“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Roses Are Red, Dahlias Are Blue

“If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.” So spaketh Ray Chandler (right), who wasn’t overly enamoured, to put it mildly, by his experience of working as a screenwriter in La-La Land. Still, the movies are crackers, and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin is hosting a mini-festival of Chandler-related flicks in September, which kicks off with Farewell, My Lovely (1944) on September 5 and includes The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Marlowe, Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Long Goodbye and Double Indemnity.
  My favourite, I have to say (usually while ducking rotten fruit and eggs of a similar disposition), is The Long Goodbye, probably because if I was a private eye, I’d be closer in spirit to Elliott Gould’s Marlowe than Bogart’s, or even Dick Powell’s. But hey, imagine if Mitchum had played Marlowe thirty years earlier …
  Speaking of Sleepy Bob, I watched Out of the Past the other night, yet again – it’s almost 20 years since I wrote a college essay on Out of the Past as the quintessential, and damn near perfect, film noir. Maybe there’s more important noirs, tauter and darker noirs, more noir-ish noirs – but Out of the Past is noir in a nutshell, right down to its US title. Build My Gallows High is too melodramatic, regardless of what the novel was called.
  Anyway, here’s a quick take on The Long Goodbye’s transition from novel to movie:
“The realist in murder,” wrote Raymond Chandler (right) in 1950, “writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities . . . It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.” Originally a man of action in taut, streamlined plots in novels such as The Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Long Goodbye (1953) finds PI Philip Marlowe ruminating at length on the relevance of his attitude and philosophy. Plot had never been Chandler’s strength but in The Long Goodbye the plot becomes a rambling, shambolic paean to the tattered grandeur of a man out of time, whose idiosyncratic sense of morality has outlived its usefulness and relevance …
  For the rest, clickety-click here

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Nobody Move, This Is A Review - Mesrine: Killer Instinct / Public Enemy No. 1

Jacques Mesrine – it’s pronounced Meh-reen; you called him Mez-reen at your peril – was the French equivalent of Martin Cahill, aka The General. A Robin Hood-style folk-hero, Mesrine was essentially a bank robber during a career that lasted from the early ’60s until 1979, when he was allegedly executed in the Paris streets by a shadowy police unit.
  Being French, of course, Mesrine was considerably more flamboyant than Cahill. A master of disguise known alternatively as ‘the Man of a Hundred Faces’ and ‘Jacques Du Monde’ (Jacques Everyman), he actively courted the media. His ability to escape from maximum security prisons, in France and Canada, struck a chord with a nation that was struggling to escape from its perception of itself as it came to terms with the emerging truth of the dirty war in Algeria. (Mesrine himself served in Algeria in 1956, where it’s alleged that he was a member of a torture squad.)
  By pitching himself as an anti-establishment rebel in a series of high-profile media interviews with outlets such as Paris Match, Mesrine captured the French imagination at a time when France itself was experiencing the social and cultural unrest that would culminate in the protests and riots of the student revolution of Paris ’68.
  His signature trademark was the double-whammy stick-up: after robbing a bank, Mesrine would run to the next street and rob another, while the police floundered at the scene of the first.
  In thumbing his nose at the authorities in such a fashion, Mesrine garnered potent enemies among the police, the judiciary and the political establishment. Yet it was this flagrant contempt for the powers-that-be that secured him a cult hero status in France on a par with Che Guevara. All of which has contributed hugely to the critical and commercial success, in France, of the movies Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1.
  Directed by Jean-François Richet, the movies are superb thrillers that capture Mesrine’s charisma, devil-may-care attitude and cavalier spirit. Captured in Canada after a failed kidnapping, for example, Mesrine is asked on TV for a quote, and responds with “Long live Free Quebec!” In a microcosm, the moment sums up Mesrine’s appeal: media savvy, cheerfully defiant in the face of apparent defeat, a man of the people, a rebel with a cause for each of his hundred faces. With their free-wheeling style and irrepressible kinetic energy, not to mention their uncomplicated and largely uncritical celebration of his lifestyle, the films are garnering favourable comparisons with Mean Streets and Goodfellas, due in no small part to a terrific performance from Vincent Cassel in the role of the eponymous anti-hero.
  And yet the subtitle of Richet’s first movie, Killer Instinct, is an uncompromising one and should give pause for thought to those who would champion Mesrine’s freebooting adventures. Mesrine was a killer who boasted of 39 murders in total. That may well be a wildly exaggerated number, given that Mesrine makes the claim in an autobiography he published from prison in 1977, also titled Killer Instinct, and which he subsequently asserted he wrote to confuse the authorities in the lead-up to his latest trial, and because his public expected any book from Mesrine to contain a high body-count. And yet there’s no getting away from the fact that, his reputation for glamour, high living and wooing beautiful women notwithstanding, Mesrine’s capacity for murder remained undiminished during the course of his career.
  Richet’s movies are not the first time Mesrine’s exploits have been committed to celluloid, although André Génovès’s film from 1984, Mesrine, confines itself to the 18 months the outlaw spent on the run – after escaping in 1978 from the maximum security prison specially designed to keep him behind bars – with his then girlfriend, Sylvia Jeanjacquot, who was by his side when his car was riddled with bullets in Paris. The fact that Richet devotes two films to Mesrine’s exploits may seem excessive, but there are strong arguments in favour of his approach.
  The first is that Mesrine packed a hell of a lot of incident into his relatively short life. Bank robbery was only one string to the bow of a man who was equally happy robbing casinos and kidnapping for profit. He was also unusually loyal, given that he operated in a milieu in which the notion of ‘honour amongst thieves’ is virtually always revealed to be a myth. After escaping from a Canadian prison, for instance, Mesrine later returned with an accomplice, both heavily armed, in a failed bid to break out some of his old comrades. Later, on the loose after yet another escape, Mesrine telephoned his then girlfriend, who was still incarcerated. She had to plead with him not to come and rescue her, on the basis that she had only a short time left to serve on her sentence.
  Moreover, Mesrine had an incorrigible sense of theatre, and it’s impossible to fully dislike a man who can unlock his handcuffs in court and throw them in the face of a judge, and later bound from the dock to kidnap the judge whilst his trial is ongoing, escaping to the street with his hostage in tow and from there to freedom, yet again.
  All of which fits very neatly with the Mesrine mythology, in which Robin Hood meets John Dillinger and provides a very satisfying movie for fans of gritty, violent and entertaining thrillers.
  The second movie, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, is a different affair. Slower in pace, more thoughtful in its appraisal of Mesrine’s public persona, it covers a period in which the criminal becomes ever more politicised, until such time as he is stating that his robberies are actually politically motivated. He claims fraternity with international causes such as the Palestinian struggle and the Red Brigades, and seems to be trying to pass himself off as a French Carlos the Jackal. While it is entirely probably that Mesrine did business with a wide range of individuals and organisations, not least when it came to trading information and / or purchasing weaponry, the grandstanding comes across as poignantly quixotic attempt by a common criminal to give his prosaic actions some socio-political ballast.
  It’s as if Mesrine, acutely aware of the power of the media, eventually came to believe his own press, despite the fact that he was the one responsible for creating much of the mythology. What is particularly poignant, however, is that he seems to have come to believe that he had transcended the law and its minions, and that he would be judged, when the time came for final reckonings, by the court of public appeal.
  Of course, the success of Richet’s films suggests that the court of public appeal has come down very much in favour of Mesrine and his self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Meanwhile, that a career criminal and self-confessed killer is the cause celebre du jour with both the disenfranchised youth and the intellectual elite in France suggests that a new work-out routine is the least of Nicolas Sarkozy’s problems this summer.

