NINE INCHES And Counting

I mentioned last week that DIVORCING JACK, by The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, has been republished, this in tandem with Bateman’s current release, NINE INCHES. The new tome features DV’s Dan Starkey, although the former wise-cracking journalist is now a wise-cracking private eye (of sorts), in Bateman’s 26th novel to date. Twenty-six? I’ll be delighted if I manage to get six published in my entire life.
  Anyway, I had the very great pleasure of interviewing Bateman for the Irish Examiner recently, to mark the publication of NINE INCHES, with said interview opening up a lot like this:

“A few years ago I was in Amsterdam promoting a book,” says crime writer Colin Bateman, “and got held at knife-point by a couple of guys when I was going back to my hotel late at night. They wanted my wallet. A hero or a fool might have tried to disarm them. Dan Starkey would undoubtedly have handed over his wallet, and then gotten stabbed for being cheeky. In real life, I screamed like a girl, and they were so surprised I was able to just walk through them, wallet nice and safe.
  “Um, I’m not sure what my point is with that story,” he says. “Maybe it’s that fiction is a mixture of real life, fantasy and bizarre circumstance.”
  It’s certainly the case with Colin Bateman’s anarchic brand of fiction. His latest novel, NINE INCHES, is his 26th in total, a formidable body of work that began with DIVORCING JACK in 1994. That novel featured the wise-cracking journalist Dan Starkey, who returns in NINE INCHES after a six-year hiatus …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, my humble tome ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL has been short-listed in the Crime Fiction category at the Irish Book Awards, and very pleased I am about that. To celebrate, I’m giving away three signed copies of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which has, all false modesty aside, been rather well received by the critics. The latest review comes courtesy of Alan Griffiths over at Brit Grit, with the gist running thusly:

“I rattled through AZC. It’s highly original, witty, laugh-out-loud at times, thought-provoking and sprinkled with cracking dialogue that, I think, is a hallmark of Declan’s writing. AZC is a terrific read.” - Alan Griffiths, Brit Grit

  I thank you kindly, sir. Incidentally, Michael Malone also has some rather nice things to say about AZC over at May Contain Nuts …
  Elsewhere, the general thrust of the AZC reviews have run something like this:

“Karlsson is a thrilling creation, up there with the Patrick Batemans of literature … a masterpiece of unsavoury reflection on history and Darwinism blended with a hefty dose of sociopathy, yet always leavened with pitch-black wit … Funny and disturbing, it also straddles a fine line between the absurd and the profound. It never forgets the conventions of crime fiction, while simultaneously subverting them. A triumph.” - Sunday Times

“Thus begins a fascinating hybrid of MISERY, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN, and who knows what else … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL isn’t quite like anything else you’ve read, in any genre. It’s clever, intimate, passionate, and funny: altogether a wonderful achievement.” - Irish Times

“What is most refreshing … is its ambition. It is rare that a so-called genre book attempts to wrest free of its constraints and do something entirely different. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL is a genre-buster. Clever, funny, challenging, surreal, unexpected and entirely original.” - Irish Independent

“Declan Burke plunges into surreal realms in this exhilarating, cleverly wrought novel … Comparisons to Flann O’Brien’s AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS are obvious, yet Burke’s canny control of his novel means they’re positive ones.” - Sunday Business Post

  For more in the same vein, clickety-click here …
  To be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, just answer the following question:

What’s the best crime novel you’ve read in 2011?

  Answers via the comment box, please, leaving an email contact address (using [at] rather than @ to confound the spam monkeys) by noon on Thursday, November 10th. Et bon chance, mes amis …
  Finally, if you’ve read AZC, and would like to vote for it in the Irish Book Awards (you don’t have to be Irish, by the way, or living in Ireland), then clickety-click here …

Dreaming Of Gene-y

Gene Kerrigan’s hard-boiled novels have been one of the more enjoyable contributions to the current wave of Irish crime writing, although it’s fair to say that Gene has been writing about crime for longer than he probably cares to remember - his non-fiction titles, HARD CASES and THIS GREAT LITTLE NATION (co-written with Pat Brennan), are minor masterpieces of their kind.
  Always a man worth listening to on the topic of crime, its causes and consequences, Kerrigan is the latest contributor to the National Library of Ireland’s series of talks on crime fiction, and he’ll be front and centre this coming Thursday to talk about how the crime novel is the new ‘social novel’, no doubt referring to his current offering, THE RAGE, in the process. To wit:

On Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 8pm, Gene Kerrigan will talk about his work and how the crime novel is one of the best mirrors on contemporary society. As a journalist, he has covered politics, crime and scandals for over thirty years, and his skills as a social commentator have established him as one of Ireland’s most gripping crime writers with a range of best-selling novels including LITTLE CRIMINALS and THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR. He was the winner of the Ireland AM Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year 2010 for his book DARK TIMES IN THE CITY.

