Crime Always Pays

The Killing Floor

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:34:00 +0000

Aifric Campbell’s two novels to date, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER and THE LOSS ADJUSTOR, have offered intriguing variations on the conventional crime novel, and her latest, ON THE FLOOR (Serpent’s Tail), sounds as if it continues in a similar vein. Quoth the blurb elves:

In the City, everything has a price. What’s yours? At the age of twenty-eight, Dubliner Geri Molloy has put her troubled past behind her to become a major player at Steiner’s investment bank in London, earning $850k a year doing business with a reclusive hedge fund manager in Hong Kong who, in return for his patronage, likes to ask her about Kant and watch while she eats exotic Asian delicacies. For five years Geri has had it all, but in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, her life starts to unravel. Abandoned by her corporate financier boyfriend, in the grip of a debilitating insomnia, and drinking far too much, Geri becomes entangled in a hostile takeover involving her boss, her client and her ex. With her career on the line as a consequence, and no one to turn to, she is close to losing it, in every sense. Taut and fast-paced, ON THE FLOOR is about making money and taking risks; it’s about getting away with it, and what happens when you’re no longer one step ahead; ultimately, though, it’s a reminder to never, ever underestimate the personal cost of success.

An advance copy of ON THE FLOOR arrived at CAP Towers yesterday, sending the ARC-reading elves into a frenzy of anticipation which barely stopped short of the book itself being flittered. Looks like I’ll have to run a lottery, to see who gets the privilege of dipping into it first. And there was you thinking CAP Towers was all about hammocks, Cuban cigars and high-balls once the sun crawls over the yardarm …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Lyndsay Faye

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:21:00 +0000

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?
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler. “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.” Stare at that sentence for two or three minutes and marvel at its perfection. That book is magical.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Dr. John H. Watson. I’d have spent my entire life watching someone be amazing.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t feel much in the way of guilt about my pleasures, truth be told. But I do collect atrociously written Sherlock Holmes pastiches, the more crack and unlikely Victorian celebrity cameos and bodice-ripping covers with floating deerstalker art the better. (Incidentally, I also collect excellent ones, but there’s no guilt whatsoever in that.)

Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing my first novel. I was baffled by the fact I’d managed it for months. I’m still baffled by it, actually - I’ve never been involved in a single “creative writing” class, just a bunch of excellent courses on the classics, and editorial work like my university writing centre and campus literary magazine.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ooh, apologies to the classics. But IN THE WOODS by Tana French really hits my sweet spot. So gritty and atmospheric and human.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Is THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR by Gene Kerrigan a movie yet?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst aspect for me is the occasional emotional roller coaster that happens in total solitude. Does this work? Will it come together? What if it doesn’t? Where’s the whiskey? But when someone tells me they identified with a person or a moment I invented from thin air - that’s glorious.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Welcome to the sequel to THE GODS OF GOTHAM, winter of 1846, in which I do more terrible, terrible things to Timothy and Valentine Wilde.

Who are you reading right now?
Alex George’s THE GOOD AMERICAN - he’s a fellow Amy Einhorn author. It’s marvellous.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
What a heinous circumstance. Well, selfishly ... I think I’d read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Open, open, open. I’m all about character exposure, breaking people apart to see the nasty and beautiful and selfish and brave bits. The crimes are incidental for me, like nutcrackers or lobster scissors - they exist to get at the meat of the person I’m writing about.

Lyndsay Faye’s THE GODS OF GOTHAM is published by Headline Review.

The Second Life Of Reilly

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:13:00 +0000

Last year’s TABOO, from husband-and-wife writing partnership Casey Hill, dragged Irish crime fiction into the bright ‘n’ shiny CSI age, as their Quantico-trained investigator Reilly Steel arrived in Dublin to head up a brand new forensics office and hunt down a nefarious serial killer. A UK production team is currently beavering away to bring Reilly to a TV screen near you; in the meantime Casey Hill’s sophomore offering, TORN (Simon & Schuster), will be hitting the shelves in March. Quoth the blurb elves:

When an ex-cop is found frozen to death in a bath of ice at a disused meatpacking plant, the Dublin police conclude it may be one of the man’s past collars taking revenge. Shortly afterwards, a tabloid journalist is found drowned in his own septic tank, buried up to the neck in excrement. The reporter had many enemies, but why would someone go to such elaborate lengths to exact revenge? Both crime scenes are a forensic investigator’s worst nightmare. The locations and victims yield little in the way of usable evidence, and Reilly Steel quickly discovers that she may be dealing with a killer - or killers - who know all about crime scene investigation. The police are just as frustrated by the crimes’ impenetrable nature, and it’s only when a third murder occurs - equally graphic and elaborate in its execution - that the police and Reilly begin to wonder if the same person might be responsible. And they soon discover that this particular killer is using a very specific blueprint for his crimes. Who is the killer’s next victim? And what’s his endgame?

Bodies packed in ice in meatpacking plants? Journos drowning in septic tanks full of excrement? Outsiders coming in to clear up our mess? Is TORN an extended metaphor for how ripped apart is Irish society in these straitened times? Or is it just good, clean serial-killing fun? YOU decide.

Survival Of The Figgis

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:24:00 +0000

I ended up nearly walking into a lamppost yesterday on Dawson Street, as I glanced into the front window of Hodges Figgis (right) and did a comedy double-take. It’s a rare but pleasurable experience to see one of your books in the front window of a bookshop, but it’s very weird indeed to see the cover of your book blown up to poster size. Anyway, said poster was part of a display in the Hodges Figgis window designed to promote ‘Crime Night!’, the details of which runneth thusly:

Crime Night! Hodges Figgis kindly invite you to a Crime Fiction Night taking place in our store on Dawson Street, Dublin 2, on the 22nd of February at 7.30pm. We have three well known Irish authors taking part: Declan Burke, Arlene Hunt and Conor Brady. The night promises to be an interesting one, with some extract readings and a questions-and-answers session based on what special qualities an Irish writer brings to the genre. Contact one of our Booksellers or our Secretary to book a free place to avoid disappointment.

So there you have it. I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, Arlene from THE CHOSEN, and Conor Brady from his debut title, A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS. Will we come through the experience unscathed, fired in the kiln of public scrutiny? If you’re out and about in Dublin on the evening February 22nd, it’d be great to see you there.

Black’s Dark And Banville’s Light

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:05:00 +0000

I’m not sure exactly what’s happening with the cover for Benjamin Black’s forthcoming VENGEANCE (August, Henry Holt), or whether we’re looking at UK and US covers, but I know which one I prefer (right). Certainly the ‘bandstand’ cover conjures up the moody, atmospheric tone I associate with Black’s Quirke novels, which are set in 1950s Dublin; the other cover (below) is rather garish, and brings to mind the worst excesses of the kind of slash-‘n’-cash rubbish that seems to be growing increasingly prevalent in crime fiction these days. Or are said novels (or their lurid covers) merely a throwback to the gory, glory days of the pulp novel? YOU decide.
Anyhoo, onto the story itself. VENGEANCE is the fifth in Black’s Quirke series, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

A bizarre suicide leads to a scandal and then still more blood, as one of our most brilliant crime novelists reveals a world where money and sex trump everything. It’s a fine day for a sail, and Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland’s most successful businessmen, takes his boat far out to sea. With him is his partner’s son—who becomes the sole witness when Delahaye produces a pistol, points it at his own chest, and fires. This mysterious death immediately engages the attention of Detective Inspector Hackett, who in turn calls upon the services of his sometime partner Quirke, consultant pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family. The stakes are high: Delahaye’s prominence in business circles means that Hackett and Quirke must proceed very carefully. Among others, they interview Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; and Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner. But then a second death occurs, this one even more shocking than the first, and quickly it becomes apparent that a terrible secret threatens to destroy the lives and reputations of several members of Dublin’s elite.

