Event: The Guardian Book Club Hosts John Banville on Philip Marlowe

John Banville – aka Benjamin Black, aka Benny Blanco – takes part in a Guardian Book Club discussion on his ‘resurrection’ of Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe in London next Thursday, February 5th. To wit:

“Maybe it was time I forgot about Nico Peterson, and his sister, and the Cahuilla Club, and Clare Cavendish. Clare? The rest would be easy to put out of my mind, but not the black-eyed blonde . . .”
  John Banville resurrected Raymond Chandler’s private detective, Philip Marlowe, for his 2014 novel The Black-Eyed Blonde. Set in Los Angeles, in the early 1950s, it begins with a visit from a beautiful, elegant heiress, Clare Cavendish, in search of her former lover. All of the essential noir elements are here - a murder, the powerful family with hidden secrets, the sleezy bars and mean streets of LA, and at its centre Chandler’s wisecracking and world-weary sleuth.
  Banville will talk to John Mullan about writing his own Philip Marlowe mystery, the genius of Raymond Chandler and the enduring appeal of one of the most iconic private detectives in crime fiction.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

Publication: BOOKS TO DIE FOR, ed. John Connolly and Declan Burke

I’m delighted to say that BOOKS TO DIE FOR, originally published in 2012, will be reissued in trade paperback by its UK publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, on September 25th. Quoth the blurb elves:

Winner of the 2013 Agatha, Anthony and the Macavity Awards for Best Crime Non-Fiction.

The world’s greatest mystery writers on the world’s greatest mystery novels.

With so many mystery novels to choose from and so many new titles appearing each year, where should the reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems?

In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about themselves and their work work as they do about the books that they love, more than 120 authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Christie to Child and Poe to PD James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Peter Wimsey, BOOKS TO DIE FOR brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought . . . I want more!

  For more on BOOKS TO DIE FOR, clickety-click here …

Blonde Ambition

I had a piece published in the Irish Independent last weekend on the new Benjamin Black Philip Marlowe novel, THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE (Mantle), which was very enjoyable to write, not least because the commission required me to write a goodly chunk about Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe before getting down to the nitty-gritty of the Benjamin Black novel. I liked the book a lot, by the way, even it’s not a purist’s dream of Chandleresque prose. That piece can be found here.
  Meanwhile, John Banville had a very good piece in The Guardian last weekend about his long-standing love affair with the novels of Raymond Chandler, which began at a young age. Here’s a sample:

“The most durable thing in writing is style,” Chandler wrote in a letter to a literary agent in 1945. In this assertion and others like it he was laying claim to his place on Parnassus, if on one of the lower slopes. Flaubert and Joyce complained frequently and loudly of having no choice but to scatter the gold coinage of their prose over the base metal of mere mortal doings, and Chandler too, in his less emphatic, more sardonic, way, sought to set himself among the gods of pure language, pure style.
  Like the bard of Bay City, the French and Irish masters of realist fiction frequently professed to care nothing for content and everything for form – and form, of course, was just another word for style. Writing to one of his numerous correspondents, Chandler insisted that “the only writers left who have anything to say are those who write about practically nothing and monkey around with odd ways of doing it”. Out of their grand indifference, however, Flaubert created Emma Bovary and Frédéric Moreau, and Joyce Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus; and Chandler, not to be outdone, gave us Marlowe, the private eye of private eyes, who is among the immortals. – John Banville

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Black On Blonde

If I ever got dumped on a desert island, and was allowed to bring only one writer’s books with me, that writer would be Raymond Chandler. So I’ve been looking forward to Benjamin ‘Benny Blanco’ Black’s new Philip Marlowe novel, THE BLACK EYED BLONDE (Mantle), for about a year now. Quoth the blurb elves:

“Maybe it was time I forgot about Nico Peterson, and his sister, and the Cahuilla Club, and Clare Cavendish. Clare? The rest would be easy to put out of my mind, but not the black-eyed blonde . . .”
  It is the early 1950s. In Los Angeles, private detective Philip Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, Clare Cavendish wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. Soon Marlowe will find himself not only under the spell of the Black Eyed Blonde; but tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families – and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune . . .
  In this gripping and deeply evocative crime novel, Benjamin Black returns us to the dark, mesmerising world of Raymond Chandler’s THE LONG GOODBYE and his singular detective Philip Marlowe; one of the most iconic and enduringly popular detectives in crime fiction.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

