Dead Men Tell Good Tales: GRAVELAND by Alan Glynn

Those who have been following Alan Glynn’s career will appreciate the symmetry that sees his latest offering, GRAVELAND (Picador USA), set in New York – which is where it all started for Alan Glynn, with the superb THE DARK FIELDS. The concluding chapter of a loose trilogy incorporating WINTERLAND and BLOODLAND (which won the crime fiction gong at the Irish Book Awards in 2011), GRAVELAND is released on May 23rd, and shapes up a lot like this:

A Wall Street investment banker is shot dead while jogging in Central Park. Later that night, one of the savviest hedge-fund managers in the city is gunned down outside a fancy Upper West Side restaurant. Are these killings part of a coordinated terrorist attack, or just coincidence? Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey has a hunch that it’s neither. Days later, when an attempt is made on the life of another CEO, the story blows wide open ...
  Racing to stay ahead of the curve, Ellen encounters Frank Bishop, a recession-hit architect, whose daughter has gone missing. The search for Lizzie and her boyfriend takes Frank and Ellen from a quiet campus to the blazing spotlight of a national media storm - and into the devastating crucible of a personal and a public tragedy.
  Meanwhile, lurking in the shadows once again is James Vaughn, legendary CEO of private equity firm the Oberon Capital Group. Despite his failing health, Vaughan is refusing to give up control easily, and we soon see just how far-reaching and pervasive his influence really is.
  Set deep in the place where corrupt global business and radical politics clash, Alan Glynn’s GRAVELAND is an explosive and hugely topical thriller.

  For a review of BLOODLAND, clickety-click here.
  For a review of THE DARK FIELDS, clickety-click here.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn

A tabloid star is killed in a helicopter crash. Three years later, a young freelance journalist, Jimmy Gilroy, is warned off the story by a political ‘fixer’, who has long been associated with the disgraced ex-taoiseach, Larry Bolger. Meanwhile, a private security contractor goes postal in the Congo whilst escorting an American politician with presidential ambitions, with deadly consequences.
  The story’s central spine is Jimmy Gilroy’s investigation of the death of the tabloid star, a young woman who is overly fond of her cocaine, and who bears more than a passing resemblance to Katy French. His original investigation, however, is a thread that, once pulled, begins to unravel an international conspiracy to cover up the murder of another passenger on the helicopter.
  This passenger is an Italian man who has threatened to blow the whistle on an American corporation which is mining a very precious metal in the Congo. That American corporation has links, via the American political fixer James Vaughn, to the proposed presidential election campaign of a US senator, JJ Rundle. James Vaughn, in turn, has links to ex-taoiseach Larry Bolger, who was party to a botched property deal in Glynn’s previous novel, WINTERLAND.
  Spanning three continents - or four, if we admit the peripheral activities of the Chinese in the Congo - BLOODLAND is a sprawling, labyrinthine thriller which has strong echoes of the classic 1970s paranoid crime thrillers, and particularly movies such as Three Days of the Condor and Chinatown. It explores the legacy of corruption in big business, the West’s fear of China, the role of back room political players and the question of who controls what we know.
  Ultimately, Jimmy Conway’s investigations, which take him from Dublin to Italy and on to New York, result in the downfall of the US Senator JJ Rundle and his businessman brother, Clark.
  While this appears on the face of it a happy ending, Glynn leaves us in no doubt that even if some of the players on the board will change, the game will remain the same, particularly in terms of the backroom fixers with their hands on the levers of power, such as the Machiavellian James Vaughn.
  BLOODLAND isn’t exactly a sequel to WINTERLAND, even if it employs some of the characters that appeared in that novel; it’s obvious, though, that Glynn is returning to some of the themes he touched on in WINTERLAND, and painting them on a broader canvas.
  I liked the style and the context, that of the hard-bitten thriller in the paranoid mould. I was very impressed with the scale of Glynn’s ambition, too; I found the scenes set outside of Ireland very vividly drawn, especially those set in the Congo.
  I did wonder - as a freelance writer - about the extent of Jimmy Gilroy’s motivation, particularly at the start of the novel. He’s not particularly idealistic, and most freelance journos, especially in these straitened times, would be happy enough to be ‘bought off’ by a plum job, particularly as Jimmy doesn’t have any real inkling of the scale of the cover-up when he is first approached by the political fixer and warned off.
  Overall, I very much liked the book, and warmly recommend it. Apparently it’s the second in a loose ‘trilogy’, and I’ll be first in the queue when the third instalment appears. - Declan Burke

Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND has been short-listed for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award in the Bord Gais Irish Book Awards. To vote for it, 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 …

Origins: Alan Glynn

Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Alan Glynn (right), author of WINTERLAND. To wit:

“Origins? It seems to me that that’s just a fancy way of asking the dreaded question: where do you get your ideas from? (A question second only in dread to: what’s your book about?). Whenever I’m asked the first question I try hard to answer it, but I generally end up feeling like a bit of a fraud, as though I’ve made an answer up on the spot just to keep things moving. Because the thing is, by the time I arrive at the end of a book I usually find I’ve forgotten how it got started, its origins obscured somewhere in memory and almost inaccessible now through thickets of notes, outlines, obsessive but often unnecessary research and a seemingly endless process of re-writing.
  “Thinking back on answers I’ve given, though, a pattern emerges. The account I offer will either be fine-sounding and rational or slightly random and mechanistic – left brain, right brain stuff. Both do the job, and neither, I suspect, is actually untrue. It’s just that I can never be sure which came first . . .
  “For example, when asked about my first novel, THE DARK FIELDS, I would say either one of two things. I would say that it arose from an interest in the scandals of the late ’90s regarding performance-enhancing drugs in sport, and that it was a sort of ‘what if . . .’ story – what if there existed a performance-enhancing drug for lawyers or businessmen or politicians? Out of which came questions about that very American theme of the perfectability of man and the notion of a latter-day Gatsby, whose impulse for self-improvement has been reduced to a pharmaceutical commodity.
  “Or I would say that it arose from . . . not much at all, from a desperate scrambling around inside my own brain for SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT. So . . . a situation. Maybe two guys who bump into each other on the street. One is a bit desperate (like I am at the time) and he meets . . . who? His ex-brother-in-law? Someone he hasn’t seen in nearly ten years? Yeah, that’s the ticket. But now that I have them together what are they going to talk about? What have you been up to? Still dealing? Not exactly. How about you? Still a loser? One thing leads to another and before you know it they’re having a conversation. Possibilities are opening up. And – quite literally – the whole book comes out of that.
  “With WINTERLAND I would say that I was fascinated by the idea of a skyscraper that had an in-built structural flaw and of having that represent the greedy aspirations of a society spinning out of all moral control. Or . . . I’d say that the book started with the disconnected image of some people sitting in a beer garden having to listen to a car alarm outside, and slowly realizing that the car belongs to a young gangland thug sitting in their midst who refuses to go out and switch it off.
  “With my new novel, BLOODLAND, was it reading Michela Wrong’s IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MR KURTZ and wanting to explore the direct line from ivory and rubber extraction in the Congo over a hundred years ago to the extraction of coltan today? Or was it simply wanting to kick-start a whole novel with just these two words: ‘Phone rings.’
  “Well? Was it?
  “As Rocky Balboa once said, “I don’t know, you know, who knows?”
  “It’s a weird process and Edgar Allen Poe describes it best in an essay called ‘The Philosophy of Composition’. He suggests going behind the scenes of a work-in-progress and taking a peep, ‘at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought - at the true purposes seized only at the last moment - at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view - at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable . . .’
  “Ouch. But it sounds about right.
  “Having finished BLOODLAND, it won’t be long before I’m heading back once more into the thickets. But every time I do this, I try to convince myself that there must be a form of insurance policy you can take out to guarantee safe passage to the other side, that there must be some help available – a GPS system for novelists, say, or at the very least a how-to manual that actually works . . .
  “It’s amazing how much time you can devote to this sort of stuff – and for devote, of course, read waste. I think what happens is that one day you realize you have started, you’re somewhere, and the only way to go is forward. By the time you’re secure enough to look back the starting point will invariably seem distant and fuzzy.
  “But then, when you get asked about it later on, you can always come up with something – a handy retrofit based on what eventually emerges . . . either that or a half-remembered fragment, a shard, dreamlike but telling, that might very well be the actual starting point, that might very well be the truth. But hey, one way or the other, who’s going to contradict you, right?” - Alan Glynn

Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND is published by Faber and Faber.

I Love The Smell Of Paranoia In The Morning

Mulholland Books has been running some very interesting material over on its blog recently, and WINTERLAND author Alan Glynn pitched in this week with his take on ‘the Paranoid Style’, an excerpt from which runneth thusly:

It was never going to last that long. Golden ages rarely do. But for a while there in the 1970s, that’s what we had.
  Ten years after Richard Hofstadter coined the phrase “the paranoid style” (in a lecture he delivered just days before JFK was assassinated), the national traumas of Vietnam and Watergate were in full swing. Hofstadter’s point was that “they” weren’t out to get you at all — you really were being paranoid. But by the early ’70s, this paradigm had been shattered. The point now was that they really were out to get you, whether you knew it or not, and generally you didn’t until it was too late … Today, paranoia and conspiracy thrillers are dismissed as “voodoo histories” and pretty much seen as a debased form of entertainment.
  All of which might lead you to believe that things have changed for the better since the ’70s, that today’s government no longer spies on, or keeps things from, its citizens, that today’s corporations no longer put the profit motive before any moral consideration of their actions, or that Deep Throat’s exhortation in that underground parking garage all those years ago to “follow the money,” somehow, happily, doesn’t apply anymore. This, of course, would be to ignore the truth (undeniably out there), i.e., that since the ’70s there has been an utterly astonishing increase — exponential, Moore’s Law–like — in every form of electronic surveillance, in the influence, reach, and wealth of transnational corporations, and in the sinister privatization of the military-intelligence complex generally …

