You Can’t Spell ‘Killarney’ Without ‘Kill’

You live a little, you learn a lot. Not only has it belatedly come to our attention here at CAP Towers (yep, all the elves finally straggled back from their summer sojourn to Santa Ponsa) that Atlantic Books are issuing a ‘Classic Crime’ series, and that said series includes Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE, but they’ve also tossed us something of a curveball in Gerald Griffins’ THE COLLEGIANS, which is – apparently – a classic Irish crime fiction title, first published in 1829. Who knew? Apart from the folks at Atlantic, obviously. Quoth The Bookseller:

The series will begin on 1st November with a four-strong launch comprising Gerald Griffin’s thriller THE COLLEGIANS, Sapper’s detective novel BULLDOG DRUMMOND, RAFFLES by E W Hornung, and Charles Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE, which Atlantic describes as “the first detective novel”.
  Thereafter, the publisher will launch a book every month—including titles by Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sheridan Le Fanu and G K Chesterton—until at least the end of 2009.

Nice. Meanwhile, here’s the blurb elves on THE COLLEGIANS:

This romantic melodrama set in rural Killarney in the early 19th century was based on a real case of 1829. Its impressive Irish locations, thrilling characters, complex plot involving love, rivalry, secrecy, betrayal, and impressive denouement made it into one of the most successful thrillers of its day. Recently home from college, young Hardess Cregan rescues poor but striking Eily O’Connor and her father from an unruly mob in the street, with the help of his hunchback foster-brother and sidekick, Danny Mann. Although he is courting his wealthy cousin, Anne Chute, he is smitten by Eily’s beauty. And to complicate matters further, his friend and fellow collegian, Kyrle, is also in love with Anne - and vying hard with him for her attentions. He secretly marries Eily, but her unsophisticated ways soon begin to anger him. And - arrogant and full of roguish self-confidence - when his mother starts to push him into the very advantageous marriage with Anne, he starts to reconsider his choices ... Married to one, engaged to another: can Hardess extricate himself from this impasse? It seems he’s trapped - until Danny suggests that perhaps if Eily were to ‘disappear’, his problems would be solved ...

  You just don’t get many hunchback foster-brother sidekicks to the pound these days, do you?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Alex Barclay

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?
Jim Thompson’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Ooh … Jeeves. Bertie Wooster is priceless.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
No guilt for me … whatever I read, I love, so I’d never feel guilty about doing something I love.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When everything comes together. Because I don’t write chronologically, I have files of separate scenes waiting to be arranged. When I can put them together in way that surprises me and it works out well, it feels great.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Any of Declan Hughes’.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Any of Declan Hughes’.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Solitude / solitude.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s Colorado, it’s below-zero, an FBI Agent hunts the killer of a colleague and starts to unravel her colleague’s life … and her own.

Who are you reading right now?
David Sedaris – WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. It’s an addiction. And I couldn’t do rehab. Too much sharing, too many group hugs.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Fuelled by coffee.

Alex Barclay’s BLOOD RUNS COLD is published by HarperCollins.

The Devil Wears Prada. And A Red Dress, Apparently.

I mentioned a couple of days back that Niamh O’Connor has a new non-fiction tome out about Sharon Collins, aka ‘Lyin’ Eyes’, and now arrives news of Abigail Rieley’s take on the same story, THE DEVIL IN A RED DRESS, courtesy of Maverick House. Quoth the blurb elves:

Ireland has been gripped by the story of a housewife from County Clare who, when her millionaire partner refused to marry her, googled a hitman and arranged to have him killed. Over the course of almost two months, the story of Lyingeyes and Hire_hitman unfolded in a flurry of emails. The website, hitmanforhire.net might have looked amateurish and carried a disclaimer but it attracted serious interest. One person who was interested was Sharon Collins, the ‘devil in the red dress’. Desperate to get her hands on a share of her partner’s fortune, she took drastic action. She turned to Google to solve her problem. A Mexican marriage certificate was obtained but wasn’t enough. On 8 August 2006, she contacted hitmanforhire.net and started to arrange the hit. This is one of the most bizarre stories to ever appear before an Irish court. Filled with intrigue, betrayal, sex, money and would-be murder, it has all the ingredients for a best-selling thriller. This book will prove to its readers that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

  Or that the truth is, indeed, at least as interesting as a good Patricia Highsmith novel, whichever is more likely to tickle your fancy ...

Laugh? We Nearly Emigrated. Again.

