Local Heroes: Seamus Smyth

I was going to write a Local Heroes post about Seamus Smyth, author of the brilliant QUINN, akin to the piece I wrote about Philip Davison recently, but then I stumbled across this from Ken Bruen, from waaaaay back in 2007. Take it away, Ken:

“Life sucks, yadda-yadda, so what else is new? But sometimes it sucks on a level that you want to scream, “Ah for fucksakes!” Being a crime writer always means registering low on the literary barometer but being an Irish crime writer? Just shoot yourself – unless you’re plugged into the usual mafia circle of same tired old names.
  “Seamus Smyth wrote a blistering debut titled QUINN back in 1999 and what should have been a major lift-off to a glittering career came to zilch. If he were writing in the UK or USA, he’d be mega. QUINN is a kick-in-the-face wondrous blitz of a novel. No tip-toeing Mr Nice Guy here: this is a first-person narrative of a psycho who operates in the Dublin underworld, the kind of novel Paul Williams would, ahem, kill to have written.
  “The hero, Gerd Quinn, is straight from the tradition of Goodis through Thompson to the wry, sly humour of a Willeford. The writing is a dream, a style all Smyth’s own. He uses his anti-hero to pay homage to the noir genre and yet subvert it in a way only a true dark Irish craftsman could. It’s the kind of novel you read and think, ‘Just bloody mighty’, and immediately watch out for his next. But this is not just a great crime novel, it’s one hell of a novel, full stop. QUINN should be THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for this decade, it’s that good and fresh and innovative.
  “Let’s remedy one case of criminal neglect and get Seamus Smyth up where he belongs, right at the top of the genre, and allow a rare and unique talent to do what he was born to do - write the provocative novels this country deserves. Gerd Quinn states, ‘There’s no malice in what I do …’, which makes it one of the most ironic opening lines of any novel in light of what’s coming down the Smyth pike. QUINN is not only vital, it’s damn essential.” ~ Ken Bruen

  For all the details on QUINN, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Mark O’Sullivan

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?
DARK PASSAGE or THE BURGLAR, both by David Goodis. On the surface, his style was typically noir – hard-bitten, compact prose; taut, streetwise dialogue. But that’s just his kicking-off point. The writing is lifted with a quirky take on life, on logic and occasional surrealist touches. A character, for example, can be obsessed with the colour orange – clothes, furnishing, car – to such an odd extent that the novel begins to feel like some kind of surreal hand-tinted noir. Another character has a three-page conversation with a bloodied corpse. And, for me, the last chapter of THE BURGLAR can’t be beaten. An extended metaphor that sums up of all that has gone before, that’s in no way pretentiously literary, and is cinematic in its visual and visceral power.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Bernie Gunther in Philip Kerr’s superb Berlin noir novels.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Football bloggers, particularly those devoted to the team I support, Fulham FC – like
HammyEnd.com. We never win anything but we’re philosophical about the true value of failure and the illusory nature of success (especially Chelsea’s success).

Most satisfying writing moment?
Ruth Rendell has said that ‘the writer’s job is to stay confused for as long as possible’. It’s nerve-wracking but staying confused is the only effective antidote to predictability and lazy writing. The moment when that cloud of confusion begins to lift is more than satisfying – it’s a kind of ecstasy (without the thirst and the hyperactivity).

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sufficiently up to speed on the new Irish crime-writing wave to answer this one – or the next. I very much look forward to playing catch up though.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
As above.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing – If I was a plumber, I can’t imagine anyone arriving at my door and asking me to come take a look at a job they’ve just completed and how they might improve it – for free. Best thing – For some reason, a line from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Going Home’ occurs to me here: ‘He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit …’

The pitch for your next book is …?
A missing Goth girl, a hacker, a Libyan rebel fighter, a gangland casualty, a West Belfast Armenian, a woman betrayed, a mother seeking revenge – and the accidental nature of life and death. Confused? DI Leo Woods is too – but he’s working on it.

Who are you reading right now?
As always I’ve got too many books on the go. Right now I’m re-reading Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series, which I love. I’m also nearing the end of Edward St. Aubyn’s AT LAST – the final Patrick Melrose novel. The only real freedom is the freedom from delusion, he concludes. Too right. In between times, I’m dodging in and out of John Gray’s STRAW DOGS – forget existentialism, this is real noir philosophy, stark but compelling and best taken in small doses.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
If I can write, I can read, but not vice-versa. Your move, God.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’ve read worse.