Benjamin Black, as you very probably know, is the alter-ego of John Banville, who also has a novel published later this year. Interestingly - or not, depending on whether you’ve been following the on-off debate about how serious Banville is about writing his crime fiction - he suggested last year, in an interview with The Star’s Mark Egan, that Benjamin Black has influenced the way John Banville writes. To wit:

“Black was able to help Banville,” he says, explaining that the Banville novel he just completed, ANCIENT LIGHT, was improved by his crime fiction.
“Black has got used to doing plots and keeping all that balanced, and Banville has learned some of that from him,” he says.
In ANCIENT LIGHT, Banville revisits his novels ECLIPSE and SHROUD. Narrator Alexander Cleave thinks about the suicide of his daughter Cass and a sexual affair he had as a teenager with a friend’s mother in a small Irish town.

Herewith be the blurb elves:

ANCIENT LIGHT is a stunning novel about youth and age, first love and the illusions of memory by one of the finest writers in the English language. An elderly actor remembers his first affair as a young teenage boy in a small town in 1950s Ireland -- the illicit meetings in a rundown cottage outside town; assignations in the back of his lover’s car on a rain-soaked afternoon. And with these memories comes something sharper and much darker -- the more recent recollection of the actor’s own daughter’s suicide only ten years earlier. In John Banville’s dazzling new book is the story of a life rendered brilliantly vivid -- the deluded nature of young love and the terrifying shock of grief. ANCIENT LIGHT is one of John Banville’s finest novels, both utterly pleasurable and devastatingly moving in the same moment.

So there you have it. A Black novel AND a Banville novel in the same year? But Mr Publisher-type Ambassador, with these gifts you are surely spoiling us …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Margie Orford

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:03:00 +0000

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?
WOLVES EAT DOGS by Martin Cruz Smith.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Arkady Renko (goes with the above). But some days I feel more like Cruella deVille. I never want to be Bambi’s mother.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The Guardian.

Most satisfying writing moment?
My first royalty check.

The best South African crime novel is …?
THIRTEEN HOURS by Deon Meyer.

What South African crime novel would make a great movie?
THIRTEEN HOURS will be a great movie – it is in production right now. And I think BLOOD ROSE, my second novel, which is busy being cast right now, won’t be too shabby either. As one of the producers told me, with true producer tact: ‘We like your South African stuff – it’s like Wallander with good weather.’ Who could argue with that?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Few people think you actually do any work (the worst thing). Being able to nap at your desk (which is probably why people think you don’t work).

The pitch for your next book is …?
Isolde Wagner, a gifted but vulnerable young woman drops out of her life, leaving behind friends, family and career as a classical musician to join a reclusive sect. After she cuts all ties, her anxious mother asks Clare Hart to find her, to persuade her to make contact. But Clare is not sure if Isolde is alive or dead and whoever has had a hand in her vanishing does not want the truth revealed.

Who are you reading right now?
ALL ABOUT LOVE: ANATOMY OF AN UNRULY EMOTION by Lisa Appignanesi (there are very few crimes that don’t have their origin in love).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’ve taken God on before and I came out alright, so I think I would challenge him to an arm-wrestle. I win – I get to write AND read. He wins – well, I get to rewrite his book. There are a couple of bits I think could do with some tweaking.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
One reviewer said my writing induced ‘ball-crushing fear’ - I’m happy with that.

Margie Orford’s DADDY’S GIRL is published by Atlantic Books.

Nobody Move, This Is a Review: SARAH THORNHILL by Kate Grenville

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:51:00 +0000

SARAH THORNHILL is the third of a ‘loose trilogy’ of novels Kate Grenville has written about Australia’s colonial past, and the interaction between white - mainly British - settlers and the indigenous native Aboriginal people, although it can easily be read as a standalone novel.
THE SECRET RIVER, Grenville’s fifth novel, was published in 2006. It concerned itself with a character called William Thornhill, a settler on the Hawkesbury River, investigating how Thornhill evolved from a deported convict to a respectable land-owner. William Thornhill is based in part on Kate Grenville’s great-great-great-grandfather. THE SECRET RIVER won a number of prizes, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Grenville subsequently published SEARCHING FOR THE SECRET RIVER, a non-fiction account of the research she did for THE SECRET RIVER, following that up with THE LIEUTENANT (2008). The second in the loose trilogy, it is set 30 years before THE SECRET RIVER, and details the relationship between a soldier and a young Aboriginal girl of the Gadigal tribe. The book is based on the notebooks of the historical figure Lieutenant William Dawes.
SARAH THORNHILL (2011) follows on directly from THE SECRET RIVER. Sarah Thornhill is William Thornhill’s daughter, and is in part based on Grenville’s great-great-grandmother. Other characters in the novel, including Jack Langland and John Daunt, are also based on historical figures.
Essentially, the story is a coming-of-age tale, with Sarah’s experience of her pioneer life shaped but by no means defined by her relationships with three men: her father, her lover and her husband. But while the story does concern itself with the vagaries of very different kinds of love, the ‘secret river’ of the first in the trilogy’s novels refers to the Aboriginal bloodline and history that has been carried down through the generations since Australia was first colonised, and Grenville is at pains to explore the fraught relationship between black and white in early Australia.
Essentially, she is putting human faces on the colonial experience, and while her settler characters are for the most part very sympathetically drawn (apart from those guilty of class snobbery), there is no doubt that her true sympathies lie with the displaced and dispossessed natives.
In terms of her style, Grenville (who has previously won a number of literary prizes, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for THE SECRET RIVER) has set herself something of a challenge in terms of allowing Sarah Thornhill narrate this story. Sarah is the daughter of a prosperous landowner, but is nonetheless uneducated in terms of a classical education. Despite this, Grenville gives Sarah a unique way of seeing the world, and allows her to express herself in an earthy kind of poetry. It’s a fine line to tread, but Grenville strikes a beautiful balance; Sarah is not so given to flowery utterances that we fail to believe in her, but her thought process is interesting enough, and so evocatively delivered, that she quickly becomes an enthralling character.
Sarah’s pragmatism, meanwhile, is reflected in the descriptions of the Australian Outback. Grenville doesn’t neglect to mention the mud and the dust, the flies, the loneliness of its vastness, but neither does she fail to give its raw beauty its full due.
All told, SARAH THORNHILL offers a unique voice telling a fascinating story against a turbulent and occasionally harrowing backdrop. Warmly recommended. - Declan Burke

A White Knight Rises

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:13:00 +0000

I don’t read an awful lot of historical crime fiction, but THE GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye (Headline Review) has persuaded me that I very probably should. A fascinating backdrop, neatly observed historical detail, an intriguing protagonist, and beautifully written, with the added bonus that many of the characters speak ‘flash’, aka the argot of New York’s criminal underworld: it’s a potent blend. Quoth the blurb elves:

August 1845 in New York: enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points ... After a fire decimates a swathe of lower Manhattan, and following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last forms an official Police Department. That same summer, the great potato famine hits Ireland. These events will change the city of New York for ever. Timothy Wilde hadn’t wanted to be a copper star. On the night of August 21st, on his way home from the Tombs defeated and disgusted, he is plotting his resignation, when a young girl who has escaped from a nearby brothel, crashes into him; she wears only a nightdress and is covered from head to toe in blood. Searching out the truth in the child’s wild stories, Timothy soon finds himself on the trail of a brutal killer, seemingly hell bent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment and threatening chaos in a city already in the midst of social upheaval. But his fight for justice could cost him the woman he loves, his brother and ultimately his life ...

The book is published in March, and I’m not the only one who likes it: “THE GODS OF GOTHAM is a wonderful book. Lyndsay Faye’s command of historical detail is remarkable and her knowledge of human character even more so. I bought into this world in the opening pages and never once had the desire to leave. It’s a great read!” - Michael Connelly.
So there you have it. Incidentally, the book reminded me very strongly of Dennis Lehane’s THE GIVEN DAY, but also Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND, particularly in terms of Tim Wilde’s fish-out-of-water quirks and foibles and Faye’s use of real historical figures, and Wilde’s pursuit of a killer pulling the political strings of sectarian hatred. All in all, it’s a hell of a book.

Claire For Take-Off

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:46:00 +0000

Claire McGowan publishes her debut novel THE FALL this week, with the official launch - according to William Ryan over at the Irish Crime Writing Facepage - taking place at 6pm on Wednesday evening (February 8th) at Goldsboro Books, 23 - 25 Cecil Court , London WC2N 4EZ. Herewith be the blurb elves:

Bad things never happen to Charlotte. She’s living the life she’s always wanted and about to marry wealthy banker, Dan. But Dan’s been hiding a secret, and the pressure is pushing him over the edge. After he’s arrested for the vicious killing of a nightclub owner, Charlotte’s future is shattered. Then she opens her door to Keisha, an angry and frustrated stranger with a story to tell. Convinced of Dan’s innocence, Charlotte must fight for him - even if it means destroying her perfect life. But what Keisha knows threatens everyone she loves, and puts her own life in danger. DC Matthew Hegarty is riding high on the success of Dan’s arrest. But he’s finding it difficult to ignore his growing doubts as well as the beautiful and vulnerable Charlotte. Can he really risk it all for what’s right? Three stories. One truth. They all need to brace themselves for the fall.

Despite the fact that the novel is not, apparently, a story about how Mark E. Smith resorts to murder to get mainstream radio air-play, the early word on THE FALL is good - a certain Peter James, for one, is impressed: “One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while ... astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.” - Peter James
Oh, and in case you were wondering: yes, as seems to be the case with virtually all the ladies of Irish crime fiction, she’s gorgeous too. How do we hate thee, Claire McGowan? Let us count the ways …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sarah Webb

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:09:00 +0000

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?
HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh. OK, it’s not your average crime novel, the spy is an eleven-year-old girl who lives in New York and spies on her neighbours, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time. There’s revenge, punishment, heartbreak and retribution. I’d highly recommend it to any reader, young or not so young.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
That’s a great question, Declan. In a lot of the books I adore, terrible things happen to the heroine - Alice, Rachel (in RACHEL’S HOLIDAY by Marian Keyes), Benny (CIRCLE OF FRIENDS by Maeve Binchy), Katniss (HUNGER GAMES), so I’ll say Posy in BALLET SHOES as I wanted to be a ballerina as a child. (Sorry, not very crime-y or kickass I know!)

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I spend a lot of time reading books for children and teenagers for work and enjoyment, so reading adult fiction is my guilty pleasure. I love good popular fiction by Marian Keyes or Katie Fforde. On the crime side, I used to be a huge Patricia Cornwell fan in the early days, and I’ve just started THE PLAYDATE by Louise Miller, a chilling psychological thriller about a child who goes missing which is excellent so far.

Most satisfying writing moment?
A good day at the desk, getting my 2,000 words done, that’s what I love. For me, that’s the real joy of a writing life.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT by Derek Landy. Yes, it’s fantasy-thriller-crime, yes, it has a skeleton detective, but it’s hilarious, clever and very entertaining. (If I had to pick a book for adults, it would be John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING, which unleashed the brilliant character that is Charlie Parker)

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - the doubt and the insecurity. You are only as good as your last book. Best - the licence to create, and the amazing people you meet - other writers, readers, booksellers, publishers.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Wanted: Two girls to time-share one amazing dress, guaranteed to change your life. All enquiries - ask inside. (And no, they don’t get murdered ‘inside’, it’s popular fiction!) Julia Schuster, floundering amidst family troubles and problem drinking; Arietty Pilgrim, lonely and insecure; Pandora Schuster, the sister from hell: can they ever be friends? THE SHOESTRING CLUB, one extraordinary dress, one life-altering friendship.

Who are you reading right now?
BLACK HEART BLUE, a remarkable book by Louisa Reid, part horror story, part mystery, part coming of age novel. It will be published in May and it’s utterly brilliant. And THE PLAYDATE (see above). I tend to have a couple of books on the go at the same time.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
They are so closely linked, but I’d have to say read. Life wouldn’t be worth living without reading every day, it keeps me sane.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Full of potential.

Sarah Webb’s THE SHOESTRING CLUB is published by Pan Macmillan.

A Warm, Warm Reception

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:46:00 +0000

The latest crime fiction column appeared in the Irish Times yesterday, featuring reviews of the latest titles from Elmore Leonard, Margie Orford, Ann Cleeves, Parker Bilal, Patricia Cornwell and Adrian McKinty. This being, ostensibly, an outlet for Irish crime writing, and THE COLD COLD GROUND being a terrific novel which has had a very warm reception to date, I’ll focus on the McKinty. To wit:

The Carrickfergus writer Adrian McKinty plunges into the dark heart of Northern Ireland’s Troubles in THE COLD COLD GROUND (£12.99, Serpent’s Tail), as Det Sgt Sean Duffy finds himself investigating a series of linked murders against the backdrop of the hunger strikes in the spring of 1981. The setting represents an extraordinarily tense scenario in itself, but the fact that Duffy is a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant RUC adds yet another fascinating twist to McKinty’s neatly crafted plot. Written in a terse style, the novel is a literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written THE COLD COLD GROUND. - Declan Burke

For the rest, clickety-click here …
For those of you who have read THE COLD COLD GROUND, and fancy a dip into the work-in-progress of its sequel, clickety-click here …

First We Take Manorhamilton

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:41:00 +0000

Maybe it’s because my life is turning into one long senior moment, but I can’t remember too many Irish spy novels from recent times, although at a pinch, Eoin McNamee’s THE ULTRAS might qualify (McNamee also writes dedicated spy thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed, along with a series of kids’ spy stories). Meanwhile, back in the ’90s, Keith Baker published three spy titles, among them ENGRAM; and Philip Davidson published a series of very well received spy novels featuring MI5’s Harry Fielding. And then there is the enigma that is Joseph Hone, whose most recent offering, GOODBYE AGAIN, was published by Lilliput late last year.
Anyway, there’s a new Irish spy thriller on the block, in the shape of Kevin Brophy’s THE BERLIN CROSSING (Headline Review), with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Secrets and spies, love and tragedy in Stasi East Germany. Brandenburg 1993: The Berlin Wall is down, the country is reunified and thirty-year-old school teacher Michael Ritter feels his life is falling apart. His wife has thrown him out, his new West German headmaster has fired him for being a socialist, former Party member and he is still clinging on to the wreckage of the state that shaped him. Disenfranchised and disenchanted, Michael heads home to care for his terminally ill mother. Before she dies, she urges him to seek out an evangelical priest, Pastor Bruck, who is the only one who knows the truth about his father. When Michael eventually tracks him down, he is taken on a journey of dark discoveries, one which will shatter his foundations, but ultimately bring him hope to rebuild them.

The early word has been a little mixed, with the Sunday Times and the Irish Independent both suggesting that Brophy’s promise might be better served by a more focused second offering, but The Guardian quite liked it, in the process referencing (as did the Sunday Times and Irish Independent) John Le Carré. To wit:

“It may be technically flawed, but its humanity, attention to period detail and sheer guts will win you over. In the end, this is a story about reconciliation, not just between the former east and west, but between the lies of dogma and the real lives of others who turn out to be us.” - Kapka Kassabova

So there you have it. The story, incidentally, moves from Berlin to London and on to Galway, although I’d have much preferred it had THE BERLIN CROSSING culminated in a shoot-out in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim, so that the title of this post might have made a little more sense. Oh well, you can’t have everything …

Hey Jo, Where You Goin’ With That Gun In Your Hand?

