Stuart Neville And The Case Of The Peculier Shortlist

Hearty congrats to Stuart Neville, who was yesterday shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, the winner of which will be announced at the Harrogate Festival later this month. The Old Peculier is a beat or two off the pace, so Stuart was shortlisted for 2011’s STOLEN SOULS rather than last year’s RATLINES, and he faces some stiff competition, including Mark Billingham and last year’s winner, Denise Mina. The full line-up runs like this:

Rush Of Blood – Mark Billingham (Little Brown)
Safe House - Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber)
The Lewis Man – Peter May (Quercus)
Gods And Beasts – Denise Mina (Orion)
Stolen Souls – Stuart Neville (Vintage)
A Dark Redemption – Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber)

  For all the details of how you – yes, YOU! – can vote for this award, clickety-click here …

On Getting Plugged At Bouchercon

One of my highlights of the forthcoming Bouchercon in St Louis - had I been able to make it - would have been the panel hosted by Peter Rozovsky, ‘Cranky Streets: What’s So Funny About Murder?’, which will feature Colin Cotterill, Chris Ewan (who appears to be on an Uncle Travelling Matt-style walkabout across the length and breadth of the planet right now), Thomas Kaufman and Eoin Colfer.
  There’s a terrific buzz building around Colfer’s PLUGGED, the first adult crime novel from the man who turned teen megalomaniac Artemis Fowl into a literary superstar. There appears to be a growing awareness that, even if Colfer branded the Artemis novels ‘Die Hard with fairies’, there has always been a criminal instinct at play in his YA offerings, as suggested in last week’s interview with the LA Times. To wit:

Colfer, 46, might not have turned his talents to adult fare had it not been for Irish crime writer Ken Bruen, who, five years ago, asked Colfer to write a short story for the DUBLIN NOIR anthology he was editing.
  “I said, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I do fairy stories,’” Colfer told Bruen, but his colleague insisted that “when you take away the leprechauns, they’re all crime stories underneath.”
  Indeed, they are. In the seven Artemis Fowl books published so far, the crime stories are just populated with nefarious mud people and trolls and other fantasy creatures. What’s different about PLUGGED is the real-world setting, the subject matter — and Colfer’s voice, which, like the many books he’s written for children, is incomparably clever and witty. PLUGGED is just more profane and violent …

  Indeed it is. Meanwhile, there’s good and bad news for Artemis Fowl fans. The good news is, director Jim Sheridan has been confirmed to helm the first movie in the series, which will be produced by the Weinstein brothers; the bad news is, the next Artemis novel, THE LAST GUARDIAN, will be the last.
  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  As for the reviews, well, it’s fair to say they’ve been of the glowing variety. Quoth, for example, the Seattle Times:

“PLUGGED is that rare book that mixes terrific suspense with laugh-out-loud humour ... [Danny] McEvoy will appeal to fans of the crime novels of Elmore Leonard and the wacky characters prevalent in the novels of Carl Hiaasen.”

  For those of you attending Bouchercon, Eoin Colfer is as funny in person as the characters he creates on the page, even if he doesn’t have any (immediate) plans for world domination, and his hair is all his own. Miss ‘Cranky Streets’ at your peril …

We Are All In The Gutter, But Some Of Us Are Looking At The Stars

Off with yours truly this evening to the award-winning Gutter Bookshop in Temple Bar, where Brian McGilloway will be holding court and reading from his latest offering, LITTLE GIRL LOST, in the company of Sean Black, who may or may not be reading from his forthcoming tome, GRIDLOCK, which should be touching down at a shelf near you on August 4th. Should be a good evening, with perhaps a Pimms or two to follow, given that today is LITTLE GIRL LOST’s official publication date. If you’re around about Dublin this evening, Friday May 6th, wondering where all the Irish literary stars are hanging out, swing by the Gutter Bookshop around 6.30pm and we’ll give you directions.
  Incidentally, Brian - due to the magic of electronic recording devices and suchlike - will be interviewed by Sean Rocks on RTE’s Arena arts programme this evening. Clickety-click here at about 7.30pm for the Derryman’s dulcet tones …
  In other Irish crime fiction-related news, the very generous Michael Malone interviews yours truly over at his blog, May Contain Nuts. Sample Q&A:

Q: One of the many things in EIGHTBALL BOOGIE that fascinated me was Harry Rigby’s relationship with his psycho brother. Tell us where that came from.