Irish producer Adrian Devane has re-launched a nationwide search for new Irish comedy scripts to produce through his Ardmore Studios based production company 2000AD Productions.
  “What we are looking for are commercial, funny, character driven scripts,” says Devane. “We have been approached by a well known studio in Los Angeles to find and co-produce a great comedy script by an Irish based writer. I have read over sixty scripts in the last four years from Irish-based writers; three were good, and none of them are writing good comedy.”
  The new comedy scripts should be copyright protected by the writer, written in the proper script format and be between 90 and 100 pages. The films should be funny, commercial and aimed towards a production budget between $6-8million. Devane suggests titles like ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’, ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, ‘Juno’, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, ‘The Wedding Crashers’, ‘American Pie’ and ‘The Wedding Singer’ as a guide to the type of films he is looking to produce.
  “If anyone feels that they can’t write a script but have a good idea then put a synopsis or treatment together and send that in but we are more looking for scripts that are fairly close to shooting,” states Devane. “The best advice I can give is to ask yourself three questions; ‘Will your script or idea make money to cover the cost of its production? Would you go and see it? Does it make you laugh when you read it? If you are unsure of any of those three answers then forget it, you are in the wrong business.”
  Adrian Devane has produced features films, documentaries, short films, commercials, music videos and TV since 1998.
  After two years of film courses at the Galway Film Centre, Adrian worked went on to work with Edwina Forkin at Zanzibar Films, Paul Holmes at Red Rage Films, Brian Willis at Igloo Films and Ned Dowd, a veteran of film making at Ardmore Studios. A graduate of the TV Business School run by the MEDIA programme Adrian has attended many film courses for producers in Ireland and abroad. ‘Veronica Guerin’, ‘Reign of Fire’, ‘Short Order’, ‘King Arthur’, ‘Apocalypto’, ‘32A’ and ‘Speed Dating’ are just a few films that Adrian has been involved in.
  To submit a synopsis go to 2000 AD submissions.

Argue & Phibbs, At Law

The Writer's Curse: if you made this up, no one would ever believe you …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jeremy Duns

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?
ENDLESS NIGHT by Agatha Christie. It’s a late novel of hers, and oddly reminiscent of the Angry Young Men novels. It’s beautifully crafted, haunting, with a killer ending.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
James Bond - he lives well, saves the world, and survives.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Dennis Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust spy thrillers.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Coming up with the title for my first novel: FREE AGENT. I wanted something that was very simple, in the vein of Geoffrey Household’s ROGUE MALE, but that would also reveal another layer once you’d finished the book. I just felt a great burden had been lifted and it acted as a kind of mini-tone poem guiding the rest of the book.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Not exactly a crime novel, although it features plenty of crimes, Joseph Hone’s THE SIXTH DIRECTORATE, part of the superb Peter Marlow spy series, sadly long out of print. Gripping plot, beautiful prose.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE BIG O, of course!

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is the mental strain of putting it all together. The best thing is being paid to do what you love.

The pitch for your next book is …?
1969: a British spy on the run in Biafra has to confront his past.

Who are you reading right now?
George Blake’s memoirs, NO OTHER CHOICE.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Spare, gripping, sweat-inducing.

Jeremy Duns’s FREE AGENT will be published in May 2009 by Simon & Schuster.

The Embiggened O # 4,209: Putting The ‘Fun’ Into ‘Funky’

Yep, it’s self-aggrandizing Saturday at Crime Always Pays, and Corey Wilde over at The Drowning Machine has been kind enough to review our humble offering, with the gist running thusly:

“Can you say funky? Can you say funky and Irish in the same sentence, is that legal? Is it possible? … THE BIG O is a fine, fun and altogether funky read. Take one part Ruthless People, add one part Fargo, mix with three parts black Irish humour, and you’ll still need author Declan Burke's storytelling skills to get it all properly shook up.”

  Thanking you kindly, Corey, you’ve been a wonderful audience. Meanwhile, Thursday night’s PEN gig was terrific fun. I met up with the luscious Alex Barclay beforehand for a bite to eat, and we had a very serious conversation about art, the craft of writing, and crime fiction’s place in the pantheon of literature. Koff. Anyhoos, the convivial atmosphere was rudely punctured by yours truly asking, “So listen, you know where the PEN gig is happening, right?”
  Erm, wrong. But we’ll draw a discreet veil over the sight of two authors who write about detectives and investigators and whatnot running up and down the length of Fitzwilliam Street in search of the United Arts club, and particularly the bit where a taxi-driver was asked for directions outside said club, this about twenty minutes before we actually found the place.
  Happily, the PEN folk were kindness personified, and the third member of the panel, Niamh O’Connor (right) had the good grace not to mention our tardiness. There was a terrific turn-out, and the event – once the malfunctioning microphones were dispensed with – was great fun. Not that I had a lot to do with it, naturally. Most of the Q&A queries were directed towards Alex and Niamh, and especially Niamh.
  An unfeasibly glamorous crime reporter with the Sunday World, Niamh also writes crime non-fiction, her most recent outing the tale of Sharon Collins, aka ‘Lyin’ Eyes’, the woman who contacted a hitman-for-hire website in a bid to have her lover and his two sons murdered so that she could scoop his €60 million fortune. Actually, the story sounds like a lurid novel – said lover has done his best to have Collins’s name cleared, despite the overwhelming evidence. Clickety-click here for a TV3 interview in which Niamh chats about the case and her book. It’s a fascinating tale, so much so that, if she’d written it as fiction, it’d have been laughed out of town …