On The Ineluctable Modality Of Shamus Nominations

Via Sarah Weinman comes news of the Shamus nominees, with my evil-twin alter-ego Declan Hughes (right) up for Best Novel with THE COLOUR OF BLOOD. Nice one, evil-twin alter-ego. The full list of Best Novel nominees runneth thusly:

BEST NOVEL
Thomas Cavanagh, HEAD GAMES (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Reed Farrel Coleman, SOUL PATCH (Bleak House Books)
Declan Hughes, THE COLOR OF BLOOD (William Morrow)
Michael Koryta, A WELCOME GRAVE (Thomas Dunne/SMP)
William Lashner, A KILLER'S KISS (William Morrow)

Tough competition, for sure, and we’ll be keeping a weather-eye on yon multi-award-winning Reed Farrel Coleman in particular. The nicest part of the announcement for yours truly was that I got to hear about it last Thursday, when my evil-twin alter-ego let slip the news over a few scoops in Fitzgerald’s of Sandycove. Now Fitzgerald’s, as you may or may not know, is something of a shrine to James Joyce, being but a fried kidney’s throw from the Martello Tower of ULYSSES fame. It was, I have to say, a nice juxtaposition – Ed Loy as a latter-day Leo Bloom, perambulating the mean streets of Dublin and digging out the foibles and idiosyncrasies of his generation. What’s that? You didn’t know that ULYSSES was a murder mystery? Ah, the ineluctable modality of it all …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

Consider us well and truly rocked, Amadeus. The good folk at AVON, out of HarperCollins, are this week’s generous souls offering you – yes, YOU! – free books, the tome in question being THE MOZART CONSPIRACY, Scott Mariani’s follow-up to THE ALCHEMIST’S SECRET. First, the blurb elves:

Former SAS operative Ben Hope is running for his life. Enlisted by beautiful Welsh opera star Leigh Llewellyn to investigate her brother’s mysterious death, Ben finds himself caught up in a centuries-old puzzle. The official line states that Oliver died in an accident whilst investigating Mozart’s death, but the facts don’t add up. Oliver’s research reveals that Mozart, a notable freemason, may have been killed by a shadowy and powerful splinter group of the cult. The only clues lie in an ancient letter, believed to have been written by Mozart himself. When Leigh and Ben receive video evidence of a ritual sacrifice being performed by hooded men, they realise that the sect is still in existence today…and will stop at nothing to remain a secret. Whilst researching this novel, Scott Mariani became increasingly convinced that political forces could potentially have been involved in Mozart’s death. This stunning new theory makes THE MOZART CONSPIRACY as controversial and provocative as THE DA VINCI CODE …

Lovely. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of THE MOZART CONSPIRACY, just answer the following question.

Is Scott Mariani:
(a) a great Scott?
(b) a great Scot?
(c) the next Dan Brown?
(d) the man who finally put the ‘art’ into Mozart?
(e) all of the above.

Answers via the comment box, please, leaving a contact email address (using ‘at’ rather than @ to confound the spam-munchkins) before noon on Tuesday, August 5. Et bon chance, mes amis …

The Other Gorgeous George

The Philadelphia City Paper drops by – not in person, y’understand – to ask if we’d be interested in hosting some of its recent interview with Gorgeous George Pelecanos (right, pic taken by the inimitable Jon Jordan), on the occasion of the publication of his latest tome, THE TURNAROUND. Which was very nice of them, although it’ll be even nicer still if they agree to interview yours truly when I’m passing through Philly on my most excellent adventure road-trip in the company of one John McFetridge on the way to the Baltimore Bouchercon. But we’ll worry about that anon. In the spirit of brotherly love, herewith be an excerpt from said interview, the full version of which can be found here. To wit:

