Big Audio Dynamite

Those of you who have wondered exactly how dulcet the Grand Vizier’s tones are need wonder no longer. For lo! The Critical Mickster has done us proud, as always, and hoisted an audio interview on his interweb malarkey – scroll down about halfway, and it’s there on the right-hand side. Or just clickety-click on this … It’s been a while since Mick conducted the interview, but if memory serves I’m waffling on about why Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley-Edwards (right) is so cuddly, why Gene Kerrigan is the master of gritty Irish noir, and why everything is so blummin’ wonderful in the wonderful world of Irish crime fiction. Yep, business as usual, then …

The Bateman Cometh

Yours truly has a piece in the current Crimespree Magazine about yon handsome devil Colin Bateman (right), and it runneth thusly:

No Man Left Behind: Colin Bateman’s DIVORCING JACK

“I was upstairs with a girl I shouldn’t have been upstairs with when my wife whispered in my ear. ‘You have twenty-four hours to move out.’”
  Colin Bateman, Divorcing Jack

In the rush to celebrate John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Tana French, Declan Hughes and all the other leading lights of the current explosion in Irish crime fiction, one name is notable by its absence, in the U.S. at least.
  Colin Bateman (or simply ‘Bateman’, according to last year’s re-branding) didn’t kick-start the current vogue for Irish crime writing – Patrick McGinley published Bogmail back in 1978, for example, while crime novels by Vincent McDonnell, Bartholomew Gill, S.J. Michaels, Jim Lusby, Eugene McEldowney, Jack Holland and Peter Cunningham were all in print before Bateman’s debut, DIVORCING JACK, appeared in 1995.
  But what Bateman achieved with Divorcing Jack was phenomenal. Not only did he advance the notion that Irish crime fiction could be both popular and profitable, particularly when the movie of the same name, starring David Thewlis and Rachel Griffiths, appeared in 1998, he managed the nigh-impossible: a comedy crime narrative set in war-torn Belfast at the height of ‘the Troubles’.
  His hero – and I use the term loosely – is Dan Starkey, a cynical, wise-cracking alcoholic journalist who gets sucked into a murder mystery when a drunken encounter with a young woman, Margaret, comes to an abrupt end when Margaret is murdered. It’s not a unique set-up, and neither is Starkey a unique character. What made DIVORCING JACK such a trail-blazer was its backdrop, the meaner-than-mean streets of Belfast.
  McEldowney, Holland, Cunningham and Michaels had all set their crime narratives with ‘the Troubles’ for a backdrop, but Bateman was different.
  If this guy can generate a contemporary, relevant and – crucially – funny novel in that setting, thought a hundred wannabe writers, then what’s stopping me?
  That’s certainly the thought that occurred to me over and over again as I read it.
  Ireland, you see, takes its books very seriously. From an early age Irish writers are acutely aware of the burden of responsibility of living up to the legacy of Joyce, Beckett, Shaw, O’Casey, et al. For such a small country, Ireland has had a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners for literature. And for a young writer, that’s a hell of a Swedish monkey on your back.
  Colin Bateman offered a way out. DIVORCING JACK was rooted in Belfast the way Samson and Goliath are, those cranes that rear up out of the Harland and Wolff shipyards to tower above the city and testify to Belfast’s past as an industrial hub of the British Empire. Starkey, born, bred and buttered in Belfast, was nonetheless a creature of his time, aware of the potential for irony in the ongoing conflict, and – again, crucially – acutely aware of his cultural heritage as a reluctant private eye.
  He was quintessentially Irish in his attitudes, his dialogue and his predilection for gloom and despair. But he was fuelled and informed by the American crime novel and movie, particularly the pulp noir of Cain and Thompson, Chandler and Leonard.
  Bateman wasn’t simply mocking the prejudices of Belfast, or those of the stuffy literary set for whom a novel wasn’t a novel without at least one ineluctable modality to its name. He seemed to be mocking Irishness itself, that narcissistic and self-defeating sense of parochial self-importance that had hobbled and blinkered one generation after another.
  Some might argue that perhaps that attitude of self-celebration was a necessary reaction to centuries of colonial oppression. ‘The English gave us a language,’ ran the Irish saying, ‘and we gave them back a literature’. Of course, as is almost inevitably the case, the arrogance masked a debilitating inferiority complex.
  DIVORCING JACK struck a defiant note. It was Irish, certainly, and unmistakably and hilariously so; Dan Starkey is one of the great rebels of Irish writing. Intrinsic to his cultural hinterland, and yet wearing his country’s recent history like a hair-shirt, his is a prickly, goading, questioning voice. And the most important question is the implicit one, the question that informs the entire subtext of DIVORCING JACK: why did Irish crime writers take it as an article of faith that they weren’t good enough to compete on an international level?
  It should be noted too that DIVORCING JACK is a courageous novel. It’s a little easier now to poke fun at the tensions that caused the ‘the Troubles’, and at the paramilitaries on both sides who bombed and tortured an entire generation. But the novel appeared the year before the great watershed of the first IRA ceasefire of the interminably long ‘Peace Process’, at a time when irony was in very scare supply on the streets of Belfast.
  In doing so it blazed a wide trail down which many followed, among them your humble correspondent. DIVORCING JACK gave me the confidence to set EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, a Chandler homage, in a small Irish town, and to use the demilitarisation of Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries, and their diversification into more prosaic crime, as a backdrop.
  Colin Bateman has had a long and successful career in Ireland and the UK; excluding his YA novels, and his prolific output for TV, he has had 18 novels published. He failed to ‘take’ in the U.S. during the mid- to late-nineties, but perhaps the U.S. simply wasn’t ready then for an Irish blend of Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler and Carl Hiassen.
  He is long overdue a serious reappraisal. – Declan Burke

This article was first published in Crimespree Magazine.

I’m Leaving On A Jet Plane ...

“All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go
I’m standing here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breaking, it’s early morn
The taxi’s waiting, he’s blowing his horn
Already I’m so lonesome I could die …

Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Oh baby, I hate to go …”

 There’s only one downside to this John and Dec’s Most Excellent Adventure road-trip malarkey, and it’s the ‘already I’m so lonesome I could die’ bit – I’ll badly miss the Princess Lilyput while I’m away jollying it up pretending to be a writer, there’s no two ways about it. But I guess it just has to be done, and hopefully she’ll still be saying “Da-da-da” and looking for lots of hugs when I stagger back into Dublin in the wake of the Bouchercon festivities …
  Anyhoos, I’ll be up-up-and-away to Toronto tomorrow lunchtime, and even though John and I intend to blog the road-trip, I’ve no idea how practical that idea is, or how regular the posts will be. We’ll see how it goes … Bear with me; regular service will be resumed all too soon.
  All that’s left to say is thanks a million to everyone who’s contributed to putting me in the position whereby I can fly off on a road-trip through New England promoting our humble tome THE BIG O. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s true that the people you meet on the journey are far more important than the destination itself. And if the quality of folk I’ve met over the last 18 months are anything to go by, I’m honestly hoping I never actually make it to that destination. Peace, people.

Robert Downey Jnr: An Ideal Holmes?

I’ve never been much of a Sherlock Holmes man myself, but a press release came through yesterday that may be of interest, to wit:

LONDON, ENGLAND, October 1, 2008 – Principal photography is set to begin on location in London for the action adventure mystery “Sherlock Holmes,” being helmed by acclaimed filmmaker Guy Ritchie, for Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures.
  Robert Downey Jr. brings the legendary detective to life as he has never been portrayed before. Jude Law stars as Holmes’ trusted colleague, Watson, a doctor and war veteran who is a formidable ally for Sherlock Holmes. Rachel McAdams stars as Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have bested Holmes and who has maintained a tempestuous relationship with the detective. Mark Strong stars as their mysterious new adversary, Blackwood. Kelly Reilly will play Watson’s love interest, Mary.
  In a dynamic new portrayal of Conan Doyle’s famous characters, “Sherlock Holmes” sends Holmes and his stalwart partner Watson on their latest challenge. Revealing fighting skills as lethal as his legendary intellect, Holmes will battle as never before to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy the country.

  And Jude Law will be going from that set to the “Blitz” set in early 2009, by all accounts …

Make Mine An Extra-Cheesy Steak

So there I was, with John and Dec’s Most Excellent Adventure looming on Saturday, about to give you a long-winded and maudlin account of THE BIG O’s humble origins and how blummin’ fantastic it is that everything is so blummin’ fantastic, yadda-yadda-ya, when lo! Up popped the lovely people at the Philadelphia City Paper to do it for me. Nice. Better again is the header – ‘Up On Dec’. Carolyn and Char? That’s genius. Sample quote:

“The book was co-published with Hag’s Head Press in Ireland, and they’re what we like to call a boutique publisher — but that’s just code for the smallest publisher in the world. We literally had no money to publicize the book and hence I started up the blog Crime Always Pays to promote both THE BIG O and other Irish crime writers. So in the beginning I was doing 100 percent of the publicity. I don’t know how familiar you are with the crime-writing community, both readers and writers, but it’s the most welcoming, generous and friendly community I have ever come across. At this point they’re almost doing the publicity on my behalf. It’s fantastic, it really is.”

