You Say You Want A Revolution …

The publishing industry is in a state of chassis, if I can misquote Sean O’Casey, the Amazon-Macmillan slugfest being the latest example of how the writer and the reader, inarguably the most important elements of the publishing food-chain, are being ill-served by the intermediaries. Writers want to write, readers want to read … it should be easy, right? Nope. Readers are still getting their fill, given that (according to Henry Porter, below) “during the worst recession for 80 years, book sales went down last year by just 1.2% in value and only 0.5% in volume.” On the other hand, writers are having advances slashed and contracts torn up, this when they can get published at all.
  A good friend of mine, and a damn fine writer, who shall remain nameless lest the publisher that keeps him on the breadline gets a whiff of sulphur, has advocated on more than one occasion recently that like-minded writers should get together and set up a co-op, akin to the United Artists studio of early Hollywood lore. In theory, it can be done: e-publishing and print-on-demand are just two elements of contemporary technology that allow writers to circumvent the publishing circus and go straight to readers. Okay, it won’t be happening today or tomorrow, but there’s a momentum building that suggests it’s becoming a distinct possibility in the near future. Hell, a media-savvy band of writers that rides the environmentally-friendly ticket (e-pub and POD = more Rain Forest) could discover that Green = the green.
  First problem: self-publishing is vanity publishing, right? Leaving aside the fact, as @stevemosby pointed out on Twitter last week, that all publishing is vanity publishing, the idea that it’s bad to have the courage of your convictions appears to be limited to the publishing industry. Quoth Simon Crump on the Guardian Book Blog:

“But surely that’s a business model, a standard template for ambition? The conviction that what you’ve got is good enough to release into the wild and stands a reasonable chance of selling is at the heart of launching any new product.”

  Pausing only to declare an interest, in that I co-published THE BIG O with Hag’s Head, and self-pubbed CRIME ALWAYS PAYS to Kindle, and that I’m thinking of self-publishing in the near future, we’ll move on swiftly to the aforementioned Henry Porter, also on the Guardian Book Blog:

“What worries me is the loss of income for writers in what is a pretty healthy market, the loss of good editors from publishing houses and the disdain for writers by retailers – people who depend on them. If they are not careful the core talent of the book trade may well combine in new types of ventures – collectives and transparent relationships where writers and editors go into business together on a 50:50 basis and are enabled by web platforms, ebooks and print on demand… disintermediation of a more radical sort.”

  Heady stuff, folks, in theory at least. But I’m genuinely curious: as a reader (and all writers are readers first and foremost, or the good ones are anyway), what’s your take on the self-published book? Does it come freighted with overweening ambition and reeking of talentless desperation? Or is there the possibility that a self-published novel might simply be one that doesn’t fit the industry’s current requirements? Is there, for that matter, the possibility that there’s a small but perfectly formed audience out there hungry for novels and authors that don’t fit the industry’s current requirements?
  I’m not a fool, and these days I certainly can’t afford to be parted from my money by investing in self-published novels and author co-ops and similar fripperies. And yet there’s a part of me that keeps nagging on about how now is the time to get in on the ground floor with self-pub POD, before the big companies wise up and move in with faux-indie offshoots and sponsored writing collectives and the like. Or is it already too late?

On Trampolining About Sex

Between you and me, the video below – in which Alan Glynn talks about WINTERLAND – is probably the most boring video you’ll ever see. Even the colour of the wall behind Alan is boring. The questions are boring, the answers are boring, and even Alan himself – handsome devil though he undoubtedly is – is a notch or two below his usual sparkling repartee. All of which is a moot point: talking about writing is akin to trampolining about sex, to mangle a bad metaphor. Just go ahead and get your hands on the superb WINTERLAND – trust me, you won’t regret it. Roll it there, Collette – if you must …

The Future Is Orange-Ish

It’s about six or seven years ago now that my brother Gavin and I went to the Greek islands. The idea was to travel around the Cyclades, as most people tend to do, but we spent most of the month, May into June, on Ios.
  That might seem a bit of a waste, especially as all the guide books tell you that there’s little to be seen on Ios by way of history or culture. But I had a laptop with me, and I was working on a novel set in the Greek islands, and we got into a nice little rhythm of getting up early, working for a few hours, spending a few more hours exploring parts of the island (there’s plenty to see, the highlights being (one of) Homer’s tombs, and a beautiful Venetian castle at Paleokastro), sleeping into the early evening, and then heading for the Orange Bar.
  It’s a very nice place, the Orange Bar. Low-key, friendly, terrific music … there was very little not to like. The place was run by Wendy, a bonny Scottish lass, and Panos, a music nut Greek (right, and righter), and lovely they were too, and very probably still are. Gavin and I hoisted ourselves onto a pair of stools every evening and drank beer and shots (every third shot came free, courtesy of Wendy, who was testing out some recipes) and talked writing and books and movies and music and women and life, the universe and everything. And every night we requested ‘The Boys of Summer’, and every night Panos played it. A damn fine time, all told. Wendy, incidentally, and if she wasn’t lovely enough already, was named for the heroine of PETER PAN.
  The novel I was writing while on Ios finally got written, although it grew into a sprawling monster of 150,000 words or so, and will remain locked in a deep, dank drawer until it learns to behave itself. Meanwhile, I wrote THE BIG O, and its sequel, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, in which most of the characters from THE BIG O wind up on Ios. A fictionalised version of the Orange Bar, called ‘The Blue Orange’, serves as a nerve centre for various nefarious deeds; indeed, I wrote the story under the working title of THE BLUE ORANGE. Naturally, no one even remotely akin to Wendy, Panos or any of their clientele makes an appearance in the novel.
  I’d like to have a copy or two to send to Wendy and Panos, but – as all three regular readers will be aware – CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is only available in e-format. Still, the good news there is that the Kindle version is now available for those of you with various iYokes: the app comes free, and can be downloaded here. When I mentioned this last week, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS jumped about 20,000 places on the Kindle charts, from 40,000+ to 20,000+, and even sneaked in to 13,573 at one stage. Since then it’s hovered around the mid-20,000 mark, which may well be rubbish by any accepted standard of book-selling, but I don’t know, I’m getting a buzz from it.
  Glenn Harper of International Noir was kind enough to post a review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS this week, with the thrust of his piece running thusly:

“CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is part road movie and part farce, reminding me sometimes of Elmore Leonard, sometimes of Allan Guthrie (particularly SAVAGE NIGHT), sometimes of Donald Westlake (particularly the Dortmunder books), and sometimes of the Coen brothers (particularly Blood Simple) – sometimes all at once.”