Lock Up Your Stained-Glass Windows

It isn’t due until March 2014, unfortunately, but I’m already looking forward to THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE (Henry Holt) by Benjamin Black, aka John Banville, writing in the style of Raymond Chandler about Philip Marlowe. Confused? Well, if Black / Banville adopts Chandler’s haphazard approach to plotting, there’s a very good chance you will be. There’s precious little information available about said plot so far, but as soon as we hear you’ll be the first to know …

The PEN Is Also Mightier Than The Sword

I’m sure that most years are of the interesting variety when you’re both John Banville and Benjamin Black, but 2013 is shaping up to be even more interesting than usual. For one, Banville will – under the Benny Blanco nom de plume – be publishing a Philip Marlowe novel later this year, while also publishing a dedicated Benjamin Black novel, HOLY ORDERS (Henry Holt), in August.
  Meanwhile, Banville will also be awarded the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature. To wit:

Irish PEN is delighted to honour author John Banville with the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature. In keeping with the tradition started in 1935, (when the WB Yeats Dinner took place), the annual Irish PEN Award is presented in the company of other leading writers. Members of Irish PEN, as well as previous winners, nominate and vote for the candidate. Since 1999, the award recipients have included John B Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern, Neil Jordan, Seamus Heaney, Jennifer Johnston, Maeve Binchy, Thomas Kilroy, Roddy Doyle, Brendan Kennelly and Joseph O’Connor.

  The event takes place at 7pm on Friday, February 22nd at the Royal St George Yacht Club, Dún Laoghaire. For all the details, including how to book tickets, clickety-click here …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … BOOKS (TO DIE FOR)

’Tis the season to be jolly, and give presents, and even if I do tend to struggle with the ‘jolly’ bit on occasion, the BOOKS TO DIE FOR (Hodder & Stoughton) team will hopefully make up for that today. For lo! I have a (multiple) signed first edition of BOOKS TO DIE FOR to give away, which will warm the metaphorical cockles of any crime fiction fan’s heart. First, the blurb elves:

With so many mystery novels to choose from and so many new titles appearing each year, where should the reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems? In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about themselves and their work work as they do about the books that they love, more than 120 authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Christie to Child and Poe to PD James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Peter Wimsey, BOOKS TO DIE FOR brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought . . . I want more!

  So there you have it. To be in with a chance of winning this unique prize, just answer the following question:

What one crime / mystery novel do you think every crime / mystery fan should read?

  Answers via the comment box below, please, leaving a contact email address (using ‘at’ rather than @ to confuse the spam munchkins), by noon on December 31st. Oh, and if you fancy a second bite at the proverbial cherry, we’re also giving away a signed BTDF over here. Et bon chance, mes amis …

It Was The Best Of Books, It Was The Worst Of Books …

You learn more from a negative review than a positive one, as they say, and by that reckoning there was much to be learned from John Boland’s review of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which was published in the Irish Independent yesterday. It’s not understating the case to say that John wasn’t particularly fond of the book - ‘frequently implausible’, ‘inherently repellent’ and ‘aggressively unpleasant’ are a few of the choicer phrases that sum up the review, while Harry Rigby is ‘as much a thug as most of the lowlifes he encounters’ compared to Raymond Chandler’s noble knight errant, Philip Marlowe. He concludes:

“The result is as bleak a picture of contemporary Ireland as you’ll encounter - though undermined by the reader’s sense that the author has nothing interesting to say about such an Ireland and that it’s all being served up for lurid thrills. On that level, the book is brutally efficient.” John Boland, Irish Independent

  Oh, the humanity, etc. Over in the Sunday Times (no link), Kristoffer Mullin liked SLAUGHTER’S HOUND a little bit more, with the gist running thusly:

“Declan Burke sets the scene for the most perfect noir novel, a screwball caper set in a recognisable Sligo where the rich scurry beneath the shadow of Nama and the drug gangs are run by former dissidents. The real joy in this set-up is that the writer somehow makes the west coast of modern-day Ireland feel like the west coast of 1940s America. The only way Harry Rigby could be more like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe would be if he rode around in a 1930s Chrysler and called all the women ‘dames’ …
  “Burke recently professed his adoration for Rollerskate Skinny, saying the 1990s indie rockers managed that rare feat of being Irish without necessarily sounding Irish. In the very American realm of hard-boiled crime fiction, Burke has managed the same trick. In fact, on this evidence, few of his peers over the Atlantic can hold a candle to him.” - Kristoffer Mullin, Sunday Times

  So there you have it: two very different takes on the very same book, and I suppose the best thing to do is take them in the spirit of Kipling’s twin imposters. That said, you won’t be even remotely surprised to learn which of the twins is my favourite …

The Big Begorrah

Most Raymond Chandler (right) fans will be aware that the author spent time in his youth in Waterford on the south coast of Ireland, but this little snippet from waterfordireland.tripod.com suggests that he was fonder of the place that we’ve been given to believe. In fact, he may have been planning to set a Marlowe novel there. To wit:

The Waterford writer, Bill Long, made Chandler’s acquaintance in London in 1958 when they lived two doors apart in Chelsea. Being neighbours, they knew each other by sight although they had never spoken. One rainy day, while Long was waiting for a bus, Chandler’s limousine pulled up and Chandler’s driver asked Long if he needed a lift. When Chandler heard Long speak he became agitated and, saying that he had an ear for dialects, he guessed that Long came from Waterford. Long wrote that Chandler was quite visibly moved on hearing that he was correct. Chandler spoke of his mother and her family and said that he remembered how snobbish and bigoted his mother’s people, the Thorntons, were, especially about class and Catholicism. Everyone who worked for them had to be Protestant. Chandler admitted that he had inherited those faults also, and that he was very class-conscious. He recalled his Uncle Ernest as being a regular tyrant. He concluded by saying that he always had a good time in Waterford.
  Chandler had parties in his house every week where the ‘beautiful’ people would gather. He was seventy at that time, a widower and in poor health, but he was a kind, gracious and generous host. Crowds tired him and, often, he and Long would leave the party-goers and retire to Chandlers study where, invariably, Chandler wanted to talk about Waterford. He would ask Long to tell him about the Waterford of Long’s youth, forty years after Chandler had known it. Long said that Chandler would often take pencil and paper, and make lists of streets and squares and laneways of the old city, just as James Joyce did in recalling Dublin. Chandler loved to talk about the Port and of the ships that traded in and out of it. He spoke often about the ‘big houses’ in Waterford that he had visited with his mother and Uncle Ernest, whose law firm handled the legal business for the owners, all of them overwhelmingly Protestant of course.
  Chandler often spoke about Power’s second-hand bookshop that he frequented in Waterford. This was the famous “Sticky Back” Power’s shop, known to several generations of Waterford people. Once, while talking about the bookshop, Chandler became quite emotional and told Long how much the old city meant to him. He said that of all the places he had lived in (and he stressed the word all) Waterford was the place that drew him back, in his mind, all the time. Chandler startled Long, on one occasion when he was talking about “Sticky Back’s”, by saying that he had been thinking about the old bookshop and had come up with an idea for a new Philip Marlowe novel. He thought it would be a wonderful idea to use the shop, and the maze of streets and lanes surrounding it, as a setting for the novel. He outlined the plot.

Marlowe is visiting Ireland and he stops in Waterford for a few days. He visits a bar on the quays in Waterford and there he witnesses a fight between sailors from different ships. The next day he hears that one of the sailors from the fight has been murdered and the body was found slumped in Sticky Back’s doorway. That evening Marlowe is recognized by the captain of the murdered sailor’s boat and is asked to investigate.

  And so begins the new Philip Marlowe mystery. Let’s pause a moment and think a little bit about that. We could have had a Philip Marlowe novel set in Waterford and, when the inevitable film version was made, would it have starred Humphrey Bogart and would the film crews have filmed in Waterford? Nothing came of it, however, and Chandler died the following year.