CP: What makes a character resonate for you? Is there a moment when you know you’ve hit upon something?
GP: “I don’t outline or anything, I just write my books. It can be kind of scary but sometimes you don’t find the character until late in the book. Historically, I’ve always hit it somewhere in the book but while you’re writing it you’re saying to yourself, ‘I don’t know who this is yet, this person is not complete.’ I’m just going to write my way through it and find the character. Eventually you do, and you go back and rewrite and change little things. That’s how it works. It can be something as little as a piece of dialogue that just comes to you and you say, ‘Wait a minute, now I know who this is.’”
CP: One of the things I’ve always been so impressed by is your ability to use space and render D.C. almost like a character. In reading the work of some of your peers, I’m struck by how important place is to the success of a book. How much of your D.C. is real and founded in the streets and how much is created in your mind?
GP: “Of course the characters are fictional and they’re sort of walking through this fictional world, but as far as the grid goes, it’s all pretty much real. I go out and check stupid things like, Is there a T in that alley behind Otis Place NW? I have to go to the alley and make sure that there is. In the historical books like Hard Revolution, if a character is walking down the street in April ‘68 in a particular week of that month, and the movie theater marquee says Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner or something, it was playing in that movie theater on that day. I can guarantee you that. I don’t make shit like that up. Even where it’s crippling. In other words, [in THE TURNAROUND] when Alex walks into the diner for the first time when he’s a kid and the James Brown song is playing, and it’s June in the book — if that song was released not until September of that year, I don’t put it in there. It wouldn’t have been coming through the radio. It’s a long-winded way of saying I’m trying to leave a record.”

Around The Web In 80 Seconds*

You lose some, you win some. Hot on the heels of Publishers Weekly dissing THE BIG O on the basis that it’s not as good as Elmore Leonard (oh, the infamy!) comes this dinky little treat courtesy of Amazon’s Listmania, titled “The Crime Writing Kings Of All Time (and a great new guy!)”. Yep, it’s lil’ ol’ EIGHT BALL BOOGIE nestling in there with Chandler, Hammett and Thompson, et al. Joelle Claire Barrios, you are officially our newest VBF …
  Staying on the subject of Elmore Leonard, Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD gets a nifty big-up from John Dugdale in tomorrow’s Sunday Times, under the heading “Eight new thrillers for holiday readers”. To wit:

“It’s the unlikely pairing of Elmore Leonard and James Joyce that seems to shape Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD (Serpent’s Tail £10.99), a pacey, violent caper that, like ULYSSES, runs from breakfast time to midnight on a single June day. Belfast gangster queen Bridget Callaghan wants Michael Forsythe dead for killing her fiancé, but when her daughter is abducted, Callaghan decides he’s the only man who can find her. As Forsythe hurtles around the city, McKinty vividly portrays its sleazy, still-menacing underbelly.”

  Hmmm, nice. Upward and onward to the Booker Prize nominations, and while the howls of anguish that greeted CHILD 44’s nomination have abated a tad, Philip Stone at The Bookseller has an interesting piece about the sales figures for the various nominees. Salman Rushdie’s THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE leads the way, having sold 15,433 copies before the nominations were announced, but four of the eleven nominees have sold 1,000 copies or less, with Michelle de Kretser’s THE LOST DOG selling a less-than-whopping 363 books. Now, anyone who has read James Patterson can vouch for the fact that big sales don’t always (koff) equate with quality, so those figures have nothing to say about whether or not the books are entitled to be considered as possible Booker winners. Still, it’d make you wonder about how in tune, or otherwise, the judging panel is with the reading public.
  Meanwhile, Boyd Tonkin at The Independent laments the novels that didn’t make the Booker long-list, among them David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER:

“I will miss several other notable absentees from the later Booker heats. David Park’s wise and moving novel of the search for reconciliation in post-Troubles Belfast, THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, should have caught the judges’ eye.”

  Finally, some groovy news for Eoin Colfer’s legion of fans, courtesy of Sarah Webb’s review of ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE TIME PARADOX in today’s Irish Independent:

“Colfer has certainly been busy. Next year his crime caper, HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS, will be on television, courtesy of the BBC, pitched as Grange Hill for the Noughties. The film rights to the Artemis books have been sold to Miramax and Tribeca (Robert De Niro’s production company) and the film is in development.”

  And the hell of it all is, it couldn’t happen a nicer guy. Happy days.