  Thank you kindly, Mr Harper.
  So: if enough people buy CRIME ALWAYS PAYS on Kindle, someone somewhere might even publish it as an actual book, and I’ll be able to send Wendy and Panos a copy. Hell, I might even be able to return to Ios and hand it to them in person, and get one last blast of ‘The Boys of Summer’. Roll it there, Collette …

Something Pooky This Way Comes

John Connolly has been dabbling in the dark corners where demons lurk for many years now, and Stuart Neville’s THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (aka THE TWELVE), as the title suggests, also incorporated supernatural elements, or at least allowed for the possibility of such. Is a trend starting? Should I start dusting off my dog-eared collection of Aleister Crowleys? For lo, the blurb for Stephen Leather’s latest, NIGHTFALL, runneth thusly:

“You’re going to hell, Jack Nightingale.” They are the words that ended his career as a police negotiator. Now Jack’s a struggling private detective – and the chilling words come back to haunt him. Nightingale’s life is turned upside down the day that he inherits a mansion with a priceless library; it comes from a man who claims to be his father, and it comes with a warning. That Nightingale’s soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday – just three weeks away. Jack doesn’t believe in Hell, probably doesn’t believe in Heaven either. But when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work. And that if he doesn’t find a way out he’ll be damned in hell for eternity.

  And if that doesn’t constitute a trend, then how about THE DEVIL, the forthcoming Jack Taylor from Sir Kenneth of Bruen? Quoth the blurb elves:

America - the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: but not for PI Jack Taylor, who’s just been refused entry. Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack. Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway. But when he’s called to investigate a student murder - connected to an elusive Mr K - he remembers the man from the airport. Is the stranger really is who he says he is? With the help of the Jameson, Jack struggles to make sense of it all. After several more murders and too many coincidental encounters, Jack believes he may have met his nemesis. But why has he been chosen? And could he really have taken on the devil himself?

  Jack, of course, has long been at war with the demon drink, but this sounds a bit more personal …
  So. The Big Question: Any other upcoming occult-themed Irish crime novels out there we should know about? Or any featuring a few angels, maybe even a Messiah? We’re all ears, people …

  This week I have been mostly reading: DIAMOND STAR HALO by Tiffany Murray; PILGERMANN by Russell Hoban; and SICILIAN CAROSUEL by Lawrence Durrell.

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey And Me

God bless Glenn Harper. These days, when contemplating the Hesperian-like wreckage of what used to be a writing career, it’s very easy to slip from pessimism into a paralysing funk. Matters are improved not one whit when you receive missives from fellow scribes letting you know that their agents have suggested they rewrite (say) ULYSSES with added radioactive werewolves, and in a forthright, accessible style akin to that of James Patterson. Most days, in fact, news from the outside world tends to filter through as confirmation of the fact that, in this brave new world of books we live in, writers are increasingly likely to succeed as the publishing industry’s equivalent of the organ grinder’s monkey. Yes, you’re the one that’s front of house, and you’re the one going around with the tin cup; but the music is getting wonkier by the day, and that organ grinder isn’t noted for his enlightened view on going splitsies with the monkey.
  Being an incorrigible romantic / naïve no-hoper, I have a fairly jaundiced take on market-driven publishing. I won’t, for example, be reading the Jane Austen / zombie novels in this lifetime, and nor will be I be reading any other half-baked, crass, formulaic horseshit, or not unless someone pays me to review it. The reasons for this include my being a literary snob and life being too short, but there’s also, I think, the fact that I have an in-built resistance to simplistic, short-term answers to complex questions. There’s also the fact that, other than our kids, books are the most precious things we have the capacity to create, and if you disagree with that then you’re probably best off visiting another blog.
  Put simply, books are not just another commodity. You can argue the case for music, art, sculpture, theatre and so forth at your leisure, but books are unique. If Western scholars had ‘rediscovered’ great symphonies or paintings in the chambers and galleries of the Muslim world during the 12th and 13th centuries, would the Renaissance have flourished as a result? It’s possible, but unlikely. Books are the thing, and even though the format might change from parchment and scroll to book and digital screen, there is nothing quite like a book for offering up a comprehensive breadth and depth of information, be that information trading in emotion, psychology, logic, philosophy or technology.
  I deal for the most part in fiction here at Crime Always Pays, so with that in mind, and one eye on the market-driven publishing model currently holding sway, let me ask this: where would the world be if JM Barrie, say, had consulted market trends before writing PETER PAN? Or Kurt Vonnegut and SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5? Or JD Salinger and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE? Or Jim Crace with QUARANTINE, or William Golding with THE LORD OF THE FLIES, or Milan Kundera with THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, Nikos Kazantstakis with ZORBA THE GREEK, John Fowles with THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT’S WOMAN? How much would have been lost had Flannery O’Connor’s editor suggested she needed a few vampires to brighten up her tales? THE BUTCHER BOY, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, GONE WITH THE WIND, MOBY DICK, AMONGST WOMEN, RIDDLEY WALKER … You catch my drift. Great books are not written with one eye on the latest Nielsen results. Great books are the product of a singular vision unpolluted by any concern other than that of the story itself. That most of the books above (a very personal list, and one taken from glancing at the shelves around me, but you’ll have your own variation) became bestsellers despite the marketplace and not because of it is something to celebrate; and it’s pertinent too that they’re the kind of bestsellers that aren’t here and gone in six months, but consistently sell across decades and generations.
  Speaking of which, and going back to Glenn Harper – my Kindle-only novel CRIME ALWAYS PAYS has virtually nothing in common with the above list of books other than it’s available to read in the English language (I can’t even claim a paper-and-ink connection), being a modestly humorous crime caper set in the Greek islands. Given that its predecessor, THE BIG O, was written to contain the absolute minimum of death and violence for a crime novel, it does have a very tenuous parallel with the novels mentioned above, in that it has no interest in following trends and suchlike. Which may explain why THE BIG O sank like the proverbial granite submarine on publication, and why its Kindle-only follow-up currently languishes (as of Saturday evening, January 30th) at # 49,163 on the Kindle charts.
  But lo, there’s a ray of light, and it comes all delightfully Glenn Harper-shaped. Quoth Glenn:

Good news for those who, like myself, don’t own a Kindle (and thus have up to now not been able to get Declan Burke’s Kindle-only crime novel, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS). Kindle is now available as an i-phone or ipod-touch app (free), and Crime Always Pays is quite legible on an ipod-touch screen (plus it’s only US$1.25. PLUS Kindle is now also available as a free downloadable application for the PC, and soon to be available for Mac. Is this Kindle-strikes-back, after the rollout of the iPad?

  Erm, I dunno. But if you want to make an incorrigibly romantic pessimist a happy-ish man, feel free to let all your iPhone-wielding friends and family know that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is available in all sorts of new formats (techie details available here). All nods, winks, links and plugs welcome.
  Meanwhile, apologies for the rant, and it’s back to capering about a-top the organ grinder’s organ (oo-er, Missus), and working on a story that features the bare minimum of radioactive werewolves. Wish me luck, people …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Bateman, Bruen and Coleman, Glynn

Yours truly had a piece in the Sunday Independent this week, in which were reviewed the latest offerings from The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman, and Alan Glynn. To wit:

THE DAY OF THE JACK RUSSELL is the whimsical title to Bateman’s latest offering, and the second title in a year from a new Bateman series which features a hero who goes under the moniker of Mystery Man. I use the word “hero” advisedly: Bateman’s protagonist is the owner of a Belfast bookshop specialising in crime fiction, and a man who likes to dabble in puzzles and the solving of crimes unlikely to put him in any serious danger. He is a whinging hypochondriac, a coward and misogynist, a bookworm nerd who nonetheless gets the girl and saves the day. He may well turn out to be Colin Bateman’s most endearing creation.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, for those of you in the Dublin area this coming Saturday (30th), Declan Hughes and Arlene Hunt are doing a couple of readings from their forthcoming tomes, CITY OF LOST GIRLS and BLOOD MONEY, respectively. Squire Hughes has all the details here …
  Finally, I heard a snippet on the radio yesterday that suggests Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK is to be adapted for a movie. Which should be a very interesting project, given that the novel is a fictional reimagining of a high-profile real life event. If anyone has any details, I’m all ears …

Casting A Cold Eye On Melanie Yeats

Ellen McCarthy got in touch this week, which was nice, to send me on a copy of her new novel, SILENT CROSSING, which was nicer still, and even included a note, which last had me trembling on the verge of ecstasy. Anyhoo, SILENT CROSSING is Ellen’s third offering, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

A young man emerges from a car crash on a remote road in Boston. Although he walks away unscathed the crash has claimed an innocent life. Sixteen years later Melanie Yeats walks into a Garda station with her hands stained in blood. As she gradually reveals her story the detectives are left with more questions than answers. What is the connection between Melanie, her missing husband, the car crash in Boston and the death of a young woman? Is Melanie a murderer or a victim? Whose blood is on her hands? Where will her story lead them?

  For more, clickety-click here …
  Also in touch was KT McCaffrey, to let me know the date and details of his launch for NO CURTAIN CALL, the latest Emma Boylan outing, but I’m not telling you them now because the launch isn’t until April and you’ll only forget. Herewith be the blurb elves:

When the naked, blood-encrusted body of a well-known property developer is discovered on a graveyard slab, the media frenzy surrounding the story is overwhelming. Investigative journalist Emma Boylan is assigned to the case but she soon discovers that she will be playing second fiddle to a rival male reporter, much to her displeasure. Peeved at being sidelined, Emma embarks on a line of inquiry that leads her deep into the dark side of London's West End. Dead bodies continue to turn up amid the most elaborate theatrical settings imaginable. Undeterred, she probes further into disturbing deeds that have been a long time hidden. Now she must peel away layer after layer of deception until events collide and spiral into a terrifying, spectacular climax …

  Also in touch this week, albeit indirectly, was Brian McGilloway, whose fourth Inspector Devlin novel landed on the mat. The blurb elves being a busy little bunch this week, here’s their take on THE RISING:

When Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin is summoned to a burning barn, he finds inside the charred remains of a man who is quickly identified as a local drug dealer, Martin Kielty. It soon becomes clear that Kielty’s death was no accident, and suspicion falls on a local vigilante group. Former paramilitaries, the men call themselves The Rising. Meanwhile, a former colleague’s teenage son has gone missing during a seaside camping trip. Devlin is relieved when the boy’s mother, Caroline Williams, receives a text message from her son’s phone, and so when a body is reported, washed up on a nearby beach, the inspector is baffled. When another drug dealer is killed, Devlin realises that the spate of deaths is more complex than mere vigilantism. But just as it seems he is close to understanding the case, a personal crisis will strike at the heart of Ben’s own family, and he will be forced to confront the compromises his career has forced upon him. With his fourth novel, McGilloway announces himself as one of the most exciting crime novelists around: gripping, heartbreaking and always surprising, The Rising is a tour de force – McGilloway’s most personal novel so far.

  Finally, and as my mother used to say, the dead arose and spoke to many – or near enough, for lo, Declan Hughes has started blogging again, the better to report on the many nice people saying many nice things about ALL THE DEAD VOICES. For all the skinny, clickety-click here …

  This week I have been mostly reading: THE LOSS ADJUSTOR by Aifric Campbell; THE CAVES OF THE SUN by Adrian Bailey; and RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Ian Sansom

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?
Georges Simenon, THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Bartleby the Scrivener.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The Bible.