Here Come The GIRLS

Crikey, there’s no stopping Squire Declan Hughes. ALL THE DEAD VOICES hasn’t so much as been nominated for a triumvirate of awards (lest we forget, THE DYING BREED, aka THE PRICE OF BLOOD, is up for a Shamus at B'con next month), and already his new novel is ready to go. The fifth in the Ed Loy series is called THE CITY OF LOST GIRLS, and finds Loy back where it all began – for Loy, certainly, but also for Loy’s spiritual ancestors, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer – for what sounds like a wandering sisters job. To wit:

In LA there’s a killer on the loose. He kills young and rootless girls and he always kills in threes. Back in Dublin, Ed Loy, happy in a new relationship, is reunited with Jack Donovan, a film director friend from LA with a turbulent personal history. When the third young female extra fails to show for work on Jack’s movie, Loy begins to suspect Jack. And when the previous victims of the ‘Three-in-One Killer’ are discovered in LA at locations Jack used for his movies, Loy’s suspicion hardens.
  Loy flies to LA to liaise with the LAPD on their investigation. He must find something in his and Jack’s shared past that can point to the killer, and hope against hope that whatever he finds will point away from his old friend.
  And then, when he finally unearths the truth, it looks like it may be too late. Back in Dublin, the ‘Three-in-One Killer’ has broken his pattern, broken cover and struck at Ed Loy where he is most vulnerable. Time is not on Loy’s side as he mounts a desperate fight to outwit a ruthless psychopath and save the last of the lost girls …

  Don’t know about you, but my money’s on the boy Loy. He’s a hardy one, that Ed …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE BIG EMPTY by Declan Burke

God bless the interweb, I say, where a man can have a novel reviewed even though it’s never been published. Corey Wilde over at The Drowning Machine was kind enough to request a Word document of THE BIG EMPTY, a sequel to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, when I mentioned in passing that I was planning to upload it to Kindle. As it happens, I decided while giving the story one final proof-through that I wouldn’t upload it to Kindle, that I’d release it into the wild to do some scavenging and see if it mightn't bring home any bacon. I’ll keep you posted, although I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you …
  In the meantime, you’ve no idea of exactly how good life would be right now if Corey Wilde was CEO of World Publishing. To wit:

SYNOPSIS: Ex-con Harry Rigby drives a cab, mules a small amount of grass, and now and again he acts as father figure to his young nephew, Ben. An odd kind of a father figure, because Harry killed his brother, Ben’s father. That’s how Harry got to be a con in the first place. When Harry delivers some grass to an acquaintance named Finn Hamilton, he’s just in time to witness Finn’s nine-floor swan dive. Suddenly everyone wants something from Harry: the cops, Finn’s shyster lawyer and accompanying goon, Finn’s sexually combustible mama and his more-than-a-smidgen dysfunctional sister with the long claws. For Harry, keeping himself alive while trying to get his hands on Finn’s much sought after laptop and gun is one thing. Protecting the one person he loves most, that’s a whole different problem.

REVIEW: I miss having a photo of a book jacket to post at the top left of my review. That’s because there is no book jacket for THE BIG EMPTY. I’m sure the publishers put it down to the recession that they haven’t found a place for this sharply funny, jaggedly violent tale of a man walking a tightrope above a twisty canyon of family deceit and dirty money. Whatever the reason, recession or otherwise, it’s a shame. Declan Burke writes with a razor wit so fine that the reader feels the sting of a thousand cuts by the end of Harry’s journey ...
  Burke creates a palate of characters to root for or against, or even just to marvel at. The late Finn’s femme fatale mother is a devious creature whose literary ancestry hearkens back to female characters produced by Raymond Chandler and Tennessee Williams. Solicitor Gillick, Finn’s shyster, conjures up images of Orson Welles in ‘Touch of Evil.’ Ben is no cardboard child; he’s a breath of fresh air, being both as smart and aware as only a 10-year-old can be, and at the same time as naive as one would expect (or at least hope for) from a child his age; slightly rebellious but still more obedient than he will be at fifteen. He’s a kid you can love because he’s genuine, being neither a plaster saint nor the demon seed. And that’s true of Harry as well. The reader can believe in Harry as much for his failings as for his strengths. And when Harry has been pushed to his limits, when he finally is bent on payback, prefixing ‘Dirty’ to his name would not be a misnomer. He does some things I’ve myself wanted to do to a lawyer or two. And it doesn’t hurt that Harry cracks wiser than Philip Marlowe.
  The pace and tension ratchet up with every complication or obstacle Harry encounters. And the author wisely opted to give Harry enough native wit to parry and sort out the tightly knitted problems and mysteries rather than relying on chance or the one lone missing miracle clue that suddenly ties it all together. Life is not so neat as Jessica Fletcher would have her viewers believe. Some of the mysteries and puzzles may be solved by this story’s end, but no one’s life is ever going to be as it was, and some mysteries may never be solved. Beyond the wisecracking and the hot tempo, this book has a heart easily wounded. Harry Rigby is that heart. The reader, and Harry, are left in no doubt that where there are wounds, there will be scars.
  Can it really be recession that’s keeping a fast, witty work of crime fic like this off the bookstore shelves? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Harry Rigby, or someone like him, should have a little talk with the publishers. - Corey Wilde

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE SNAKE STONE by Jason Goodwin

Set in Istanbul in the mid-19th century, THE SNAKE STONE is the second of Jason Goodwin’s novels to feature Yashim Togalu, an unusual variation on the reluctant private eye (Yashim made his debut in THE JANISSARY TREE; THE SNAKE STONE won the 2007 Edgar for Best Novel). Formerly a eunuch at the sultan’s court, Yashim has earned a reputation as a lala, or guardian – a man of discretion to whom people can turn in their time of need. When an archaeologist, Lefèvre, throws himself on Yashim’s hospitality, Yashim is duty-bound to provide the Frenchman with whatever help he can. But when Lefevre is discovered horribly murdered shortly after Yashim has arranged for his escape from Istanbul, it quickly becomes apparent that the only suspect in the murder is Yashim himself.
  If that sounds fairly conventional, worry not; that’s merely the bare bones of the first 50 pages or so. Goodwin writes a pleasingly labyrinthine plot, one that utilises history, archaeology and politics in fleshing out a vibrant and meticulously detailed vision of Istanbul. The city makes for a wonderful setting, situated at the geographical crossing point between East and West, and a cultural melting pot that accommodates a bewildering variety of nationalities alongside its staple populations of Turk and Greek. Historically, the city can be summed up by the narrative of the former cathedral of Aya Sofia, a miracle of architecture that was formerly the jewel of Constantinople and pride of Byzantium, now the mosque with the largest dome in Islam. The aging sultan is dying; the hated janissaries have been defeated; the past and the future mingle in the thronged markets.

Early the next morning, leaving the Frenchman sleeping on the divan, Yashim walked down to the Horn and took a caique over to Galata, the centre of foreign commerce. In the harbourmaster’s office he asked for the shipping list and scanned it for a suitable vessel. There was a French 400-tonner, La Reunion, leaving for Valetta and Marseilles with a mixed cargo in four days’ time; but there was a Neapolitan vessel, too, Ca d’Oro out of Palermo, which had already been issued with bills of lading.

  Goodwin, a prize-winning historian, doesn’t graft his learning onto the plot. Instead the narrative is driven by its context, and the unravelling of the central mystery is integral to Yashim’s peeling back of layer upon layer of the city’s history. Yashim is a classic private investigator in that he seeks to understand his urban hinterland as a means by which he explore the motives of those who thrive in its mean streets; and just as Marlowe’s LA speaks to subsequent generations, so Goodwin’s Istanbul is a metaphor for contemporary globalisation. Istanbul is home to dozens of languages, the proverbial melting-pot of race and religion, a socially stratified nexus for trade and cross-cultural pollination.
  As for the story, it’s an absorbing tale, and Goodwin has a relaxed and lyrical style perfectly suited to the stately pace. Yashim walks, and never runs; he never so much as raises a jog. But Goodwin appreciates the fine difference between pace and pacing, and the importance of judicious timing, and THE SNAKE STONE is very much a compelling page-turner, a literary thriller. The most impressive thing, though, is the sense that Jason Goodwin is equally committed to all the elements of his craft: not only does he write beautifully and craft a fine plot set against an exotic background, he does so with a keen respect for the tradition of the crime narrative:

He’d seen it before, the way that sudden death made a nonsense of the things people did and said. Murder, above all, overturned the natural order of God’s creation: it was only to be expected that unreason and absurdity should crackle in its wake.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Rafe McGregor

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?
PLUM ISLAND by Nelson DeMille.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Philip Marlowe.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Sherlock Holmes pastiche – a mixed bag if ever there was one.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Receiving the cheque for the advance on my first novel.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE MAGDALENE MARTYRS by Ken Bruen.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I have to go for your own THE BIG O, Dec.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is trying to find the balance between what I want to write and what I think has the best chance of being taken on by a publisher – sometimes these seem mutually exclusive. The best is probably the same as every other writer, the thought that people are reading my stories.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Twenty thousand war dead, the will of the wealthiest man in the Empire, the coronation of Edward VII, and a hero with post traumatic stress disorder … Murder and mayhem on the mean streets of 1902 Westminster.
Who are you reading right now?
MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. While I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember, I’ve already spent too much of my life not writing.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Original, authentic, uncompromising.

Rafe McGregor’s THE ARCHITECT OF MURDER will be published by Robert Hale in February, 2009

Mi Casa, Su Casa: Adrian McKinty on The English Detective

The continuing stooooooory of how the Grand Vizier puts his feet up and lets other people talk some sense for a change. This week: Adrian McKinty (right) on the English detective.