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  For an interview (‘The Dark Art of Paranoia’) I conducted with Alan Glynn for the Sunday Times earlier this year, clickety-click here …

There Will Be Fresh Blood

Waterstones’ ‘Fresh Blood’ campaign, currently in its second year, aims to showcase ‘some of the best new crime writers around’. The fact that one quarter of this year’s list is taken up by Irish writers is a sign of just how healthy 2009 was for Irish crime writing: step forward Alan Glynn (WINTERLAND), Gene Kerrigan (DARK TIMES IN THE CITY) and Stuart Neville (THE TWELVE, aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST).
  Unsurprisingly, all three novels finished in the top four (along with John Connolly’s THE LOVERS) in the inaugural ‘Crime Always Pays Irish Crime Novel of the Year’, with THE TWELVE topping the poll - no mean feat for a debut novel. Mind you, and as I said at the time, the fact that WINTERLAND was published in November worked against it, voting-wise, and I have no doubt it would have polled even better had it had a longer shelf-life.
  Anyway, the bottom line is that all three are terrific novels. Clickety-click here for a review of THE TWELVE, and here for a review of WINTERLAND, and here for DARK TIMES IN THE CITY. Or better still, go out and buy them, all three.
  Oh, and if anyone reading this has read any (or all) of the titles, don’t be shy about telling us what you thought about them. You know what to do …

Thieves Like Them

You wait ages for an Irish crime writing gig to go to, and then two come along at the same time. William Ryan launches his debut novel THE HOLY THIEF at O’Mahony’s Bookshop in Limerick next Wednesday evening, May 12th, with the event kicking off at 6.30pm. Who he? I hear you cry. Well, the pre-pub praise has been pretty strong so far. To wit:

‘A subtle, superb mystery, a wonderful central character and with a sense of place and period to rival even the greatest of the Russian masters. More please!’ - KATE MOSSE, author of Labyrinth

‘A first-rate crime novel: a genuinely memorable detective, powerful story and a seamlessly convincing setting. William Ryan is the real thing.’ - A L KENNEDY

‘THE HOLY THIEF is an utterly compelling and beautifully lucid novel, in which murder, history and suspicion combine to create an atmosphere of ever-increasing and constantly shifting suspense.’ - JOHN BURNSIDE, author of Glister

‘With THE HOLY THIEF, Ryan establishes himself as a fresh voice, rendering the snow-slicked streets of Thirties’ Moscow with brilliant clarity. His picture of Captain Korolev as a conflicted, yet loyal, state servant is acutely real, as is his world, slouching toward terror and war. A masterful evocation of a dark time, wrapped around an even darker mystery, THE HOLY THIEF does its magic on the head as well as the nerves.’ - OLEN STEINHAUER, author of The Tourist

  THE HOLY THIEF is currently suffering from oxygen deprivation on the peak of Mt TBR, so hopefully we’ll have a review here in the next week or so. Meanwhile, Library Voices in Dun Laoghaire hosts Declan Hughes and Alan Glynn on the same evening, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Library Voices presents two of Ireland’s leading exponents of noir crime writing, Declan Hughes and Alan Glynn. Of Declan Hughes’s Ed Loy series, Val McDermid said: “If you don’t love this, don’t dare call yourself a crime fiction fan”. The fifth in the series, CITY OF LOST GIRLS, is set in Dublin and LA. Alan Glynn’s marvellous second novel, WINTERLAND, is a gripping thriller set in the Dublin underworld of hitmen, big business and government corruption.

Details: Wednesday, May 12th, at 7.30pm in County Hall, Marine Rd, Dun Laoghaire. Tickets €5.00 from the Pavilion Box Office. Call (01) 231 2929.

  So there it is. If anyone masters the art of bi-location and manages to get to both the Limerick and Dun Laoghaire gigs, be sure to let us know how it all panned out …

  Lately I have been mostly reading: THE DEVIL by Ken Bruen, THE WHISPERERS by John Connolly, PEELER by Kevin McCarthy, and A QUESTION OF BELIEF by Donna Leon.