Mark O’Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS is published by Transworld.

No Alibis For The Lost

Sounds a little like a David Goodis spoof, doesn’t it? No? Okay, be like that …
  Claire McGowan (right) will be in Belfast this coming Saturday, April 6th, where she will be launching her latest tome, THE LOST, at the very fine book emporium No Alibis. The event kicks off at 3pm, and all the details – including how to book your free ticket – are here.
  I reviewed THE LOST in the Irish Times last month, with the gist running thusly:

“In a different setting, The Lost might well have been a straightforward tale of abduction and serial killing, but the Northern Ireland backdrop offers sub-plots incorporating sectarian bigotry, religious and political fundamentalism, and a heavy-handed sexual repression that manifests itself in a number of ugly ways … McGowan’s pacy, direct style ensures that the twists come thick and fast.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ Crime Beat

Being the latest in a series of columns on crime writing compiled by your humble scribe, which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Irish Times. To wit:

On the Trail of the Killers

The complex nature of its hierarchies can make the world of Italian policing a daunting place for the inexperienced reader, but making a virtue of such complexities while also rendering them accessible is one of the strengths of Conor Fitzgerald’s debut offering, THE DOGS OF ROME (Bloomsbury Publishing, £11.99). Called to investigate the apparent murder of a Senator’s husband, Commissario Alec Blume quickly finds himself tip-toeing through a singularly Roman political minefield. Fitzgerald is an Irish writer long domiciled in Rome, Blume is an American-born Chief Inspector, and both men bring their sceptical outsider’s eye to bear on a city in which the art of compromise is as essential as oxygen. Written in a spare but elegant style, THE DOGS OF ROME is a very promising debut indeed.
  Yvonne Cassidy’s THE OTHER BOY (Hachette Books Ireland, £12.99) is another Irish debut, a novel of suspense that aims to bridge the gap between the conventional crime novel and more mainstream fare. JP Whelan should be the happiest man in London when his girlfriend Katie gets pregnant, but then JP’s brother Dessie appears, threatening to blow the lid on the ugly truth of JP’s youth. Cassidy ratchets up the tension as Dessie tightens his grip on JP’s life, all the while offering flashback snippets of what happened back in Dublin when the brothers were boys. Fans of Tana French will find much to enjoy here, even if Cassidy’s prose lacks French’s ambition and inventiveness.
  Jan Costin Wagner’s second novel, SILENCE (Harvill Secker, £12.99), is set in Finland, and opens with an extended prologue in which an unidentified man is party to the rape and murder of a young girl. When a similar crime takes place in the same spot 33 years later, Detective Kimmo Joentaa calls on the experience of his recently retired partner Ketola, whose first big case was the original crime. Wagner delivers his tale in a taut, dry style, utilising multiple points of view to explore the psychology of criminality from both sides of the thin blue line. Similar in tone to Henning Mankell’s early Wallander novels, this one drifts up off the page with all the deadly intensity of mustard gas.
  Matt Rees’s series protagonist Omar Yussef generally prowls the mean streets of Palestine, but his fourth outing, THE FOURTH ASSASSIN (Atlantic Books, £11.99), finds him in New York as part of a Palestinian delegation to the United Nations. There, Yussef is reunited with his son, only to discover that one of his son’s friends has been brutally murdered. Plodding the bitterly cold thoroughfares of Brooklyn, Yussef must track down the killer before his son is framed for the crime, all the while striving to subvert a Jihadi assassination plot. Rees’s first novel won the CWA ‘New Blood Dagger’ in 2008, and Omar Yussef remains hugely enjoyable company, equal parts fussy Poirot and the tarnished knight of Philip Marlowe. As always, Yussef’s love of Muslim culture, and the irascible temperament that allows him to poke fun at himself and his co-religionists, makes for a winning blend.
  Simon Johnson gets attacked in his apartment one night by a doppelganger who wants him dead. That’s all the information payroll accountant Simon has to work with in Ryan David Jahn’s second novel, LOW LIFE (Macmillan, £12.99), as he sets out to discover who might have ordered his killing, and why. Fans of noirish tales of paranoia by the likes of Gil Brewer and David Goodis will enjoy the Kafkaesque twists and doom-laden tone, but the appeal of Jahn’s tale quickly begins to pall as the improbable absurdities pile up.
  A town on an island off the Icelandic coast long buried by a volcanic eruption yields some macabre artefacts when its excavation begins, in particular the three corpses and one severed head discovered in the basement of Markus Magnusson’s old home. Attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir agrees to take up Markus’s case in Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s third novel, ASHES TO DUST (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99), only to discover that her faith in his innocence looks increasingly misplaced. Sigurdardottir neatly dovetails Thora’s humdrum domestic concerns with the gruesome details she uncovers, and patiently builds up a superbly detailed backdrop to the crime. The sedate pace may frustrate at times, but Sigurdardottir compensates with elegant prose studded with nuggets of mordant humour.
  SAVAGES (William Heinemann, £12.99) is Don Winslow’s fourteenth novel, and reads like a Ken Bruen redraft of Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers. Specialists in manufacturing high quality dope, philanthropist Ben and ex-Navy SEAL Chon go to war with the Baja Cartel as the Mexican drug war spills over the border into Southern California. The tale could have been ripped from yesterday’s headlines, and Winslow’s irreverent style and linguistic pyrotechnics maintain a breathless pace throughout. Given that the pair are in love with the same woman, however, and that all three find themselves at the mercy of a terrifyingly ruthless foe, the tale is frustratingly shallow when it comes to emotional depth.
  Former Whitbread Prize winner Kate Atkinson’s previous offering, WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, was something of a phenomenon, and her latest, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG (Doubleday, £17.99), is a beguiling follow-up. Opening with retired policewoman Tracy Waterhouse ‘buying’ a young girl, the novel expands to incorporate a number of parallel narratives, chief among them private eye Jackson Brodie’s attempt to trace a client’s parentage. Brodie is a recurring character in Atkinson’s novels, and his whimsical internal monologues are only one of the joys to be had in a riveting page-turner that blends biting social commentary with an off-beat take on current developments in both the traditional PI and police procedural novels, even as it harks back to Ripper-era Yorkshire of the 1970s. - Declan Burke

  This article first appeared in The Irish Times.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS by William Boyd

A chance meeting in a London restaurant gives climatologist Adam Kindred the opportunity to become a Good Samaritan, when his distracted new acquaintance, Dr Wang, leaves his briefcase behind. On delivering the briefcase, however, Adam discovers Dr Wang knifed and dying. Moments later he is running for his life; within hours, pursued by Dr Wang’s killer, he is the subject of a nation-wide manhunt and embroiled in the corruption behind a multi-billion dollar scandal.
  William Boyd is a much-decorated writer, winning the Whitbread Award in 1981 for ‘A Good Man in Africa’, and the Costa Award in 2006 for ‘Restless’, along with numerous other prizes, and securing a pair of shortlist nominations for Booker and IMPAC for ‘An Ice-Cream War’ and ‘Any Human Heart’, respectively. A prolific screenwriter and film director, he has always maintained a sharp distinction between his film work and that of his novels, but ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’ offers a propulsive, cinematic narrative. Certainly the novel, despite its deceptively sedate pace, has the page-turning quality of a genre novel, which suggests that Boyd was aiming yet again for crossover appeal – ‘Restless’, for example, bore all the hallmarks of the spy thriller.
  To the crime fiction fan, and particularly those familiar with the work of David Goodis and Gil Brewer, Adam Kindred’s plight will be a familiar one. Intelligent, urbane and highly educated, he nevertheless finds himself skulking in the shadows and reduced to a primitive quality of living as, in a desperate bid to render himself anonymous, he foregoes the props of contemporary life – credit cards, mobile phones, cash, etc. – to live rough in the very heart of London. The theme touches on the alienation intrinsic to the modern city, of our inability, whether willing or not, to successfully interact with those around us. Boyd’s protagonists invariably explore how a quintessential Englishness contends with an unfamiliar landscape, be that Africa, Los Angeles or the Philippines, but here the homeless Kindred (the name is ironically instructive) is a stranger in a land that should not be strange at all, and is yet utterly, and horrifyingly, foreign.
  Kindred’s exploration of his underground world is fascinating in itself, but Boyd surrounds him with a host of characters, some malevolent, others benign, most simply thoughtlessly callous in their own pursuit of whatever it will take to make it through the day. As the characters gradually flesh out, there is a suspicion that Boyd is simply toying with the genre tropes, as a policewoman, a company CEO, a prostitute, a lord and a killer-for-hire all emerge to engage with Kindred on some level. But even the minor characters get their full due here, and some of the main players, such as the prostitute who drugs her son with a ‘happy-mix’ of rum and pills before going out on the game for the night, are simply heart-breaking.
  The style is equally pleasing. There are few of the conventional cliff-hanger endings to chapters, and Boyd’s prose is for the most part resolutely deadpan, eschewing tension-building pyrotechnics for a faith in his readers’ ability to empathise with his characters. He does, on occasion, digress into purple prose, which can be irritating, especially when offered by characters who wouldn’t have access to such language, such as an illiterate prostitute or an ex-solider hitman, but these are few and forgivable lapses, as are the occasional deus ex machina plot-twists that rely too heavily on coincidence.
  Those caveats aside, ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’ is a powerful, brooding novel of ideas with the compulsive readability of a straightforward thriller. Sturm und Drang, indeed. - Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Sunday Business Post

“The Only Salvation That’s Mine For The Asking …”

Following on from the flummery of song lyrics as potential crime novels, as originally suggested by KT McCaffrey some weeks back, we herewith present St. John the Gambler by Townes van Zandt (right, holding his guitar – and there’s no other way of putting this – like a tommy-gun). Would it make for a great crime novel? Erm, no, given that no actual laws appear to be broken, although those “dead men laying deep ’round the door” might warrant some investigation. Still, crime fic or otherwise, it’d make a terrific read. We’re thinking CITIES OF THE PLAIN meets WUTHERING HEIGHTS by way of David Goodis and Gil Brewer. Any takers for a collaboration?

St. John the Gambler by Townes van Zandt

When she had twenty years she turned to her mother
Saying Mother, I know that you’ll grieve
But I’ve given my soul to St John the gambler
Tomorrow comes time leave
For the hills cannot hold back my sorrow forever
And dead men lay deep ’round the door
The only salvation that’s mine for the asking
So mother, think on me no more

Winter held high round the mountain’s breast
And the cold of a thousand snows
Lay heaped upon the forest’s leaf
But she dressed in calico
For a gambler likes his women fancy
Fancy she would be
And the fire of her longing would keep away the cold
And her dress was a sight to see

But the road was long beneath her feet
As she followed her frozen breath
In search of a certain St John the gambler
Stumbling to her death
She heard his laughter right down from the mountains
And danced with her mother’s tears
To a funeral drawn a calico
’neath the cross of twenty years

To a funeral drawn a calico
’neath the cross of twenty years.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THEFT: A LOVE STORY by Peter Carey

Peter Carey understands that crime is a means and not an end in itself. THE ILLYWHACKER tells the story of Herbert Badgery, ‘self-admitted liar, trickster, and confidence man’; JACK MAGGS explores what might have happened to Dickens’ banished convict Magwitch; THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG doesn’t do exactly what it says on the tin, but instead fictionalises the infamous Australian outlaws; MY LIFE AS A FAKE concerns itself with literary hoax, while THEFT: A LOVE STORY engages with hoaxing and fakery in the world of modern art. But is Carey, twice a winner of the Man Booker Prize, a crime fiction author?
  Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ because he is quite obviously obsessed, albeit not exclusively, with the criminal mind. ‘No’ because you won’t find Peter Carey’s novels reviewed in some ‘Crime / Mystery Round-Up’ ghetto tucked away in the corner of a newspaper once a month, an afterthought to the other works of fiction deemed worthy of review. That is not to say that Carey’s novels, in that patronising phrase gaining currency, ‘transcend the genre’. But Carey himself, as an author, name and now virtually a brand, has. This should be a cause for celebration for writers of all genres and none.
  THEFT is typically Carey, in that it’s an exercise in debunking myths, not only of its subject matter, the hysterically pretentious modern art world, but of the craft of writing itself. The story is told in twinned narrative voices, those of Butcher Bones and his ‘idiot savant’ brother Slow Bones, and while both offer a refreshingly earthy and distinctively Aussie take on the art world, it’s Slow Bones who steals the show. Reminiscent in his interior monologues of Patrick McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, which in its turn owes a debt to Jim Thompson’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME, the childlike Slow Bones is by turns crude, perceptive, insightful and potentially homicidal. A pawn in the hands of his ambitious artist brother Butcher, and Butcher’s ruthless lover and art authenticator Marlene, Slow Bones is a deranged angel, his infantile yearnings the only hope for morality in a world in which all reference points, including the quality of the art that sells for millions, are by definition subjective. Carey can’t resist the occasional poetic flourish, but for the most part THEFT reads like it could have been written by (an admittedly giddy) David Goodis or Gil Brewer. Says Butcher:

I have told this bloody story so often. I am accustomed to the expression on my listeners’ faces and I know there must be some essential detail I omit. Most likely that detail is my character, a flaw passed from Blue Bones’ rotten sperm to my own corrupted clay. For I can never have anyone really feel why her confession so thrilled me, why I devoured her slippery soft-muscled mouth in the dancing light of country barbecue near the Shinjuku railway station.
  So she was a crook!
  Oh the horror! Fuck me dead!

  The real charm here is the way in which Carey addresses some pertinent questions to anyone who loves books. Who decides what is art and what is not? Is anyone truly entitled to claim the role of ‘authenticator’? Can a novel be considered literary if its story is told in (deliciously) profane vernacular? Carey, clearly one of the most gifted wordsmiths of his generation, could easily have told the story of THEFT in any style he chose, from hardboiled prose to a baroque parody of the language used by those who inhabit the rarefied atmosphere of modern art. That he chose not only to puncture the bubble of self-aggrandizing, mutual deception that characterises the art world, but does so in a manner akin to Pollock spattering bullshit all over its ostensibly pristine canvas, the whole shot through with crime fiction tropes, suggests that the gap between what is considered literary and genre fiction may well need to be radically reassessed in the near future.
  For the two to be given equal footing will require the majority of crime writers to improve their prose, and for the majority of literary writers to hone their story-telling – or at least try to remember that the fundamental point of any book is the story it tells. For now, though, the likes of Peter Carey on the one hand and James Lee Burke on the other, both superb and popular stylists who revel in the possibilities of a good story, are close enough to shake hands if they so choose. It may take a bit of work, but there’s no good reason why other writers shouldn’t be able to slip into the wake created by their momentum and produce work that acknowledges its debts and roots but is not confined to any particular genre, or none. – Declan Burke

This Week We’re Reading … The Vengeful Virgin and The Wounded and The Slain

“I knew I’d never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.” We’re having a bit of a Hard Case Crime binge this week, folks – first up is Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin, first published in 1958 and a cracker in the mould of Brewer’s patented amour fou, in which TV salesman-on-the-make Jack hooks up with Shirley, a 17-year-old chafing with frustration at having to take care of her rich, bedridden stepfather (“She looked hot enough to catch fire, but too lazy to do anything but just lie there and smoke.”). Delivered in Brewer’s precise, deadpan tone, the best laid plans of vengeful virgins and men quickly spiral out of control as one murder leads to another and Jack finds himself split between the allure of a vast pile of cash and the psychotic charms of a woman who should really be entered under the dictionary definition of ‘all or nothing’. Cain meets Jim Thompson, reckoned Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, and we’re not here to argue. Meanwhile, David Goodis, he of the novel-length suicide notes, sets The Wounded and The Slain (1955) in Jamaica, where James and Cora Bevan have gone in an attempt to rescue their marriage, a shell just hollow enough to accommodate alcoholism, self-loathing, simmering sexual dissatisfaction and bleak thoughts of ending it all. Naturally, Goodis avoids the palm-fringed beaches and sultry sunsets, dragging his characters into the slums of Kingston and face-to-face with their worst nightmares. “He did it to himself. He brought it on by slow degrees and then faster degrees and finally it blew up in his face and knocked him for a loop. For many loops. For endless loops. To send him sailing far away to some dizzy, goofy place where every day is Halloween.” You like your noir dark and psychologically twisted? The Wounded and The Slain is a black, bloody corkscrew.

Flick Lit # 109: Dark Passage

It has been said that David Goodis didn’t write novels, he wrote suicide notes, and the titles of his novels give some idea of the mental and emotional state of this virtual recluse: Dark Passage (1946), Nightfall (aka The Dark Chase, 1947), Street of the Lost (1952), The Moon in the Gutter (1953), Street of No Return (1954), The Wounded and the Slain (1955), Down There (aka Shoot the Piano Player, 1956), and Somebody’s Done For (1967). In the post-war years, and in the hands of David Goodis, crime was no longer something ‘out there’, a concept to be taken on by hard heads and smart mouths. Crime, according to Goodis, was ‘down there’ – a sickness of the soul. His characters were paranoid and tortured, keenly aware of their lowly social status and the squalid desires that drove them further down into the mire. Those who believe in the innate goodness of man, and the possibility of redemption, would do well to steer clear of David Goodis. The opening lines of Dark Passage are as good an example as any of the way in which Goodis blended deceptively lucid prose, Kafkaesque hopelessness and simple human yearnings:

“It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing. The jury decided he was guilty.”

Parry breaks out of prison, becomes a fugitive, and embarks on a nightmarish hunt for the person who framed him for the murder of his wife. The desperate gamble he takes to gain time – submitting to a quack surgeon’s knife for plastic surgery – allowed the director of Dark Passage (1947), Delmer Daves, to follow on from a technique pioneered in 1946’s The Lady in the Lake, in which the camera’s point-of-view plays the part of the detective. When the bandages finally come off, the comely features of Parry, aka Humphrey Bogart, are revealed. The film’s producers made much of the fact that Bogart and Lauren Bacall were back in harness again, for the first time since The Big Sleep (1946). And, as usual, their timing, screen presence and ability to play off one another is impeccable. But anyone expecting the rapid-fire dialogue and crackling sexual chemistry of Howard Hawks’ classic was to be sorely disappointed. Goodis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Daves, had other fish to torture. Parry distrusts everyone and everything, wallowing in his misery until it seems he must surely drown. That the film doesn’t sink under the weight of its own pessimism is down to Daves’ crisp pacing, a brooding, atmospheric depiction of San Francisco, and a wonderfully eccentric supporting cast of noir misfits, including Bruce Bennett, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy and Hollywood’s best-ever on-screen WASP, Agnes Moorehead. Noir purists decry Dark Passage’s implausibly upbeat denouement, but to be fooled by the happy ending is to ignore all of the preceding ninety minutes. The success of Dark Passage, first as a serialised tale in the Saturday Evening Post, then as a film, led to work as a Hollywood screenwriter. However, Goodis fell out with Hollywood and retreated to his home town of Philadelphia. There he moved in with his mother and began a long and lonely slide into alcoholism. Successful as a novelist during the ’50s – Cassidy’s Girl, one of nineteen novels, sold over a million copies – his star dimmed as the ’60s wore on. By the time he died in 1967, Goodis was broke and – with the notable exception of French film directors – languishing in squalor and obscurity. The pity is that he never turned to autobiography: his life would have become his finest novel.- Michael McGowan

The Monday Review / Interweb Mash-Up Super-Baloohaha

Kind words yet again for Irish crime writers from Marilyn Stasio at the New York Times: "No one brings down the temple with more outrageous wit and style than Ruth Dudley Edwards," she says of Murdering Americans, while Tana French (right) is celebrated for In The Woods' 'vivid' scene-setting and the 'lyrical ferocity of her writing'. Meanwhile, Eurocrime comes over all unnecessary about Brian McGilloway's Borderlands, the gist of which runneth, "Small but perfectly formed, this little gem of a book ... is excellent and well-written." In other news, John Boyne scooped the Children's Books Ireland Bisto Book of the Year to absolutely no one's surprise (insert your own 'gravy train' gag here), while Ever The Idealist has declared John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things (left) the best novel he has ever read, like, ever: "John Connolly manages to combine outrageous yet believable fantasy with horrific murders while he entertains you with a story that holds you in thrall." Sweetness incarnate, say we. Moving swiftly on ... Glen Dimplex and the Irish Writers' Centre have announced that the Glen Dimplex New Writers' Awards 2007 will have a total prize fund of €45,000, divided across five categories, the awards going to the best first book published in the last year in Ireland and the UK ... Hang about - have we introduced you to Garbhan Downey yet? Hold on there while the Sunday Business Post's Andrew Lynch stops chatting him up and we'll make with the necessaries ... Finally, radiofreeubu gives a big shout-out to the Millipede Press for re-publishing David Goodis' Street of No Return (right), which will make a suitably sordid companion piece to Hard Case Crime's re-publication of Goodis' The Wounded and the Slain. And remember - Goodis things happen to Goodis people, folks ... you can't say you haven't been warned.