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:56:00 +0000

It’s turning into Ladies’ Week here at Crime Always Pays, and not before time, say I. Mick Halpin over at the Irish crime fiction Facebook page brings my attention to the fact that there’s a new Jo Birmingham novel on the way from Niamh O’Connor (right), her third, called TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT (Transworld Ireland). Quoth the blurb elves:

Behind the façade of Nun’s Cross, an exclusive gated development in South Dublin, lurks a dark secret. The body of one of its residents, Amanda Wells, is found in a shallow grave in the Dublin mountains, a plastic bag stuffed in her mouth. When her neighbour, Derek Carpenter, disappears, he becomes the prime suspect: he was questioned about the disappearance of his sister-in-law, Sarah, many years earlier. It seems like an open and shut case, but DI Jo Birmingham is not so sure, and she has her own personal reasons to prove Derek innocent: it was her husband Dan who had cleared Derek of Sarah’s disappearance. But when Jo starts digging, she unearths more than she bargained for, and her own fragile domestic peace comes under threat. And the one person who could help Jo crack the case, Derek’s wife Liz, is so desperate to protect her family that she is going out of her way to thwart all efforts to establish the truth. Can both women emerge unscathed?

There’s a depressing familiarity to the phrase ‘body found in a shallow grave in the Dublin (or Wicklow) mountains’ these days, and it’ll be interesting to see what O’Connor - true crime editor with the Sunday World - carves from the stark facts and newspaper headlines. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT isn’t due until June, but it’s certainly one for your calendar …

Break Out The Bunting And Red Ribbons

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:16:00 +0000

It’s a good week for debut Irish crime writers. Claire McGowan (see Q&A below) launches her first novel today, in London, and news reaches us of yet another debutant, Louise Phillips (right), whose RED RIBBONS will be published in October by Hachette Ireland. Quoth the blurb elves:

A girl’s body is found in the Dublin mountains. The reasons behind the killing are unclear, as criminal psychologist Julie Pearson tries to unravel the mystery of Caroline Devine’s murder. Why were the girl’s hands and body placed the way they were in the grave? And why did the killer plait the 12-year-old’s hair with red ribbons after she died?
Julie, in her mid-30s, is married to Declan Cassidy and has one son, Charlie. During the investigation, her life, both past and present becomes linked to the crime and the murderer in a way which has potentially devastating results.
Suspect William Cronly, a private man, lives his life by routine, from how he brushes his teeth, to the time of day he pulls the window blinds up or down. William now lives in the city, but his original home ‘Cronly Lodge’ in Wexford, holds secrets which he needs to protect.
The murder investigation spreads to Italy, as police link the current crime to the death 40 years previously of Silvia Vaccaro, a 12-year-old girl whose skeletal remains were discovered 30 years after her disappearance in Suvereto, Tuscany.
Ellie Brady, is a long-term patient at St Michaels’ asylum, who was convicted of murdering her daughter Amy 15 years earlier. Through a relationship built up with her new psychiatrist, Dr Samuel Ebbs, she reveals events surrounding the death of her daughter, which not only establishes her innocence, but also a connection with the murder of schoolgirl Caroline.
How are these characters linked? Will Ellie Brady finally be believed? And can Julie discover the truth behind the killing of Caroline before the murderer strikes again?

“With overtones of Sophie Hannah and Tana French,’ says Hachette Ireland Editorial Director Ciara Doorley over at Inkwell.ie, “Louise is a supremely talented writer. She subconsciously creates parallels between her characters, and this really challenges the reader. Her writing is tense, atmospheric and we’re really excited to be launching a new voice in Irish crime.”
Tana French and Sophie Hannah? Crikey. No pressure there, then …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Claire McGowan

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:57:00 +0000

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?
I just read Mo Hayder’s TOYKO and it blew me away, to the point that I set it aside and thought, ‘I wish I could write like that’. It was a gripping story, a brilliant evocation of a place, a fascinating character study, and a hugely moving and emotional read. I’m in awe.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Nobody in a crime novel, that’s for sure. Even if you’re not a murder victim you’ll most likely be horribly traumatised by something. Probably someone from a Jilly Cooper novel, dripping in champagne and perfume, a hugely talented rider / TV producer / opera singer, and ending up madly in love with a gorgeous film director / polo player / musician. Sometimes it’s nice to read an unreservedly happy ending.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
As you can see above, I’m a big fan of Jilly Cooper, when I want to read something gripping, heart-warming, and glamorous. I’ve re-read most of hers at least ten times. I don’t feel guilty about it though. I feel guiltier about buying Heat magazine instead of all my unread copies of the London Review of Books.

Most satisfying writing moment?
I think it’s when a new story starts to take shape in your mind, and you feel excited about working on it, heart racing, palms sweating. When I’m editing I sometimes dream about leaving the old boring book for a thrilling new one. But you have to try to work things out.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ve heard it described loosely as one, so I’ll risk saying Roddy Doyle’s THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS. I like books that can make me cry, and that one did, a lot. I can still recite bits of it from memory and I read it years ago.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I just read Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION, and thought it would work very well as a film, especially the dramatic end scene. I’d love to see someone make a crime series set in Ireland. Surely it’s about time.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing is working on something creative all day, and immersing yourself in a story. Oh, and being able to work in your pyjamas, of course. The worst thing is the insecurity of always wondering are you any good, will people like what you do, is someone reading your book right now and enjoying/not enjoying it, can you write another book that works, etc. You can talk to people about what you’re doing, but it doesn’t always help, so most of the time, you’re on your own.

The pitch for your next book is …?
My next book is about a woman whose life is turned upside down when her mother dies and she finds out who her father really is. As she learns that nothing in her apparently ordinary life is what it seems, she and her young daughter are thrown into terrible danger. It’s a psychological thriller with echoes of REBECCA and JANE EYRE.

Who are you reading right now?
An Irish writer, as it happens – William Ryan’s THE BLOODY MEADOW. So far it’s great- I could tell from page one I was in the hands of an expert.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
These are hard questions, aren’t they? Can I get a note from my Mum so I don’t have to answer? If you insist, probably reading. It would be sad, but I know I’d never produce anything good if I just wrote in a vacuum.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Unsettling. Emotional. Foreshadow-y (or a good word I learned today and plan to use more – ‘presageful’).

Claire McGowan’s debut novel The Fall is published by Headline.

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: The Booklist Verdict Is In

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:29:00 +0000

It’s been a while, although not nearly long enough, some might say, since we’ve had some ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL-related flummery here, but the book officially goes on sale in the United States and Canada next Friday, February 3rd (where the hell did January go?), so it’s incumbent upon me to point you in the direction of some recent reviews of said tome. I’ve already mentioned that Publishers Weekly gave it the thumbs up, and Elizabeth A. White was also good enough to say some very kind things about AZC a couple of weeks ago. With which, as you can imagine, I am mightily pleased.
Meanwhile, the most recent review comes courtesy of Booklist, with the gist running thusly:

“Metafiction? Postmodern noir? These and other labels will be applied to Burke’s newest; any might be apt, but none is sufficient. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is largely a literary novel that draws on history, mythology, and literature to insightfully discuss writing, books, parenting, relationships, health care, and dying with dignity. Bits of Burke’s comic noir (THE BIG O, 2008) appear, but they serve to subvert the form. Noir fans may not care for this one, but lovers of literary fiction will find much to savour.” — Thomas Gaughan, Booklist

Which is, again, very nice indeed, and I thank you kindly, Mr Gaughan.
Incidentally, THE BIG O picked up a review the other day, and one which touches in part on an issue raised here a few weeks back, given that the reviewer announces at the beginning of the review that he / she gave up reading halfway through, largely put off by the fact that the book is infested with sexism. “I wouldn’t normally review a book I disliked this much,” the review concludes, “but it’s frustrating to find an author who can clearly write, but who can’t make an intelligent creative decision.” Which may well be the epitome of the back-handed compliment.
Anyway, back to ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. The book gets its official North American release on Friday, as I say, and loath as I am to ask favours of CAP readers, I’d be obliged if you could spread the word by any means available to you. Tell a friend (or an enemy, if you read it and didn’t like it), mention it on your blog, post a review to Amazon, etc, or simply send up a barrage balloon with the book cover emblazoned on the side (or both sides, if your budget will stretch). As always, any and all help would be very greatly appreciated.
Here endeth the flummery.