The English Detective, Reconsidered

“At this year’s Oscars, Tilda Swinton declared that the Best Actor winners were examples of a triumphant Celtic spirit. Swinton, who was born in London and went to the same school as Princess Diana, thinks of herself as Scottish. The other big Oscar winner, Daniel Day Lewis, also born and raised in London, considers himself Irish. Irish indeed is the default nationality for uncomfortable Englishmen everywhere. Some sneak themselves in so successfully we forget that they’re actually from over the sheugh, while others fail miserably. Jeremy Irons is never going to convince anyone of his essential Mickness but Shane McGowan, that wonderful living (still, I think) stereotype was born and went to school in Tunbridge Wells.
  “Now, I don’t mind sharing my Irishness with anyone. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to call yourself Irish but you and your family have been living in, say Boston, for the last hundred and forty years, well then that’s okay. We all do it: sometimes I cheer for the Kenyan marathoners because only a few thousand generations ago my very own ancestors were traipsing round the Great Rift Valley hunting antelope. No, what makes me sad about all of this is the rejection of Englishness.
  “I think it began in the seventies, perhaps through a combination of football hooliganism, economic recession, colonial guilt and Kevin Keegan’s haircut: a perfect storm which produced a generation who considered Englishness an embarrassing, guilt-ridden appendage. For five centuries before 1978 it was good to be Anglo-Saxon, but then almost overnight it wasn’t. On a recent podcast even The Greatest Living Englishman, Stephen Fry, admitted that he really wanted to be Oscar Wilde.
  “Literary fiction hasn’t produced new role models. The best English writers have always come from humble origins but these days brainy escapers tend to write screenplays or code for video games. Reading has become an almost cult behaviour with the consequence that the literary universe has gotten more clubbish, more exclusive and more out of touch than ever.
  “Movies haven’t helped either. I have never seen a Hugh Grant film in my life (I’m saving that experience for an eternity in hell) but I’ll bet Grant’s stuttering, foppish, sarcastic, allegedly witty characters do the English no favours. There’s a thin line a being a wit and a complete cunt, as that wannabe Irishman John Lydon once said.
  “So where does an Englishman (Swinton aside, women don’t usually have this problem) turn if he’s looking for an archetype? Music? Fuggedaboutit. The Gallagher brothers are no-talent has-beens, Tom Yorke is a doom-saying mystic and Duffy’s a girl. And Welsh. All the most famous Englishmen these days are, God save us, chefs.
  “No, I suggest that the confused Englishman reject all of this and embrace an older role model, that of the sophisticated, smart, unruffled, classic English detective.
  “Sherlock Holmes (right) sprang from the mind of a Lowland Scot but essentially he’s as English as soft-boiled eggs, warm rain, rudeness in restaurants, kindness to animals, cruelty to children, etc. On TV he’s usually a chilly savant but in the books he’s a moody dope fiend, prone to fisticuffs, occasionally witty and of course hyper-intelligent. The downside is Holmes’ snobbishness and his fawning attitude towards royalty, but you can forgive him his milieu. If more Brits behaved like Holmes they’d still miss penalties in crucial football games but at least they wouldn’t blub about it.
  “If Sherlock Holmes isn’t your cup of tea, there are many others. We’ll skip over Lord Peter Wimsey (see snobbishness above) and go straight to Philip Marlowe. Courteous, smart and funny; a seducer of violet-eyed heiresses, a resister of femmes fatale. And cool. Sherlock Holmes is a lot of things but he’s not hip. Marlowe is, in spades. If cool were America, Holmes would be a hick town in Kansas and Marlowe would be the East Village. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Wasn’t Philip Marlowe born in Santa Rosa, California? Didn’t that American actor Humphrey Bogart play him in the movies? How can he be English? He just is, that’s all.
  “Like Chandler himself, Marlowe was born Stateside but obviously, like Chandler, he went to school in London and spent his formative years in England, becoming - again, like Chandler - a naturalized Brit. Marlowe likes poetry, chess, the aesthetic, the Old World, ancient books over modern, the nineteenth century over the twentieth, metaphor over simile, violet over blue. His phoney accent doesn’t fool me, he’s a Brit through and through. His name is English, his clothes are British, the weather owes more to London than Santa Monica and his stance has a certain trans-Atlantic panache. Both he and James Bond are late thirties but Marlowe’s world weary cynicism is more appropriate than Bond’s boyish enthusiasm as a response to the anomie and existential crises of our nightmare epoch. Marlowe’s your man if you went to blend your own rye whiskey and look through rainy windows at the poor deluded fools dreaming their lives away while the world goes to hell about them.
  “If neither of those guys work for you, you could look at Inspector Wexford and Adam Dalgliesh but for me the apotheosis of the type has to be Chief Inspector Morse of the Oxford Constabulary. Morse has the virtues and vices of the classically educated man. He is continually outraged by the psychopathology of every day life. He hates deadlines, cell-phones, meetings, workshops, press conferences, television, gossip mags, celebrities, chilled beer … As Brian Wilson once said, he just wasn’t made for these times. Who is? With insanity everywhere, Morse starts drinking when the pubs open and swallows his last dram before bed; and unlike the Hugh Grants of this world, Morse’s sarcasm isn’t there to amuse and titillate. Morse’s sarcasm is a slate-black irony directed at the God who isn’t there, the chaos that robs us of any chance of love and the meaninglessness of it all. As Nabokov pointed out, “the cradle rocks over the abyss” and for Morse the abyss is always with us. For a trillion years we’ll be dead until the universe itself dies in a whimpering heat death, our petty lives not even a glimmer of a spark in all that long grim durée. Morse knows that the only thing we can do is enjoy the achingly brief time we have. Following Epicurus, Morse says drink good beer, listen – really listen – to the best music, drive your car and relish it (easy if you’ve got a Mark 2 Jag), and if you can, try to salve the pain of the grief-stricken.
  “Yeah, I like Morse just as I like the English, but I’d like them better if Englishmen rejected the lines given them by Richard Curtis and rediscovered their old clichés: the stiff upper lip, coolness in a crisis, dry wit, and the broody imperiousness of Holmes, Marlowe (right) and Morse. The classic English detectives, like real Celts everywhere (and unlike poor foot-in-mouth Tilda Swinton) know when to talk and when to embrace the silence.” – Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD is published by Serpent’s Tail

Yes Sir, We Can Boogie

Jochem over at Sons of Spade was kind enough to review our original humble offering, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, although we reckon he might have been slightly biased in his opinion given that one of the main characters is called Dutchie. Or maybe not. Anyhoo, the gist of Jochem’s review runneth thusly:

“It could take you some time to get used to the Irish slang and setting but if you do you’ll enjoy this, edged with humour as black as the plot itself. Harry[Rigby] is a Guinness-soaked Philip Marlowe who gets in so many great wisecracks and one-liners this novel would’ve been the one to win the Best Wisecracks 2007 if it hadn’t come out years earlier. A lot of the charm from this book comes from the fact Harry feels like such a ‘regular’ kind of guy. He shows enough grit and smarts to be a satisfying protagonist, making sure you won’t mistake him for a cozy amateur sleuth, but the entire reading you’re not quite sure if he’s really going to make it out alive. A great book if you dig Ken Bruen’s stuff!”

Criminy! Ken Bruen? Truly our Guinness-charged cup over-floweth …

Flick Lit # 131: The Long Goodbye

“The realist in murder,” wrote Raymond Chandler (right) in 1950, “writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities . . . It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.” Originally a man of action in taut, streamlined plots in novels such as The Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Long Goodbye (1953) finds PI Philip Marlowe ruminating at length on the relevance of his attitude and philosophy. Plot had never been Chandler’s strength but in The Long Goodbye the plot becomes a rambling, shambolic paean to the tattered grandeur of a man out of time, whose idiosyncratic sense of morality has outlived its usefulness and relevance. Marlowe’s code of honour had always cherished truth and loyalty above all other traits; called upon to help a friend, Terry Lennox, to escape a tricky situation, Marlowe offers his support unquestioningly. When Lennox commits suicide in Mexico, the consequences plunges Marlowe into a complex tale of double-cross and triple-cross; but where the earlier Marlowe would have cut through the bluff with some snappy dialogue and a back-hander to the face, the Marlowe of The Long Goodbye appears hamstrung by a growing realisation of his own ineffectiveness at imposing justice on the mean streets. Bitter and confused, with his precious code of behaviour tarnished, Marlowe retreats to contemplate his own demise, and by extension that of the traditional literary private eye. Abhorred on its release by Chandler purists, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) simply spun the writer’s theme out to its logical conclusion. As played by Elliott Gould, Marlowe is a spaced-out social casualty who is incapable of discovering his cat’s favourite brand of tinned food. The detective’s philosophy, attitude and loyalty have become bad jokes in a Los Angeles where corruption is so endemic as to be irresistible; but while Chandler’s Marlowe was at least aware of his irrelevance, Altman’s Marlowe is reduced to a blinkered, bumbling patsy in Terry Lennox’s great scam. Where Chandler’s novel can be read as the tale of a writer trying to make sense of a mid-life crisis, Altman’s movie cocks a snook not only at the then outmoded genre of the private eye movie, but also mercilessly skewers the pretensions of a bloated, self-important movie industry that was sleepwalking towards the abyss. If the Marlowe of old had raged against an LA that was too often heartless, the new Marlowe can only shrug at an LA that has become spineless, gutless and bloodless. “In Altman’s world,” claims Kevin Hagopian, “every citizen is an inmate, and society is only a way to multiply the psychological infirmities and pathologies of its members.” In The Long Goodbye, LA plays the same role as the military hospital as lunatic asylum in MASH (1970), country-and-western’s ‘lawless frontier’ of 1975’s Nashville, and the deranged Wild West tent show of Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976). As Altman’s film unfolds, the impression created is that of Marlowe wandering the grounds of a madhouse and peering enviously through the windows. What the Chandler purists objected to most strongly, however, was Altman’s finale. When Marlowe discovers Terry Lennox’s treachery, he pulls a gun on his erstwhile friend and – in a total perversion of Marlowe’s precious code of honour – shoots Lennox dead; in a long, lingering shot, as Marlowe walks away, a tinny version of Hooray for Hollywood gathers strength on the soundtrack. The facile gesture was, for Altman, a mercy shot to conclude the process Chandler had begun; the logical, final nail in the coffin of a code that had long since outlived its relevance.- Michael McGowan