The Dark Art of Paranoia

The publication of the paperback edition of Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND is as good an excuse as any to reprint the interview with him I had published in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times’ Culture section a couple of months ago. To wit:

It started on the late, late shows. While most boys in the early ’70s were trawling the late-night TV channels in the hope of glimpsing some illicit flesh, the teenage Alan Glynn was getting off on a more potent charge: paranoia.
  “I think that the stuff you ingest as a teenager is the stuff that sticks with you for life,” says Glynn. “When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the biggest influence was movies, and especially the conspiracy thrillers. What they call the ‘paranoid style’ in America – Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, and of course, the great Chinatown. There was a societal thing going on, they were examining the whole paranoia thing in American politics at the time, which seemed exotic to me when I was catching late-night movies on BBC2. It was exotic back then, but now we’ve got it. We’re all paranoid now.”
  ‘Follow the money,’ urged Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. Sage advice for those trying to understand why and how Ireland’s boom went bust; or it might be, were there any money left to follow.
  Written while the economy was still thriving, Glynn’s new novel, Winterland, nevertheless gets under the bricks and mortar of post-boom Ireland. Noel Rafferty is a consultant working on a building development on Dublin’s quays. His nephew, also Noel Rafferty, is a gangland hard man. When both men die on the same night, Gina Rafferty, sister and aunt to the men, suspects there is more to the deaths than mere coincidence. As Gina asks questions of those in authority, however, the novel broadens its remit to investigate the connections between blue-collar criminality and those who inhabit the white-collar worlds of politics and business, the latter with fortunes to lose if their building development fails.
  Is there a danger that there will be little new in Winterland, at least in terms of newspaper headlines, for contemporary readers?
  “There has been a tendency for people to say that this is a very prescient book,” he says. “But none of it was consciously written to be prescient. It’s not an economic polemic, or a political polemic, so the specifics of the story detail and how they run parallel to where we are now aren’t all that important.”
  Established as a paradigm by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the theme of linking street-level crime to those in positions of authority abusing their power is virtually axiomatic in crime fiction. Glynn, however, is interested in taking that paradigm onto another level (“I haven’t read a lot of it, really,” he says. “I’m not an expert on crime writing.”) In common with such recent Irish novels as Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome, Kevin Power’s Bad Day in Blackrock, or Gene Kerrigan’s Dark Times in the City, Winterland expands beyond crime and punishment to explore those junctures where the personal becomes the political. Fuelled by bad blood and paranoia, the novels investigate the nature of justice itself.
  “Gene Kerrigan is much more knowledgeable about the specifics of this, because of his career in journalism,” says Glynn. “And I think ‘crusade’ would too strong a word, but juxtaposing street crime with the kind of crime that happens in politics or business, I think that highlights on a moral level the question, ‘Where’s the difference?’ Not to be heavy-handed about it, but in Winterland, certain people get away with things in a way that people from a lower economic class wouldn’t get away with.”
  In person amiable and self-deprecating to a fault, Glynn is a far cry from the hard-bitten anti-heroes of ‘the paranoid style’, although he is every bit as single-minded when it comes to following his instincts. Born in Dublin in 1960, and educated locally, he decided very early in life that he had a vocation to write.
  “There was never anything else, ever, on the radar. I have a photograph of myself when I was about seven, sitting at a desk with a pen and a notebook. I only came across it recently, and I was amazed, but it’s completely consistent with what I remember as a kid.”
  He went to Trinity College to read English, where he met his wife Eithne, with whom he has two sons. He then spent five years in Verona teaching English, and then went to New York, returning to Ireland in 1992, when he took the decision to write full-time. His first novel, The Dark Fields, set in New York, was published in 2002.
  “It’s insane,” he says of the writing process, “it’s painfully, painstakingly slow. If I have to write a note to the milkman it’ll take me half-an-hour and three drafts. Not that it’ll be any better in the end, but that’s just the process I have to go through. And that’s a disadvantage in some respects.”
  The main disadvantage is that, as a father of two, and despite working as a full-time writer, Glynn has produced only two published novels in eight years. A third novel, The Paloma Stripe, was rejected in 2005.
  “The reason I was given basically boiled down to ‘likeability’, they had a ‘likeability’ issue with the main character. And that’s a very subjective thing.” It’s also an issue more relevant to commercial fiction, whereas Glynn’s ambitions are more literary. “Look at Humbert Humbert, you wouldn’t call him a likeable character. Or Macbeth.”
  With the publication of Winterland and a Neil Burger-helmed Hollywood adaptation of The Dark Fields due later this year, Glynn’s personal circumstances have hugely improved. His themes, however, remain the same.
  “It’s called Bloodland,” he says of his current work, “and it’s not a sequel to The Dark Fields, but it develops a minor character from that novel and turns on similar themes of power and corruption and the abuse of money and position. The character is an investment banker, and he’s involved in a series of companies which are involved in illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’m fascinated by this idea that the scramble for Africa, and the plunder of its natural resources, is as big or bigger today as it was when Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness. Then it was ivory and rubber, and the exploitation was on a massive scale. Today it’s coltan, and other precious metals that are used in consumer products, like mobile phones and games consoles and that kind of stuff.”
  Again, the personal meets the political.
  “Well, absolutely. It’s about responsibility – taking responsibility or not taking responsibility, and the broad consequences individual actions can have throughout society.”
  Winterland’s abiding symbol is a tower being built in Dublin’s docklands, proposed to be Europe’s highest building if only those individuals with their hands on the levers of power can apply enough pressure in the right places. Such projects, whether flawed by engineering or overweening ambition, are now considered monuments or mausoleums to the boom years.
  “I was writing this when everything was fine, economically speaking,” says Glynn, “although in saying that, if you looked ahead you knew there had to be something coming down the tracks. People saying, ‘This time it’s different,’ and ‘The Irish model is different.’ We knew then that that was insane. But I was conscious even then that this flaw in the building could symbolise in some sense the hubris that existed, that there was an in-built, invisible fatal flaw in this whole economic boom. Originally the flaw was just a technical issue, an engineering problem, but it quickly became apparent that it was symbolic. I didn’t want to push that too heavily, or be heavy-handed about it, but it was there.
  “Now, in the context of the economic collapse, it makes more sense. It’s clearer to me now than it would have been then. The organic development of those kind of ideas … Sometimes it’s hard, because you’re not quite sure of where it’s bringing you. I think that’s a very important part of writing, to learn to go with that instinctual feel for an idea. You have to trust that.”
  ‘That all is not what it seems’ was once described by the great creative writing teacher John Gardner as the quintessential narrative hook, and it’s an instinctive philosophy that Glynn cleaves to as he gives voice to a distrust of authority that is by no means confined to Ireland.
  “It’s the only sane position to hold,” he says. “This whole idea that we’re being presented with what’s going on, but that behind that again there’s something else happening. Not to be a loopy conspiracy theorist, but just to voice the sense that there’s a disconnect. And we’ve had plenty of evidence of that over the last two decades that things simply were not as we were told they were.”

  This article first appeared in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times’ Culture section.

On Trampolining About Sex

Between you and me, the video below – in which Alan Glynn talks about WINTERLAND – is probably the most boring video you’ll ever see. Even the colour of the wall behind Alan is boring. The questions are boring, the answers are boring, and even Alan himself – handsome devil though he undoubtedly is – is a notch or two below his usual sparkling repartee. All of which is a moot point: talking about writing is akin to trampolining about sex, to mangle a bad metaphor. Just go ahead and get your hands on the superb WINTERLAND – trust me, you won’t regret it. Roll it there, Collette – if you must …

THE GHOSTS Of Christmas Presents

It’s been a terrific year for Stuart Neville. Superb reviews of his debut novel, THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST); interviewing James Ellroy at the Belfast Waterfront; and last weekend – in case you missed it – a lovely write up from Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times, in which TGOB was the lead review. All of which is very nice indeed, but then Stuart is a very nice bloke indeed, as you’ll see for yourself in this video interview with Keith Rawson. Roll it there, Collette …
  And while we’re on the subject of nice blokes, there was a marvellous turn-out for Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND launch at Dubray Books last Tuesday night, which was cunningly timed to coincide with the official turning on of the Christmas lights on Grafton Street. Among the writerly types in attendance were Declan Hughes, Peter Murphy, Professor Ian Ross, Cormac Millar, Ava McCarthy, Critical Mick and John Boyne, and at least one Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright. Which goes to show how highly regarded Alan Glynn is across the writing spectrum, and deservedly so, because WINTERLAND is a wonderful novel.
  Anyway, you may well be wondering about Christmas gifts at this point. For the reader in your life, you could do a hell of a lot worse than give them THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST or WINTERLAND. Or, better still, both. They’re both beautifully written novels that are page-turning thrillers, but they also do what the best crime writing does: they remind us who we really are and how we live now.
  Incidentally, in a very good week for Irish writing, hearty congratulations to Colum McCann for scooping the National Book Award for LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN.
  Finally, and in contradiction to erroneous information provided here by yours truly, it appears that my latest opus, THE BIG EMPTY, has only gone out for consideration to publishers this week – last Monday, to be precise. I really should pay more attention to such things, but I was under the impression that the book was already under consideration. This is both good news and bad news: good in the sense that the book is still a live grenade, in a manner of speaking, and bad in the sense that the waiting begins all over again. And, given the fact that editors generally have an already existing pile of submissions to work their way through, and that it’s already more than halfway through November, there’s a good chance that we won’t hear how it’s faring until well into the New Year.
  It is, of course, the hope that kills you in the end, but as all three regular readers of this blog will know, I last week went public with my decision to quit writing. So I feel curiously detached from THE BIG EMPTY – although there’s a strong possibility that I feel that way because it’s by far my most personal piece of writing to date, and I’m simply steeling myself against the inevitable rejection letters (hey, not everyone’s going to like it, or love it enough to publish it; that’s just the way things work). Having said all that, I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t feeling just the tiniest frisson of anticipation, or trepidation: in effect, I’ve submitted my baby to a beauty contest, and she’s now at the mercy of factors beyond my control, and depending on the kindness of strangers.
  As for the story, it’s a Harry Rigby private eye tale, a sequel to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, of which the ever-generous Ken Bruen had this to say on its publication:

“I have seen the future of Irish crime fiction and it’s called Declan Burke. Here is talent writ large – mesmerizing, literate, smart and gripping. If there is such an animal as the literary crime novel, then this is it. But as a compelling crime novel, it is so far ahead of anything being produced, that at last my hopes for crime fiction are renewed. I can’t wait to read his next novel.”