  Did I mention that everything is blummin’ fantastic? Yes? Fine, I’ll get my cloak …

Gerard Brennan: His Ass Is Officially Grass

Has anyone else noticed the amount of work Gerard Brennan is getting through over at Crime Scene Northern Ireland? The guy must have eight arms, or else he’s repatriated all the elves who abandoned Crime Always Pays for the flesh pots of Santa Ponsa during the summer and never came back. Sob, etc.
  Anyhoos, in the last fortnight alone, Gerard has posted interviews with uber-babe Arlene Hunt (right), Ken Bruen and Neville Thompson; reviewed Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS and Paul Charles’ THE DUST OF DEATH; and posted sundry other Irish crime fic-related bits ‘n’ bobs. And not only that, but he’s gone and half-inched the only regular contributor Crime Always Pays ever had, aka Adrian McKinty, who’s written a very funny review of Julian Barnes’ ARTHUR AND GEORGE. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he gets tons more comments than Crime Always Pays does. Boo.
  What’s to be done? Well, it’s obvious, innit – we’re taking a hit out on the boy Brennan and putting a CAP in his ass. Gerard? It’s pistols at ten paces in a murky Russian dawn. Well, it’s either that or slow down, squire. You’re making us all look bad …

The Lone Ranger And Toronto Ride Again

All three regular readers of Crime Always Pays will know that John McFetridge (right) and I are taking a road-trip next week, starting on Sunday in Toronto and meandering down through New England towards Baltimore for Bouchercon, which runs from October 9 to 12. I will, I’m sure, be dining out for many years to come on the fact that I once, even for a shimmeringly brief moment in time, played Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Robin to his Batman, Waldorf to his Stadler, Ginger to his toe-twinkling Fred, etc.
  Anyhoos, the book-signing / reading / event itinerary can be found here, and if you’re in the vicinity of any of the outlets involved, we’d love to see you come along. John, I’m told, is a sight to behold in his diamante-spangled Lone Ranger / Batman / Stadler / Fred Astaire costume ...
  He also writes a mean story or two, which is actually the point of this post, because McFetridge has just collected all his web-published short stories and flash fiction on one interweb yokeybus, the whole shebang entitled ‘The Toronto Series’. If it’s good enough for Elmore Leonard, and it is, then it should be good enough for you. Here’s a taster from ‘Grow House’ to get you started …

Grow House

Steve Barrett had been back from Afghanistan two weeks when he stole his first car, a brand new BMW X5, leather interior, V8. What he did was, he stood around the parking lot of the Vaughn Mills Mall in north Toronto until some woman pulled in driving it and he followed her inside. Then he gave a couple of teenagers fifty bucks to steal her purse and while she was giving the mall security guard shit for half an hour, Steve drove the car to a garage on Dufferin owned by a biker named Danny Mac who gave him ten grand in cash.
  It was the same kind of independent thinking the army sent him home for showing. What the fuck did they expect him to do back home?
  Now, less than a month later, he was driving north on Avenue Road in a Jaguar XJ, British Racing Green, slowing down in front of the Four Seasons, looking for his girlfriend, Summer, and there she is, looking like every other twenty-something blonde in Yorkville; expensive skirt suit with the skirt way too short showing off fantastic skinny legs and a nice ass, the little jacket buttoned up to show her tits spilling out of the push-up bra, sunglasses and a big Holt Renfrew bag over her shoulder. And talking on the phone. She could be just another one of the rich kids with Daddy’s credit card, but when she got in the car saying, “The fuck you talking about Freddie, don’t give me that shit,” there was enough edge to make it real.
  That, and everything in the big Holt Renfrew bag was stolen.
  Steve pulled away from the curb looking at her and she gave him the nanosecond smile and went back to talking to her brother, saying they’d be right there and Steve saying, no we won’t, and Summer saying, don’t fucking worry and Steve saying worry all you want, I’m not helping and Summer saying, “Are you sure they’re dead?” ...

Jump on this for the rest ...