* Providing you don’t actually click any of the links, of course

The Disembiggened O: Hey, At Least They Got The Title Right

Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah for Publishers Weekly, which provides our humble offering, THE BIG O, with its first print review in the U.S. To wit:

The Big O
Declan Burke. Harcourt, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-15-101408-8
While Irish author Burke (Eight-ball Boogie [sic]) has been compared to Elmore Leonard, this effort falls short of Leonard’s superior blending of crime and dark humor. The impending parole of violent armed robber Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan sets in motion a cascading series of events. Callaghan’s ex-wife, Karen King, herself a thief, fears he’ll come after her, and seeks to get herself some insurance in the form of professional kidnapper Ray Brogan. Ray, in turn, is hired to abduct Karen’s friend, Madge Dolan, by her husband, Frank, a plastic surgeon who wants to cash in a lucrative insurance policy. The waters are further muddied by questions about Callaghan’s parentage and the introduction of a vicious, half-blind dog named Stalin. The broadly drawn figures and situations are clearly not intended to be taken seriously, but the absence of any character a reader is likely to sympathize with is a significant drawback. (Sept.)

  Now, as much as we’d like to take our lumps and crawl away into a hole and cry, it behoves us to stand our ground and make a couple of points, on the basis that anyone who has read the book will notice an error or eight in the plot description that suggests the anonymous reviewer may not have been paying as much attention as he / she should have, and may even have read the book while bungee-jumping. For example, even reading the blurb on the back of the book would have told the reviewer that Karen is not Rossi’s ex-wife, but his ex-girlfriend. A petty detail? Perhaps, although the difference has huge ramifications for their relationship when Rossi gets out. But it’s not the only basic mistake the reviewer made – in fact, the review is so littered with them, I think I’m entitled to ask whether or not the reviewer read the book all the way through.
  But I won’t. Instead, just for japes, I’ll review the review. To wit:

The Big O review reviewed
Anonymous. Publishers Weekly
While American magazine Publishers Weekly has been compared to a serious review publication, this effort falls short of the expected blend of attention to detail and sense of humour. The impending parole of violent armed robber Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan sets in motion a cascading series of events, even if Rossi Callaghan is not, as the story’s set-up might lead you to believe, a violent character. Nor is he paroled. Callaghan’s ex-wife, Karen King, is not in fact his ex-wife, and nor is she afraid Rossi will come after her. Nor does she seek any kind of insurance from professional kidnapper, Ray Brogan. In fact, when Ray seeks to protect Karen from Rossi, she tells him she can take care of herself, and in no uncertain terms - and as it happens, this much, Karen's independent and feisty character, is so integral to the plot that it was the initial spark of inspiration for the entire story. The review is further muddied by the introduction of a character called 'Stalin', who is actually called by another name, and is only referred to - erroneously - as Stalin by one character. The broadly drawn generalisations and mistakes are clearly not intended to be taken seriously, but the absence of any attention to detail a review reader is likely to expect as a minimum is a significant drawback. (Aug.)

  Ba-doom-tish, etc.

On Putting The Gat Into THE GREAT GATSBY

Answergirl – aka Clair – was kind enough to respond to my most recent post on the definition of crime fiction, during which I briefly but comprehensively bored everyone into submission by recounting my previous attempts to grapple with a concept no one else seems even remotely interested in. Quoth Clair:

I agree with your first position -- but even by your revised position, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES, THE SCARLET LETTER and THE GREAT GATSBY are all still crime fiction. For starters.

  Intrigued, I tracked answergirl down to her lair, and found this in her most recent-but-one post, which concerns itself with TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES:

It makes me angry when I hear literary novelists talk trash about crime fiction as a genre, as if plot, conflicts and violence disqualified a book from being taken seriously as literature. The essay for my Advanced Placement English exam asked us to discuss the role of an act of violence in a major work of literature, and any bright student would be spoiled for choice. You could write about anything from Macbeth to THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.
  THE GREAT GATSBY? MOBY DICK? TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? INVISIBLE MAN? Violent, violent, violent. HEART OF DARKNESS is a thriller; THE SCARLET LETTER is a mystery. This was obvious to me as a girl of 16, and it’s even more obvious to me now.