  For what it’s worth, I think that THE BIG EMPTY is a better book than EIGHTBALL BOOGIE – but then, I would say that. The fact of the matter is that, when it comes to THE BIG EMPTY, my opinion no longer matters. To belabour the baby metaphor, I’ve done all I can to prepare her for the big, bad world, and can do nothing more to protect her from its harsh realities. All I can do is pray she gets a fair hearing and is treated kindly. Here’s hoping.
  If some kind soul does pick it up, then it would actually jibe quite well with last week’s decision, given that there are another two Harry Rigby novels already written, the rewriting / redrafting of which would allow me to keep my hand in at writing, without requiring the full-time commitment I’d have to make to write a new novel from scratch. In a perfect world, that would be the perfect scenario – although you don’t need me to tell you that neither you, I nor Harry Rigby lives in a perfect world. Anyway, upward and onward: bon voyage, THE BIG EMPTY, and a fair wind …

Laddies Who Launch

’Tis the season to be merry, tra-la-la-la, etc. There will, no doubt, be a fair swally of dry sherries lowered in the wake of not one but two book launches next week, with merriment assured at the launch of THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL, the latest offering from The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman. I’m reliably informed that TAFKAP will be doing interpretive excerpts from Riverdance as part of the evening’s festivities at No Alibis (where else?) in Belfast, the shindig kicking off at 6pm next Monday evening, November 17th. I’ve just finished TAFKAP’S A-OK TDOTJR, and enjoyed it even more than MYSTERY MAN, the eponymous ‘hero’ of which returns to investigate The Case of the Cock-Headed Man. Having much more in common with THE MALTESE FALCON than THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, TDOTJR boasts a fabulous McGuffin and more red herrings than the McCarthy witch-hunt. Gerard Brennan has all the details, as always, over at CSNI …
  That’s next Monday taken care of. Onwards then to Tuesday evening, November 17th, when Alan Glynn will be launching WINTERLAND at Dubray Books, Grafton Street, Dublin, with kick-off around 6.30pm. W (do single-title books qualify for abbreviation?) is a terrific novel, both contemporary and prescient, and a classic crime novel in the way it links conventional, street-level criminality to the highest echelons of business and politics. For more of the same, check out Declan Hughes, Gene Kerrigan and Stuart Neville, all three of whom have turned out excellent novels this year. As for WINTERLAND, I think it’s a superb piece of work, mature and elegant. In terms of its politicisation of criminality, it put me in mind of Liam O’Flaherty’s THE INFORMER and Chinatown. For what it’s worth, I really think this one is worth your time and money …
  Finally, a quick word of thanks to everyone who dropped by and left comments on the whinge-fest below, and also to everyone who linked to it, and got in touch by other means, and generally sympathised. Folks, it’s disappointing but life is otherwise good – it’s not a bad complaint for a freelancer in these straitened times to be so busy you can’t find time to write. Onward and upward …

FIELDS Of Dreams

Good news for Alan Glynn, people – the movie based on his debut novel, DARK FIELDS, is up and running again. The project was to have starred Shia LaBeouf, but that didn’t happen after LaBeouf broke his arm, but now it’s green lights for filming to start next spring, with Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, The A-Team) playing the lead in a tale that is being described as ‘Fight Club meets The Game’. Nice. It’s a terrific novel, so do yourself a favour and check it out before it hits the silver screen …
  In other Glynn-related news, WINTERLAND gets its official launch on Tuesday, November 17th, at the Dubray Bookshop on Grafton Street, Dublin (kick-off 6.30pm). Lauded to the heavens by the likes of John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Val McDermid and George Pelecanos, WINTERLAND deserves all the plaudits going, and more. Mark it down in your diary now – this is one you’ll want to tell the grandkids about …

UPDATE: Laura Wilson reviews WINTERLAND in The Guardian. To wit:

“ … a heavyweight, grown-up thriller set in Dublin against a background of dirty politics and even dirtier business dealings … Emotionally truthful, with a plausible cast, and told in wonderfully fluent prose, WINTERLAND is a gripping tale of a world of greed and secrets.”

The Glynn Edge Of The Wedge

A couple of very nice reviews for Alan Glynn’s forthcoming WINTERLAND this weekend, with the Irish Independent proclaiming it, “A brilliant Dublin noir thriller by a writer with real international potential.” Nice. Not to be outdone, the Irish Times drafted in John Boyne to review WINTERLAND, who gave it the full half-page treatment and concluded thusly:

“WINTERLAND takes its place as the first contemporary Irish novel to explore the disastrous effects of the property boom and the damage it has done to countless Irish families. For that, and for this thrilling, brilliantly written novel, Alan Glynn deserves enormous praise.”

