On Shooting Bertie Ahern With Bullets Of His Own Shite

It’s been hilarious here in Ireland for the past week or so, if endemic political corruption is the kind of thing that tickles your funny-bone. The results of the Mahon tribunal are in, and even though former taoiseach Bertie Ahern (right, with cheeky chappie Robert - check the fine print on Robert's t-shirt) denies any wrongdoing on his behalf, he has resigned from the Fianna Fail party he led in government for 14 years, this before they can kick him out next Friday. Resigning before you can be booted out being, of course, the only action that a wrongfully libelled innocent man can take.
  For my own part, I don’t believe Bertie Ahern is personally and solely responsible for the economic disaster that is Ireland today, but only because I’m grudgingly forced to provide the muppet with a fool’s pardon. But still - a qualified accountant who, despite rising through the political ranks to become the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Minister for Finance and then Taoiseach for 14 years, somehow never managed to persuade himself that it might be a good idea to open a bank account? Not dodgy at all, that. Not in the slightest. Doesn’t AT ALL suggest a man who shouldn’t have been allowed fumble in the greasy till of Tessie Bear’s sweetshop in Toy Town, let alone get his grubby mitts on the levers of power of a modern democracy. Here's a CAP taster on Bertrand from all the way back in 2007 ...
  Anyhoo, and with apologies to those of the Three Regular Readers who have sensitive stomachs, I pretty much had my say about Bartholomew Ahern in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. To wit:

There being no ‘Family Guy’ to be found on any of the 94 channels available, Cass and I watch a documentary recreation of the latest scandal from the Middle East, which is the assassination of a carload of suspected terrorists by an air-to-ground missile fired from an unmanned drone airplane. An operator, sitting deep in the bowels of a destroyer, controls the drone and launches the rocket.
  ‘That’s complete crap,’ Cassie says. ‘Everyone knows those fuckers are sitting in a bunker in Idaho.’
  Either way, this represents a remarkable feat of engineering. At least Bin Laden got the human touch. This latest requires the identification, targeting and assassination of a carload of human beings from a position hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the state in which the car motors along. This is trial, conviction and execution by remote control.
  This is Phil Dick on a bad hair day. This is George Orwell suffering from migraine. This is Stanislaw Lem with a boil on his anal rim. The holiday cruise of the future involves safaris conducted from offshore destroyers, targeting carloads of suspected Muslim terrorists.
  I like to imagine the operator as he sits deep in the bowels of the destroyer twiddling the buttons of his joy-pad. This is the logic of breeding a generation of couch-bound warriors. Some day presidential candidates will be required to clear all twenty levels of ‘Apocalypse Hence III’, in one sitting and without resorting to cheats, in order to establish their credentials.
  When the programme ends we flick over to the news, to see what Jean Byrne is almost wearing tonight while reading the weather report. A PR flunky for Bord Failte regales us with a good-vibes story about soaring tourist numbers in the wake of visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama.
  I say, ‘Hey, how about this. We stick all the scumbags on an island, say Inishbofin, all the paedophiles and bankers and Real IRA fuckers.’
  ‘Bertie Ahern,’ Cass murmurs, handing across the spliff.
  ‘Nice. So then we sell charter cruises to tourists, who sail around the island all day lobbing rockets at them. Plus, we don’t give them any food, so they’re eating one another. The scumbags, like, not the tourists.’
  ‘We could film it,’ Cass says, ‘sell the broadcast rights.’
  In the end we decide we want Bertie shot with bullets of his own shite, then left on a hospital trolley to rot.
  Sadly, Jean Byrne is a no-show for the weather report. Maybe she turned up naked tonight.

  So there you have it.