A Murder Less Ordinary

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Now this could be interesting. It’s not often you get a debut crime novel from a former editor of the Irish Times who is also a former Garda Ombudsman, but Conor Brady publishes A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS with New Island next month. Quoth the blurb elves:

In the 1880s the Dublin Metropolitan Police classified crime in two distinct classes. Political crimes were ‘special’, whereas theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were ‘ordinary’.
Dublin, June 1887: the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps up to investigate. Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past successes in need of a win.
In the background, the city is sweltering in a long summer heatwave, a potential gangland war is simmering as the chief lieutenants of a dying crime boss size each other up and the castle administration want the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee to pass off without complication. Underneath it all, the growing threat of anti-British radicals is never far away. With the Land War at its height, the priority is to contain ‘special’ crime. But these murders appear to be ‘ordinary’ and thus of lesser priority. When the evidence suggests high-level involvement, and as the body count increases, Swallow must navigate the waters of foolish superiors, political directives and frayed tempers to investigate the crime, find the true murderer and deliver justice.
A JUNE OF ORDINARY MURDERS captures the life and essence of Dublin in the 1880s and draws the reader on a thrilling journey of murder and intrigue.

Sounds like it could be an absolute cracker. Brady, incidentally, has previously published the non-fiction GUARDIANS OF THE PEACE, ‘a political history of the Irish Police, or Garda Síochána’. We’ve had historical Irish crime fiction from Cora Harrison and Kevin McCarthy to date, and while one Swallow (koff) doesn’t make a summer, the late 19th century in Ireland could well be very fertile ground for a very interesting series. We’ll keep you posted …

The James Gang

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:52:00 +0000

I had a round-up of recent crime titles published in the Sunday Independent last week, among them PERFECT PEOPLE by Peter James and DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY by PD James. I’ve mentioned both of those titles here recently, though, so here’s the third of the reviews, being FEAST DAY OF FOOLS by James Lee Burke. To wit:

Set in contemporary Texas, FEAST DAY OF FOOLS by James Lee Burke is a very modern novel that is nevertheless obsessed with the past. The novel is the third in a series of books to centre on Hackberry Holland, county sheriff of a Texas territory that shares a border with Mexico; the first in the series, LAY DOWN MY SWORD AND SHIELD, was published in 1971, while the second, RAIN GODS, was published in 2009.
Here Holland finds himself faced by an old adversary, a religiously-inspired killer called Preacher Jack. He also struggles to cope with a narco-gang spilling over the border from Mexico, led by the ruthless Krill; and a number of competing groups, some of whom are legal, others criminal, who are in pursuit of a missing man called Noie Barnum, an engineer with information on the Predator drone, and who is considered a valuable asset to be captured and sold to Al Qaeda.
Written in a style that could on occasion be mistaken for that of Cormac McCarthy, Burke’s prose is here heavily influenced by Biblical references, as the aging Holland meditates on this mortality and tries to come to terms with his failings as a man. Holland is depicted as something of a bridge between the past and the future - his grandfather, for example, was an Old West sheriff - and Burke is at pains to set Hackberry Holland very firmly in the landscape of south Texas, frequently writing eloquently descriptive passages about the deserts and mountains, its storms, sunsets and dawns.
Despite the contemporary references, however, and Burke’s explicit referencing of the consequences of 9/11, FEAST DAY OF FOOLS is no less than a good old-fashioned Western masquerading as a crime thriller, fuelled by the pioneer spirit and the attempt to impose order on the anarchy of the lawless Old West. The result is a hugely entertaining and thought-proving novel.

This review first appeared in the Sunday Independent.

How NOT To Be A Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:35:00 +0000

You may, if you’re an aspiring writer and you’ve perused the interweb for more than five seconds at a time, stumbled across a blog post titled, ‘How To Be A Writer’. There are variations on this theme, the bolder ones being titled, ‘How To Be A Successful Author’, but generally speaking the song remains the same: someone you’ve never heard of saying things like, ‘Work hard’ and ‘Don’t give up’ and ‘Try to marry someone who thinks you’re a genius but who doesn’t actually know a good book from an elephant’s left testicle’. And so on, and so forth.
For some reason, you never come across posts about ‘How Not To Be A Writer’. Which is a little bit odd, really, because wanting to be a writer is a disease, a sickness, and most people (yours truly included, very probably) are never going to get well, aka make it as a successful author. Which means, in turn, that all these helpful bloggers are not unlike enablers in a perverse take on Alcoholics Anonymous (‘Be sure to drink booze every day’; ‘Set yourself a number of drinks, for example ten, and try to drink them all in one sitting, although don’t beat yourself up if you only manage nine.’).
Funnily enough, very few of these posts about how to be a writer start off with (or mention at all) the need for some talent. ‘Before you begin your soul-shrivelling journey into oblivion, first ensure you have a flair for swilling martinis at 3pm in the afternoon, every afternoon. Your wife believing that you are a useless booze-hound simply isn’t enough.’
Anyway, given that being a writer is a tough gig, but wanting to be a writer is that soul-shrivelling experience, and particularly if you lack talent, and that I’ve spent the last two decades embarked on such a journey, I hereby present for your delectation ‘Declan Burke’s How NOT To Be A Writer’ (© Declan Burke, 2012). To wit:

How NOT To Be A Writer

1) Read, read, read, read, read. And keep on reading. What’s the worst that could happen? An education?

2) Write every day. Especially on Twitter. Blogging helps too, and especially guest posts on other author’s blogs and unpaid self-promo gigs masquerading as op-eds in your local newspaper. If you’re of an ironic bent, you could specialise in ‘How To Be A Successful Author’ pieces.

3) Develop an obsession with honing your craft. An extreme example of this is Ernest Hemingway, who learned to write by typing out entire books by writers he admired. The trick here is to read back over these manuscripts once they’re typed up, accept that you’ll never in a million years do any better, acknowledge that there’s few enough trees in the Amazon rain forest anyway, and go read some Hemingway.

4) Express yourself. Many people turn to writing as a cathartic exercise, a means by which they can purge their inner demons. But why waste your time impressing complete strangers with your lunacy? It’s much more fun to allow your anger to build and build, then terrorise your nearest and dearest with irrational outbursts of (preferably inarticulate) rage.

5) Learn to delegate. Come up with story ideas and then hand them over to someone else to turn into a novel. If you’re very good at this, you’ll come up with the same story every single time. If James Patterson sues, great: you’ll be so busy fending off his lawyers you won’t have time to scribble so much as a Post-It note.

6) If at first you don’t succeed ... immediately accept that repeating the same action over and over again and getting the same result while expecting a different response is a kind of madness, albeit not a madness sufficiently interesting to be worth writing about. (see Number 4).

7) Shoot for the moon. Aim to be the next James Joyce, Mary Renault or Raymond Chandler, et al. If you’re useless, that should keep you locked away in a shed working on your first manuscript for at least forty years. If you’re halfway good, you’ll give up immediately. If you’re as brilliant as you think you are, you’ll pack it in after three pages, consumed by self-loathing at how close you came to stooping to compete with the likes of raggedy-ass Joyce, Renault and Chandler, et al.

8) Learn from the experts. Sign up to every creative writing programme in town. Literally. Not only will you be too busy attending classes to do any actual writing of your own, the conflicting advice offered by the internationally renowned, prize-winning and critically acclaimed authors hosting said programmes will melt your brain to the point where even your special brand of lunacy is left smouldering in the ashes.

9) Identify your target demographic. Don’t go writing any old tat in the hope people will find it interesting. Do some research and find out what it is people actually like to read (the NYT best-seller list may be of some use here), and then write that and publish it under the name of James Patterson. He’ll hardly notice one more, will he? And even if he sues, we’re back to Number 5 again.

10) Get a life. No, really. Make some friends, have a kid or two. Go for a walk. Play some ball. Travel the world, swim with the dolphins, stalk James Patterson. Start living first-hand rather than through the mirror darkly. What’s the worst that can happen? A life?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE COLD COLD GROUND by Adrian McKinty

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:43:00 +0000

I reviewed Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND for RTE’s Arena programme last week, in the very fine company of Arlene Hunt. The audio can be found here, with the gist of my review notes running thusly:

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife.
And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain. - Adrian McKinty, THE COLD COLD GROUND

Adrian McKinty’s latest novel opens in the spring of 1981, with a group of RUC officers watching a Belfast riot from afar. The action is described in the first person by Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, a Catholic in the predominantly Protestant RUC. The backdrop to the riots is the ongoing hunger strikes, although Duffy and his cohorts are a little disappointed with this particular riot:

“In fact we had seen better only last week when, in the hospital wing of The Maze Prison, IRA commander Bobby Sands had finally popped his clogs.”

Against the powder-keg backdrop of the hunger strikes, DS Duffy investigates a number of murders that appeared to be linked: a homophobic serial killer seems to be targeting homosexuals. Given that Northern Ireland has had no previous experience of a serial killer, however, Duffy has his doubts, and believes that the murders may be perpetrated by someone using the homophobia, and the ongoing tension related to the hunger strikes, as an excuse to settle some personal, paramilitary-related scores …
DS Sean Duffy is a fascinating character, being a Catholic police officer in a predominantly Protestant RUC at the time of the hunger strikes. This immediately gives his story an extra frisson, as sectarianism was at its height (or nadir) in Northern Ireland during the early 1980s. In fact, and despite being a police officer, DS Duffy keeps his religion a secret from his neighbours, allowing them to presume that he is a Protestant.
That said, the sectarianism Duffy faces doesn’t necessarily lend itself to conflict. At work, for example, Duffy and his co-workers engage in sectarian banter in which Duffy gives as good as he gets. As often as not, the sectarianism manifests itself as lazy stereotyping; his Protestant superiors, for example, simply presume that Duffy, being a Catholic, must know virtually every other Catholic in Northern Ireland.
Away from work, Duffy is the antithesis of the ultra-conservative RUC officer. He listens to the period’s more adventurous rock music, and occasionally smokes dope. He appears to be more laidback about life in general than his colleagues, particularly in terms of the sectarianism of Northern Ireland. When it becomes clear that a killer is targeting homosexuals, Duffy is much less homophobic in his attitude towards the gay community than most of his colleagues.
It’s easy to see why McKinty picked the hunger strikes for a backdrop: the setting provides immediate tension, a sharply divided society, and a very vivid backdrop of continuous rioting. By the same token, the hunger strikes are still hugely important in the psyche of Northern Ireland, and have iconic status in large parts of the Catholic / Nationalist community. Any crime writer deploying the hunger strikes as a backdrop runs the risk of being accused of exploiting the period, and the sacrifices made, for the sake of a crime thriller.
Having said all that, I got the impression that McKinty picked the hunger strikes for the backdrop to this novel not just because it would provide instant tension, but because that period, arguably, represented the nadir of the Troubles, and so serves as a kind of crucible for the worst that humanity is capable of.
It’s worth mentioning, I think, that there has been very little by way of serial killer novels in Ireland until very recently. The only explicit examples I can think of are Rob Kitchin’s THE RULE BOOK and TABOO by Casey Hill, although it can be argued that Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE is a serial killer novel (in that particular case, the ‘serial killer’ is a sympathetic character, who kills to avenge others’ deaths). All three novels have appeared in the last two or three years. (Arlene Hunt’s novel THE CHOSEN is in part a serial killer novel, but that book is set in the US.)
This may be because Ireland itself has had no history of serial killers - officially, at least. By the same token, Ireland has lent itself over the years to being a place where a psychopath could very easily indulge a homicidal streak by signing up to one or another political / paramilitary creed. The Shankhill Butchers, for example, were serial killers in all but name.
As for the style, McKinty quickly establishes and maintains a pacy narrative, but he does a sight more too. McKinty brings a quality of muscular poetry to his prose, and the opening paragraph quoted above is as good an example as any. He belongs in a select group of crime writers, those you would read for the quality of their prose alone: James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, David Peace, James Ellroy.
I should probably have pointed out before beginning this review that I’ve been a fan of Adrian McKinty’s work since his first novel, DEAD I WELL MAY BE. I think he’s one of the best crime writers currently working today, and I also think that THE COLD COLD GROUND is his best novel since his debut. Given its backdrop, and the fact that the hunger strikes are still to a great extent a taboo subject in fiction, I would also argue that THE COLD COLD GROUND is an important novel too. - Declan Burke

Down These Mean Streets A Man Called Job Must Go

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:08:00 +0000

I’m on a Raymond Chandler buzz at the moment, inspired by my annual treat of a Chandler novel, in this case THE HIGH WINDOW, which I haven’t read in many years. And before I go on, and before you waste your time reading on, I should declare an interest and say that Chandler is one of my many blind spots. I appreciate that some hail Dashiell Hammett as the original and the best, and that some claim Ross Macdonald as the man who finessed the private eye novel into the apogee of the form, and the truth is that I’m not learned enough to prove either faction wrong, if such were even possible. All I can say is that it was THE BIG SLEEP that properly introduced me to what a great crime novel was capable of, and that I love Raymond Chandler’s novels because first loves aren’t to be dissected and parsed and judged, but cherished with the giddy irrationality that characterises such things precisely because they were the first to expose you to love.
Anyway, reading THE HIGH WINDOW confirmed a few things, as reading Chandler generally does. One is that, yes, his plots were cats’ cradles in which chauffeurs get bumped off because a chauffeur, at that particular point in time, needed to be bumped off. The second is that Chandler, as a writer, and at the risk of over-stretching the point, is Hemingway with a sense of humour. The third - and it’s unfortunate that I’m currently re-reading my latest book right now, in preparation for its final draft - is that no matter what I do as a writer, I’ll essentially be writing the equivalent of fan fiction; and the equivalent of fan fiction is, of course, fan fiction, which is rarely good, and is never good enough.
The point of this post, however, is to invite your opinion of a question that has been dogging me through the latter stages of my current book, which has to do with the point of crime fiction; what it achieves and what it hopes to achieve; what its place is in pantheon of literature. Specifically, I’ve been wondering about its philosophy, and its stance vis-à-vis good and evil, if those terms aren’t too simplistic; and in terms of the bigger picture, about what it says about who we believe ourselves to be.
I’ve recently been writing about my attitude towards violence, for example, murder being the most extreme form of violence, and querying my right as an author to make hay from other people’s misery. The conclusion I draw over at Elizabeth A. White’s blog is fine as far as it goes, I think, although I think at this point that when I wrote that piece I was getting bogged down in detail; or, to put it another way, I was confusing the issue of telling a story with that of telling a story within a certain moral framework. But is it the job of a writer to be some kind of moral pathfinder? To present a scenario in which good and evil go to war, with conclusions to be drawn from the eventual triumph of one over the other? Is it my role to affirm that the glass is half-full if good wins out, or half-empty should evil, at the death, slip away into the shadows with a maniacal laugh?
At the time of writing I don’t have any good answers to these questions; and I should also say that I’m fully aware that every writer will have his or her own ‘philosophy’ in mind while writing, or none at all; and that the same applies to every reader, while reading.
But I was struck the other day by a quote I came across and its similarities to Chandler’s description of the ideal detective from his essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’. For those few of you unfamiliar with Chandler’s celebrated appraisal, it runs like this:

“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world …
“He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks - that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness …
“If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.” - Raymond Chandler, ‘The Simple Art of Murder’

My first book, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, was very much a homage (aka third-rate knock-off) to Chandler’s Marlowe novels; the current work is a sequel to that story, in which the main character, and narrator, Harry Rigby, takes a fairly heavy beating throughout. I liked the idea of Rigby’s experience being akin to that of the Biblical Job, and we’re all familiar with the notion that the crime novel essentially follows the three-act structure of classical Greek tragedy, as Chandler alludes to above; so when I came across a book by Horace M. Kallen called THE BOOK OF JOB AS A GREEK TRAGEDY, I could hardly resist.
That’s when I came across the quote below.

It’s worth bearing in mind, I think, that Chandler wrote (or had published) the ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ in 1950 (I’m open to correction on that), whereas the quote below, in which Kallen summarises Job’s confrontation with Yahweh, comes from a book first published in 1918:

“To cling to his integrity while he lives, to assert and to realize the excellences appropriate to his nature as a man, as this particular kind of man, knowing all the while that this is to be accomplished in a world which was not made for him, in which he shares his claim on the consideration of Omnipotence with the infinitude of its creatures that alike manifest its powers - this is the destiny of man. He must take his chance in a world that doesn’t care about him any more than about anything else. He must maintain his ways with courage rather than faith, with self-respect rather than with humility; or better, perhaps, with a faith that is courage, a humility that is self-respect. When ultimately confronted with the inward character of Omnipotence, man realizes that, on its part, alone moral indifference can be justice. Its providence, its indifference, its justice - they are all one.” - Horace M. Kallen, THE BOOK OF JOB AS A GREEK TRAGEDY

They sound quite similar in tone, I think, and even in certain phrasing; but while Chandler asserts that his hardboiled protagonist exists in a world which may be improved if a certain kind of moral code is adhered to, Kallen’s Job operates in a universe that is essentially indifferent. Kallen, who gives ‘The Book of Job’ a Euripidean reading (and goes to on convert the text into a classical Greek tragedy), and further suggests that Job emerges as an early, subversive example of a particular brand of humanism in the Old Testament, is more hardboiled, to my mind, than Chandler. His conclusion runs thusly:

“In [Job’s story] the soul of man comes to itself and is freed. It is a humanism terrible and unique. For unlike the Greek humanism it does not enfranchise the mind by interpreting the world in terms of its own substance, by declaring an ultimate happy destiny for man in a world immortally in harmony with his nature and needs; it is not an anthropomorphosis, not a pathetic fallacy. It is without illusion concerning the quality, extent and possibilities of man, without illusion concerning his relation to God. It accepts them, and makes of the human soul the citadel of man - even against Omnipotence itself - wherein he cherishes his integrity, and so cherishing, is victorious in the warfare of living even when life is lost.” (ibid)

We do good not because we fear divine retribution, or because our actions might improve our lot, or that of mankind in general; but because the alternative, in the active or passive sense, is to succumb to indifference and atrophy and sink into the premature death of apathy.
Or, this:

“When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it.” - Dashiell Hammett, THE MALTESE FALCON

You’ll appreciate, I hope, that all of the above may well just be a symptom of my desperately thrashing about trying to retrospectively justify a story that started out Chandleresque but slips the noose, for better or worse, of Chandler’s own retrospective assessment of Marlowe and his code. Come my next book, I may well be arguing something else entirely. For now, though, I quite like Kallen’s take on the ‘terrible and unique’ humanism of a Euripidean Job; for the want of a mast of my own construction, I’ll pin my colours to it.

Origins: Stuart Neville

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:06:00 +0000

Once in a while here at Crime Always Pays, I like to hand the reins over to an actual writer who knows what she or he is talking about. ‘Origins’ is a (very) occasional series in which an author talks about the inspiration - character, plot, setting, whatever - for their latest novel, in this case Stuart Neville on Galya Petrova, the heroine of STOLEN SOULS. To wit:

“For every crime, there’s a victim. Sometimes many victims. How those victims are portrayed is a weakness of crime fiction. Too often they are simply cadavers, pieces of meat on which the story feeds. They are rarely human. They seldom have lives that precede the moments of their deaths. They exist only to be crouched over by detectives or dissected by coroners.
“When I first started writing the character Galya Petrova I was determined she would not be a victim. She would not be a body on a slab. She would not wait passively, in fear, for a man to come and save her. If she was to survive STOLEN SOULS, it would be by her own efforts. The Damsel in Distress is a thriller trope that’s far too easy to fall back on, and I’m guilty of doing so myself in previous books. Galya is indeed a damsel, and in distress, but that trope does not stand without a white knight charging to the rescue.
“Jack Lennon is no white knight. Galya’s on her own with only her will to survive. Every aspect of her background and personality feeds into her fight for life. I wanted to create a character who might have fallen prey to some despicable people, but who’d never be a victim. I hope I’ve achieved that with Galya Petrova.” - Stuart Neville

Blessed Am I Amongst Women

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:17:00 +0000

The internet really is a wonderful place. You hang out, you meet lovely people, you talk about blowing up hospitals and Kurt Vonnegut. That is to say, you talk about blowing up hospitals, and Kurt Vonnegut. There’ll be no exploding Kurt Vonneguts on these pages, no sirree, ma’am.
Anyway, Alex Donald was kind enough to host me over at her Multiverse yesterday, where she asked me, among other things, about the meta-fictional elements of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL and who influenced the novel most, which is when the name Kurt Vonnegut came up. If you’re interested, the interview can be found here …
Alex was also good enough to read and review AZC last week, with the gist of her opinion running thusly:

“Darkly funny, superbly written, meta-fictional and with more than a passing nod to Paul Auster, Flann O’Brien and (dare I say it) Chuck Palahniuk’s FIGHT CLUB, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL l fuses literary and crime fiction to create something utterly original.” - Alex Donald

I thank you kindly, ma’am.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth White hosted a guest post from yours truly on her blog, in which I talked about violence in the crime novel, and how the impact of real-life violence alters what you write - or whether you write at all. It also features such searing insights into the contemporary crime novel as the following:

“Meanwhile, it’s also true that the Irish crime novel, in common with most other territories’ crime novels, has for its structure the basic three-act drama of Greek tragedy. To wit: 1) Things Are Mostly Okay; 2) Things Get Screwed Up and / or Someone Sleeps With His Mom; 3) Things Are Mostly Okay Again.”

For the rest, clickety-click here …
Not all the internet ladies have been so kind, of course. Over at Good Reads, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is currently thriving on a 4.29 average from 17 ratings. The average would probably be considerably higher had not one Celia Lynch, bless her cotton socks, given the book a one-star rating, even though the book’s status is ‘gave up’. Now, I know there’s absolutely no rules when it comes to internet reviewing, and that the ethics and standards that apply to professional reviewers go out the window, but isn’t it a bit much, regardless of your reviewing status, to award a rating to a book you haven’t had the courtesy to finish? Mind you, I suppose I should feel chuffed; the only other books Celia gave up on were by Joanne Harris and William Burroughs.
Finally, and for all of you who have been waiting breathlessly for the Tuam Herald verdict on AZC - it’s in. To wit:

“While the character-coming-to-life device is clever enough, the real beauty of this book is the sharp dialogue, the witty vignettes and the well-sharpened digs. The running commentary on the state of the world is priceless … his delightfully jaundiced take on our current ‘reality’ could provide a political primer for any arriving alien unluckily enough to be beamed down here right now.” - Tuam Herald

For the full report, including the reviewer’s appreciation of Raquel Welch in her fur bikini, clickety-click here …

Finally, this week’s reading: Paul Johnston’s THE SILVER STAIN is the latest Alex Mavros novel, is set on Crete and dabbles in the Nazi invasion of that island in 1941; it’s terrific stuff. I’m also reading THE BOOK OF JOB AS A GREEK TRAGEDY by Horace M. Kallen, which is a hoot and a half; and THE GOLDEN SCALES by Parker Bilal, a private eye tale set in contemporary Cairo that may or may not herald a wave of Egyptian hardboiled noir.
So there you have it: this week’s AZC flummery in full. Do tune in next week, when we’ll very probably be talking about Sophia Loren, Edward Anderson’s THIEVES LIKE US, the new Donald Westlake novel from Hard Case Crime and what it was like to meet Amanda Hocking (lovely person, very unassuming, big Kurt Vonnegut fan).