  Well said, that man, and I’d imagine that those reviews are only the start of something Very Big Indeed. Meanwhile, and staying with the Irish Times, Stuart Neville reviewed James Ellroy’s latest, BLOOD’S A ROVER, throwing caution to the wind in the process. To wit:

“It’s a rare writer who can tell a story of such emotional weight that genre becomes meaningless. That’s why James Ellroy is the best crime writer in the world.”

  So there you have it. “James Ellroy, the best crime writer in the world.” Any takers?

You Can Never Be Too Rich Or Too Glynn

You will, if you’re one of CAP’s three regular readers, have encountered the name of Alan Glynn before, as often as not in conjunction with the latest rave for his forthcoming novel, WINTERLAND – John Connolly, George Pelecanos, Val McDermid and Ken Bruen are among those who just about stop short of acclaiming it a cure for all mankind’s ills. I interviewed Alan for the Evening Herald last week, with the opening gambit running thusly:

Alan Glynn is a man of many talents. Not only has he written two superb novels, one of which has been optioned in Hollywood, he has also, in writing the prophetic novel WINTERLAND, pretty much single-handedly caused the crippling Irish recession.
  “Oooops,” he says, “sorry about that. But you’re right, the first draft of WINTERLAND was written during the boom, although I don’t think I was trying to predict anything or be Cassandra-ish. I did revise it in the light of what has happened more recently, but the central concern, or target, of the story is something that applies equally in times of boom or bust -- which is that all-too-familiar dynamic in Irish life where people tell lies, cover them up and create all sorts of collateral damage, sometimes spread out over decades, and never take responsibility.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Alan Glynn: In Which Our Discontent Gets WINTERLAND

The worse things get here in Ireland – and the place is disintegrating by the day, with worse (Nama, the Lisbon referendum, the increasingly unfunny Tweedledum ‘n’ Tweedledee act that is the Fianna Fail / Green Party coalition) coming down the pike – the more appropriate becomes the title of Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND. Contemporary and brutally relevant, it is set against a Dublin backdrop in which the worlds of crime, big business and politics collide, with Joe O’Schmoe (and his comely missus, Josephine) bearing the brunt of the fall-out, as always. WINTERLAND isn’t due out until November 5th, but the covers (UK above, US below) have appeared and the big-ups keeping on coming. To wit:

“Timely, topical, and thrilling.” – John Connolly

“A terrific read ... completely involving.” – George Pelecanos

“A dark and terrifying slice of Dublin noir. I loved it.” – RJ Ellory

“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction. What MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged.” – Ken Bruen

  And while we’re on the subject of Ken Bruen, Gerard Brennan has news over at CSNI about a forthcoming TV series based on the Jack Taylor novels. Clickety-click here for the inside skinny …

In Like Glynn

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 2009 is shaping up as a terrific year for Irish crime writing. One of the reasons to get excited is WINTERLAND from Alan Glynn (right), which isn’t due until November but has already attracted quite a glittering array of big-ups. To wit:

“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction – what MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged … It’s as if Flann O’Brien wrote a mystery novel and laced it with speed, smarts and stupendous assurance.” – Ken Bruen

“Both a crime novel and a portrait of contemporary Ireland caught at a moment of profound change, WINTERLAND seems set to mark Alan Glynn as the first literary chronicler of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Timely, topical, and thrilling, this is Ireland as it truly is.” – John Connolly

“A thrilling novel of suspense from a new prose master.” – Adrian McKinty

“WINTERLAND is crime fiction of the highest order – smart, vivid, meticulously crafted, and highly entertaining. Alan Glynn has written a flat-out classic.” – Jason Starr

“WINTERLAND is a powerhouse of a novel whose pacy, character-driven narrative scrutinises Ireland’s underbelly, offering new meaning to the notion of corruption in high places. Glynn’s grasp of the big picture is as immaculate as his attention to detail. This is an exceptional and original crime novel, convincing at every level.” – Allan Guthrie

  Nice, nice and very, very nice. Quoth the blurb elves:

In the vein of films such as Michael Clayton and Syriana, WINTERLAND is a fast-paced, literary thriller set in contemporary Dublin. The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night—one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels.
  Devastated by her loss, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger—because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it. Told repeatedly that she should stop asking questions, Gina becomes more determined than ever to find out the truth, to establish a connection between the two deaths—but in doing so she embarks on a path that will push certain powerful people to their limits ...

