The good people at Serpent’s Tail have been kind enough to offer us three copies of Aifric Campbell’s critically acclaimed debut THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER to give away, so the least we can do is quote their blurb elves. To wit:
Jay Hamilton lives a comfortable life in fashionable west London, listening to the minor and major dysfunctions of the over-privileged clients who frequent his psychoanalysis practice. But the darker recesses of his own psyche would not stand up to close examination: his brother Richard, a genius professor of mathematical linguistics, was apparently killed by rent boys in Los Angeles and Jay was the first on the scene. Author, Dana Flynn is determined to scratch beneath the surface while researching a biography she intends to write about Richard, and finds that Jay’s professional life is as precarious as his personal relationships - he uses his clients’ case studies as material for his fiction writing. Such is Jay’s hunger for recognition as a creative force that he exploits the vulnerables he counsels, and a decision not to intervene when a troubled patient steals a baby causes his past to unravel.
Lovely. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER, just answer the following question.
During her teenage years, did Aifric Campbell have a prize-winning ... (a) science project; (b) greyhound; (c) afro?
Answers via the comment box, along with an email address (please use (at) rather than @), before noon on Tuesday, May 6. Et bon chance, mes amis …
It’s Friday, it’s funky, to wit: Derek Landy is circling the globe as we speak to promote the new Skulduggery Pleasant opus, PLAYING WITH FIRE, and the Book Witch has a rather lovely interview-cum-book signing piece over at her fabulous interweb yokeybus. Derek also turns up in the Irish Independent, in a two-part interview with fellow YA horror-meister DB Shan, who’s promoting PROCESSION OF THE DEAD. Oh, and if you’re interested in picking up a free copy of POTD, Waterstones and Harper Collins are offering the chance to win one of three blow-up prints of the book jacket, signed by the man himself, and of course a copy of the book, over here … Yet more Derek Landy! SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT is among Voya’s best science fiction, horror and fantasy of 2007. Huzzah! Meanwhile – brace yourself – “150 students aged 11-13 from schools across the North East of England read, reviewed and voted for their favourite book from a shortlist of 6 chosen by librarians and last year’s North East Book Award student judges,” reports the School Library Association. The winner? You guessed it … Yet another interview, albeit in video format: Liam Durcan can be found opening up his GARCIA’S HEART over at Book Opinion … Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise was the first to let us know that Benny Blanco’s CHRISTINE FALLS has been nominated for a Theakston’s Old Peculier … Staying with Benny: Early Word reports on a potentially unseemly literary spat between the New York Times’ Marilyn Stasio and Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation over the merits or otherwise of Benny Blanco’s THE SILVER SWAN. Erm, we’re with Marilyn on this one, Mark … Derry’s finest Garbhan Downey is out and about plugging his latest opus, YOURS CONFIDENTIALLY, with interviews in Derry Today, The Limerick Leader and The Londonderry Sentinel. Quoth Garbhan: “I got the inspiration for the book after reading THE EAGLE’S THRONE by Carlos Fuentes a few years back. That book is told in an epistolary form as well and deals with a corrupt Mexican presidency in a time when the Americans have cut off all forms of electronic communication so they have to revert to the old fashioned quill and pen. Knowing that we, as a nation, have a great letter writing history, it seemed the perfect way to delve into the story of this ambitious assemblyman.” He neglects to mention that it’s very funny indeed, but happily Gerard Brennan at CSNI is on hand to do the reviewing honours … Finally, and appropriately given the day that’s in it, here’s the weekly vid, courtesy of Book Opinion again, in which Tana French fesses up the skinny on IN THE WOODS. Roll it there, Collette …
A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: “Ahem, koff … So busy were we (hic) knocking back our patented Elf-Wonking Juice™ to celebrate Tana French’s win at the Edgars (see below) that it entirely slipped our notice that Declan Burke’s THE BIG O has been shortlisted for The Last Laugh Award, which is given to the ‘Best Humorous Crime Novel published in the British Isles in 2007’, with the winner to be announced at the forthcoming Bristol CrimeFest. Naturally, this is wonderful news for the elves, as it means the Grand Vizier will be away from CAP Towers for a long weekend in early June, at which point we can kick off that long overdue coup d’etat. Meantime, a trumpet-parp please, maestro, for that all-important full list of nominees:
Declan Burke, THE BIG O (Hag’s Head Press) Ruth Dudley Edwards, MURDERING AMERICANS (Poisoned Pen Press UK) Chris Ewan, THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM (Long Barn Books) Allan Guthrie, HARD MAN (Polygon) Deanna Raybourn, SILENT IN THE GRAVE (MIRA Books) Mike Ripley, ANGEL’S SHARE (Allison & Busby) L. C. Tyler, THE HERRING SELLER’S APPRENTICE (Macmillan New Writing) Donald Westlake, WHAT’S SO FUNNY? (Quercus)
“Given that he has been neglecting his stalking duties recently, the Grand Vizier feels honour-bound to vote for Ruth Dudley Edwards, in the vain hope that she won’t set about him with a blunt object when they share a panel at Bristol. Allan Guthrie was supposed to be on that panel too, but the Grand Viz informs us that ‘we don’t need to worry about him no more’. Which is a shame, because we really liked his early stuff. Anyhoo, and while we’re on the topic of THE BIG O, herewith be the cover artwork for the forthcoming US publication of said tome, with which the Grand Viz has pronounced himself ‘well pleased’. And now, with all of that out of the way, we’re off to play with Sheepy the Lamb, who really does come out of himself after a saucer or two of Elf-Wonking Juice™. We thank you for your cooperation. Peace, out.”
So there we were at 6.30am trying to make a funny out of the Edgars and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and the fact that Tana French’s (right) second name is, well, you follow our drift, when we realised that trying to make funnies before the first bucket of coffee goes down the hatch may well cause our collective spinal cords to leap up and strangle what’s left of our pitiful collective brains. So, instead, we’ll just give it to you straight – Sarah Weinman reports that Tana French’s debut novel IN THE WOODS has won the Edgar for Best First Novel By An American Author. Hoo-rah! Of course, the downside to Tana’s win means that we’ll have to disinclude her from the roster of Irish crime fiction writers, but that’s a small price to pay. Run wild, Tana, run free! Meanwhile, the winner of the Best Novel award was John Hart’s DOWN RIVER, and Megan Abbott scooped the Best Paperback Original with QUEENPIN. Bernd Kochanowski? We still love you, but you’re sacked. For all the Edgar details, jump on over here … * How long have we been waiting use that header? Way too long, that’s how long ...
Shawn Patrick Bagley (right) tags the Grand Vizier for a project Patti Abbott is working on called Fridays: The Book You Have to Read, the gist of which is to refresh people’s memories about great books that might have slipped off the radar. Quoth Patti:
“I’m worried that we are letting some great books of the recent past slide out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we can all name perhaps, but that group of books that comes next.”
Sounds just about jake to us. The Grand Vizier’s choice? Edward Anderson’s Depression-era classic, THIEVES LIKE US. To wit:
“They steal …”
According to Raymond Chandler, THIEVES LIKE US (1937) is “one of the great forgotten novels of the ’30s”. Given that Edward Anderson published only one other novel (HUNGRY MEN, in 1935), and that Anderson garners little more than a footnote in the margins of American literature, it is perhaps unsurprising that THIEVES LIKE US has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Taking its cue from the social realism of John Steinbeck’s dustbowl sagas, and utilising the spare, hard-boiled rhythms of Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammet, THIEVES LIKE US represents a literary masterclass in social critique. Anderson took to the road to research his debut novel, HUNGRY MEN, which chronicled the plight of the transients and hobos who travelled the trains during the Depression of the `30s; his experience had not noticeably diminished his compassion for a disenfranchised, alienated underclass by the time he came to write THIEVES LIKE US. HUNGRY MEN won the Doubleday Story prize in 1935; Anderson used the prize money to travel to Texas, where he interviewed his cousin, then a convicted bank robber serving time in Huntsville State Penitentiary. Taking the contemporary exploits of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as his starting point, the author recounted the exploits of the young jail-breaker Bowie and his lover Keechie as they twist and turn in a desperate, doomed attempt to escape the law, their criminal background, and the eventually lethal suspicions of society at large. America had suffered economic deprivation on the scale of the Depression-era ’30s before, most notably in the 1870s and the 1890s. What made the depression of the ’30s different was the mobility of the ravaged underclass; when the communist authorities in the USSR sanctioned the screening of John Ford’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940), in order to demonstrate the folly of capitalism, it had to be withdrawn again when the proletariat marvelled at how even the most deprived of the American poor could afford to drive cars. Bowie and Keechie’s battle to establish a life worth living was not a new story to proletarian America, but their cross-country flight and dogged determination to stay one step ahead of the law suggested that – in theory at least – it was possible to escape the ties that bind. The Promised Land beckoned, and all a man and a woman needed was a tank full of gas and one even break …
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 …
The ever-lovely editor of Mystery Readers Journal, Janet Rudolph, gets in touch to ask if Crime Always Pays can get the word out to Irish crime and mystery writers (not pictured, right) about the forthcoming ‘Irish Mysteries issue’ of MRJ. Basically, if you’re Irish and you write crime and / or mystery, they want you. Quoth Janet:
“Author! Author! essays. 500-2500 words, first person, up close and personal about yourself, your mysteries, and the Irish connection. Think of it as chatting with friends, readers and other writers in a bar or living room. Be sure and add a 2-3 sentence bio / tagline – and your snail-mail address, so I can send a copy when it comes out. Deadline is May 10. Mystery Readers Journal, a quarterly review periodical, is in its 24th year and goes out to over 2000 readers worldwide. We also have a web presence [where you can email Janet directly]. Have a look at past themed issues for sample articles and tables of contents. Perhaps the Scandinavian issue would be a good place to start.”
So there you have it: Janet Rudolph + Mystery Readers Journal = Free Publicity. You know what to do, people … and tell ’em Crime Always pays sent ya.
Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.
The good people at Serpent’s Tail have been kind enough to offer us three copies of Aifric Campbell’s critically acclaimed debut THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER to give away, so the least we can do is quote their blurb elves. To wit: 
