Down These Green Streets: Michael Connelly Speaks!

All Three Regular Readers will excuse me, I hope, for running two consecutive posts on DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, but it’s not often that a book appears with my name on the cover, and given that today marks its official launch, the fact is that I’m giddy as a three-legged donkey on ice. If you’ll bear with me, normal-ish service will be resumed on Wednesday, but in the meantime I offer for your delectation the Introduction to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which is penned by no less a personage than the great Michael Connelly (right). To wit:

Introduction
By Michael Connelly

“At first I thought I didn’t belong here. My name got me the invite but the truth was that I didn’t belong. I am a full and direct descendant of Ireland all right. My grandparents were Scahan, McEvoy, McGrath and Connelly, but still, what did I know of the true Irish experience? I’d been to Dublin and Belfast, quaffed a Guinness at the place on the river where it’s made and drank another pint at Davy Byrnes in an effort to conjure the ghost and inspiration of Joyce. But it hardly qualified me to introduce this book.
  “But then I started reading the stories and the essays and I came to realize there is a universal language in the crime story. What Tana French does in Dublin I try to do in Los Angeles. What John Connolly (spelling not withstanding) hopes to say with Charlie Parker is what I want to say with Harry Bosch. Same goes with Black, Bateman, Burke, and any of the other writers whose work is contained here in. We’re all in this together and there is only the language of storytelling.
  “Great storytelling knows no boundaries such as oceans or borders. It is universal and it is in embedded in the twisting helix of our DNA. It is arguable that the Irish DNA is indeed different, that it has extra chromosomes for metaphor, legend and wit. For such a relatively small place, its impact on and contribution to the world of literature has been disproportionately huge.
  “So, too, now in the shorter field of crime fiction. What you have in this book is the acknowledgement of some of the finest writers in the world in the understanding of the crime story’s important place in literature. These writers know the secret. That the examination of a crime is an examination of society. The form is simply the doorway we go through as we enter lives and worlds as fully realized as any in fiction, as we examine issues and societies and moral dilemmas that are important to all of us. I am drawn to these stories as an outsider with this inside information. As someone who knows the power and importance of what these pages hold.” - Michael Connelly

  We thank you kindly, sir. Meanwhile, the launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS takes place today, Tuesday June 7th, at the Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, with festivities kicking off at 6pm. All are more than welcome, and for a full list of the attending authors, who will be signing copies en masse, see the post below …

Down These Green Streets And Into The Gutter

And so the big day approacheth. Tomorrow, June 7th, sees the official launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY, said launch taking place at the award-winning Gutter Bookshop, Temple Bar, Dublin, at 6pm. As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS is a collection of essays, interviews and short stories by Irish crime authors addressing the phenomenon that is the quality and quantity of Irish crime writing that has emerged in the past decade or so.
  It goes without saying that all are welcome, and I’m hoping for a large turn-out, given that many of the contributors will be in attendance, including John Connolly, Tana French, Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes, Gene Kerrigan, Alan Glynn, Alex Barclay, Eoin McNamee, Brian McGilloway, Niamh O’Connor, Jane Casey and Gerard Brennan, with Eoin Colfer proving gracious enough to agree to launch the tome on behalf of Liberties Press. I’ll be mooching around in the background too, but don’t let that put you off …
  It feels as if tomorrow has been a long time coming, and I’m sure the abiding feeling will be one of relief, given that it’s about three years or so since I first had the idea for GREEN STREETS. I’ll be proud of the book too, of course, but in an oddly dislocated way, I think: my name is on the cover, as editor, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the book belongs to the authors, and that the pride will stem from a delight in seeing a body of writers giving voice, in a range of diverse ways, to the very personal inspirations, compulsions and justifications for doing what they do. It’s hard to say how the book will be received, given that it’s something of a rattle-bag without any real precedent, but for now I’m just happy to see it on the shelf and take its place in the world.
  All the attending authors will be signing copies, by the way, with hardback and paperback editions available. Given the assembled talent, tomorrow evening represents a unique opportunity for crime fans to get their hands on a tome signed in multiple fashion by some of the best writers in the business. Oh, and there’ll be glasses of plonk too. How could you possible resist?
  For those keen to know more, I’ll be on The Last Word with Matt Cooper tomorrow evening, Tuesday, basking in the reflected glory of one John Connolly, who may be persuaded to contribute a few words to the discussion; and for early risers, I’ll be on TV on Wednesday morning, on TV3’s Ireland AM at 8.15am, shuffling nervously and hoping not to say anything too stupid in the company of Eoin McNamee.
  If you can’t make the launch, feel free to cross your fingers on our behalf. All good wishes gratefully accepted … And if you've a mind to order a copy, just clickety-click on the interweb lair of Liberties Press here ...

Here Comes The Summer

And so we’re back, to a grey and dreary Irish summer. You very probably didn’t notice, but I was away for the last two weeks, on holidays in Northern Cyprus, and a terrific time was had by all. Good food, more-or-less constant sun, fabulous views from the terrace of splendid sunsets (sample pictured, above), plenty of reading time, and plenty of time too to spend with Mrs Lovely Wife and the Princess Lilyput. All told, it was a nigh-on perfect holiday in a place with a fabulously interesting recent history, more of which anon …
  In the meantime, it’s on with the job of this blog, which is to big-up good books for the discerning reader, one of which is the latest from Benjamin Black, A DEATH IN SUMMER. Black - aka John Banville - got the royal treatment in the Irish Times yesterday, with an excellent interview by Sara Keating dovetailing with a review of A DEATH IN SUMMER by John Boyne.
  I know there are crime readers out there who resist Benjamin Black on the basis that John Banville has in the past been - allegedly - snobbish about ‘slumming it’ when he writes crime fiction, but in my very limited experience, while interviewing Banville for the DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS collection, he was entirely candid about the notion that Banville and Black write two different kinds of books, one self-consciously literary, the other self-consciously genre. From yesterday’s interview:

“I suppose some of my John Banville books could have been written by Benjamin Black: THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, maybe, THE UNTOUCHABLE, because they are to some extent crime books. I am not necessarily saying that one [type of book] is better than the other. They are just two different ways of writing.”

  Meanwhile, John Boyne had this to say in his review of A DEATH IN SUMMER:

“John Banville, a man for whom the term ‘serious literary figure’ might have been invented, often speaks of these books in a slightly offhand way, as if they were of less worth than his ‘Banville’ novels. This brings to mind Graham Greene, a writer who also divided his work into literary fiction and ‘entertainments’, although, when one considers that the entertainments included THE MINISTRY OF FEAR and OUR MAN IN HAVANA, one might think that Greene was doing himself a slight disservice.” - John Boyne

  Set in 1950’s Dublin, and featuring the amateur sleuth Quirke, the Benjamin Black novels have the outward appearance of sepia-tinged cosies. But - and without giving away too many spoilers - the ending of A DEATH IN SUMMER features the most hard-boiled, stomach-churning noir finale to any novel I’ve read this year, bar none.
  I’ve gone on record before to say that I’ll always enjoy the Banville novels more than the Black novels, but if A DEATH IN SUMMER is any indication of where Banville is going with the Black novels, I’m no longer sure that that’s the case. I certainly think that A DEATH IN SUMMER is worth the consideration of any serious crime fiction reader, and that it rewards a patient reading.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE FATAL TOUCH by Conor Fitzgerald