  I’ve read it, I love it, and it’s even better than THE DARK FIELDS, which is saying quite a lot. To book your advance copy, shufty on over here …

LaBeouf: No Beef

Good news and bad news for Alan Glynn, people. The bad news is that Shia LaBeouf has had to pull out of the movie version of THE DARK FIELDS. The good news is that Glynn is on the Fox News radar. To wit:

LaBeouf was supposed to star in director Neal Burger’s new feature, “Dark Fields”. Burger, the man behind “The Illusionist” and “The Lucky Ones”, was supposed to start shooting this fall.
  But the shoot was postponed because LaBeouf had smashed his hand in a car accident last July. He had hand surgery, according to reports, and the injury was worked into “Transformers 2”, which was held up for a month while LaBeouf recuperated.
  Burger had signed him for “Dark Fields”, in which the 21-year-old star of “Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” was supposed to play a man who stumbles on a one of a kind smart pill. The screenplay, by Leslie Dixon, is based on a novel by Alan Glynn.
  But now I’m told that LaBeouf has withdrawn completely, and the search is on for a new leading man. “Shia’s hand is totally shattered, it’s much worse than anyone thought,” says a source, indicating the area around the thumb needs more surgery.
  So stay tuned, as all the young actors in Hollywood line up to take Shia’s place.

  Meanwhile, and staying with Alan Glynn-related malarkey, I’m about halfway through his second novel, WINTERLAND, and it’s living up to all the hup-yas so far …

Now Is The WINTERLAND Of Our Discontent

Don’t be fooled by his boyish good looks and cherubic charm – Alan Glynn (right) is something of a criminal mastermind. Yours truly was well impressed with his debut, THE DARK FIELDS, and there’s a rather impressive buzz building around his second, WINTERLAND, which is due early next year and appears to have nailed the second-rate circus that is contemporary Ireland. To wit:

“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction – what MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged … It’s as if Flann O’Brien wrote a mystery novel and laced it with speed, smarts and stupendous assurance.” – Ken Bruen

“Both a crime novel and a portrait of contemporary Ireland caught at a moment of profound change, WINTERLAND seems set to mark Alan Glynn as the first literary chronicler of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Timely, topical, and thrilling, this is Ireland as it truly is.” – John Connolly

“A thrilling novel of suspense from a new prose master.” – Adrian McKinty

“WINTERLAND is crime fiction of the highest order – smart, vivid, meticulously crafted, and highly entertaining. Alan Glynn has written a flat-out classic.” – Jason Starr

“WINTERLAND is a powerhouse of a novel whose pacy, character-driven narrative scrutinises Ireland’s underbelly, offering new meaning to the notion of corruption in high places. Glynn’s grasp of the big picture is as immaculate as his attention to detail. This is an exceptional and original crime novel, convincing at every level.” – Allan Guthrie

  Mmmm, nice. So what’s it all about then?

The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night – one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels. Although she’s devastated, especially by the death of her older brother, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger – because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it. Alan Glynn is a Dublin-based writer whose first novel, THE DARK FIELDS, is soon to be filmed, starring Shia LaBeouf.

  All that, and depressingly zeitgeist-y too …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 2010: Alan Glynn

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?
Depends. AMERICAN TABLOID for big, insane, ambitious. THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for small, tight, perfect.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Tom Ripley.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The only guilt I associate with reading is guilt at not finishing books I’ve started, like still being on page 111 of AGAINST THE DAY’S 1,085, sixteen months after it came out.
Most satisfying writing moment?
That rare moment when something clicks, and the whole thing comes - fleetingly - into focus. Then it’s back to work.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD by Declan Hughes. The words ‘quantum’ and ‘leap’ spring to mind.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think the Benjy Black books would translate very well. It’d be interesting to see THAT version of the world my parents were young in - but you’d need a shitload of CGI to recreate the Dublin of the 50s.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is the insecurity - eight years between publishers saying, ‘Yes’. Best is having it be what you do.
The pitch for your next book is …?
A doppelganger story. Watch these spaces . . .
Who are you reading right now?
Otto Friedrich’s CITY OF NETS. Hooray for Hollywood.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Why, the idea. Away beast, I say - a pitchfork, a clove of garlic, a WMD . . . whatever it takes.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Always Be Closing.

Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND will be published in spring 2009 by Thomas Dunne

Walking In A Wonder WINTERLAND

It’s a good time to be Alan Glynn, people. THE DARK FIELDS’ author has a new novel on the way, WINTERLAND, with the blurb elves over at Antony Harwood ponying up thusly:

WINTERLAND is a fast-paced, complex thriller set in contemporary Dublin. The worlds of business, politics and crime collide when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That’s the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels. Although she’s devastated, especially by the death of her older brother, Gina’s grief is tempered, and increasingly fuelled, by anger, because the more she’s told that it was all a coincidence, that gangland violence is commonplace, that people die on our roads every day of the week, the less she’s prepared to accept it …

Meanwhile, Anthony Covino over at Pop Culture reports that the movie of THE DARK FIELDS, starring Shia LaBeouf and directed by Neil Burger, is ‘said to be in the vein of Fight Club and The Game’. Colour us intrigued, particularly as LaBeouf is hotter than snot on a griddle right now – his next outing is in - oh yes! - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull …