the most compelling novels you’ll read this year.

  Of course, the trouble with reading a terrific novel like that is that you immediately want to go back to the start of the author’s back catalogue and dive in. A luxury that a lack of time, unfortunately, doesn’t allow me these days. The good news there, I suppose, is that Megan Abbott has a new title, DARE ME, on the way next summer, which should nicely brighten up those long, damp, dreary Irish summer days.
  Elsewhere in the Irish Times’ column, I reviewed THE RETRIBUTION by Val McDermid, THE AFFAIR by Lee Child, THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis, THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina and STOLEN SOULS by our own Stuart Neville. Top stuff, all in all; one of the best month’s reading I’ve had in a long, long time. For the full piece, clickety-click here …

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: And The Winner Is …

A little bit of house-keeping today, folks. I ran a competition last week to celebrate being short-listed in the Irish Book Awards, offering a signed copy of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL and asking people to nominate their favourite crime novel of the year so far. Thanks a million for your response, and for some very interesting suggestions, although I should say that the ‘judging’ process is entirely unscientific and very biased indeed. In other words, I’m going to award the signed copy to Michael Malone, this on the basis that he picked THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott, which blew me away when I read it last month. It really is a superb novel - and, oddly enough, one of the least crime-driven crime novels I’ve read all year. Anyway, a signed copy of AZC is winging its way to Michael Malone as you read …
  Incidentally, if anyone is really, really desperate to get their hands on a signed copy of AZC, I’m reliably informed that they are available at the Liberties Press website …
  Elsewhere this week, I was delighted to appear on TV3’s Ireland AM to promote both AZC and the Irish Book Awards. Ireland AM sponsors the crime fiction section at the IBA, although I think it’s worth pointing out that the programme - and Mark Cagney in particular - have been very supportive of Irish crime writers since long before the sponsorship began. If you’re remotely interested in seeing yours truly on the TV, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, AZC received a very nice review from Sarah over at Crime Pieces. What I liked about it most was that Sarah came across the book courtesy of someone else posting about the Irish Book Awards short-list, and decided to read the book as a result. Which is, of course, the true purpose of any kind of award, I think. As nice as it would be to actually win the prize, I’m delighted that as a result of the nomination, AZC is now coming to the notice of readers who might not otherwise have heard of it. Of course, it’s also very nice that said readers actually like the book once they get to read it. Anyway, Sarah’s full review can be found here …
  Finally, there’s still a week to go to the closing date for voting in the Irish Book Awards, which take place on November 17th. If you’d like to vote for anyone on the crime short-list, which also includes Benjamin Black, William Ryan, Jane Casey, Casey Hill and the inimitable Alan Glynn, just clickety-click here …

That’s Entertainment?

Maybe we can blame Graham Greene, who famously - or infamously - labelled his crime novels ‘entertainments’, although I suspect it goes back a lot further than that. I’m talking about the notion that crime novels - all genre novels, really, but we deal in crime writing here - are obliged to be entertaining, as if it’s incumbent upon crime novelists, or their books, to be clowns, regardless of how sad the clown might be behind the garish make-up.
  A recent and very positive review of Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND in the Irish Times is a case in point. Anna Carey wrote the review, and did a very fine job too, in my opinion, finishing up thusly:

“A good thriller is there to entertain the reader as well as make her think - and [BLOODLAND] is a very entertaining book.” - Anna Carey, Irish Times