Most satisfying writing moment?
There are no satisfying writing moments.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Flann O’Brien, AT-SWIM-TWO-BIRDS.

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

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
It’s all good.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Currently under inspection.

Who are you reading right now?
Stefan Zweig.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I refuse to do business with terrorists.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Oi va voi.

Ian Sansom’s THE BAD BOOK AFFAIR is published by Fourth Estate.

The Future’s So Bright, We Gotta Wear Goggles

First off, a belated happy New Year; and thanks to everyone who has been in touch to see if I’d fallen down a well, or had a nervous breakdown, or had some natural disaster befall me. Christmas was hugely enjoyable, especially as Lily was just about old enough to appreciate it for the first time; and even though we’ve been snowed or iced in for what seems like a couple of years now, we’re all safe and warm and in very good form.
  The reason for the radio silence on the blog is going to sound a bit selfish, I’m afraid. Basically, early in December, I was putting together a piece to upload when it dawned on me (very late, but I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer) that it was a little bit perverse that I couldn’t find the time to write for myself, but had time to promote other writers. In fact, it was counter-intuitive, particularly as I’ve had a story screaming around my head since even before I announced I was going to stop writing. In fact, that story was the reason I made that announcement; knowing I wouldn’t have the time to do it justice, I wanted to draw a line under the writing for the foreseeable future.
  What has happened in the last month, then, is that with the time I’ve stolen away from blogging, and with extra time available over the holidays, I’ve made a start on a new story. Right now I’m about five thousand words in, which isn’t a huge amount for a month’s work (there were a couple of false starts), and loving it; I’ve had decent feedback from a couple of people whose opinions I trust; and there’s a real fire to the writing that I haven’t felt now in a few years, even if (and perhaps because) the story is probably the least commercial one I’ve ever taken on (sorry, Al). So, upward and onward on that score: hopefully, as the year wears on, I’ll still be able to find the time to keep working away at it.
  What that means for the blog I really don’t know. I can definitely say that I’ll be blogging far less than I used to; and I can also say that the occasional posts will very probably be more me-oriented than of yore; and having said that, I have no doubt that I’ll be featuring other writers besides me. But – a good complaint to have in these times – I’m busier than ever with work, the actual paying kind, and with the writing taking precedence over the blog (which is as it should be, and something I think I lost sight of over the last few years), the posts will probably be so intermittent as to be virtually useless. We’ll see how it goes.
  Meantime, it looks like being an interesting year. I’ve already been on TV, on RTE’s The View, which was good fun to do (January 5th, for those interested); the collection of essays from Irish crime writers, DOWN THOSE GREEN STREETS, is with a publisher awaiting a green light; I have two novels still under consideration from publishers; a couple of invites to summer festivals have already come in; I’m hugely enjoying the story I’m working on; and all in all, it feels like a very fecund time. Despite the cold snap we’re having here in Ireland – and it’s a historical event at this stage, and snowing again as I write, with 10 cms due tomorrow, and temperatures of -13 forecast for tonight – we’re already three weeks past the shortest day of the year, and the sun is on its way back, and the sap is rising. I sincerely hope that all of you are in as fine a fettle.

Fixed, Like A Chicken Bone

Movies And Shakers

Irish movies are, for the most part, a load of pants. There are good reasons for this, not least of which is the all-important issue of finance, or lack thereof, but as often as not hamstrung from the off by scripts that are – there’s no gentle way of putting it – not good. In the past couple of weeks alone I’ve seen Situations Vacant and Happy Ever Afters, both of which appear to have been written by people who haven’t seen a movie since the mid-’70s.
  That said, this week sees released on DVD two Irish movies that at the very least tried to shake things up for the indigenous film industry, although I’ll allow that I’m biased towards Anton (2008) because I know one of the producers. Still, for a movie that was independently made, and for a budget of around €500,000, it’s a minor triumph. To wit:

Ireland, 1970s. Returning home to County Cavan after five years at sea, Anton O’Neill (Anthony Fox) finds himself sucked into the Troubles that have erupted across the border in Northern Ireland. A political innocent, he becomes a pawn in the hands of ruthless terrorists, all the while striving to stay one step ahead of the hardboiled Detective Lynch (Gerard McSorley). With a baby on the way, Anton has big decisions to make – but he’s quickly discovering that sometimes it’s the decisions that make you. Made on a miniscule budget, Anton at times displays the kind of naïveté that bedevils Anton himself, and some of the dialogue is unforgivably clunky. For all that, and particularly given its humble origins, the movie represents something of a call to arms to the indigenous film industry, especially in the context of the series of more lavishly funded and abysmally executed Irish movies we’ve been subjected to in the last couple of years. Vivid cinematography and strong performances in the key roles make for a compelling drama, with Fox (who also wrote the script) marking himself out as a name to watch.

  Re-released this week is Adam & Paul (2004), which may well be the best Irish movie ever made. To wit:

Lenny Abrahamson’s Adam & Paul is a rough diamond that follows ‘dying sick’ junkies Adam (Mark O’Halloran) and Paul (Tom Murphy) on their day-long purgatory through inner-city Dublin as they try to beg, borrow, scam or steal the money that will get them their next fix, with only an occasional toke to take the edge off. If that sounds like a bleak prospect, then be assured that script-writer O’Halloran has read and appreciated Beckett for his combination of black despair and blacker humour: rather than wait around for the elusive Godot, our latter-day Pozzo and Lucky tramp the streets in a Ulysses-style odyssey, encountering various friends, enemies and (for the most part) people who veer clear. Abrahamson makes wonderful use of Dublin’s grimmer environs, O’Halloran has a wonderful ear for vernacular dialogue, and the central roles are excellently played, with Murphy just about claiming the laurels. Hauntingly dark and frequently touching, Adam and Paul is also hilarious: when the pair mistake a Bulgarian (Caramitru) on a park bench for a Romanian refugee, the enraged Bulgarian denounces Dublin as ‘a shit-hole’ on the basis that the city is full of “maniacs, liars and fucking Romanians.” Assured and provocative, albeit indulgently sympathetic to its characters’ addiction, this as good a film as you’ll see all year.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Brendan Garner

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?
SACRIFICE OF FOOLS by Ian McDonald. It’s a fascinating crime and science fiction crossover set in a futuristic Northern Ireland. Well, futuristic when it was written. We’ve caught up with it now. But even reading it today it can be very cool to see how many of McDonald’s ideas and predictions on Belfast society have come true. Only thing missing is the aliens ... so far.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Faust. I’d have driven a harder bargain, though.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Conspiracy websites.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Starting a brand new project.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
That’s a tough one. There are so many. I’ll go with PRIEST by Ken Bruen, though I may change my mind when I read the next Jack Taylor. I hear it’s got some supernatural stuff in it ...

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
DEAD I WELL MAY BE by Adrian McKinty. I imagine the soundtrack would kick ass too.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is that you can’t experience anything without wondering how you might use it in a piece of writing. The best thing is that it drives you to try new stuff because you need to have life experience before you can write what you know (to whatever degree you follow that idea).

The pitch for your next book is …?
I’ll work on that when it’s ready for submission.

Who are you reading right now?
John Connolly’s THE GATES. It’s class.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
As long as he doesn’t make this crazy demand before I sell my soul to become an internationally acclaimed novelist, he won’t have enough clout to force a decision.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Good aul craic.

Brendan Garner’s POSSESSION, OBSESSION AND A DIESEL COMPRESSION ENGINE is available now.

The Irish Crime Novel Of The Year: And The Winner Is …

Last week I mentioned that I’d asked as many Irish crime writers as I know to vote on their favourite novel(s) of the year, in 1-2-3 order, with each first preference getting 10 points, second getting five points, and third preference getting one point. The results are as follows:

THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville (32)
THE LOVERS by John Connolly (21)
DARK TIMES IN THE CITY by Gene Kerrigan (17)
WINTERLAND by Alan Glynn (15)
ALL THE DEAD VOICES by Declan Hughes (15)
FIFTY GRAND by Adrian McKinty (11)

  Personally, I think all six are terrific novels, and I’m not just woofing: I think that any country, regardless of its size, should be proud of producing six novels of that quality (in any genre or none) in a given year. The bar has been well and truly raised, and it augurs well for 2010.
  One point I think worth making is that Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND was published only three weeks ago, which meant that it was unfairly handicapped by time. Had it had a six-month run, as most of the other novels had, I believe it would have received more votes.
  It’s also worth mentioning that Stuart Neville is the only debutant author on the shortlist of six, which makes his win even more impressive. I say ‘impressive’ not because the poll was organised through Crime Always Pays, which makes it a small enough thing in itself, but because it was voted top of the pile by his peers, which – were it me – would give the gong a priceless value.
  Finally, there’s a prize going for those who guessed the right 1-2-3 order via the comment box on the post announcing the shortlist, and while no one got it exactly right, I believe that ‘Bill H’ and ‘Speccy’ came closest in that they both predicted THE TWELVE would win, and also mentioned THE LOVERS in their Top 3. If those folks want to drop me a line letting me know their address, some books will be in the post forthwith.
  Thanks to everyone who joined in the fun, and congratulations to Stuart Neville, a thoroughly well-deserved winner of the 2009 Irish Crime Novel of the Year.

Deadlier Than The Male

Yes, yes, 2009 was a terrific year for the Irish crime novel, blah-de-blah. But it was all a bit, well … blokey. Next year, the ladies are back with a vengeance – literally, in some cases. Arlene Hunt has just posted the very snazzy cover to her latest tome, BLOOD MONEY, in which Sarah Kenny and John Quigley of QuicK Investigations are back in business – albeit without the missing Sarah. Can John cope? Given the man’s previous form, I have my doubts, but all will be revealed on March 4th …
  Tana French is also back in the game next year, after a year out, with FAITHFUL PLACE. This one features Frank Mackey, the handler who ‘ran’ Cassie Maddox in THE LIKENESS, and is another sequel-of-sorts in the sense that it develops a relatively minor character from a previous novel into a main protagonist. “This one spins around family,” says Tana, “the way THE LIKENESS spun around identity.” Nice. The bad news? It isn’t due until July 13th … Boo.
  Aifric Campbell’s debut THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER was well received as a literary thriller when it appeared last year: “A storyteller of really immense gifts. She combines a unique sensibility with a prose of shimmering beauty,” said Joseph O’Connor. So hopes are high for the follow-up, THE LOSS ADJUSTOR, which arrives on February 25th. Details are still sketchy on the content, with Amazon’s book description contenting itself with, “Haunting and humane, THE LOSS ADJUSTOR speaks of grief, forgiveness and redemption.” Consider our breath well and truly bated …
  Busily beavering away over in Clare’s beautiful Burren, Cora Harrison appears to have grown an extra arm or three. Not only will she be publishing EYE OF THE LAW on March 25th, the latest in the Brehon series featuring the investigator Mara, she’ll also be publishing the YA novels I WAS JANE AUSTEN’S BEST FRIEND, also in March, and THE MONTGOMERY MURDER, in May. Crikey. That makes me feel like the laziest slacker in Christendom …
  There’s at least one debutant next year, when Niamh O’Connor publishes IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN, a police procedural featuring Detective Inspector Jo Birmingham – although, to be strictly pedantic about it, O’Connor has published a number of true crime books to date. Will her day job as a crime reporter with the Sunday World give her a cutting edge when it comes to crime fic? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell … IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN appears on April 29th.
  Ava McCarthy debuted last year with THE INSIDER, and the follow-up, THE COURIER, again features that novel’s protagonist, feisty IT girl Harry Martinez. Last time out, Harry’s trials took her from Dublin to the Caribbean; this time she’s off to South Africa and the illegal diamond trade for her most audacious heist to date. THE COURIER delivers on April 15th …
  Another McCarthy, this one of the Ellen variety, publishes SILENT CROSSING on December 20th, a follow-up (but not a sequel) to 2008’s GUILT RIDDEN. Melanie is a woman with blood on her hands (literally, as she walks into a Garda Station) and a missing boyfriend. But the secrets of Raven House mean that nothing is as it first appears …
  Lastly, but by no means leastly, Alex Barclay returns to the fray with TAINTED, a follow-up to BLOOD RUNS COLD which features FBI agent Ren Bryce and is again set in Colorado. BLOOD RUNS COLD won the inaugural TV3 / Irish Book Awards crime fiction gong, so expectations are higher than usual. TAINTED hits a shelf near you in the near future, although confusion reigns as to exactly when: according to some sources it’s today, December 1st, but others are saying it’s as far away as next October. Can anyone out there clarify?

