Like The Descent Of Their Last End, Upon All The Living And The Dead

If it’s autumn, it must be Ingrid Black. CIRCLE OF THE DEAD, the fourth Black novel in five years, and featuring her series heroine Saxon, finds the husband-and-wife writing team in serial killer territory, to wit:

Ex-FBI agent Saxon has dealt with many killers in her time but nothing can prepare her for the night of horror ahead ... It’s early evening on Halloween when the Dublin Murder squad are called out to the home of wealthy businessman Daniel Erskine. There, in his basement, they discover Daniel’s tortured body. Then, just hours later, his friend Oliver Niland also meets a gruesome end. As special adviser to the Dublin Murder squad, Saxon teams up once again with Chief Superintendent Grace Fitzgerald to track down a killer who’s closer than they think. But why has he targeted Daniel and Oliver? And what is the significance of the group known as the Second Circle to which they both belonged? The other members of the group might have the answers – but can Saxon and Fitzgerald get to them before it’s too late?

  Well, here’s hoping they do. Mind you, at a whopping 496 pages in paperback, you’d be inclined to believe that quite a few of the Second Circle are due some form of grisly comeuppance. Meanwhile, I’m wondering why Ingrid Black isn’t a household name. Saxon has that ballsy lesbian thing going on, she’s ex-FBI, and the woman is a more attractive Jessica Fletcher in terms of body-count. Like, what more do you want, people?
  Oh, and courtesy of the “Is It Just Me?” department: Is there any chance that ‘The Dead’ part of the title is a nod to the James Joyce short story of the same name, given that the novel kicks off with the worst snowstorm Dublin has seen in half a century? If anyone out there is in the know, pray tell ...

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tim Maleeny

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?
Quite a few … damn near anything by Ross Macdonald, Loren Estleman or Elmore Leonard … but if I had to pick one I’d probably say THE MALTESE FALCON, if only because I’d want to be able to say that Sydney Greenstreet starred as one of my characters in the movie adaptation … even the way they shot him in that film, the camera down low and him looking gigantic, was pure genius.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Travis McGee.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Comic books, pulp adventures from the thirties, old issues of Spy Magazine.
Most satisfying writing moment?
When I figure out the ending, usually halfway through the manuscript.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
It’s a high bar, isn’t it? That other Declan, the lovable reprobate Declan Hughes, he wrote a kick-ass novel in THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD. And Ken Bruen writes like a poet — THE MAGDALENE MARTYRS is one of my favourites. Adrian McKinty, I lost count of how many times I recommended DEAD I WELL MAY BE. But since I’m talkin’ to you and I’m not above kissing ass, I’ve no problem saying THE BIG O is a work of pure genius. The sheer unbridled mayhem of it appeals to my world view, sort of a cross between Hiaasen, Guy Ritchie (before he started banging Madonna and got artistically distracted) and Raymond Chandler on meth.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Those listed above, no doubt. Ken’s stuff is almost written like a screenplay, very spare, totally character-driven.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst … deadlines. The need for discipline. My inability to type without looking at the keys. Best …The channelling of the characters into dialogue on the page. Having it done, then reading it as if someone else wrote it. Getting fan mail from folks who loved escaping into your twisted corner of the world and can’t wait to go back.
The pitch for your next book is …?
Elmore Leonard writing an Agatha Christie novel while drinking tequila.
Who are you reading right now?
Neil Gaiman.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
First I’d call Him a prick for forcing such a choice on a man, then I’d probably say … I’d probably say … fuck, I’d probably say read, then when He wasn’t looking I’d burn something to make charcoal so I could use it to write while He slept.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Unapologetic. Visceral. Mayhem.

Tim Maleeny’s GREASING THE PINATA will be published in December.

Mi Casa, Su Casa: Adrian McKinty On Ronan Bennett

Evil genius Adrian McKinty (right) sends us yet another literary missive from his mountain lair, this one on the ‘fearless, gifted Irishman from Newtownabbey’, aka Ronan Bennett. Take it away, O Dark Lord, sir …

Ronan Bennett’s HAVOC, IN ITS THIRD YEAR is set in the north of England in the 1630s. It is the story of John Brigge, a respectable county civil servant who is also a covert follower of the “old religion”. Brigge is the parish coroner, and the book begins with his investigation into a local woman who appears to have murdered her baby. There may be more to the story than meets the eye or it could be that Brigge’s compassion towards the desperate wretches that appear before him day-in and day-out has clouded his judgement. In either case, Brigge raises suspicions among some of the local townsfolk and his life, complicated already by his own wife’s pregnancy, takes a dramatic turn for the worse.
  Bennett skilfully portrays a man on the edge and a country at the cusp of a disastrous civil war; among many remarkable passages he gives us Brigge’s dreams that mix murderers, wives, victims, secret priests and unborn children in a swirling whirlpool of guilt and fear.
  Brigge is ultimately betrayed as a Catholic by a jealous clerk and he and his family go on the run through a nightmare landscape no less vivid than the dreamscape.
  Ronan Bennett and all right-thinking people will hate this analogy, but sometimes you read a novel that impresses you, but whose power, like the festering bite of the komodo dragon, only increases with time. HAVOC, IN ITS THIRD YEAR is such a book for me. When I read it several months ago, I liked it, I thought it was a good read, I recommended it to friends, but I didn’t think it was transcendent. Since then, however, it has resonated in my consciousness at odd times of the day and night; whole scenes played out like a film, entire passages recalled like poetry.
  Last week I bought Bennett’s THE CATASTROPHIST and that too is an extraordinary read. Set in the Belgian Congo in 1959 and 1960, it is a love story and political thriller that takes place in the wake of Belgium’s hasty attempt to divest itself of its African empire. It too is a great book, both moving and gripping and a powerful allegory for imperialism closer to home.
  Ronan Bennett and I were born only a few miles and a few years apart but we’re from different cultural and political universes. Bennett was radicalised in the early seventies and apparently he has lost none of his righteous indignation. He has got himself into passionate debates with Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens and he has said unfortunate things about the Omagh bombing - things which he has since recanted.
  But surely no one can fault Bennett’s fury at our contemporary scene, and his prose tells us something about the writer behind the disputes: clinical, dispassionate, ironic, intelligent, careful and ultimately incendiary.
  His plots move, his writing pulses, and his characters live and breathe and disagree with each other and often him. He takes his time with his protagonists, allowing them psychological and spiritual depth and yet he understands that characters alone aren’t enough; for a book to succeed it must have a strong, well planned narrative. Bennett’s novels are structurally sound and that hardest of combinations: unpredictable, yet completely convincing.
  Bennett is a profound writer in the tradition of early Le Carré or middle period Greene. He takes his job seriously and never underestimates the intelligence of his readers. And, speaking of Greene (this is where Bennett fans begin to groan), occasionally the British press will play the perennially popular game of wondering who “the new Graham Greene” could possibly be. A few – almost always English – authors are often tossed out and then summarily critiqued and dismissed as mere pretenders. No dauphin has yet been found, but if Ronan Bennett keeps on going the way he’s been going, I’d say the contest is over. Although Bennett would no doubt reject the dubious honour, the new Graham Greene isn’t an Englishman at all – he’s a fearless, gifted, Irishman from Newtownabbey. – Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty blogs at The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. His latest novel, FIFTY GRAND, is due in 2009 from Holt

The Blue Jays, The Dodgers And Me

A little post-Bouchercon housekeeping folks, starting with a thank-you-kindly-ma’am to Laurie McFetridge for co-hosting yours truly in Toronto, and for buying some beautiful gifts for Lilyput – although I’m really not sure if I should let the little girl in for a lifetime of pain by dressing her in a Blue Jays romper suit. If I was that way inclined, I’d just go out and get her a Sligo Rovers strip. Still, wouldn’t you love to see the Blue Jays take to the ice in a fetching shade of pink? Hmmmm …
  Anyhoos, it behoves me to flag up the Irish contingent at Baltimore’s Bouchercon, all of whom seemed to be nominated for one award or other. Excepting, of course, yours truly. Dec Hughes lost out in the Shamus category, although there’s no shame there given that the winner was Reed Farrel Coleman’s SOUL PATCH. The first I heard of it was in the bar, when Reed says, “Hey, looks like they’ll have to change the blurb on your book to ‘Two-time Shamus winner Reed Farrel Coleman’.” Nice. Naturally, he was taking the piss out of himself, for which he appears to have a singular talent. During his panel on Saturday morning, he spoke movingly about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn the year after he was born, and how it was like a still-birth the community knew was coming. For years Brooklyn was in mourning, and Reed always thought the place was depressed because he was born. When he was old enough to know better, he was delighted to discover it was because the Dodgers left. “Yeah,” his dad said, “that too.”
  But I digress. A big CAP shout-out to Tana French, whose unstoppable IN THE WOODS bagged not one but two awards, for Barry First Novel and Macavity Best First Mystery. And she didn’t even turn up! Hell, I was there all weekend and I couldn’t even win an argument with the homeless guy who slept on the bench across the street … John Connolly, meanwhile, took home the Crime Spree Favourite Book of 2007 award, the good folk behind Crime Spree – the Jordan mob – being this year’s Bouchercon organisers, and a terrific job they did too. Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah for Ruth, Jon and Jen …
  As for the rest of the Irish contingent: Ken Bruen was there, stately in his majesty as he was squired about the place attended by a retinue like the last incarnation of an ancient sun king. Nice work if you can get it, etc. There was also quite a bit of talk about Irish writers who were absent, including Seamus Smith, whose RED DOCK has been picked up by a high-profile publisher; Stuart Neville, whose 2009 debut GHOSTS OF BELFAST was being spoken of in hushed tones as ‘unputdownable’; Colin Bateman, who will be dragged kicking and screaming to the next Bouchercon if Jon Jordan has his way; Brian McGilloway, whose BORDERLANDS was getting approving nods and murmurs every time it was mentioned; Gene Kerrigan, whose gritty realism might well be getting a Stateside outing if a certain editor has his way; and Adrian McKinty, whose DEAD I WELL MAY BE was described to me by an editor as ‘the best American novel in the last five years’ – the editor wasn’t McKinty’s, incidentally – and whose FIFTY GRAND is generating quite a bit of anticipation over at Holt.
  As for yours truly and THE BIG O – well, let’s just take the Olympic view and say that it’s the taking part that counts, not the winning. Or the being noticed much. Or the being noticed at all. Still, it can’t be Mills & Boon every day, right?

Monday Morning, Coming Down

Hmmmm. Three flights + four airports + 18.4 hours travel time + half a coal-sack of jet-lag can do funny things to a man, albeit of the funny-peculiar variety. And I still haven’t seen the crèche-bound Lilyput yet, who was (allegedly) waving at a picture of the Grand Viz yesterday and saying “Da-da”. This book promotion malarkey just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be …
  Happily, I finally got back from Bouchercon to find two new reviews of THE BIG O wandering aimlessly around ye olde interwebbe, the first from Adam Woog at The Seattle Times, the gist of which runneth thusly:

“Declan Burke’s THE BIG O is full of dry Irish humour, a delightful caper revolving around a terrific cast … If you don’t mind the occasional stretch of credulity, the result is stylish and sly.”

  Thank you kindly, Mr Woog - we don’t mind if you don’t. After that came Luan Gaines, who has already given THE BIG O the old hup-ya over on Amazon.com, holding forth on Curled Up With a Good Book:

“I wasn’t sure what to expect in Burke’s Irish thriller, humour and crime not of particular interest to me. But I was seduced by Burke’s writing style - short, incisive dialog, heavy on attitude and rife with implication … a tale that begins with criminal intent and snowballs into a messy denouement that leaves little doubt about Burke’s skills as a writer of an ironic and entertaining thriller.”

  Who dares, Gaines – or words to that effect. A rather long post about all the wunnerful folk I met in Baltimore will be forthcoming in the very near future, but right now I’m boarding the train for Sleepytown. Night-night, Mary-Ellen …

Nice-Nice Baby

One of the many cool things about Wednesday night's Noir at the Bar at Fergie's in Philly (yep, I'm only a week in the States and already I've gone native) was meeting Scott Phillips (right). I didn't realise that at the time, because at that point I'd never come across Scott Phillips' novel THE ICE HARVEST. Greg Gillespie of Port Richmond Books came to Fergie's and brought a crew along, which was also very cool, and told me that THE ICE HARVEST was a terrific novel. Okay, I'm thinking, yeah, maybe it is, although I hate it when someone praises a book too highly - I think I have an in-built resistance to being snowed that way. Anyway, with Scott having made the effort to come along to Fergie's, I bought a copy and had him sign it. Back at the hotel that night, a little worse for wear, I flipped open the first page just to get a feel for it ... Sixty pages later it's 3am and I'm thinking, this is so good I don't want to finish it all in one go. Truly wonderful stuff, with a deliciously light and deadpan style, it's a marvellous character study. I highly recommend it. Apparently there's a movie of the novel, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, and I don't know how that one slipped under the radar ... But the best news I've heard all weekend is that there's a follow-up to THE ICE HARVEST, called THE WALKAWAY. Happy days, people.

Yo, We Be Trippin'

Hi-ho for the uneagerly awaited account of John and Dec's Most Excellent Adventure, aka the road-trip John McFetridge and Declan Burke are taking all the way from Toronto to the crazy mayhem that is Bouchercon 2008. I'll skip all the maudlin and sentimental stuff about how lovely John's family were when I got to meet them all on Saturday evening, pausing only to note that the ever-radiant Mrs McFetridge outdid herself with her gifts for the Princess Lilyput. Mind you, I really don't know if I should be inflicting a Blue Jays romper suit on a little girl, even if it does come in a fetching pink with blue trim ...
Anyhoos, upward and onward to Sleuth of Baker Street on Sunday afternoon (John pictured right, ravening hordes just out of picture), where J.D. and Marian proved perfect hosts. And so they should, having had loads of practice - they've been running the place for 26 years. The highlight of the gig was the guy who'd travelled all the way from Ottowa to see John, a rather impressive dedication to the cause. A reading was arranged, mainly to a group of students who weren't particularly interested in the books or their authors, but who had a school paper to write on book readings. Oh, the glamour of it all ... Afterwards J.D. took us out for a bite to eat and a few beers, and some intense speculation as to the real identity of Inger Ash Wolfe. What's that you say? You don't give a rat's ass either? Okay, moving swiftly on ...
Next up on the itinerary was Brattleboro, Vermont, which necessitated a long, long drive and no little shenanigans at the border crossing, when it was discovered that the Grand Viz's passport lacked some little doohickey that the post-9/11 paranoia had deemed essential. Between you and me, they don't do irony at the U.S. / Canada border crossing. God only knows how much fun it is at the U.S. / Mexico crossing ...
Manfully we ploughed on, overnighting in the delightful Herkimer. Is there a more poignant sight than a rain-drenched motel parking lot at 4.30am, as seen through jet-lagged eyes? No? Didn't think so. Actually, we weren't too far from Cooperstown, which might have made for a diverting couple of hours, but even it's closed at 4.30am. In fact, the only thing open for business was my pesky brain, which had me reading HITLER'S IRISHMEN in the bathroom until about 6am. Like, I know travel is supposed to broaden the mind, but, y'know ...
Happily, Mystery on Main Street in Brattleboro was a real tonic for this particular trooper. First there was the drive down through God's Country, which was just starting to flicker into a variegated blaze of reds, oranges, yellows and browns. The Mohawk Valley was particularly nice, and especially as McFetridge told me that the Native Americans who got kicked off the land all those hundreds of years ago are buying back the Mohawk Valley piece by piece, with money they've snaffled from the morons who frequent their reservation-based casino. Nice. Anyhoos, Brattleboro itself was beautiful - "A college town without the college," as Mystery on Main Street's David Lampe-Wilson it. David put on a very impressive spread for lunch, and a total of three people turned up for our reading, none of whom was working on a term paper. One of them, Michael, claims Kerry roots, and has just won a prize in the Alfred Hitchcock short story magazine. Which was nice. David reckoned that THE BIG O had hit the Top 5 in the bookstore's best-sellers list the previous week, on account of the impressive cover. Erm, okay, but what about the bit that comes between the covers?
A couple of cool things about Brattleboro. One, there's an outstanding warrant for the arrest of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Two, I spotted an LP (LP!) of Robert Frost reading his own poetry for seven dollars in the window of a shop next door to Mystery on Main Street. Seven dollars? Yoink! Finally, David Lampe-Wilson is a wonderfully genial host, and Mystery on Main Street is a fabulous bookstore. If you live anywhere near Vermont, do yourself a favour and check it out ...
So now it's Monday afternoon and we're heading for New York, and everything is going swimmingly until we miss a turn and get lost somewhere on the Upper East Side. Or thereabouts. "Look, it's New York," I told John, "there'll be another turn coming along fairly soon. Oh, there's one. Try that." Funnily enough, NY being laid out on a grid, it's pretty much impossible to get lost. Highlight of the first night was sneaking into Barnes & Noble near Columbus Circle and discovering THE BIG O bold as brass in the 'New Mystery' section, and only two copies left on the shelf. Yep, you're right, they probably only ordered three copies. Still, it was a nice buzz ...
Tuesday we scammed a free lunch from the folks at Harcourt, and went looking for Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookstore.
We didn't find it. That grid malarkey is fine if you're in a car but hell on the feet. So we went to an Irish bar and got twisted, then went to see the new Coen Brothers movie back on Columbus Circle. Not great, is it? What was great was Central Park, where yours truly cut loose and went all uber-tourist on my own ass, complete with what seemed like a jug of Starbucks latte. Hell, when in Rome, drink Starbucks ... Oh, and it's true what they say about post-9/11 NY. The folk are so friendly it's like the start of a 1950s sci-fi movie about pod people. It's scary, but very nice.
Wednesday we headed for Philly, where Peter Rozovsky had organised a 'Noir at the Bar' at Fergie's. But I'll let Peter tell you about that one, and I'll get back to you tomorrow with some stultifying info about all the lovely people I've met at the Bouchercon in Baltimore. Peace, people.