  Now, I’m sure Alan Glynn was very happy with that review, but I do wonder about the distinction being made in that line. There’s no good reason, for example, why the word ‘book’ couldn’t be substituted for ‘thriller’. After all, it’s the function of every book to ‘entertain the reader as well as make her think’. Crime, sci-fi, chick-lit, literary, fantasy, romance, historical biography, quantum physics - if a book on any given topic isn’t entertaining, which is to say enjoyable to read, then why would anyone read it? Are there books that are deliberately written not to entertain? Has any writer ever sat down at the desk with the express intention of writing a book that will bore his or her reader into a coma?
  I do hate the notion of ‘special pleading’ on behalf of crime fiction, but I think there’s a case to be made for declaring a moratorium on the use of ‘entertaining’ when it comes to reviewing the genre. I mean, if the book receives a positive review, then surely the fact that the reviewer was entertained is implicit in the good vibes. The moratorium might even be extended to the phrase ‘page-turning’. No, seriously - how else are you going to read a book if it doesn’t involve turning pages?
  I suppose what I’m suggesting, and not for the first time, is that crime fiction requires a more rigorous analysis than it generally gets. ‘An entertaining, page-turning read’ is a description that could apply to any good book, from Noddy to ULYSSES. Is it the case that crime fiction is more about breadth than depth, than it’s prime function is to entertain, and saying so suffices as a valid review? Is it the case that the genre doesn’t actually require or deserve a more subtle, nuanced lexicon? Or is it the case that the genre, being perceived as little more than a lurid distraction, and particularly by comparison with other kinds of books, is being ill-served by a self-perpetuating simplification, as often as not by the readers and fans of the genre itself?
  In the last month or so, I’ve read a number of books - among them BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn, THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly, THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott, THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis and THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina - that are as good as any novel of any stripe I’ve read in the last few years. They are all unmistakably crime fiction titles; all are beautifully written, first and foremost; they also have in common a rare quality of psychological insight as they pursue the flaws and foibles of the human condition. All of which are the essential elements of any good novel, it seems to me.
  Anyway, I opened up talking about Alan Glynn, and there’s a lot him about right now. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with the Faber blog, The Thought Fox:

[TF] BLOODLAND has the kind of plot where tiny details at the start lead to huge revelations by the end. How hard is it when writing a story like this to keep back secrets from your readers?

[AG] “It’s not easy. I continually re-read, re-write and revise. At the same time it’s an organic process and the subconscious does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. A connection that in the context of the story might seem inevitable, something meticulously and very deliberately placed there by the author, will often in fact have occurred to me at the very last minute. Maybe it was there all along, waiting to be discovered but the poor sap at the keyboard isn’t necessarily the first one to see it. But then when it all becomes clear, you have the luxury of being able to go back and re-arrange stuff, to re-weight and re-calibrate scenes in the overall context of the story. As the writer, you just have to pay attention, which I suppose isn’t too much to ask. Another way of keeping secrets back from the reader, of course is by not knowing them yourself, as you go along. No plan, therefore, no outline. It’s a good way of keeping things fresh and unpredictable, but it’s also fraught with danger. You can write yourself into a corner. Or fall off the tightrope.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, you can bag yourself a free signed copy of BLOODLAND over at the Harrogate Festival’s interweb lair, with the competition running until October 9th.
  For a couple of nifty reviews to complement Anna Carey’s take in the Irish Times, there’s one here at International Noir, and another courtesy of Laura Wilson at The Guardian.
  Finally, for Alan Glynn’s take on his ‘Book of a Lifetime’, aka THE GREAT GATSBY, jump on over to The Independent …
  Oh, and as I mentioned a day or so ago, I’ll be doing an event with Alan Glynn at The Rathgar Bookshop this coming Thursday, October 6th, at 7.30pm. He’ll be reading from BLOODLAND, I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and if there’s anyone still awake after that little lot, we’ll be talking about, y’know, good books and stuff. If you’re around, I’d love to see you there …

Fly Concord For Free

I had a piece published in the Irish Times yesterday on the Concord Free Press, which is currently publishing Scott Phillips’ rather excellent RUT. The opening ran a lot like this:

The best things in life are free books. That’s the philosophy of the US-based Concord Free Press, which publishes books and gives them away.
  “GIVE + TAKE, my fourth novel, inspired the whole idea,” says Stona Fitch of CFP. “It’s about a jazz pianist who steals diamonds and BMWs and gives away the money - in short, a modern retelling of the Robin Hood fable. But it’s also about the limits of generosity and the slippery nature of value. When the book ran into classic delay at a major New York publishing house, I decided to start the Concord Free Press and give it the book away, asking only that readers give some money to a charity they believed in or someone in need.”
  The CFP publishing model - which they have dubbed ‘generosity-based publishing’ - is overseen by an Advisory Board of writers that includes Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, Megan Abbott and Gregory Maguire, among others. “It’s important to point out that we’re a group of writers that publishes books,” says Stona, “not a publisher only. We’ve just seized control of the machinery of publishing and put it to work in a new way.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: C.J. Box