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD by Ian Rankin

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:53:00 +0000

Off with yours truly to RTE last Monday night, and the Arena arts programme, there to review Ian Rankin’s THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD in the company of Sean Rocks. The audio of the review is available here, with the gist running thusly:

THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD is the second in Ian Rankin’s series of novels about Malcolm Fox, who is a police officer with the Scottish Professional Ethics and Standards Department, which is the equivalent of internal affairs, colloquially known as ‘the Complaints’.
Inspector Malcolm Fox and his ‘Complaints’ team of Sergeant Tony Kaye and Constable Joe Naysmith are based in Edinburgh. The novel opens with their arrival in Kirkcaldy, Fife, where they have come to interview a police officer, Detective Paul Carter, who has been found guilty of misconduct after Carter’s uncle, himself a former police officer, blew the whistle.
Carter was convicted of asking for sexual favours, and generally threatening women, and Fox and the Complaints are in Fife to discover the extent to which Carter’s behaviour was covered up by his colleagues. On interviewing Paul Carter’s uncle, Alan Carter, Fox realises that the retired policeman is conducting an informal investigation into the suspicious death of a radical lawyer in the mid-1980s, this at the request of an Edinburgh-based solicitor. When Alan Carter is subsequently discovered dead, in what appears to be a suicide, Fox suspects a conspiracy and a cover-up, especially as the gun Carter uses to kill himself doesn’t officially exist …
It’s difficult to review an Ian Rankin novel without referring at some point to Inspector Rebus, so it’s probably best to get that out of the way first. I know many people will disagree, but I actually prefer Malcolm Fox to Inspector Rebus. He’s a far more balanced and nuanced character than Rebus, who was very much a black-and-white, us-versus-them kind of character.
When I read the first Malcolm Fox novel, THE COMPLAINTS, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Fox. He seemed a milder version of Rebus, and I wondered why Rankin would offer the reader a similar kind of story, and investigator, while making his new protagonist less confrontational, and therefore less dramatic, character. I believed that Rankin could have challenged himself more, but it took THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD to persuade me that that is exactly what Rankin did.
It’s probably fair to say, I think, that Malcolm Fox is a more difficult character to write than Rebus. Fox is a complex man, but he is essentially good-natured; he is also a team player, whereas Rebus was, as the conventions of the police procedural often demand, very much a loner. Moreover, the nature of Fox’s job - a cop investigating other cops - gives him a depth that Rebus’s job didn’t confer. Fox is not a crusader for a perfect police force; he understands that people are prone to making mistakes, and that cops are no less likely than civilians to fall foul of human faults and foibles. Neither does he set himself up as a shining example of what a policeman should be. In his personal life, Fox is as guilty of making mistakes as anyone else. By the same token, having been seconded to ‘the Complaints’, Fox is determined to do the best job he possibly can. If that means that he will earn the opprobrium of his peers for investigating their wrongdoing, then that is a price he is prepared to pay.
One of the most likeable aspects of the novel as a whole is its understated tone. One example: Fox and his team of Kaye and Naysmith. Most writers, with a team of three to fill out, would have made one of the team a woman, if only for politically correct reasons, and especially as the majority of crime fiction readers are women. Instead, Rankin gives us three relatively ordinary blokes who aren’t particularly sexist or politically correct, who enjoy friendly banter and pass their days in one another’s company with the minimum of friction and conflict. Given the pressure the trio are under, and especially as they are so despised by their peers, there’s an endearing quality to their understated mini-brotherhood.
That understated tone also extends to Rankin’s style. Here he writes in a pleasingly crisp, unfussy style, and seems content to allow the story emerge in what appears to be an organic fashion, rather than forcing the issue by giving proceedings a fake sense of urgency. The chapters unfold at a languid pace, and yet this belies the fact that there is plenty by way of drama and event being recorded.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is its historical backdrop. According to Rankin, that backdrop is rooted in reality. When I interviewed Rankin recently , he had this to say:

“It’s based on a real case. The lawyer found dead in his car is absolutely accurate, it happened in 1985, although in the real-life case he was a Glasgow-based lawyer rather than an Edinburgh lawyer. His name was Willie MacRae. And all that stuff in the book, the Dark Hand Commando, the letter-bombs, the anthrax - that’s all taken from the newspapers of the time.”

Despite the sectarianism of the Celtic-Rangers football clashes, we don’t normally associate Scotland with extreme nationalism, and certainly not with paramilitary terrorism. THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD offers a glimpse of a time and place not so far from Northern Ireland in the 1980s, and suggests - explicitly, at one point - that the situations weren’t all that different. The real difference, Rankin suggests, is that the Scottish equivalent(s) of the Irish paramilitary groups were far less organised and ruthless, and were quickly infiltrated by British secret services and Special Branch.
By the same token, there are contemporary resonances to be taken from THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD in terms of Northern Ireland, not least the fact that former paramilitaries wind up democratically legitimate and working in government.
Ultimately, I give THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD a very warm recommendation, to existing Ian Rankin fans who have yet to take plunge into the Malcolm Fox series, and also to those wondering why Ian Rankin is so highly regarded. It showcases his ability to construct an intriguing police procedural plot and people it with believable and interesting characters, and to provide a page-turning entertainment while still investing his story with a thoughtful critique of contemporary society. - Declan Burke

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: So It Goes

noreply@blogger.com (Declan Burke) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:49:00 +0000

Is it really five months since the publication of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL? Jayz. Seems like it happened only a couple of weeks ago, and at the same time it feels like half a lifetime ago. Weird. Anyway, 2012 is off to a good start, review-wise; my cup fairly ran over last weekend.
First up was the inimitable Glenn Harper of International Noir, who opened his review by referencing a number of authors who dabbled in meta-fiction, most of whom (to be perfectly frank) I’d never even heard of. Glenn finished up something like this:

“Among the many crime fiction references, it’s [Patricia] Highsmith that resonates most with ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (for me) … Declan Burke has cemented his central position in the current wave of neo-noir and contemporary crime fiction.” - Glenn Harper, International Noir

As you can imagine, I was pretty pleased with that; Glenn Harper knows of what he speaks. Then a review popped up from an Irish blogger, Alex Donald. Now, I should declare an interest here: about 18 months ago, Alex and I were two of a quartet of writers who sat down to establish a writing group, essentially to motivate one another into finding the time to write. As it happens, I was working on a different book entirely for that writing group, and only managed to make it along to two sessions; despite the writers being a smart and funny bunch, the truth was that I didn’t have the time to devote to any motivational sessions designed to find me time to write. Anyway, cutting a long and not very interesting story short, Alex was kind enough to review AZC over at her blog, with the gist running thusly:

“Darkly funny, superbly written, meta-fictional and with more than a passing nod to Paul Auster, Flann O’Brien and (dare I say it) Chuck Palahniuk’s FIGHT CLUB, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL fuses literary and crime fiction to create something utterly original.” - Alex Donald

Last weekend, incidentally, Dufour Editions was good enough to declare AZC its Book of the Week. I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest, although it was very nice indeed of the Dufour people to republish the Publishers Weekly review of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL that compares it (favourably) to Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF.
Also last weekend, the Sunday Independent carried a review of AZC, under the headline, ‘Darkly hilarious classic takes modern crime writing to a whole new level’. As you can probably imagine, the review that followed was broadly positive. To wit:

“Stylistically removed from anything being attempted by his peers … [a] darkly hilarious amalgam of classic crime riffing (hep Elmore Leonard-isms and screwballing) and the dimension-warping reflections of Charlie Kaufman or Kurt Vonnegut. Like the latter’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL sees another Billy ‘come unstuck’ in what is, frankly, a brilliant premise.” - Hilary White, Sunday Independent

I have to say, it’s all getting a little confusing in terms of the references. Patricia Highsmith, Paul Auster, Flann O’Brien, Chuck Palahniuk, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Charlie Kaufman, Kurt Vonnegut … that’s a pretty wild brew.

I should also say that Hilary White was inspired, in terms of references, in his choice of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. The Billy in AZC is so called as a homage to Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s classic, which is one of my favourite novels from one of my favourite writers; Vonnegut is one of those very rare writers who combines hugely entertaining and accessible stories with great profundity. In my head, Kurt Vonnegut’s fingerprints are all over AZC, to the extent that I went out of my way to erase all traces of his influence in the final drafts - apart, of course, from renaming Karlsson ‘Billy’.
God, I wish I had the time to go read a Vonnegut RIGHT NOW …