“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 291: Brian McGilloway

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’m stuck between The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke for totally different reasons. Can I pick two? I just have.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t really feel guilty reading anything. Any of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels would certainly qualify under the ‘pleasures’ though.
Most satisfying writing moment?
My four year old son picking up a copy of Borderlands in a shop to see his name in the dedication at the start after he started learning how to spell in school. That’s the best so far, and will be kind of hard to beat, I think.
The best Irish crime novel is …
I’m not sure I’ve read enough to make a judgement. The Killing Kind by John Connolly is one of my favourite crime novels by an Irish writer. I read it a few summers ago in one sitting.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again, I’m not sure I’m qualified to judge. A book I’d love to see on the small screen would be The Rye Man by David Park. A great book about a teacher starting in a new school, which I was reading when I started teaching. You’ll need to read it to get the crime element.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is the self-imposed solitary confinement to write and having plot points clogging up your brain for days. The best thing is cracking those plot points when you least expect it.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Maybe he thinks it sounds harder. Like Benny Blanco from the Bronx in Carlito’s Way.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Words on pages? Border-based mysteries? You decide.

Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands was short-listed for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Debut Dagger