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 LAST GOOD KISS by James Crumley. I read it ages ago as a fledgling novelist and suddenly lights went on. I’ve talked to a surprising number of other writers over the years who’ve said the same thing.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Shane. As in the Jack Schaefer western novel.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Thomas McGuane, Charlie Huston, John Sandford, Michael Connelly, Ken Bruen, Denise Mina, Megan Abbott. I’d also list Cormac McCarthy, but his writing makes me feel too guilty.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Starting the last third of the novel after everything else is in place and the horrifying and exhilarating sprint to the finish is about to begin.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
… an impossible question to answer. Books that have bowled me over include THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen and DEAD I WELL MAY BE by Adrian McKinty. I can’t wait to read THE BIG O, by some Burke fellow.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE GUARDS, although I don’t know how the hell they’d make it. In order to get it right, all the movie-goers would have to agree to arrive drunk and continue to drink heavily (and quietly) throughout the film.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best thing, seriously, is hearing from readers who claim that up until recently they were non-readers but now they’ve seen the light. Worst thing (or one of the worst) is when someone sidles up at a cocktail party and says, “If I had the time, I’d write a novel myself.” As if any writer HAS EVER HAD THE TIME.

The pitch for your next book is …?
“Imagine looking up at a wind turbine and seeing a body lashed to one of the enormous rotating blades…”

Who are you reading right now?
T. Jefferson Parker. He’s a friend and fly-fishing partner of mine, and his new one is fantastic.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. Although I’d be pretty put out about it.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
You are there.

CJ Box’s THREE WEEKS TO SAY GOODBYE is published on December 1

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Megan Abbott

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?
FAREWELL, MY LOVELY by Raymond Chandler. Perfectly structured, gains in texture with every read and is filled with luminous strangeness.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
That’s an interesting question because most of my favourite characters are pretty doomed, so I can’t say I’d like to take their place. I’m going with Ned Beaumont, from THE GLASS KEY. Smart, wily, loyal and a survivor. I’d feel okay in his shoes. Except for that touch of tuberculosis. Second choice: Sammy Glick.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Movie star biographies. I tear through them. Or really, really low-grade true crime. The kind that seems to have been published by some private press in a remote town in Idaho. My most recent favourite: Charles Stoker’s cop memoir, THICKER ‘N’ THIEVES, the basis for much of Ellroy’s LA Quartet.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When you know that, as unhappy as you might be with a piece of writing, anything else you do is just going to screw it up even more. So you have to stop. Doesn’t sound very satisfying, does it? And yet, somehow, it is.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Any single sentence by Ken Bruen is a great Irish crime novel, a great crime novel, a great novel. Let’s say PRIEST.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Almost any of them. I think there’s something deeply cinematic about Irish crime fiction. To speak in possibly-annoying generalities, there’s that irresistible combination of high theatre, a tortured national history and lush, theatrical, epic (including epically profane) language. These are the stuff of great movies.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best is the excuse to talk about books with people all the time. The worst is that empty maw at the centre of your soul that you feel staring at the blank computer screen.

The pitch for your next book is …?
BURY ME DEEP: tabloid love and murder in the 1930s. It’s based on the Winnie Ruth Judd murder case, which made headlines around the world. It had it all: booze, drugs, sex, degeneracy—and this sad, sad story at its centre: a lonely young woman who falls victim to her own desires and has to try to fight her way out.

Who are you reading right now?
I recently finished Ace Atkins’s superb and haunting DEVIL’S GARDEN, which is a novel about the famous Fatty Arbuckle case, with a young Dashiell Hammett as one of the Pinkertons on the case. Next up: I just got an advance copy of Hard Case’s reissue of Jason Starr’s FAKE ID.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, definitely. Some days I wish He would say that!

