We Love Lucy

The Ireland AM programme over on TV3 has been very supportive of Irish crime writers over the last few years, even going so far as to sponsor the Crime Fiction gong at the annual Irish Book Awards bunfight. Brian McGilloway was on the couch recently, talking about his latest offering, LITTLE GIRL LOST - which is terrific, by the way - and discussing the challenge of switching horses midstream, particularly when you’ve established a critically acclaimed series character like Ben Devlin, to write a standalone. The good news is that it sounds as if there’ll be more to come from DS Lucy Black, the heroine of LITTLE GIRL LOST who dabbles in the Freudian darkness of fairytales, even if Brian is currently working on a brand new Devlin. Mr McGilloway, with these very fine novels you are surely spoiling us …
  For the six-minute interview, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, and staying with Ireland AM, the programme has been kind enough to invite Eoin McNamee and yours truly onto the couch on Wednesday morning, June 8th, to chat about our mutual love of horoscopes, unicorns and toe jewellery. I can’t speak for Eoin, but I’ll be doing my damnedest to shoehorn in a mention of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, which launches the night before in the award-winning Gutter Bookshop, Temple Bar, Dublin, where all will be made very welcome indeed. As it stands, the authors attending include John Connolly, Arlene Hunt, Tana French, Eoin McNamee, Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes, Gene Kerrigan, Jane Casey, Kevin McCarthy and Niamh O’Connor, an array of talent so stellar that the Gutter Bookshop may well develop its own gravity and collapse into a black hole, thus wiping out an entire generation of Irish crime writers in one fell swoop, and leaving the field free for yours truly, who will have nipped outside for a crafty smoke just as gravity starts to suck them all in. A cunning plan? I like to think so …