  It’s been pretty quiet recently, I have to say, in terms of AZC reviews. In one sense, that’s hardly surprising, seeing as how it was first published way back in August; but it was only officially published in February in the US and Canada, and there’s been precious little by way of reaction. Booklist and the Library Journal were very generous, as were Elizabeth A. White and Glenn Harper, but for the most part it’s been pretty much tumbleweeds.
  So it was nice to hear some good word for AZC this week. First up, the wonderful folk at Crimespree Magazine:

“You will be amused as hell, philosophically aroused and mentally sated as you wonder how Burke can pull it off. And pull it off he does. A courageous, droll and satisfying read.” - Crimespree Magazine

  And then, out of the blue, that very fine author Paul Johnston got in touch to say he’d read the book, and quite liked it:

“Do you know how difficult it is to write a postmodern crime novel that is both funny and moving? The only person I knew to have pulled that off was Robert Coover in his imaginatively titled NOIR. Now Declan Burke has done it even more successfully in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. A true one-off: witty, profound, sad and ... cool as hell.” - Paul Johnston

  In the interest of clarity, transparency, accountability and non-Bertie Ahern-ish shenanigans, I should point out that (a) I write for Crimespree Magazine and (b) I reviewed Paul Johnston’s latest novel, THE SILVER STAIN, very positively last month - the review here is a longer version of an original that appeared in the Irish Times.

The Lone Ranger and Toronto

Canada is justifiably lauded for many things, but gritty urban noir isn’t one of them. Unless, of course, you’re one of the cognoscenti who’s read John McFetridge’s (pictured right, in classic ‘having cake and eating it’ mode) ‘Dirty Sweet’ (2006) and ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’ (2007). Pared-down tales of Toronto’s dark underbelly, the novels have been favourably compared with Elmore Leonard’s Detroit-set stories for their smartly observed characters, sharp dialogue, and a willingness to go beyond simplistic characterisations to explore the complex nature of crime and criminality.
  His latest offering was published last year in Canada as ‘Swap’, but arrives in the US bearing the title ‘Let It Ride’. It’s his best novel yet, a distillation of the elements that made the previous novels such compelling reading, and yet it’s a complex story of interwoven motivations that virtually defies a synopsis. John? Can you tell us what it’s all about in fifty words or less?
  “My publisher would love it if I could,” he laughs. “It’s about how relationships change over time, how the balance of power shifts ... It’s about an ex-marine who comes to Toronto from Detroit to set up a supply line for drugs from a guy he met in Afghanistan who’s now a member of a biker gang. And he meets a woman who’s robbing spas and wants to rob the bikers. And there are cops ...”
  Before John McFetridge, Toronto revelled in the name of ‘Toronto the Good’. Is it true that he’s personally responsible for the steep rise in Toronto crime statistics? Is it even safe to visit Toronto these days?
  “Yes, this is true, the only crime in Toronto is in books, otherwise it really is New York run by the Swiss. No crime, clean streets, all the people friendly all the time. Honestly, though, almost everything that happens in my books has its roots in something that actually happened here, from the closed-down brewery being used as a giant grow-op to the eight bikers killed in one night, to the highest ranking narcotics officers on the Toronto police being arrested for drug dealing.”
  As in all good crime writing, McFetridge’s tales explore how conventional notions of street-level criminality impacts on all strata of society, a pervasive poison that goes right to the top of the power structure. Is there a moral dimension to writing that kind of fiction? Or is crime fiction purely an entertainment that reflects the world we live in?
  “If it accurately reflects the world we live in,” he says, “then I think that’s the moral dimension. I try to show the circumstances that allow the criminals to operate, the ways that they justify criminal behaviour to themselves as being just business, and the internal politics and the restrictions on the police that make it difficult to catch these guys. Any conclusions are up to the reader.”
  McFetridge gets compared to Elmore Leonard quite a lot. Does that ever get boring?
  “It’s certainly not boring yet, though he must be getting tired of the number of writers being compared to him. I think it’s a style of writing that’s almost a genre of its own by now. I think of it starting with Hemingway and short stories like ‘The Killers’ and ‘Fifty Grand’ and then maybe it split into crime and literary with Elmore Leonard, and everyone who gets compared to him in the crime camp, and people like Richard Ford and Raymond Carver in the literary camp.”
  Are there any writers who make him you bite his fingers with envy?
  “Lots. So many. And the great thing is there are more all the time, every year more writers come out with debut books that are so good.”
  That said, McFetridge is of the opinion that there should be more good writers getting published every year.
  “I know of a few very good writers,” he says, “who’ve had a number of books published, who are having trouble finding a publisher for their new work. More and more I see any book that falls outside the easy description, that’s difficult to categorize or take risks - all the things that literature should do - having trouble finding a publisher. I can understand the employees of the publishing companies having bosses to answer to who have shareholders to answer to, so the drive becomes the most amount of profit in the shortest time above all else, but that mentality isn’t really the roots of publishing.”
  To that end, McFetridge has recently taken the radical step of setting up a writers’ co-operative organisation.
  “The idea is a kind of novelists version of the original United Artists,” he says, “a company run by the artists. Democracy sounds like a great idea but it’s messy and hard to work on a day-to-day basis, but I’d like to try. If the co-op members are all people who love books and who love literature and that’s their main priority, then I think it’s possible they could do great things. I’m not suggesting it be a non-profit organization (at least not on purpose) but that the drive for the most amount of profit possible not be the main decision making factor all the time.”
  It’s a fascinating concept, especially given the technological advances of recent years, which should in theory make it a lot easier for writers to connect with readers while minimising the number of middle-men involved in the process. For more info, clickety-click here ...
  Meanwhile, do yourself a favour and check out John McFetridge’s superb ‘Let It Ride’. If its quality is anything to go by, Toronto’s Lone Ranger won’t be riding away into the sunset any time soon.

  This article was first published in Crimespree Magazine.

He Sells Sanctuary

The one-man publishing industry that is Ken Bruen has another offering for your delectation – SANCTUARY, the latest in the Jack Taylor PI series, is due from Transworld on June 2. Quoth the blurb elves:

Two guards, one nun, one judge. When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, PI Jack Taylor is sickened, but tells himself the list has nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery, and alcohol’s siren song is calling to him ever more insistently. A guard and then a judge die in mysterious circumstances. But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and stop them at any cost. What he doesn’t know is that his relationship with the killer is far closer than he thinks. And that it’s about to become deeply personal. Spiked with dark humour, seasoned with acute insights about the perils of urbanization, and fuelled by rage at man's inhumanity to man, this is crime-writing at its darkest and most original.

Don’t know about you, but we’re backing SANCTUARY each-way for Crimespree Magazine’s annual ‘Best Novel By Ken Bruen Award’ …

The Embiggened O # 213: A Trumpet, A Trumpet, Our Kingdom For A Trumpet!

Actually, International Noir reviews our first humble offering, Eightball Boogie, and not The Big O, but ‘The Embiggened Eightball’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Anyhoo, the gist beginneth thusly: “There is classic noir popping up in what would once have been unusual places …” and winds up with … “Most of the time, at least, Harry (Rigby) is almost as funny as he thinks he is, and the comedy keeps the story rolling along between the sudden eruptions of violence. If Harry’s imitation of the voice of a hard-boiled private eye isn’t your cup of tea, stick with the book anyway – Burke’s novel is not just a pulp revival, it’s genuine neo-noir.” Blimey! We’re thrilled skinny-ish! If any of the above intrigues you, we refer you to the Eightball reviews on Amazon UK, where Jon Jordan of CrimeSpree Magazine reckons, “It’s fast-paced and filled with wonderful characters through out … A PI story that moves forward like freight train.” Meanwhile, over on Amazon US, Hank Wagner loses the run of himself entirely: “Burke is in full control the entire way, providing a plethora of witty one-liners and a couple of action sequences so tense and well rendered they’ll leave you breathless. A fun, satisfying read, Eightball Boogie marks the arrival of a new master of suspense on the literary scene.” Mmm, yummy! You know what to do, people – schlep on over to Amazon and make with the food-stamps bartering malarkey today! Or tomorrow! Or, y’know, don’t bother at all. We’re cool …