A Tsar Is Born

There was a very good interview with William Ryan in the Irish Times last week, conducted by Kevin Courtney, to mark the publication of Ryan’s sophomore offering, THE BLOODY MEADOW, a sequel to THE HOLY THIEF. The perennial evergreen of genre stereotyping raised its head, with the gist running thusly:

THE HOLY THIEF is about to be published in Russia, and Ryan is bracing himself for a spate of missives from the motherland pointing out glaring errors in geography and history. But Ryan is confident that his storytelling skill will make up for any factual inaccuracies, and happy that his serial detective is proving popular – a third Korolev novel is in the pipeline. But for him the biggest inaccuracy is that the books will, of necessity, end up being filed under crime fiction.
  “I think when you talk about genres as such . . . I can understand why publishers do it, but I think at the end of the day it’s whether you write a good book or not. I think a lot of crime writing is very, very good, and it’s a shame that it’s put into that category, particularly if you look at Irish writing at the moment. A lot of the good Irish writing, if you look at Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville and Ken Bruen, you could list 50 writers who are putting out really good stuff, and it’s a shame that you have that kind of genre thing.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

From Russia With Blood

I mentioned last week that William Ryan’s THE BLOODY MEADOW gets its Irish launch today, at O’Mahony’s Bookshop, 120 O’Connell Street, Limerick, and the mood should be buoyant, to say the least, given the early buzz. To wit:

“THE HOLY THIEF was both bleak and savage … In an interesting change of pace which suggests the author has more than a formulaic series planned, in this second instalment Ryan has produced a film-noir-ish rewrite of the old-fashioned locked-room mystery, complete with creepily gripping, and ultimately gruesome, cops and robbers chase through the great catacombs on which Odessa sits, while Stalin’s man-made terror-famine, which scorched through the Ukraine half a decade before the book opens, is only gestured at, in elliptical speech and ultimately in the characters’ motivations.” - The Spectator

  Tasty. And there’s more:

“THE HOLY THIEF, set in Stalin’s Russia, was one of last year’s most impressive crime fiction debuts. THE BLOODY MEADOW, William Ryan’s follow-up, does not disappoint … Ryan has obviously done much research into that sinister period of Russian history and manages to convey its claustrophobic atmosphere brilliantly.” - The Times

  All of which is very nice indeed; consider this fan’s appetite well and truly whetted. For more of the same, clickety-click here …

The Future Is Claret

There’s a couple of interesting launches next week, folks, and lashings of ye olde claret in prospect as BLOODLAND and THE BLOODY MEADOW see the light of day.
  First up, the official send-off for Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND, which takes place on Tuesday 13th at - where else? - the Gutter Bookshop, Dublin, which appears to have become the bookstore of choice for the Irish crime fraternity. All the details are available in the invite to your right ...
  I got to read an early copy of BLOODLAND, although to be honest it didn’t arrive half early enough. As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, I’m a big fan of Alan Glynn’s first two offerings, THE DARK FIELDS and WINTERLAND, and BLOODLAND more than delivers on the promise of those novels, being something of a synthesis of the two, and a damn fine example of the classic paranoid thriller. If you don’t believe me - and I wouldn’t - then check out the couple of early reviews over at the Mulholland Books interweb lair, one of them written by no less a personage than the venerable Ali Karim. Sample quote:

“Glynn’s ability to take these big themes and distil them down to the seedy personal stories and motivations of the protagonists is the key to why this novel hypnotizes the reader.” - Ali Karim

  Elsewhere, William Ryan launches THE BLOODY MEADOW next Thursday, said tome being the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, THE HOLY THIEF, and one hotly anticipated around these here parts (said he, hoping to nudge some eagle-eyed PR personage into sending on an ARC). Quoth the blurb elves:

Following his investigations in THE HOLY THIEF, which implicated those at the very top of authority in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself decorated and hailed as an example to all Soviet workers. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace – his new-found knowledge is dangerous, and if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to the frozen camps of the far north. But when the knock on the door comes, in the dead of night, it is not Siberia Korolev is destined for. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman: Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya, a model citizen. Korolev is unnerved to learn that Lenskaya had been of interest to Ezhov, the feared Commissar for State Security. Ezhov himself wants to matter looked into. And when the detective arrives on the set for Bloody Meadow, in the bleak, battle-scarred Ukraine, he soon discovers that there is more to Lenskaya’s death than meets the eye ...

  I thought THE HOLY THIEF was a terrific read, but I won’t be able to make the launch, unfortunately, given that it takes place at 7pm in O’Mahony’s Bookshop, 120 O’Connell Street, Limerick on Thursday the 15th, at which time I will be working in Dublin and still forlornly struggling to master the art of bi-location.
  So there you have it: Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND and William Ryan’s THE BLOODY MEADOW. That’s another good week for Irish crime fiction right there …

There Will Be MEADOW

William Ryan’s debut, THE HOLY THIEF, was very well received indeed, and was nominated for a CWA gong. Those who enjoyed Ryan’s exploration of Stalinist Russia won’t have long to wait for the follow-up: Captain Alexei Korolev returns in September, in THE BLOODY MEADOW. Quoth the blurb elves:

Following his investigations in THE HOLY THIEF, which implicated those at the very top of authority in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself decorated and hailed as an example to all Soviet workers. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace – his new-found knowledge is dangerous, and if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to the frozen camps of the far north. But when the knock on the door comes, in the dead of night, it is not Siberia Korolev is destined for. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman: Maria Alexandovna Lenskaya – Masha, a model citizen. Korolev is unnerved to learn that Masha had been of interest to Ezhov, the feared Commissar for State Security. Ezhov himself wants to matter looked into. And when the detective arrives on the set for Bloody Meadow, in the bleak, battle-scarred Ukraine, he soon discovers that there is more to Masha’s death than meets the eye …

  Incidentally, I particularly enjoyed the New York Times review of THE HOLY THIEF in which the reviewer criticised Ryan’s work on the basis that Korolev, a red-blooded Russian, doesn’t scoff enough vodka, even though said Korolev was half-mangled for the duration. Hopefully Korolev will be downing pints of the stuff in THE BLOODY MEADOW, to the point where he’s so bladdered even a reviewer can’t fail to notice. It’s the little things, hic, that matter, see …