  For all the details, including information and booking, clickety-click here …

Flash! It May Save Every One Of Us …

I had a piece on flash fiction published in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago, and the response to it was phenomenal. Not to my piece, per se, but to the fact that the Irish Times requested examples of flash fiction. In fact, so impressive was the response - in quality and quantity - that the Irish Times today publishes a selection of flash fiction, a feature that is to become a regular item in the newspaper. As far as I know, submission is open to all, regardless of where you’re from. First, the feature:

Flash fiction – very short, bite-sized stories – has become the favourite form of many writers. It’s succinct, punchy and effective – perfect for the online reader and perfectly in synch with the times, writes DECLAN BURKE

LESS HAS always been more in the writing of fiction, but “flash fiction” takes the concept to a whole new level. In essence, a flash fiction is a very short short story, the classic example being attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
  “Flash fiction appeals because it gets right to the heart of human experience in just a few words,” says author Alison Wells. “Its brevity and condensed resonance make sure it lingers in the mind and heart. It has the power of a poem but with greater clarity and accessibility.”
  Nuala Ní Chonchúir is a novelist, poet and short-story writer. “Lovers of flash fiction, like poets, value brevity and the hit of surprise that flash often delivers,” she says. “A good flash story is intense, urgent and often a little explosive, but also deep and clear, so the effect on the reader is like that of a poem – as you read it you admire its concision and, afterwards, it lingers.” The format is quickly gaining credibility. The Dublin Review of Books , for example, announced Ní Chonchúir as the winner of its second annual flash fiction competition recently, securing her a prize of €1,000.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  For today’s samples of flash fiction in the Irish Times, clickety-click here …
  Anyone wishing to submit examples of their flash fiction should email them to flashfiction@irishtimes.com.

The Devil Is In The Detail

I tend not to cover true crime books on Crime Always Pays, but here’s an intriguing prospect I’ve been meaning to bring you for a few weeks now. It’s THE BOY IN THE ATTIC by David Malone, and sounds as if it’ll make for very fascinating reading. To wit:

The disturbing exploration of a previously unreported murder of a young boy by a Satan-worshipping teenager in 1970s Ireland … On a bright and sunny June afternoon, a seven-year-old boy was left in the care of his teenage neighbour. No one knew, or would even have dreamed of suspecting, that the teenager was a Satanist. The two went out to the fields to look for rabbits. The child was never seen alive again. For the first time, in THE BOY IN THE ATTIC, David Malone reveals the exact events of that summer day: how the youngster was lured to his death, how the teenager came to delve so deeply into the occult, and the nightmarish scene awaiting police when they entered the attic. But there is another disturbing question - how is it that this murder, which was easily one of the most shocking and horrific in living memory, was barely reported upon at all? Why have you never heard of the boy in the attic until now?

  Sounds like the devil, quite literally, is in the detail. For an extract from THE BOY IN THE ATTIC, clickety-click here …

The Troubles? We Don’t Need No Stinking Troubles

Good vibes for Stuart Neville’s latest tome, STOLEN SOULS, which appears to be stealing as many hearts as it does nebulous spiritual manifestations of the human spirit, or souls. This review comes courtesy of Denise Hamilton in the LA Times, which kicks off in no uncertain manner, declaring in the standfirst that STOLEN SOULS is ‘a masterpiece of hard-edged, fast-paced Irish crime fiction’. Crikey. But stay! There’s more! For it opens thusly:

“The Irish crime fiction wave rises to new heights with Stuart Neville’s third novel, the tight, telescopic thriller STOLEN SOULS. The writing here is mature and assured: there are no extraneous words or characters, no discussion of Northern Ireland’s long and sorrowful ‘Troubles’. We are beyond politics, beyond the Celtic Tiger and its financial meltdown, mired in a crumbling 21st century Belfast wasteland where Lithuanian gangs bed down with Ulster Loyalists and Republicans as law enforcement looks the other way.” - Denise Hamilton

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, if you’re in the mood to be soothed by Stuart’s dulcet tones, he was interviewed about STOLEN SOULS last week on Ireland AM. Roll it there, Collette …

On Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise And ‘Concealed Homophobia’

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I got to sit down with Lee Child (right), to interview him for the Irish Examiner on the publication of the latest Jack Reacher tome, THE AFFAIR. A very interesting conversation it was, too, especially when Child discussed the negative reaction to the casting of Tom Cruise as Reacher, which he believes is in part a kind of ‘concealed homophobia’. To wit:

SIZE may or may not matter, but for author Lee Child, height certainly isn’t an issue. Particularly if it means that his famously tall hero, ex-US army MP Jack Reacher, will be played in the movies by the diminutive Tom Cruise.
  “Making movies is incredibly complicated,” says Child. “Somebody once advanced the metaphor that you’ve got a hundred extension cords, and they’re all a foot too short. So there are a thousand things to worry about, but an exact physical facsimile of the printed character is not one of them, no.”
  Child is fully appreciative of the fact that Jack Reacher’s fans have been up in arms about the casting of Cruise. “I’m very grateful for the way the character seems to have entered people’s consciousness,” he says. “The ownership of the character has migrated outwards, so that every reader now has a stake in Reacher.”
  By the same token, he believes there’s something sinister in the aggressively negative reaction.
  “I think a lot of this negative anger is a kind of concealed homophobia among certain people,” he says. “I mean, this persistent rumour that Cruise is gay, and the comments about his smallness and his prettiness, smacks to me of something that is not quite all revealed yet.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …