Publication: WHITE CHURCH, BLACK MOUNTAIN by Thomas Paul Burgess

Described as a ‘punk pioneer’ by no less an authority than Glenn Patterson, Thomas Paul Burgess – now a senior lecturer at University College Cork – publishes his debut crime novel WHITE CHURCH, BLACK MOUNTAIN (Matador). To wit:

What links a traumatic childhood secret with the murder of a high-ranking police officer and two young men facing terrorist death threats? In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the fragile Peace Process is still haunted by the crimes of the past. Truth and justice have become the currency through which victim and terrorist alike must purchase their closure regarding the conflict ... When Detective Inspector Dan Watson of the Historical Enquiries Team enters an interview room for a routine consultation, he is astonished by the recognition of an eerily familiar face - Eban Barnard, the younger brother of his late partner and mentor Detective Superintendent Alex, who was brutally assassinated by the Provisional IRA twenty years earlier. What Dan learns in that room defies credulity and threatens to open up a Pandora’s Box of secrets that will unhinge the lives of all those involved - and endanger the very peace process itself. Based on actual events, and set against the backdrop of a society’s hunger for redemptive catharsis, White Church, Black Mountain is a tightly-constructed, fast-paced novel that follows the dysfunctional life of the misanthropic Eban as he traverses a generation of secrets and lies. Unlike many of the novels about ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland, White Church, Black Mountain is at the forefront of an emerging ‘post-conflict’ canon, considering the legacy of the conflict as it impacts upon those who seek to build a future in its aftermath.

  Colin Bateman, for one, is impressed: “White Church, Black Mountain just sucks you in. Like Brian Moore given a make-over by James Ellroy. Excellent stuff.”
  For more, clickety-click here …

Launch: THE DEFENCE by Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh launches his debut novel, the legal thriller THE DEFENCE (Orion), at No Alibis in Belfast at 6.30pm on Thursday, March 12th. Quoth the blurb elves:

The truth has no place in a courtroom. The truth doesn’t matter in a trial. The only thing that matters is what the prosecution can prove. Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren’t that different. It’s been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn’t have a choice. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie’s back and kidnapped his ten-year-old daughter Amy. Eddie only has 48 hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial - and win - if wants to save his daughter. Under the scrutiny of the media and the FBI, Eddie must use his razor-sharp wit and every con-artist trick in the book to defend his ‘client’ and ensure Amy’s safety. With the timer on his back ticking away, can Eddie convince the jury of the impossible? Lose this case and he loses everything.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

Review: BLUE IS THE NIGHT by Eoin McNamee

There’s a very short line in Eoin McNamee’s Blue is the Night (Faber) that could serve as a calling card for the entire trilogy it completes. “Dark blue, very sharp,” is the description given of the eyes of Thomas Cutbush, a suspect for Jack the Ripper, on his admission to Broadmoor Hospital in 1891. McNamee’s ‘Blue’ trilogy – The Blue Tango was published in 2001, and Orchid Blue in 2010 – is distinctively noir, but it’s one shaded by more nuance, and given more depth and breadth, than conventional noir tends to offer – more dark blue than plain black, and very sharp indeed.
  The trilogy largely concerns itself with the historical figure of Sir Lancelot Curran, a brilliant and ruthless lawyer and politician whose career took him to the heights of Attorney General and Member of Parliament. Set in 1949, Blue is the Night takes us back to the case that made Lancelot Curran’s name, when he served as prosecution in the murder trial of Robert Taylor, a Protestant man accused of killing a Catholic woman, Mary McGowan.
  While the high-profile case had social, political and religious overtones particular to post-WWII Northern Ireland, Blue is the Night is by no means a traditional courtroom drama. Around this main narrative strand, and between the past and the historical present to draw together threads from the previous two novels, McNamee weaves in a number of other plots, which include the brutal murder of Curran’s own daughter, Patricia, outside the family home in 1952, and the possibility that Curran’s wife, Doris, was responsible. The events of the story come to us via the fictional Harry Ferguson, Curran’s right-hand man, confidante and political fixer.
  Ferguson, a pragmatic man in his public utterances, is given to philosophical wanderings in the privacy of his own mind, and thus allows McNamee to extrapolate from a historical crime to investigate the murkier depths of human nature. “If wrong had a human form,” is Ferguson’s own verdict on Robert Taylor, the accused in the murder trial, which opens up the story to the possibility of the existence of pure evil. The suggestion is further amplified by Doris Curran’s experience in Broadmoor Hospital, where she was reared, and where she encountered the Jack the Ripper suspect Thomas Cutbush, and may – or may not; McNamee’s storytelling does not lend itself to absolutes – have absorbed a murderous insanity by a kind of spiritual osmosis.
  It’s a theme that crops up again and again in the book, from Jack the Ripper and Ferguson’s time working at the Nuremburg Trials to Patricia Curran referencing wolves in the forest, which brings to mind the original, darker versions of the old European ‘fairytales’, those Charles Perrault tales that served as cautionary fables for the unknowable malign forces that lurked beyond the flickering lights of the village. At one point Ferguson visits a Belfast museum and sees the mummy Takabuti, and is moved by its aura of ‘ancient malice’.
  Nailed to the page by McNamee’s at times brutally stark prose, the story gradually reveals the extent to which the characters, despite their intelligence, ambition and ruthlessness, are helplessly bound by forces much greater than they, by a fate decided upon long before they were born. That’s a rather lurid claim in a novel based on historical fact, but McNamee is hugely persuasive even as the story grows increasingly gothic in tone. Sympathetic to even his most callous of characters, McNamee has crafted a beguiling, gripping tale that deserves to be considered a masterpiece of Irish noir fiction, regardless of whether its hue is black or the darkest blue. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner.

Competition: CAN ANYBODY HELP ME? by Sinead Crowley

Sinead Crowley’s debut CAN ANYBODY HELP ME? (Quercus) has just been published in paperback, and to celebrate Sinead is offering a signed copy to one lucky reader. First, the blurb elves:

It was crazy really, she had never met the woman, had no idea of her real name but she thought of her as a friend. Or, at least, the closest thing she had to a friend in Dublin.
  Struggling with a new baby, Yvonne turns to netmammy, an online forum for mothers, for support. Drawn into a world of new friends, she spends increasing amounts of time online and volunteers more and more information about herself.
  When one of her new friends goes offline, Yvonne thinks something is wrong, but dismisses her fears. After all, does she really know this woman?
  But when the body of a young woman with striking similarities to Yvonne’s missing friend is found, Yvonne realises that they’re all in terrifying danger. Can she persuade Sergeant Claire Boyle, herself about to go on maternity leave, to take her fears seriously?

  To be in with a chance to win a signed copy, just answer the following question:

What is the title of Sinead Crowley’s second novel, to be published later this year?

  Answers to dbrodb[at]gmail.com by 5pm on Friday, March 6th please, and don’t forget to include a contact email address. Et bon chance, mes amis …

Pre-Publication: THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND by Stuart Neville

Stuart Neville’s latest, THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND (Harvill Secker), is the first in a new series to feature DCI Serena Flanagan, who previously appeared in THE FINAL SILENCE, a novel currently shortlisted for an Edgar award. Quoth the blurb elves:

When 12-year-old Ciaran Devine confessed to murdering his foster father it sent shock waves through the nation.
  DCI Serena Flanagan, then an ambitious Detective Sergeant, took Ciaran’s confession after days spent earning his trust. He hasn’t forgotten the kindness she showed him – in fact, she hasn’t left his thoughts in the seven years he’s been locked away.
  Probation officer Paula Cunningham, now tasked with helping Ciaran re-enter society, suspects there was more to this case than the police uncovered. Ciaran’s confession saved his brother Thomas from a far lengthier sentence, and Cunningham can see the unnatural hold Thomas still has over his vulnerable younger brother.
  When she brings her fears to DCI Flanagan, the years of lies begin to unravel, setting a deadly chain of events in motion.

  THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND is published on June 26th. For more, clickety-click here …

Interview: Adrian McKinty

Jason Steger interviewed Adrian McKinty for the Sydney Morning Herald last week, most of the conversation centring on the Sean Duffy series of novels, of which GUN STREET GIRL (Serpent’s Tail) is the latest. Sample quote:

It was after Dead I May Well Be, his New York novel, came out in 2004 that McKinty first considered writing about Northern Ireland. He had originally pitched a cop show set in ‘70s Belfast along the lines of The Sweeney.
  “Seventies nostalgia with the added frisson of the Troubles in the background. They couldn’t have been more horrified. This guy said ‘we won’t be able to sell it in Northern Ireland, nobody wants to watch anything to do with the Troubles; we can never sell it across the water in England – they just want to forget it ever happened. And as for selling it to the US, that’s a joke; they have a very nostalgic view of what Ireland is’.”
  Although there had been novels about Belfast and the Troubles – Brian Moore’s Lies of Silence and Glenn Patterson’s The International, for example – everyone he asked told him the same thing: don’t touch the Troubles. And he took the message on board for years. But a few years back he had his epiphany – the thing that no one wants you to write about is exactly what he should be writing.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Steve Cavanagh

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?
There’s a few that spring to mind; The Black Echo by Michael Connelly, Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris, The Killing Kind by John Connolly and I’d even throw in The Firm by John Grisham. I think The Firm is one hell of a thriller with great themes running all the way through it. It’s very much a class warfare book, and a modern dissection of the American dream.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
One of my favourite fictional characters is Horace Rumpole. He believes in the presumption of innocence, Legal Aid, cheap Claret and teasing judges. I can’t fault that. I think John Mortimer is often overlooked in the crime fiction canon but I’d put the Rumpole of the Bailey series right up there with Holmes – it’s that important. In later books Mortimer even used Rumpole like a moral scalpel for society by examining ASBO’s and knee jerk anti-terrorism legislation. It would mean I’d have to put up with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Maybe I should rethink that one?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t believe there are guilty pleasures when reading. If I enjoy something and I think it’s good then I don’t feel guilty about it. But I know what you mean. I’d probably say the late David Gemmell, as he is my favourite fantasy writer. He wrote fantasy novels, but wrote them as thrillers. David Gemmell was labelled as writing “heroic fantasy” which puts some readers off as they think it’s all about white knights on horses rescuing damsels in distress. I would say Gemmell was the master of unheroic fantasy – as most of the supposed heroes in his novels are almost as bad as the villains. Character is the key in his books and doesn’t spend the first 50 pages with world building. The first two books of his Celtic quadrilogy are stunning page turners. Gemmell also wrote the best fight scenes I’ve ever read. Read Legend – Gemmell’s hero, Druss, is basically a sixty-year old Jack Reacher with an axe. I can see why some might think this a guilty pleasure – I just see it as pleasure.

Most satisfying writing moment?
There is a scene in the second Eddie Flynn novel, The Plea, where the book shifts up several gears in a single sentence. It’s a moment that nobody sees coming and sets up a really tense action sequence. I think it’s probably the best thing I’ve written.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I can’t recommend just one. The latest novel from my host, would be high on my recommended reads list, as would Brian McGilloway’s Little Girl Lost, Stuart Neville’s The Twelve, Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series and Gerard Brennan’s Undercover. I read Gerard’s last year and I thought it was the best thing he’s written, I loved it.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think Stuart Neville’s The Twelve will make a great movie. And I really hope that does get made as it would transfer brilliantly to the screen. If I had my wish list – HBO would take a Charlie Parker book and adapt it over a whole season. That would be awesome.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best thing is when someone reads your book and tells you they enjoyed it. Worst thing? The worry. I constantly worry about everything; the writing, promoting, the whole shebang is like a brilliant, exciting but nerve wracking dream.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s my debut novel, The Defence.

Eddie Flynn used to be a con artist. Then he became a lawyer. Turned out the two weren't that different. It’s been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn’t have a choice. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie’s back and kidnapped his ten-year-old daughter, Amy. Eddie only has forty-eight hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial - and win - if he wants to save his daughter. Under the scrutiny of the media and the FBI, Eddie must use his razor-sharp wit and every con-artist trick in the book to defend his ‘client’ and ensure Amy’s safety. With the timer on his back ticking away, can Eddie convince the jury of the impossible? Lose this case and he loses everything.

Who are you reading right now?
I’ve just finished Lee Child’s Never Go Back, and I’m starting CJ Sansom’s Lamentation. I’m a real sucker for the Matthew Shardlake novels.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. I love to read but most of all I enjoy reading to my kids. Yeah, that’s the best. I couldn’t give that up.

The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
Fast. Tense. Funny. The three words I’d use to describe my process of writing are – Shit. Noooo. AARRGHHHH!!!!

Steve Cavanagh’s THE DEFENCE will be launched at No Alibis bookstore on March 12.