The Sunday Roast

It’s Sunday and it’s the proverbial rack of lamb, albeit of the cold and sweet variety. Yep, it’s our favourite ice cream bloggers, Sean and Kieran Murphy of Dingle, who are celebrating the publication of their tome THE BOOK OF SWEET THINGS through the Mercier Press. Apparently their recipe for brown bread ice cream is only da bomb … Back to more conventional crime fiction-related matters, and John McFetridge submits his DIRTY SWEET to Marshall Zeringue’s Page 69 test, to wit: “Page 69 is the end of a scene. Boris, the driver of the getaway car, is picking up his Uncle Khozha (the shooter he brought in) at a hotel to take him to the airport to get him on a plane back to New York. But Khozha has been spending time with the strippers from the club Boris owns and doesn’t want to go so fast. Now Khozha decides he’s going to have lunch with his old friend, Boris’s mother …” Hmmm, colour us intrigued … A quick jaunt now across the Atlantic to Gerard Brennan’s Crime Scene Norn Iron, where, amid a veritable cornucopia of crime fiction matters, Gerard features interviews with Ian Sansom and some chancing wastrel called Declan Burke … Staying with Norn Iron crime, and GALLOWS LANE scribe Brian McGilloway has one of those fancy-pants podcast malarkey yokes going over at the Pan Macmillan interweb thingy. And while we’re on the McGilloway-shaped subject, Detectives Beyond Borders has been perusing GALLOWS LANE … The Irish World hosts an interview with Paul Charles, he of THE DUST OF DEATH and the Camden Town-based Christy Kennedy series: ‘It was around this time that Detective Christy Kennedy was born, an Irishman who takes his name from two men – Christy Moore and JFK. “It created a very strong, honest-sounding name, I thought.”’ … A couple of snippets on Adrian McKinty – the London Review of Books is hosting a competition to see who can spot the most literary references in his new offering, THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD, while Serpent’s Tail give a heads up about the launch of said tome at No Alibis of Belfast on June 11 … Following on from last week’s win in the Bisto-sponsored Children’s Books Ireland Bisto-flavoured bunfight for THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, Siobhan Dowd’s BOG CHILD has been longlisted for The Guardian’s 2008 children’s fiction prize … Finally, a quick reminder that Ken Bruen’s SANCTUARY, the latest Jack Taylor tayl – sorry, tale – is due on a shelf near you next week. For the skinniest of skinnies, jump on over here …