  Mesrine: Killer Instinct is released on August 7th. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 is released on August 28th. This article first appeared in the Irish Examiner.

  Meanwhile, friend of CAP and aspiring crime writer Darragh McManus has posted the first chapter of his magnum opus crime spoof COLD! STEEL! JUSTICE!!! to the web, suggesting that, if enough people are interested, he’ll post Chapter Two. Make it so, people

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Declan Hughes: Resistance Is Futile

As befits these recessionary times, Crime Always Pays has gone on a go-slow, paring back all output to a one-day week. But the news that Declan Hughes (right) has been nominated for yet another Shamus is more than enough to get yours truly back at the keyboard, given that this year’s nomination – full list here – is his third Shamus nom on the bounce: he won the debut section in 2007 for THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD, was back in harness in 2008 with THE COLOUR OF BLOOD, and has just been nominated for 2009 for THE PRICE OF BLOOD (winner to be announced at the Indiana Bouchercon, October 16th). Now, without having the patience or time to go through the history of the Shamus awards, I’m sure there have been other writers who have been nominated for three awards in a row – but for their first three novels?
  I know that the news itself is a little stale at this stage, given that the nominations were announced last week, but given that a high percentage of this blog’s readers are Irish, and there remains a resistance among Irish readers for Irish-set crime fiction, it’s certainly worth repeating – Declan Hughes is one of the best PI writers in the world.
  Quite why Irish readers are resistant to Irish-set crime fic is a story for another day, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of turn-out Hughes gets for his crime writing workshop next month, which kicks off the crime fiction element of the Books 2009 Festival (Dublin, September 12th). If there’s any justice in the world, they’ll need cattle-prods to keep the crowds at bay.
  In a not-unrelated digression, I was at the recent Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan, where I was ‘Who’s he?’ guy in a line-up of yours truly, Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway and Eoin McNamee. The conversation largely concerned itself with why literary fiction is generally considered superior to crime fiction, although what bugs me about those kind of conversations is the presumption that people only read one kind of story – crime or literary fiction, or sci-fi, or chick lit, or whatever you’re having yourself. I always feel a bit guilty at times like that, because I’m a complete magpie – I’ll read anything once it’s well written, or has a great plot, or terrific ideas. And if you can give me all three at the same time, I’ll come and be your Filipino house-boy for the rest of your life (I’m being rhetorical, McKinty).
  Anyway, the gig finished up with Dec Hughes reading a passage from his latest novel, the fifth Ed Loy, which Dec Hughes has very recently finished (the name escapes me now). When he was finished, Eoin McNamee said, ‘Well, that’s put to bed the idea that crime writers can’t write literary fiction.’ Or words to that effect.
  Perhaps it’s because Hughes takes for his inspiration Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and – particularly – Ross Macdonald that his prose has a lushly gorgeous style, and perhaps it’s that the PI of crime fiction – that eternally wounded romantic – lends itself to the kind of first-person monologue that allows the writer’s imagination to flourish. Either way – and this is for those resistant Irish readers – Declan Hughes is a wonderful writer. And all of the foregoing doesn’t even take into consideration his best novel, in my opinion his latest, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, which won’t even be nominated for a Shamus until this time next year.
  There’s a bandwagon leaving town, people. Its name is Declan Hughes. My advice to you is to be on it when it pulls out.