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Fevery, urgent, compulsive.

Megan Abbott’s BURY ME DEEP will be published in July.

French Kissing In The USA*

So there we were at 6.30am trying to make a funny out of the Edgars and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and the fact that Tana French’s (right) second name is, well, you follow our drift, when we realised that trying to make funnies before the first bucket of coffee goes down the hatch may well cause our collective spinal cords to leap up and strangle what’s left of our pitiful collective brains. So, instead, we’ll just give it to you straight – Sarah Weinman reports that Tana French’s debut novel IN THE WOODS has won the Edgar for Best First Novel By An American Author. Hoo-rah! Of course, the downside to Tana’s win means that we’ll have to disinclude her from the roster of Irish crime fiction writers, but that’s a small price to pay. Run wild, Tana, run free! Meanwhile, the winner of the Best Novel award was John Hart’s DOWN RIVER, and Megan Abbott scooped the Best Paperback Original with QUEENPIN. Bernd Kochanowski? We still love you, but you’re sacked. For all the Edgar details, jump on over here …

* How long have we been waiting use that header? Way too long, that’s how long ...

Mi Casa, Su Casa – Bernd Kochanowski

The continuing stooooooory of how the Grand Vizier puts his feet up and lets other people talk some sense for a change. This week: Bernd Kochanowski (right) makes his Edgar predictions.

“On May 1st, the mystery writers of America (MWA) will announce this year’s winners of the Edgar Awards. Compared to other crime fiction awards it seems especially difficult to predict winners for the Edgar Award; not only might one’s own preferences send one awry, but the expectations of the juries change from year to year more than that of other.”

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
“Last year in this category, highly unusual (but fine) crime fiction novels were nominated. That might have been the reason that a rather bland book won. This year’s books are modern, sometimes bold but still more to the liking of the conventional crime fiction reader. In ROBBIE’S WIFE, Russel Hill tells the story of an older American writer who comes to England to find his peace and rebuild his shattered career. There he meets a young attractive woman who revives and stimulates him and leads him back to writing, a woman worth fighting for. It is a fine, but rather a conventional book and not on a par with earlier Edgar Award winners in this category.
  “WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?, written by Kevin Wignall, is an altogether different matter. It is a thriller that plays with the expectations of the reader and tells the story of a man who lost himself, became a killer and wants to find himself again. It is not so much a suspenseful and gripping book as well constructed and told. I missed a bit the great emotion and would assume that this slightly cool book has only a small chance.
  ”Two of the books are written by female authors, not only with heroines but with a female twist of the genre, with women who life lives and behave in a way not typically attributed to them. Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN is a female variation of the ’50s pulp fiction. In a fine language it tells the story of a young woman who learns the ways of the criminal world and who makes her first own steps. It is a hardboiled story with a hint of noir but not enough speed to sustain this notion. The heroine is not really engaging and the plot itself has certain flaws. Obviously this should be no realistic candidate but the book has been much praised in the English-speaking world. In direct comparison, CRUEL POETRY by Vicki Hendricks is as noir, female, exciting and self-contained as only the best books. Renata provides sex for joy and money until a client wants more than he gets. With its explicit sex scenes and as a noir, it is not necessarily palatable to the majority of readers, but it would be a worthy winner.
  “In this panel, BLOOD OF PARADISE by David Corbett is the classical thriller. It is a book with a political proposition which is stated in a dossier that is found at the end of the book. Some of its quality lies in the fact that this proposition is not obvious for a reader who does not read the dossier. BLOOD OF PARADISE is a story of an US bodyguard who works in El Salvador and is confronted with his own past and is getting between the lines. This story describes a reality of which the USA and its security services are partly responsible. It is a story full of esprit and a has fair chance to win.
  “Therefore: CRUEL POETRY almost head to head with BLOOD PARADISE and clearly ahead of WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?. QUEENPIN would be a mistake and ROBBIE’S WIFE not understandable.

