“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” John Lawton

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 LAWS OF OUR FATHERS by Scott Turow. One of the few novels about us old hippies that is worth your time.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Barbarella.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Zoe Sharp … levels of shit-kicking violence that I cannot emulate and urban street-grot that make me want to live up a mountain in wilderness.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Sitting on a doorstep in Bloomsbury circa 1994 waiting for a 38 bus to Islington, armed only with a pencil and a receipt for a garden hose. A page sprang fully-formed into me head and having nowt else to write on I jotted it down on the back of the receipt. Then I thought ‘what da fukk do I do with this?’ It became the final page of OLD FLAMES and I changed not a word. Arsy and versy might apply, but a good moment all the same.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I’m go to be very old-fashioned and betray all my contemporaries by saying THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY by Oscar Wilde. It must be one of the most influential tales ever written and perhaps the most invoked allusion.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Alas I know zilch about modern cinema and go about once a year. I emerge sea-sick from the pace of things, wondering if I have seen The Hobbit Part XIII, Carry On Captain Sparrow or Iron Man on the Planet of the Apes. Can I cop out and say, “Whatever Martin McDonagh decides to film next” … ?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The Best Thing has to be just the doing of it, the act of writing. The Worst Thing is definitely dealing with the question I get asked most often … “Why did you never write another novel after BLACK OUT?”

The pitch for your next book is …?
Troy is back … younger, smaller … just as insufferable.

Who are you reading right now?
Volume 4 of Robert Caro’s THE LIVES OF LYNDON JOHNSON: 1960-64. A bit of a cheat as I have not read Vol. 3 and only bits of 1 & 2.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Oh … I’d rather be dead than make that choice. I’d say return me to star dust and zaps of interstellar carbon.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
‘Could do better’ … exactly as it said on my school reports 55 years ago. I hate to think the old bastards who pretended to teach me were right. They were a bad-mannered bunch of fascists with no respect for anyone, and violent tendencies that would see them in the lock-up ward of a loony bin these days … but I cannot deny the insight. Fukkem.

John Lawton’s THEN WE TAKE BERLIN is published by Grove Press.

Review: IDENTICAL by Scott Turow

Scott Turow was once described by Time magazine as ‘the bard of the litigious age’, but most of Identical (Mantle), his 10th novel, takes place outside of the courtroom. Indeed, as the story opens in 2008, it’s almost 25 years since Cassian Gianis was tried and convicted – after pleading guilty – for the murder of his then girlfriend, Dita Kronon. Cassian’s imminent release from prison coincides with an election campaign being waged by his identical twin brother Paul, formerly a successful lawyer and now a politician, who is ahead in the polls as he runs for the position of mayor. Paul has reckoned without Hal Kronon, however, Dita’s billionaire brother, who is convinced that Paul had a part to play in Dita’s death and is determined that Paul should be brought to justice.
  As the names suggest, Identical takes place in the Greek-American community that has established a significant presence in Turow’s recurring fictional setting of Kindle County, although Turow has one eye on a much older Greek culture. Hal’s father is called Zeus, and Tim Brodie, the private investigator Hal employs, has a particular fondness for reading Greek mythology. It is Brodie who amplifies the motif of identical twins that lies at the heart of the novel, specifically referencing the myth of Castor and Pollux, a story that in part provides the inspiration for the tragedy that subsequently engulfs the characters.
  A quirky bunch of characters they are, too. Tim Brodie is an unconventional private eye, an 83-year-old retiree bordering on senility who is still in mourning over the recent loss of his wife. Evon Miller, reprised from the novel Personal Injuries (1999), is a gay ex-FBI agent struggling to extricate herself from an emotionally destructive relationship. Paul Gianis, meanwhile, is that most unlikely of creations, a former lawyer and aspiring politician whose idealism still outweighs his pragmatism, a man whose faltering bid for power in 2008 is obliquely cross-referenced with the gathering momentum of Barack Obama’s campaign for presidential election.
  All told, it’s an absorbing thriller that boasts its fair share of twists and turns as the characters become increasingly entangled in a legal cat’s cradle that is further complicated by updated DNA identification techniques that weren’t available to the investigating team 25 years previously. Rooted in Greek mythology, the novel is an ambitious attempt to blend ancient and modern storytelling forms, in the process reminding us that human nature has changed far less in the intervening three thousand years than might have been hoped, particularly when it comes to our more venal instincts.
  Surprisingly, however, Identical is most effective when Turow turns from the public and the political to the private and the personal. A variety of expressions of love and loss are explored in considerable depth here, often in very moving and unsettling ways. The result is a novel that is utterly fascinated by character, and especially with how love can twist us into creatures unrecognisable even to ourselves when we seek to defend and protect those we love at any cost. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.

Great Scott

I mentioned earlier in the week that I’ll be interviewing Scott Turow in Dublin on November 11th – he’ll be appearing at Smock Alley in Temple Bar to promote his latest thriller, IDENTICAL (Mantle). The details run like this:

We are delighted to announce another event in our ongoing series of author talks with our neighbours, The Gutter Bookshop. Meet the bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow, who will be discussing his new thriller Identical, a gripping masterpiece of dark family rivalries, shadowy politics and hidden secrets.
The event will be chaired by award winning Irish crime writer Declan Burke.

  11th November @ 6pm in the Main Space

  Scott Turow is the author of nine best-selling works of fiction including Innocent, Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, and two non-fiction books including One L, about his experience as a law student. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into film and television projects. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Atlantic.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

And Into The Riverbank We Dived

I was in the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge yesterday, where I hosted a conversation between Brian McGilloway and Declan Hughes for the Kildare Readers Festival, which was – no, really – a lot more lively than the picture suggests. Brian read an excerpt from HURT, which will be published later this month, a follow-up to the Lucy Black novel LITTLE GIRL LOST (which has sold in excess of a very impressive 300,000 e-book copies). Declan, meanwhile, read an intriguing taster from his forthcoming novel, ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, which will be published next February. A departure from his Ed Loy series of private eye novels, it’s a domestic suspense novel set in the US.

  All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable event. The Kildare Readers Festival is always meticulously organised, hosted in a beautiful setting at the Riverbank, and the hospitality is superb. I bumped into Louise Phillips, who had been speaking at an earlier event, and also Niamh Boyce, who told me that she’d taken part in a writer’s workshop in Castlecomer in Kilkenny many moons ago, co-hosted by myself and Garbhan Downey. I was relieved, to be honest, to learn that I hadn’t put her off writing entirely; indeed, Niamh was holding a copy of THE HERBALIST, her debut novel, which was published earlier this year to a veritable chorus of critical acclaim. Happy days.
  That’s it for public appearances in October, but November is shaping up to be a busy month. Brian McGilloway curates ‘Killer Books’ in Derry on the first weekend of the month, and ‘Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival’ takes place at Trinity College on November 22nd / 23rd. I’ll also be hosting a public interview with Scott Turow at Smock Alley on November 11th, which should be a real treat. If you can make it along to any of those, I’d love to see you there …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tom Phelan

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?
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. Written long before all the modern digital props became available to modern writers, this is a book to sink into a very soft mattress with and to be savoured for story, language, and ingenuity.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jim Hawkins in TREASURE ISLAND [by Robert Louis Stevenson]. God, the excitement when I was twelve. Long John Silver, Billy Bones, Black Dog, Hispaniola, the sails, the wind in the rigging, pieces of eight, the map, all the very evil and terrifying pirates, the ever-present danger …

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Mystery novels. Once I begin one I do not put it down. They are a sinful distraction and should be banned. All mystery writers should be taken up in the Rapture along with their books.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Blocked, I decided to write out a joke I’d heard from a priest in an elevator in Mineola in New York. As I wrote, new characters appeared and the joke lasted for three chapters. By that time a story had taken shape, and it became my first published novel, IN THE SEASON OF THE DAISIES.

The best Irish crime novel is…?
I’ve spent my life being modest, supposedly because it’s a virtue. I’m 70 now and it’s time for me to commit the cardinal sin of pride. My latest novel, NAILER, of course, is the best Irish crime novel.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again, let me take pleasure in a terrible sin. NAILER would make a great movie. I’m waiting for Godot to call me from Hollywood but he’s probably waiting for something to happen first.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is the self-doubt (who out there gives a damn?). Best is when I read back over what I have written and cannot remember having written some of it, and it’s good.

The pitch for your next book is…?
After many years, two emigrants return to their native Irish village, one from India, one from the U.S. Both are insufferable elitists. The village people, always divided along religious lines, come together to conceal what befalls the two interlopers. The novel is called LIES.

Who are you reading right now?
THE FOURTH BOOK OF RABELAIS and THE BURDEN OF PROOF by Scott Turow. Rabelais for the language, the analogies, and his wonderful scatology; Turow to give me a break from mining Rabelais’s now (generally) forgotten 16th-century references.

God appears and says you can only write or read. Which would it be?
Read. All those wonderful books and so little time, as some basketball player said about blondes. I could read dozens of books a year, but it takes me at least a year to write one.

The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
Leaving myself vulnerable and naked to critics, I immodestly and trepidatiously declare that my own writing is funny, poetic, and unflinching.

Tom Phelan’s NAILER is published by Glanvil Press.