I’ve Seen The Future, Baby, It Is Murder …

For all my recent piffling about quitting as a writer, it was still something of a shock to see my picture in yesterday’s Sunday Times’ Culture section (Irish edition) with the caption ‘ex-novelist Burke’. Mind you, as my lovely wife pointed out, at least I’ll be able to show it to the grandkids to prove that I’m not some senile old fool when I wibble on about the halcyon days when I used to be a writer.
  I write theatre reviews for the Irish Culture section most weeks, and very enjoyable work it is too. The editor of the Culture section was kind enough to get in touch last week to say that he’d read the post on the blog about my quitting the writing game, and wondering if I’d be interested in turning it into an article. I didn’t want to write a me-me-me piece, even if my experience of the last few years was the hook, so I suggested we make it an article about how 2009 was an excellent year for the Irish crime novel, but that forces beyond the control of the writers could mean that the future isn’t as bright as it could or should be. Basically, I didn’t want the piece to read as a bilious case of sour grapes.
  The piece that appeared yesterday (no link) was pretty much the one I submitted, although it had been subbed to give it a punchier opening, and the last two paragraphs were gone, presumably because they were weak and sentimental and because I had already made the relevant point. (This, of course, is pertinent writing advice: perhaps if my books had had punchier openings and stronger endings, I wouldn’t be ‘ex-novelist Burke’.) Anyway, the piece as it appeared yesterday comes below, and – because I’m weak and sentimental – I’ve included the excised final paragraphs beneath. To wit:

This year has been a vintage one for the Irish crime novel, as writers tackle our post-boom neuroses. But it could become a high water mark, too, warns the retiring Declan Burke

Few literary agents come much bigger or more influential than Darley Anderson, and few have keener snouts for new talent. Twenty years ago, when he was getting his agency off the ground, he signed the unpublished Martina Cole and set about turning the thriller writer into a bestseller. Eleven years ago, he secured an advance of £350,000 for John Connolly’s debut novel, Every Dead Thing, the then 29-year-old Dublin crime writer having been rejected by half a dozen publishers before he approached Anderson. For reasons such as these, the publishing world listens when Anderson speaks.
  It’s especially depressing, therefore, to see what Anderson looks for in authors, which he outlined in candid terms to a publishing trade journal last month: plot first, characters second. “Good writing is the last thing,” said Anderson, “and we can work with authors on that.”
  The success of his stable of writers is testament to the wisdom of Anderson’s approach, but is formula is a depressing one for anyone who appreciates good crime writing. Plot and character are the staples of any good genre novel, but they are equally integral to movies, plays and even computer games. In reducing the crime novel to its most basic building blocks, and marginalising the author’s voice, Anderson is doing what the market requires. Artistry is an option extra that can be applied if and when necessary.
  Many in the new generation of Irish crime writers have taken a different tack. There is no school of Irish crime writing, but writers such as Gene Kerrigan, Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes and Stuart Neville have something in common in the way they have looked for cues to America, where noir novels take inspiration from the trinity of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, writers for whom matters of style were inextricably linked with matters of content. Their novels sold to a mass market but they also came to be recognised as works of art, and as having something to say about the societies in which they were set.
  In what may well come to be regarded as the watershed year for Irish crime fiction, Kerrigan, Hughes, Glynn and Neville this year published books that straddle the line between crime fiction ‘entertainments’, as Graham Greene referred to his crime narratives, and the social, or realist, novel. Political corruption, the fall-out from Northern Ireland’s Peace Process and the parlay of paramilitary gains into socially acceptable wealth were some of the themes explored. Angry, fresh and bracingly polemical, the novels are important contributions to our attempt to understand who we are and where we are going.
  They have a fair wind behind them. Writing about crime has become increasingly popular in Ireland over the last decade, and particularly in the last five years or so. The seismic shudders generated by the murder of Veronica Guerin shouldn’t be discounted, but the post-Troubles fall-out, the economic boom, an increasing urban anonymity and the commercial success of ‘chick lit’ have all contributed to a growing number of writers utilising crime narratives to tell their stories about modern Ireland.
  Connolly, who sets his supernatural thrillers in Maine, blazed a trail in the U.S. that Ken Bruen and Tana French have followed. There are movies being made from Irish crime novels, and awards are being won. Literary authors such as John Banville and Eoin McNamee write crime fiction under nom-de-plumes. All told, 2010 should be the year in which the Irish crime novel finally breaks out onto the international stage.
  If it does – and I hope it does – I won’t be along for the ride. Last month, and despite having two published novels under my belt (Eightball Boogie in 2003 and The Big O in 2007) I decided to hang up the gumshoes and abandon crime fiction. The problems of any struggling writer don’t amount to a hill of beans, but there can come a point, especially with a young family and a hefty mortgage, when the rational decision is to withdraw.
  For most aspiring writers, the business of writing involves working two to four hours per day, five or six days per week, all in the quixotic hope that someone, somewhere will like your book enough to pay you an advance that is enough, if you’re lucky, to pay two months’ worth of mortgage. Any business requires sacrifices to make it a success, but if you’re a writer, you’re asking others to make those sacrifices on your behalf, and that can come to seem wrongheaded, or worse, when you’re taking large chunks of time to write books that the market doesn’t want.
  Any sensible reflection on failure involves the realisation that, for one reason or another, one simply wasn’t up to delivering what was required. My problem, according to various rejection letters, was that my books aren’t big enough. By big, publishers mean books that will translate to an international audience and be easily adaptable for the movie screen. Ireland, in its post-Troubles, post-boom incarnation, is fertile ground for a writer, particularly given the prevalence of both blue- and white-collar crime, but the advice I’m being given is that Irish-set crime novels simply don’t have the appeal to cut it on the global stage.
  It’s not just me. In the last week alone I’ve had conversations with two well-respected and well-reviewed Irish crime writers, both of whom were pessimistic about their immediate futures because their books simply aren’t selling; one has already made the decision to stop writing. Their loss would not only impact on the potential of the Irish crime novel, it would raise a serious question mark as to whether the Irish crime novel can continue to generate the kind of momentum that would see it reach a tipping point of market acceptance.
  There are reasons for optimism. Hughes’s The Price of Blood was this year shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America’s prestigious Edgar award in the U.S., while Kerrigan’s Dark Times in the City was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger award in Britain. A fortnight ago, Neville’s debut The Twelve received top billing in the New York Times’ weekly review of crime fiction. Glynn’s recent release, Winterland, has been widely praised by reviewers.
  As any writer will tell you, however, you can’t eat good reviews. In any case, a review is just one person’s opinion. While Neville’s novel was recently praised by a South African reviewer for how it dealt with post-conflict politics, Hughes’s was given a negative verdict by a New Zealand reviewer on the basis that raking over the Troubles is in nobody’s interest. It’s telling, too, that Neville’s novel was published under its original title, The Ghosts of Belfast, in the U.S., but was rebranded for the British market because of perceived apathy or even antipathy to anything related to Northern Ireland.
  The next few years will be crucial for the development of the Irish crime novel. Are our stories big enough to compete on the international stage? Connolly sets novels in the U.S., and Bruen has recently taken to setting his standalone works in America too. Adrian McKinty’s most recent offering, Fifty Grand, was set in Cuba and Colorado, while Alex Barclay’s Blood Runs Cold, and her forthcoming Black Run, are also set in Colorado. French has proved that Irish-set crime novels can be both international best-sellers and award winners, but on current form she is very much the exception to the rule.
  Right now there is a very real danger that what appears to be the Irish crime novel’s annus mirabilis will in fact come to be seen as the high-water mark from which the tide rolled back, leaving some very fine writers high and dry.
  It’s a Catch-22 situation: to survive in the current publishing climate, Irish authors will have to write the big novels that publishers want; but doing so means they will no longer be writing the novels that made this year such a stand-out for the Irish crime novel. – Declan Burke