  Strong words, ma’am, and your passion warms the cockles of my heart. But – and here we diverge slightly – I do have issues with crime fiction fans and writers claiming the likes of Hawthorne, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Hardy, Shakespeare et al as authors of crime fiction, and for two reasons.
  The first is the issue of intent. In terms of the quality of their prose, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, who were more-or-less peers, are equals. But the difference is this, I think: Hawthorne tells a story in which a crime, or crimes, are central to the narrative; Poe, on the other hand, writes about criminality, using a crime, or crimes, to propel the narrative. Maybe it’s a fine line that separates the two, but it is an important distinction.
  The second issue I have is that, by saying that every narrative which features a crime is automatically crime fiction, fans and writers of crime fiction run the risk of (a) diluting the elements of what makes crime fiction such a potent genre, and (b) sounding like they have an inferiority complex, in that they need to claim the literary giants for their own in order to justify reading and writing crime fic.
  As a reader, I love the crime fiction genre above all others. But the genre only accounts for a third, and possibly even a quarter, of my own reading, and I have no need to read JUNKY as a crime novel, or THE CROSSING, or LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, or THE LORD OF THE FLIES or CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN, in order to enjoy them, even if they all contain elements of crime and criminality.
  I suppose the reason I’m mulling all this over right now is that I have a story on-going, and have had for some years, which contains a crime at its heart, and a crime without which the rest of the story would collapse. And yet I think the reason the story hasn’t worked out for me yet, even after five or six drafts, is that it isn’t a crime novel, and never will be, and that I need to start thinking beyond those parameters as a writer, because the novels I’ve written to date have been very definitely crime novels.
  If the story is to work, I need to get back to where I was as a young reader, when the branding – indeed, the author, or the quality or otherwise of the writing – was irrelevant, when all that mattered was that the story was interesting enough to keep the pages turning.
  Sounds naïve, I know. But here’s hoping.

TB Or Not TB, That Is The Question

It’s been, oh, almost a whole week now since we’ve had any TB-related material on Crime Always Pays, and some people have been in touch alleging withdrawal symptoms. Sorry, folks. Herewith, and without further ado, be Damien Seaman’s interview with part-time Scottish sex god Tony Black (right) …

NONE MORE BLACK

If it’s debut novels you’d be looking for, then how’s about giving PAYING FOR IT a gander? Tipped as ‘One To Watch For 2008’ by the Edinburgh Evening News, author Tony Black has also garnered praise from a Galway resident by the name of Bruen ...

DAMIEN SEAMAN: You’re a part-Lithuanian Scotsman with a chubby for Australia: what gives you the cojones to be interviewed for an Irish crime fiction blog?

TONY BLACK: The Grand Vizier has specifically invoked the FIFA grandparent ruling to have me here and I’m not gonna disappoint. And I grew up in Galway! Went to the same primary school as Ken Bruen and everything ... Am I in front yet? God, I have a hurley signed by Joe Connolly, there, that’s got to swing it.

DS: Your first novel, PAYING FOR IT has been released this month. How would you pitch the novel to readers in a few words?

TB: Jeez, I hate those hundred- word blurbs: How’s this? ... It’s a murder mystery, told in a thriller style, in which a father has lost his only son, tortured to death by people-smuggling gangsters with a sideline in prostitution, and he’s seeking answers. There’s a fairly significant father-son element. Thug-Lit said it was about the ‘pains of being a father and the pains of being a son’, which I really liked.

DS: The novel features a couple of memorable Irish characters. Is there anything significant in this?

TB: Scotland has always had a huge Irish population; mostly it’s associated with the west coast (Glasgow) but not exclusively. Edinburgh is Scotland’s most multicultural city and is sometimes actually described as its least Scottish as a result ... so there should be Irish characters cropping up in a representation of the city.
  As I say, I did some of my growing up in Ireland and I absolutely love the place, in fact, when I was living in Australia I was hugely homesick for Galway – it’s actually the place I feel most at home in the world -- I think it imprinted on me at that crucial age of about nine or ten. I had a really strong Irish accent when I left Galway and I can still hear all the voices from my childhood and I tap into them when I write.
  Al Guthrie -- God, I’m a dreadful name dropper -- told me he was really convinced by my Irish voices and that pleased me no end. I love my Irish characters; I actually wrote a whole (as yet unpublished) novel set in Ireland.
  In fact, when I think about it, Milo, one of the Irish characters in PAYING FOR IT, attracts the most praise from readers after my protagonist Gus.

DS: Given that PAYING FOR IT features an alcoholic ex-hack PI type, how do you aim to keep your series fresh in the next instalments?