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
“There is a very tough competition in this category and each book would (more or less) deserve to win. SNITCH JACKET by Christopher Goffard is the story of a loser who is on remand and explains to his lawyer why it was not so as it seems. It is a fine book in a style reminiscent of Jim Nisbet, but more stringently plotted. It is full of witty remarks, elaborate language and clever observations of the US-American culture. Because of the language, if at all, only with small odds.
  ”Craig MacDonald’s HEAD GAMES is full of homage and historical allusions. The story describes the hunt for the head of a former Mexican general. It is a road movie that hides under the disguise of a typical American crime story an ambitious literary novel. As the quality of this book is more hidden than plainly obvious, it is also only with small odds.
  “Tana French’s book IN THE WOODS reads like a crossbreed of a classical Whodunit and James Ellroy’s BLACK DAHLIA, a bit psycho-thriller, a bit police procedural, told with literary ambition. It describes the investigations of a murder of a young girl but ends with a daring finish where the different strands of the plot are whirled and shuffled and an emotional cauldron is created. At the end not all riddles are solved, which didn’t find the approval of all readers but I think that’s life. IN THE WOODS is multilayered, moves from one subgenre to another, and pleases again and again with opulent and felicitous phrases. It has a fair chance to win, and as much as MISSING WITNESS by Gordon Campbell. A courthouse drama that celebrates the US-American trial as a performance and demonstrates that all the scheming can backfire and that then a lawyer has to face the results of his own doings. Here is an author who tells a tricky story convincingly and can generate a cogent atmosphere.
  “In pole position in this category I would see PYRES by Derek Nikitas, a story about a young girl whose father is shot in front of her and whose mother is trying to kill herself and in time regresses to an infant state. It (like IN THE WOODS) draws from an astonishing range of subgenres, is well plotted, is full of sensitive descriptions of characters and (again like IN THE WOODS) is a formidable literary book. Pyres ends furiously and puts all the different strands convincingly to bed.
  “Therefore PYRES ahead of IN THE WOODS and MISSING WITNESS followed by HEAD GAMES. SNITCH JACKET would be a surprise.

BEST NOVEL
“The five candidates in this category all a penchant for the literary infused style and they are all viewed by the reader of mainstream genre with reservation. Two of the books are written by writers who had already success outside of the crime fiction world. “[...] there are sentences, whole passages, where he give the genre crime fiction coaching lessons,” writes Franz Schuh about Benjamin Black’s   “CHRISTINE FALLS. It is a book that reads as if its author compiled a list of genre specifications that he than worked off. It is stuffed with clichés and because of its opulent descriptions, real suspense is almost absent.
  “By comparison it looks as if Michael Chabon’s THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION is authentic: If you read this book you get a real Chabon; Yiddish in Alaska. The book constructs a world of its own and tells about it with a volley of anecdotes; it is entertaining and exploring. That there are authors who write more suspenseful is not the point. The book is a likely candidate.
  “Two of the books are written almost in an classical (crime fiction) mood. DOWN RIVER by John Hart states its literary program in the acknowledgements and fails in this regard completely. It is not an analysis of choices (as stated) but the demonstration of stereotypical reactions. It is a wonderful atmospheric book, though; still, the Edgar would be a big surprise.
  “Reed Farrel Coleman’s SOUL PATCH is a dark book, well written, well structured, with a fine plot; but still, those who read THE JAMES DEANS might be a bit disappointed. As it combines literary style and classical genre themes, there is a small possibility that this book wins.
  “In between falls Ken Bruen’s PRIEST. As usual there are some small cases to solve and as usual the story is a canvass on which Jack Taylor’s life is drawn. He wonders about the influence of America’s language and culture on Ireland’s intellectual life and sees the long life of old crimes’ memory. It is told in Bruen’s poetical voice, emotionally intense and rooted in the modern pop culture. All in all it seems to me that it is so far the best book in the Taylor series and stands a real chance to win the Edgar.
  “Therefore PRIEST with a small head-start, followed by THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION and then SOUL PATCH. DOWN RIVER would be a surprise, CHRISTINE FALLS more than that.”

Bernd Kochanowski blogs at Internationale Krimis