Set in Rome, but featuring an American-born Italian police detective, and written by an Irishman, THE FATAL TOUCH is Conor Fitzgerald’s sequel to last year’s debut, THE DOGS OF ROME, which garnered him comparisons with the late Michael Dibdin, who along with Donna Leon had virtually cornered the market on English-language crime fiction set in Italy until his untimely death.
  ‘Conor Fitzgerald’, by the way, is a pseudonym for Conor Fitzgerald Deane; the author is the son of poet and academic, Seamus Deane. Intriguingly for a man who has previously translated Joycean academic work, Fitzgerald has given his protagonist the name Blume.
  Here Commissario Alec Blume investigates the murky world of art forgery, aided and abetted by his colleague Caterina Mattiola, former policeman Beppe Paolini, the mysterious Colonel Farinelli, and the memoirs left behind by a dead forger, the Irish artist-in-exile Henry Treacy.
  Beautifully written, the story proceeds at a stately pace which disguises an exquisitely complex plot, as Blume delicately negotiates the labyrinth that is Roman policing. Fitzgerald has an elegant, spare style that straddles both the literary and crime genres, and the style is perfectly pitched to reflect Blume’s own world-weariness.
  Despite his cynicism, however, one of Blume’s chief virtues is his laconic sense of humour, which gives rise to deliciously dry and deadpan observations on virtually every page, most of them at Blume’s own expense.
  Blume is a loner, an outsider and a potential alcoholic, but Fitzgerald cleverly reworks the police procedural’s conventions, much as the forger Treacy pays homage to the Old Masters, and makes a distinctive hero of Blume, particularly in terms of his ability to not only adjust to the corruption that is integral to Italian policing, but to employ it on his own terms. This is a particularly clever twist, as the world is fully aware that corruption is endemic to Italian public life, but this is the first time I’ve come across a character proactively employing corruption as a policing tool.
  Meanwhile, Treacy’s memoirs provide a secondary narrative strand that is equally compelling, and which neatly feed into the main story despite Treacy’s penchant for baroque and self-serving prose. Treacy’s journals, of which there are extensive excerpts, put me in mind of John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE, had Freddie Montgomery turned to art forgery rather than murder.
  The character of Colonel Farinelli is also an intriguing one. A corpulent sybarite, he carries a whiff of cordite wherever he goes. Formerly a powerful policeman, he has long since been shunted out of the corridors of power, due to a murky past in which he was involved, unsuccessfully, in attempting to secure the release of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who was abducted and subsequently murdered by the Red Brigade in 1978.
  All these elements come together in a scintillating novel which offers a compelling snapshot of contemporary Rome, courtesy of a guide, in Alec Blume, who seems set fair to become this generation’s Aurelio Zen. - Declan Burke

  Conor Fitzgerald’s THE FATAL TOUCH is published by Bloomsbury.

This World Is Mostly Broken

Tana French (right) is having a hell of a year. We’re still not halfway through, and already she’s been nominated for an LA Times Book Award, an Edgar and an Anthony, all for FAITHFUL PLACE. Nice work, with her latest offering, BROKEN HARBOUR, to come in August.
  Tana, of course, makes a virtue of pulling a minor character from a previous novel into the spotlight with her latest, and BROKEN HARBOUR will follow in the stumbling footsteps of ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy, who played a supporting role in FAITHFUL PLACE. So wot’s BROKEN HARBOUR all about then? Quoth Tana, from her contribution to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS:

“It’s set somewhere out past Balbriggan [north County Dublin], on one of those half-built ‘ghost estates’, one of the quarter-inhabited ones. A family has been attacked and the father and two children are dead, the mother’s in intensive care and Scorcher, who is still not one hundred per cent back in everyone’s good books after making a mess of the case in FAITHFUL PLACE, has been assigned this case with his rookie partner. And of course, it ends up getting tangled up with Scorcher’s own personal life because Scorcher’s got a history with this location in this previous incarnation – before it was an estate, it was a place where people went on their summer holidays. He’s got a bit of history there and what with that and everything else, the case sucks him in.”

  So there you have it: another slice of thoughtful social commentary wrapped up in beautiful prose which excavates the dark secrets of a psychologically complex anti-hero as a metaphor for a broken country. Easy when you know how, eh?