  So there you have it. Not just sour grapes, but dog-in-a-manger to boot.
  Finally, those excised concluding paragraphs in full:

  Not every author will change course or stop writing, of course. Many will persevere despite their economic circumstances and the lack of commercial success. Some will do so because they have no choice but to write the kind of novels they do. Personally, I hope they survive and thrive, because the realist literature being created by the new wave of Irish crime novelists is too important to be allowed wither away.
  That said, it would be a terrible pity if, having as a nation finally matured beyond Seamus Heaney’s “Whatever you say, say nothing” to broach the taboos that have historically blighted Irish society, we were to be left with “Whatever you say, keep it yourselves.”

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE DARK PLACE By Sam Millar

Garbhan Downey gets in touch, not to promote his current tome, THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES, as you might expect, but to ask if I’d be interested in running a review of fellow Norn Ironer Sam Millar’s THE DARK PLACE. The answer is yes, and thank you kindly, sir, and the review runneth thusly:

THE DARK PLACE by Sam Millar (Brandon Press)

Little children look away now.
  There’s a tagline running across the back of Belfast writer Sam Millar’s new crime novel, THE DARK PLACE, which I really hope isn’t true. It reads: “While most writers sit in their study and make it up, Sam Millar has lived it ...” For no-one, but no-one, deserves the type of punishment Sam metes out to his detective hero Karl Kane in this darkest of tales.
  Kane is beaten to near-death twice, force-fed narcotics, raped by a crazed (and possibly venereal) vamp, cuckolded by at least one partner, and then blown up in an underground tunnel.
  The people around him don’t fare much better either – his daughter is kidnapped by a particularly monstrous serial killer, his father develops late-onset Alzheimer’s and his best friend gets his throat slit helping our man track down the villain ...
  But for all the gore, Millar is a riveting story-teller, leading the reader from crisis to catastrophe at a frenetic pace. And he skilfully punctures the darkness with moments of sharp humour too, getting great mileage out of Kane’s bawdy relationship with his new girlfriend. Indeed, the sarcastically suggestive pre-coital interchanges between Kane and Naomi are as highly charged as anything Chandler or Hammett ever scripted.
  Like Marlowe, Kane has a touch of the white knight about him, and his idealism – and refusal to do the wrong thing – saves the book from its occasional lurches into horror-schlock. Indeed, if the book has a failing, it is that Millar has an inclination to lay it on too thick.
  But then, what do I know? I sit in the study and make it up. Sam, I suspect, while he mightn’t have lived all of it, certainly has spent a lot more time in dark places than me.
  If ever a novel were aptly named. - Garbhan Downey

The ‘Crime Always Pays’ Irish Crime Novel Of The Year: The Shortlist

A trumpet parp there, please, maestro …
  Last week (or maybe the week before) I posted about the inaugural but rather less than prestigious ‘Crime Always Pays’ Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award, which was, above all else, designed to remind people of how many excellent Irish crime novels were published in 2009. If memory serves (although more often than not, it stands and waits), the post involved detailing a forthcoming shortlist and what were in retrospect horribly complicated voting procedures. By which I mean, of course, that the voting would have been fairly straightforward, but the collating and counting would have been unnecessarily time-consuming for yours truly.
  Anyway, to cut a long story short, I cheated, and went with a system akin to that of the Professional Football Association’s ‘Player of the Year’ award, in which the players themselves vote on the best player. To that end, I contacted as many Irish crime writers as I know, and asked them to nominate their best Irish novels of the year, and preferably in the order of 1-2-3. Each ‘1’ vote gets 10 points, each ‘2’ vote gets five points, and a ‘3’ vote gets one point.
  The votes are still coming in, but already a pattern has emerged. It’s tight: to date only six novels have been nominated, and the one currently in first place has 32 points, while the one in sixth place has 16 points, a very narrow spread that confirms the quality of the books involved. So – if you’re an Irish crime writer who received a ‘voting’ email, and you haven’t yet voted, please crack on. I’ll be posting the results on this coming Friday, December 4th, and your vote – yes, YOURS! – could make all the difference.
  For the non-writers among you, I’d mentioned in the original post that whoever predicted the 1-2-3 in correct order would go into a hat for a draw for a bundle of rather fine Irish crime novels. The ‘shortlist’ – aka the list of six novels already nominated – runneth thusly, in alphabetical order (by author):

John Connolly – THE LOVERS
Alan Glynn – WINTERLAND
Declan Hughes – ALL THE DEAD VOICES
Gene Kerrigan – DARK TIMES IN THE CITY
Adrian McKinty – FIFTY GRAND
Stuart Neville – THE TWELVE

  If you want to be in with a chance of winning said bundle of novels, leave your 1-2-3 predictions in the comment box below before noon on Thursday, December 3rd. Et bon chance, mes amis …
  I haven’t voted myself, by the way, and won’t be, simply because I know a few of the Irish writers at this point, and there’s a very great danger I’d be biased in favour of those.
  One last thing: I didn’t say anything in the ‘voting’ email I sent out about writers being precluded from voting for themselves, on the basis that to do so would be to insult their intelligence. Happily, no one has voted for his or her own book. Frankly, I’m not surprised.

Pin ’Em Up, I Say – Pin ’Em Up!

I was pondering aloud on these pages last weekend about how best to ‘market’ Irish crime fiction, as is my wont, which was enough to get the inimitable Joe Long, Irish crime fic fan and bon viveur about NY town, tossing his two cents into the ring. To wit:

“I know how Irish crime writers can get Irish people to buy books. Just start an Irish crime writers calendar. Proceeds will go to charity. The more you show the more the calendars you will sell. The picture taken for each month would have copies of the respective author’s books covering – shall we say – strategic spots. Now, you would have to convince the female contingent to get on board, but a man with your charm should not have a problem. Obviously, you, Declan [Hughes], John [Connolly] and Brian [McGilloway] would have to be buried in months no one cares about. But Arlene Hunt and Alex Barclay – Christmas and Summer – there you go.”

  So there you have it: a sexy Irish crime writers calendar. Personally, I think you’d be quicker trying to sell sexy Irish crime writer colanders, but that’s just me. Any takers?

The Gospel According To Genre

There was a good piece in Publishers Weekly titled ‘Breaking the Wall’, in which a variety of crime writers discuss what Michael Connelly describes as the ‘membrane’ (as opposed to ‘wall’) between genre and literary fiction. For my money, Tana French (right) nails it to the wall:

“When you’re working to make a sentence as perfect as it can be,” says French, “or to make a character real and vivid and three-dimensional, how and whether you do that isn’t dependent on where the book will be shelved.”

  Well said, that woman. Mind you, Tana is one of those writers for whom style appears to be every bit as important as plot or character. Could it be a coincidence that IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS are award-winning best-sellers? Erm, probably not …
  It’s also true that Ireland has its fair share of ‘literary crime fiction’: John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE and THE UNTOUCHABLE, Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN, Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, Eoin McNamee’s RESURRECTION MAN (and others), Brian Moore’s THE COLOUR OF BLOOD (and others), Liam O’Flaherty’s THE INFORMER and THE ASSASSIN, David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK, Gerard Donovan’s JULIUS WINSOME, Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST (and others) … It’s a long and noble tradition.
  Okay, your turn. Your favourite ‘literary crime fiction’ is ...

Oi, Kids – Go Play In The Traffic

It were all fields round here when I were a boy, and where it weren’t, we used to play football on the street, with special rules to allow for passing traffic. No one I knew was ever killed that way, and occasionally diving out of the way of juggernauts gave you a body swerve Georgie Best would’ve given his left liver for.
  All of which is a long-winded way of saying that kids are tougher than we think, and that the desire to protect kids (especially from themselves) has grown out of all proportion to the real dangers that exist. That’s a bit rich coming from someone who has adapted the last line of the Rock-a-Bye-Baby lullaby to ‘Down will come baby / Daddy break your fall,’ so thankfully John Connolly is on hand, courtesy of the Brisbane Times, to lend a bit of perspective to the debate, and particularly the part of the debate that centres on what kids should or shouldn’t be reading. In a piece titled, ‘Why It’s Good to Terrify Children’, JC ruminates thusly:

“Like a lot of boys, I was curious about the darkness, and I quite liked being scared a little, as long as I was in control of the medium.
  “I can’t ever remember closing a book because it frightened me, but there were a couple that I tended not to read when alone in the house, or when I was sitting up in bed at night. After all, I might have been adventurous when it came to my literary tastes, but I wasn’t stupid.
  “Recently I have been put in the unfamiliar position of having to defend my latest book, THE GATES, from accusations that it may be a bit frightening for younger readers who don’t get out enough …
  “When the Victorians bowdlerised the fables, removing much of the violence and peril, and indeed the punishments visited on the wrongdoers at the end, they took away their power and their purpose. Without terror they have no meaning.”

  The scariest book I read as a kid was the Illustrated Bible, especially the bit where Herod slaughtered all the babies. That and the crucifixion. When you’re a kid, and you realise that this is what they do to the good guy … that’s pretty damn scary.