A: “As with all the ostensibly bad guys in my books - Rossi in THE BIG O, Karlsson in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL - I have a lot of sympathy for Gonzo, who is Harry’s brother in EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. He’s an exaggerated version of the milder kind of sociopath that people tend to meet in their lives - the bullying boss at work, the aggressive moron who lashes out at the end of the night after one too many beers, the passive-aggressive manipulator we’ve all met at some point in our lives. Gene Kerrigan makes the point that most criminals aren’t all that different to law-abiding citizens, they simply want to pay their mortgage off quicker, and are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals ...”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Elsewhere, the estimable Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders fame reviewed Gerard O’Donovan’s PRIEST for the Philadelphia Inquirer last weekend. Peter being Peter, a straightforward review wouldn’t suffice, and so the novel is reviewed in the context of O’Donovan’s ambition, as quoted by Peter, to ‘put the crucifix back at the heart of Irish writing’. Which is an entirely admirable ambition, in my opinion, so long as said crucifix is being used as a stake in the heart of an Irish church that has abused the trust of its faithful by sheltering sexual deviants who preyed on vulnerable young children. But that’s just me. Anyway, you can find Peter’s review here …
  Finally, good news for The Artist Formerly Known As Colin Bateman: DR YES has been short-listed for the Crimefest ‘Last Laugh’ award, a gong that Bateman has taken home in the past. By which I mean, he has won it in the past, not that he snuck in and stole it and smuggled it back to Norn Iron. Anyway, the competition will be fierce this year: also shortlisted are Chris Ewan for THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO VEGAS, and the entirely bonkers OLD DOGS, by the lovely Donna Moore. Good luck to all concerned, and all the shortlists for the Crimefest weekend can be found here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Chris Ewan

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Chandler’s THE LONG GOODBYE. The book that got me into crime fiction in the first place, and probably still my favourite.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Sal Paradise in ON THE ROAD.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I can’t say I feel guilty about it, because they’re a great series of books, but some of the pastel, chick-lit style covers on Janet Evanovich’s early Stephanie Plum novels can make me feel a tad self-conscious.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing the first five chapters of a new manuscript. Love the set-up phase. After that, it gets trickier.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
So much to chose from, and so much still to read, but Declan Hughes’ THE COLOUR OF BLOOD is terrific.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’d like to see John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series translated to the screen.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing - we used to have a darts board in the office I worked in. I miss that dart board. Best thing? I guess now that I’m officially a ‘writer’, I might not sound like quite such a nut when I tell people what I do with my time.

The pitch for your next book is …?
THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO VEGAS. Think Ocean’s Two - only with a floating corpse, a magician who vanishes in the middle of his own show, and no George Clooney.

Who are you reading right now?
A mixture of things. I just finished Dennis Lehane’s A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR. I’m currently reading Michael Stanley’s A DEADLY TRADE, Lee Child’s KILLING FLOOR and Jan Morris’ VENICE. And I’m just about to revisit Anne Zouroudi’s THE TAINT OF MIDAS, the next selection for the crime fiction book club I run on the Isle of Man.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, I guess. Probably a good moment to take a peek at a Bible for the first time since school.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Nimble. Convivial. Sly.

Chris Ewan’s THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO VEGAS is published by Pocket Books.

Bristol 2009: Natural Born Shillers?

I was a bit ambivalent about the Bristol Crime Fest this year, I have to say. On the one hand, it’s always terrific to meet up with people you only see once or twice a year, if you’re lucky, some of whom dandered out for a bite to eat on Friday night (L to R: award-winning blogger Peter Rozovsky (sans beard), Vincent Holland-Keen, Donna Moore, Ewan (aka Donna Moore’s other half), Cara Black, Chris Ewan, Rafe McGregor, and Your Humble Host). A good night was had by all, although some appetites were rather ruined by Ewan’s mention of Donna’s party piece, which she was gracious enough not to showcase …
  On the other hand, events / conventions aren’t really about the business of writing, but much more about the business of marketing. I shouldn’t really grouse about that fact, given that I was privileged enough to be asked to sit on two panels, one of which took place on Friday and was moderated by Donna Moore, alongside Chris Ewan, Steve Mosby and Kevin Wignall. The panel went well enough, in that none of the panellists were chucked out any windows for boring the audience to tears, although I did find myself explaining why, exactly, I’d hijacked a mini-bus at the age of 15. Gosh, you get a bad rap and The Man never lets you forget it …
  But I only attended one panel I wasn’t involved with all weekend, and that for about 20 minutes, and that only because I got caught up in Ali Karim’s gravitational pull and he was already headed that way. The panellists were all interesting people, and two of them had published novels set in Greece (Paul Johnston and Anne Zouroudi), which is something I have a personal interest in, given that I’ve been working on-and-off on a novel set on Crete for the last five or six years, but … well, I don’t know. It’s hard to feel that you’re not really discovering anything you wouldn’t from reading between the lines of a back-page biog, I suppose … which isn’t to criticise the writers, because all the panellists I saw were pro-active and engaging. Maybe it’s just the case that writers talking about writing just isn’t very interesting, much in the same way as porn stars talking about sex isn’t very interesting. Or so I imagine …
  By the same token, and maybe it’s just that the dry sherries were in, the various conversations on Friday night were much more fun.
I had a particularly good one with Steve Mosby and Ali Karim (right) about a whole range of subjects – which is to say, of course, that Ali talked while Steve and I nodded occasionally. Still, there was a couple of fascinating topics, not least of which is the new demand in the US for companies which will maintain your on-line persona after your death, updating your Facebook, emailing your buddies, and even keeping your game-playing avatar hale and hearty while you sleep the big sleep. Perverse? Yes. Pointless? Yes. Chunky material for a Phil Dick-style book? Most certainly.
  Anyway, Friday was a good day, given that I bumped into Karen Meek and Norm Rushdie, and Dec Hughes and Brian McGilloway, and Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Maxim Jakubowski and Paul Johnston, and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours bitching about the publishing industry with Rafe McGregor, gentleman that he is. All of which went some way to off-setting the embarrassment I should have been feeling at attending Crime Fest with no book other than THE BIG O to promote, which was first published two years ago, and – technically speaking – has never been published in the UK. For shame, etc …
  Which brings me back to the whole being-marketed-at issue. Would I have been happier with the weekend if I’d had a book to market? Not really. And I should say that I’m not dissing Crime Fest here, because I think it’s a terrific experience, and brilliantly run, and I’ll be back again next year to hook up with like-minded folk. But, to be honest – and I’m probably shooting myself in the foot here – the whole issue of selling / marketing books is simply a necessary evil that follows on from the privilege of being published in the first place. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d imagine most writers would much prefer to live in splendid isolation, tossing a manuscript over the wall of their mansion every year or so to a waiting editor, leaving the whole business of promotion and generalised shilling to people who are trained and / or have a vocation for the selling side of things.
  Hey, maybe there’s a market for a company that could maintain an electronic avatar-style version of writers, 3-D simulations who go on the circuit and promote the books, while the real writer stays home and writes. Any takers?

And so to Bristol …

I had a ball last year at Ye Olde CrimeFeste (statue erected in my honour, right) and I’m looking forward to more of the same this year. What’s terrific about these conventions is that you get to stroll around for a couple of days pretending to be a bona fide writer and no small boy points his finger at you and says, “Oi, yon emperor-type ain’t wearing no clothes.” It’s a wonderful thing, pretending to be a writer … but then, pretending is what writers do best.
  The other great thing about conventions and festivals is meeting up with the people you only tend to see at such events. Writing being (in theory, at least) a solitary pursuit, and regarded by something of an anti-social affliction by those nearest and dearest who don’t write, it’s nice to chow down with like-minded folk. As always, it’ll be great to hook up with Irish scribes the likes of Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway and Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley Edwards, and also some people I’ve met on my travels over the last couple of years, including Paul Johnston, Martin Edwards, the uber-glam Donna Moore, Ruth Downie, Chris Ewan, and a few more. And then there’s my fellow members of the bloggoratti, being Maxine, Karen, Norm, Ali and – possibly – the Book Witch and Rhian, although I’m not sure they’re going to make it this year. And, of course, we’ll all be in awe of the award-winning blogger, Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders, who’ll be doing his Uncle Travelling Matt impression in Bristol.
  Anyway, it’ll be dry sherries all round, so here’s hoping the old liver holds out. For those of you interested, I’ll drop a line on Monday or Tuesday (depending on the volume of dry sherries) to let you know how the panels went. I’m on two: Friday at 1.30, for ‘I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang: Writing About The Bad Guys’ alongside Chris Ewan, Steve Mosby and Kevin Wignall, with Donna Moore moderating; and Saturday at 3.30, for Natural Born Killers: Maxim’s Picks, alongside Cara Black, Paul Johnston and – hurrah! – Donna Moore, with Maxim Jakubowski moderating.
  All in all, fun times ahead …

  UPDATE: The ‘Who Is The Sexiest Irish Crime Writer?’ poll is now open for business, people, in the top-left corner of the blog … The results will be skewed, naturally, given that Gene Kerrigan has removed himself from consideration, but what can you do?

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: L.C. Tyler

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
OK, let’s establish some ground rules here, shall we? I write crime but I also write what gets described (for want of a better term) as “general comic fiction”. So my envy about other novels is fairly widespread and comprehensive. The novel I would most like to have written is THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD - not crime exactly, but there is a spine-tingling moment about ten pages in from the end, when you suddenly realise how comprehensively hoodwinked you have been - precisely what you try to achieve in a good detective story. If you want me to stick narrowly to crime, then I’d probably go for one of the classics from the Golden Age – THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, say. I also wish I had written THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM before Chris Ewan did. But, sadly, I didn’t.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. There’s an on-line quiz you can do to establish which character from Winnie the Pooh you are. I was Rabbit. I know a number of other people who also did the quiz and proved to be Rabbit. We were all very happy with our choice; it’s the type of fictional character we are.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
At any given time I tend to have two metaphorical piles of books. One is the books I ought to be reading: crime novels I’ve been told I should read, books by people I know well and who’ve read my books, anything that might constitute “research” for a future novel. The other pile is everything else. Reading from one pile makes me feel slightly guiltier than reading from the other - but not much.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Typing “Chapter One” (or more usually, in my case, “Prologue”).

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Other than your own, of course ... GALLOWS LANE by Brian McGilloway.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Logically the answer should be as above, and I’m sure it would make an excellent film or TV series. I’d also like to see one of Ruth Dudley Edward’s novels made into a film, though.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Most things about being a writer are pretty good, as you’ll know yourself. The best thing is the actual creative process - watching the book unfold in front of you is a bit magical. Also, as a writer of comic crime, it always comes as a pleasant surprise that something you wrote and found funny is something that other people have read and found funny. The worst? Possibly reviews that fail to convey the absolute sense of wonder and awe that you feel your book should command in any right-minded critic. (Yes, you really do get reviews like that occasionally. No, I couldn’t believe it either.)

The pitch for your next book is …?
My next book, after the paperback of THE HERRING SELLER’S APPRENTICE, is A VERY PERSISTENT ILLUSION (published in March), and the first thing I need to explain is that it isn’t crime. It’s black humour and it delves into the nature of reality, why people support Southend United and the importance of owning a classic sports car. But there is a mystery to solve and a point, about ten pages from the end, where hopefully you finally see what it was all about. For the one after that (TEN LITTLE HERRINGS - out in August) it’s back to a life of crime ...

Who are you reading right now?
It’s a book on the English Civil War from the non-guilt pile. At some stage soon I’d like to start writing a comic-historical-crime series set in the seventeenth century. There’s a real-life murder that I want to include, but I’m not going to be so foolish as to reveal which one at this stage. I’ve just finished DROWNED HOPES by Donald Westlake - a great writer sadly no longer with us.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
This is clearly a bum deal either way. I’d be straight onto the internet to see if any other deity was offering better terms.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
“Perky” (Financial Times) “Classic” (The Scotsman) “Subversive” (The Bookseller)

L.C. Tyler’s THE HERRING SELLER’S APPRENTICE is now available in paperback

The Embiggened O # 2008: All Ship-Shape And Bristol Fashion

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: “Ahem, koff … So busy were we (hic) knocking back our patented Elf-Wonking Juice™ to celebrate Tana French’s win at the Edgars (see below) that it entirely slipped our notice that Declan Burke’s THE BIG O has been shortlisted for The Last Laugh Award, which is given to the ‘Best Humorous Crime Novel published in the British Isles in 2007’, with the winner to be announced at the forthcoming Bristol CrimeFest. Naturally, this is wonderful news for the elves, as it means the Grand Vizier will be away from CAP Towers for a long weekend in early June, at which point we can kick off that long overdue coup d’etat. Meantime, a trumpet-parp please, maestro, for that all-important full list of nominees:

Declan Burke, THE BIG O (Hag’s Head Press)
Ruth Dudley Edwards, MURDERING AMERICANS (Poisoned Pen Press UK)
Chris Ewan, THE GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM (Long Barn Books)
Allan Guthrie, HARD MAN (Polygon)
Deanna Raybourn, SILENT IN THE GRAVE (MIRA Books)
Mike Ripley, ANGEL’S SHARE (Allison & Busby)
L. C. Tyler, THE HERRING SELLER’S APPRENTICE (Macmillan New Writing)
Donald Westlake, WHAT’S SO FUNNY? (Quercus)

“Given that he has been neglecting his stalking duties recently, the Grand Vizier feels honour-bound to vote for Ruth Dudley Edwards, in the vain hope that she won’t set about him with a blunt object when they share a panel at Bristol. Allan Guthrie was supposed to be on that panel too, but the Grand Viz informs us that ‘we don’t need to worry about him no more’. Which is a shame, because we really liked his early stuff. Anyhoo, and while we’re on the topic of THE BIG O, herewith be the cover artwork for the forthcoming US publication of said tome, with which the Grand Viz has pronounced himself ‘well pleased’. And now, with all of that out of the way, we’re off to play with Sheepy the Lamb, who really does come out of himself after a saucer or two of Elf-Wonking Juice™. We thank you for your cooperation. Peace, out.”