TB: I’d like to think Gus is pretty rounded, his alcoholism and his accidental PI work isn’t the sum of him. He has quite a bit of damage in his life and he’s a conflicted character. I’m interested in him -- and the cast of characters he’s surrounded himself with -- so as long as I maintain that interest, and want to write about him, I can see the series barrelling along.

DS: Who are your favourite Irish writers and why?

TB: It’s kind of impossible not to start with Joyce. I really got into THE PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST and DUBLINERS when I was younger, and the heavier stuff later. Beckett too, all the big guns, there’s too many to list. Latterly, though, it’s been Bruen I’m massively impressed by. He’s the Hemingway of the crime genre, a real innovator and in my humble opinion a true genius. Nobody writes like Bruen.

DS: Favourite Irish crime novel?

TB: Well, it has to be by Ken Bruen (right), doesn’t it. THE GUARDS is a frickin masterpiece. I read it when I was living in Australia and every time I picked it up it was as if I was being transported back to Ireland. There’s a scene when Jack’s got some glasses he’s bought from Roche’s Stores and I was like, I know where he got them! It’s a fantastic achievement to render a city so alive.

DS: Favourite Irish character in crime fiction (doesn’t have to be written by an Irish author)?

TB: Got to be the incredible Francie Brady from THE BUTCHER BOY.

DS: Ken Bruen says that PAYING FOR IT ‘blasts off the page like a triple malt’. How do you feel to get this kind of praise from Bruen?

TB: Impossible to explain. I’d been stalking Ken for a wee while and persuaded him to read it so he took the ms on the weekend and got back to me that same evening saying he’d started it and had to shove the Sunday papers aside till he finished it. I just couldn’t get my head around that. Still can’t.
  If I’d been asked in advance who is the one person you’d want to adore your book it would have been Guv’nor Bruen. For him to be so blown away by it and so generous with his praise was very moving. He is a very generous man, though. If only the world had more like him ...

DS: From Ian Rankin and Stuart MacBride to Al Guthrie, Ray Banks, Russel McLean and your good self, do you have any theories as to why there’s such a glut of quality Scottish crime writing at the moment?

TB: I just picked up the [Scottish] Daily Record and there’s a Murder Map of Scotland on page one. Inside it says Glasgow has a higher murder rate than London. We’ve got worse knife crime stats than NY; there’s the alcoholism, the drugs, the gangs, the lot ... am I painting a picture here?

DS: You see any major differences or similarities between the work of Scottish and Irish crime writers?

TB: On the whole I think the Irish and the Scots are being more experimental and innovative of late. Writers like Al Guthrie and Ray Banks are pushing things in much the same way as Ken Bruen and Adrian McKinty are. It’s a great time for the Celts.

DS: How important is it to you that a crime novel comes packing a sense of humour?

TB: The Scots have a great reputation for ‘The Patter’, so it should be in there. It’s a tricky one to pull off though, it can backfire drastically if it’s utilised in the wrong situation -- it’s almost like a guarantee of a work descending into farce if it’s not used appropriately.

DS: You’ve been a journo for some years now. You find that a help or a hindrance to your crime writing career?

TB: Latterly more of a hindrance than a help; getting up and going out to sit in front of a PC all day and then coming home to do it again all night isn’t something I’d choose to do. Believe me, if I had the knackers, I’d chuck it and wouldn’t go back.
  There’s also the confusion my journalism adds to the way my fiction writing is viewed too. Y’know, it’s a real easy line ‘the hack that wrote a book about a hack’ for journos to dive on. So, on balance, more of a hindrance. If I’d been a road sweeper to pay the bills I don’t think anyone would have given two shits about my day job.

DS: What’s the next Gus Dury novel about?

TB: GUTTED sees Gus Dury up to his neck in the seedy underside of Scotland’s ‘genteel’ capital once again. There’s a gangland murder and it all seems to be connected to the city’s booming dog-fighting trade and a well-heeled family who lost a child in a savage pit-bull attack. All the characters from PAYING FOR IT are back ... and Gus gets a rescue dog.

Damien Seaman’s crime-related tosh has graced the web pages of Pulp Pusher, Noir Originals, Spinetingler Magazine and Shots. He is not Irish, nor has he ever lived in Ireland, but he’s got some Irish friends and likes the occasional pint of Guinness. Angry emails more than welcome: damien.seaman@web.de