“A Broken Mind Is A Very Attractive Thing To A Woman.”

I had a piece published in the Irish Examiner the weekend before last, which centred on Irish women crime writers, and exploring the reasons why crime fiction written by women comes at the crime narrative in a way that’s distinct from the male take on the genre. It featured a rather fabulous photo-shoot styled by Annmarie O’Connor (right), which starred Arlene Hunt, Ava McCarthy, Niamh O’Connor and Alex Barclay as latter-day femmes fatales, and opened up a lot like this …

A WOMAN’S work is never done, especially when that work involves excavating the fears, hopes and traumas that lie at the heart of crime fiction.
  Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O’Connor and Ava McCarthy are four of the leading lights of the current wave of Irish crime writing — women who prove that the female author is very often deadlier than the male.
  “Crime novels are about life, death, love, loss and broken minds,” says Alex Barclay. “A broken mind is a very attractive thing to a woman, because there is a compulsion to understand it. I’m not saying that no man is wired that way, just that more women are.”

For the rest, clickety-click here …