And The Beat Goes On …

The Irish Times published a ‘Crime Beat’ round-up of crime fiction last Saturday, featuring eight novels of Irish and international interest, including three rather fine Irish debuts. To wit:

Three radically different debuts suggest that Irish crime fiction is in a rude state of health. Set in Cork in 1920, Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER (Mercier Press, €10.99, pb) finds the RIC and the IRA pursuing the same killer against the backdrop of the War of Independence. Strong on historical detail and assured in its plotting, PEELER is delivered in an economical style with occasional poetic flourishes. McCarthy hasn’t made things easy for himself in choosing for his protagonist a RIC sergeant who is a veteran of the Great War, and who works alongside Black-and-Tans, but it’s to McCarthy’s credit that Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe emerges as a sympathetic character in a compelling narrative.
  Niamh O’Connor’s IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN (Transworld Ireland, €12.99, pb) is equally authentic, the setting here being the mean streets of contemporary Dublin as Detective Jo Birmingham investigates a series of murders that appear to be the work of a serial killer with a grudge against Dublin’s gangland. A crime correspondent with the Sunday World, O’Connor invests her pacy police procedural with gritty detail, although Birmingham’s struggle to balance the demands of her professional life with her personal circumstance as a single mother raising two boys is as integral to the plot as the traditional crime fiction tropes. Birmingham’s one-woman campaign on behalf of victim’s rights gives the novel its moral ballast.
  Moscow faces into the chilly winter of 1936 in William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF (Mantle, £12.99, hb), in which a number of horrific murders coincide with the start of Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’. Militiaman Detective Korolev is assigned to investigate, and soon finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the NKVD, the Orthodox Church, and Moscow’s infamous Thieves. Korolev, a religious man secretly faithful to the Old Regime, makes for an unusually spiritual crime fiction protagonist. Ryan’s stately style belies the page-turning quality of the novel, which compares favourably to Rob Smith’s CHILD 44, not least in terms of Ryan’s evocation of the claustrophobic paranoia of Stalinist Russia.
  Meanwhile, two titans of the contemporary crime fiction novel offer hugely satisfying reads. In 61 HOURS (Bantam, £13.99, hb), Lee Child’s ex-military drifter Jack Reacher fetches up in a South Dakota town during a blizzard, and is quickly pressed into service by a police force besieged by a drug cartel bent on eliminating a murder witness. Terse and laconic in style, the novel’s tale owes a significant debt to the classic western High Noon, but the deadpan Reacher is a charismatic and endlessly resourceful protagonist. The hero’s status as a noble loner reeks of James Bond-style male fantasy, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, 61 HOURS is an expertly crafted entertainment.
  Scott Turow’s INNOCENT(Mantle, £17.99, hb) is a sequel to his best-selling PRESUMED INNOCENT (1987). Now 60, and long after being acquitted of the murder of his mistress, appeals judge Rusty Sabich finds himself being investigated by his old adversary, Tommy Molto, when his wife dies in unusual circumstances. Blending Sabich’s first-person account of events with third-person narratives, and featuring an elliptical structure that jumps back and forth in time, INNOCENT is a mature and insightful exploration of the psychology of crime that makes a mockery of its title, and a gripping thriller to boot.
  Venetian policeman Commissario Guido Brunetti returns in Donna Leon’s A QUESTION OF BELIEF (William Heinemann, £12.99, pb), in which domestic and professional concerns compete for his attention as he investigates the apparently random murder of a court clerk during a sweltering heat wave. Brunetti’s emotional intelligence is both his most effective tool and charming attribute as he negotiates his way through the labyrinthine corridors of power in his search for the truth. While the compassionate Brunetti makes for enjoyable company on his morally complex quest, Leon’s 19th offering lacks a quality of urgency that might have given it a telling edge.
  Donna Moore’s sophomore offering, OLD DOGS (Max Crime, £7.99, pb), is a crime caper that centres on two scheming ladies of a certain age, Letty and Dora, who have decided to steal a pair of jewel-encrusted Tibetan dog statues from a Glasgow museum. Pursued by a ruthless killer, the duo inadvertently gather around them a teeming multitude of scammers, blaggers and thieves, all of whom are inept to a greater or lesser degree. Liberally sprinkled with salty Glaswegian vernacular, the manically twisted tale reads like a contemporary but unusually bawdy Ealing comedy.
  With only three novels under his belt, John Hart has already won two Edgars, the crime writing equivalent of the Oscar, the most recent of which was awarded last month to THE LAST CHILD (John Murray, £9.99, pb). Set in a small American town where a number of young girls have gone missing never to be seen again, it features two protagonists, Detective Clyde Hunt and Johnny Merrimon, the 13-year-old twin of one of the missing girls. Their intertwined investigation provides Hart with a propulsive narrative momentum, but this is a complex tale that explores concepts as diverse as the abuse of power, paedophilia, domestic violence and the consequences of slavery. While THE LAST CHILD is first and foremost a compelling police procedural, Hart is a subtle author who is in the final reckoning concerned with excavating the best and worst of the human heart. THE LAST CHILD is as fine a novel as you’ll read all year, crime or otherwise. - Declan Burke

  This article was first published in the Irish Times.