Mc vs Mc: The Spinetingler Awards

I find myself in something of a bind courtesy of the good folks at Spinetingler Magazine. Their annual Award nominees have just been announced, and John McFetridge and Adrian McKinty have been pitched in against one another in the ‘Rising Star / Legend’ category in what amounts to a (koff) duel nomination. The trouble being, you’re only allowed to vote for one nominee in each category. So – vote for McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND, or McFetridge’s TUMBLIN’ DICE? Hmmmm. I may need to consult the chicken entrails on this one.
  It’s a tough category, by the way. To wit:

The 2013 Spinetingler Award Best Novel: Rising Star/Legend

Capture by Roger Smith
The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
Kings of Cool by Don Winslow
Lake Country by Sean Doolittle
The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli
Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
Tumblin’ Dice by John McFetridge
What it Was by George Pelecanos

  The very best of luck to all involved. For the full list of categories and nominees in the Spinetingler Awards, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Stav Sherez

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?
THE POWER OF THE DOG (Don Winslow) or THE COLD SIX THOUSAND (James Ellroy). Two novels that grip, rattle and roll, opening up windows into unwritten history and secret desire. Everything about these books works, from the uncompromising nature of the material to the Cubist accretion of sentences, the micro-processing of history into narrative, and the sheer plunging Shakespearean complexity of the characters.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
All my favourite fictional characters have terrible lives and worse ends, so that’s a tricky one. But [Lee Child’s] Jack Reacher would be cool: the existential drifter and classic Saturday-matinee Western hero who rides into town and dispenses justice and retribution before fading back into the sunset. I think we all nurture dreams of leaving our lives behind, sundering aside the weight of possessions and personal ties and setting off into the dusty unknown. I would also love to be James Crumley’s CW Sughrue because his life seems like a lot of wild-eyed fun and bad craziness.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Derrida and Wilbur Smith.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When you get a sentence just right, and you know it’s right, and there’s no doubt about it.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
It would vary, depending on the day, month, year. At the moment it’s probably WINTERLAND by Alan Glynn.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’d like to see Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE on screen

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: Reading through drafts and wondering when exactly did you forget how to be a writer. Coming up against your own limitations every single day. Best: Not having to wear shoes.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Eleven days before Christmas. Eleven dead nuns. A snowstorm over London. A killer on the loose.

Who are you reading right now?
Volume 2 of William Burroughs’ collected letters, which I’ve been waiting 19 (!) years for. And dipping back into William Vollmann’s RISING UP & RISING DOWN. It’s his attempt to construct a moral calculus and perhaps the only truly necessary book of the 21st century.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. Definitely. I couldn’t imagine a life without the pleasure of reading other people’s books.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Dark. Dark. Dark.

A DARK REDEMPTION by Stav Sherez is published by Faber and Faber.

Origins: Reed Farrel Coleman On GUN CHURCH

Once in a while here at Crime Always Pays, I like to hand the reins over to an actual writer who knows what she or he is talking about. ‘Origins’ is a (very) occasional series in which an author talks about the inspiration - character, plot, setting, whatever - for their latest novel, in this case the venerable Reed Farrel Coleman, on GUN CHURCH. To wit:

WONDER BOYS Meets FIGHT CLUB, With Guns
By Reed Farrel Coleman

“I’m an adjunct professor of English at Hofstra University and I teach writing classes for Mystery Writers of America University—a kind of travelling roadshow MWA offers as a great member benefit. In any case, one of the things I inevitably discuss with students is the elevator pitch or, to put it another way, a very brief description of what your book is about. This is not a description of what happens in the book. It’s not a plot summary. It’s one line that conveys the gist of the novel. Writers, even seasoned and experienced ones, often struggle with this concept. The odd thing about GUN CHURCH is that not only did its entire plot pop into my head when I had the inspiration to write it, but the elevator pitch appeared immediately as well: WONDER BOYS meets FIGHT CLUB, with guns.
  “First, a brief summary, so you can get some idea of where I’m coming from. Kip Weiler is a washed up ’80s literary wunderkind fallen on hard times. Twenty years past his last novel, Kip’s foibles have landed him in the rural mining town of Brixton. He teaches creative writing at the local community college. One day, Kip saves his class from potential violence. For this he gets his second fifteen minutes of fame and, more importantly, the urge to write again. Little does Kip know that the book he is working on may be the blueprint of his own demise. Kip gets deeply involved with two of his students and a cult-like group that is obsessed with the intrinsic nature of handguns. The world gets very weird when art begins to imitate life imitating art.
  “So, back to how this all came about. Six years ago I was at a mystery conference, sitting in the audience as my close friend and fellow author, Jim Born, gave a weapons and self-defence demonstration. During the Q&A part of the demonstration, someone in the audience asked a question about how far shotgun pellets spread and at what rate. Jim said something like, “You’d have to be a real gun expert to answer that one.” And bang! (no pun intended), the plot of GUN CHURCH and the elevator pitch popped into my head. I’ll never know why, exactly. It just did.
  “Unfortunately, it took me six years and about twenty drafts to get it right. Strange thing is, I can usually write a series novel in 4 to 6 months, not years. But I didn’t have the chops to pull off the novel as originally conceived. There are many moving parts, lots of characters, a book within a book, tons of Irish dialect, third and first person narration … Talk about giving yourself a challenge, but it was absolutely worth it. Much like writing TOWER, the stand-alone I did with Ken Bruen, GUN CHURCH proved to be a means through which I became a far better and skilful writer. The chops I didn’t have when I began the project, I developed because of the project.” - Reed Farrel Coleman

  For a free sample of GUN CHURCH at Audible.com, along with a couple of very nice big-ups from Daniel Woodrell and Don Winslow, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Andrew Pepper

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?
RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett – the original hard-boiled crime novel and still the best. David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet – four astonishing novels that made me feel physically ill by the time I’d finished them (in a good way). THE POWER OF THE DOG by Don Winslow is a thing of awe and wonder – visceral, finger-chewing stuff and the last word on the lamentable ‘war on drugs’ and the limitations of American power. Anything bleak and angry that asks the right questions but knows not to try and provide answers. Newton Thornburg’s CUTTER AND BONE is another novel I’d loved to have written. Failure and despair are all but inevitable but that doesn’t mean you have to give up. And each time I read the part where Cutter tries to ‘park’ his car I weep with laughter.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Chief Bromden played a cagier game than McMurphy and managed to side-step the lobotomy.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Student essays.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Whenever you know you absolutely should be doing something else and yet you still feel somehow compelled to sit in front of the screen and type away – and before you know it an hour, two hours, four hours, have passed since you last thought to check the time.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE ULTRAS by Eoin McNamee. It’s spare, terse, poetic; it disorientates you and never lets you settle; it delves deep into minds of its characters but never gives you the answers you expect; it tells a gripping and gut-churning story about complicity and state violence without succumbing to political posturing or cliché.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
WINTERLAND by Alan Glynn – I see Richard Gere channelling his best ‘Jackal’ voice for the part of Paddy Norton and Julia Roberts reprising her star turn from ‘Mary Reilly’ in the role of Gina Rafferty.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: Monday 10.37am – everything is great, you’re great, what you’re writing is great, not just great, it’s going to blow every other crime novel ever written out of the water. Great is a word, daring is another, because what you’re doing is ripping up the genre into tiny little pieces and letting them fall where they may on the page …

Worst: Monday 12.13pm – you’ve spent the last half hour picking up those pieces of paper and carefully sellotaping them back into some kind of recognisable order. The result is a piece of writing so dreary and predictable, so utterly moribund, that it could creosote Alan Shearer’s shed and still have time to put in a full shift at the call centre. Not only does it suck, you suck, you’re a fraud, and worse, a coward, and just when you think you can’t sink any lower you’re watching a repeat of ‘Bargain Hunt’ which you know is a repeat because you’ve seen it before …

The pitch for your next book is …?
I slip into the leather booth and when the movie producer asks this same question, I lean across the table and whisper, “Karl Marx meets ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’.” The producer smiles to reveal teeth as white as Belfast (circa 1997) and says, “I saw a Karl Malden movie once.” Not listening, I reply, ‘He was German.” He says, ‘In ‘On the Waterfront’?” I grimace a little and remember to thank him for the first-class flights and the suite at the Chateau Marmont. “Who’s going to play the Marlon Brando role?” says he. I frown. “It’s a searing indictment of the ills of global capitalism.” He checks his phone. “Have you thought about Justin Bieber?”

Who are you reading right now?
Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM. I always feel uplifted when I read proper literature.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
First I’d ask God to do his Morgan Freeman impression. Then I’d ask him about the Old Testament and what happened to his sense of humour. Then I’d select the latter option. Anyone can write. Reading is for the chosen few.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Be. Less. Shit.

Andrew Pepper’s BLOODY WINTER is published by W&N.

DAMN NEAR DEAD 2: David Thompson Lives On

The late and very much lamented David Thompson casts a long shadow over DAMN NEAR DEAD 2, the collection of ‘geezer noir’ stories which was published by Busted Flush on November 30th. I haven’t seen a copy yet, but it’s a hell of a line-up: CJ Box, Joe Lansdale, Ed Gorman, Marcia Muller, Christa Faust, SJ Rozan, Don Winslow, Denise Mina, Bill Pronzini and Cornelia Read all make a contribution, along with many more, one of whom is your humble host. Bill Crider is the editor, and the final package was put together in the wake of David’s death, which makes it a rather poignant collection. The last I heard, authors’ fees and all proceeds were to be donated to a fund designed to commemorate David’s massive contribution to crime fiction, although I’ve been out of the loop for the last couple of months, so maybe those plans have changed. Either way, it looks like a terrific compilation, so congrats to all involved in making it happen and bringing David’s project to fruition. Meanwhile, if you fancy nabbing a copy for a Christmas gift for the crime fan in your family, all the details can be found 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.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mike Nicol

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?
James Ellroy’s LA CONFIDENTIAL.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Boone Daniels in Don Winslow’s THE DAWN PATROL because he’s such a damn good surfer.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
George V Higgins, Elmore Leonard, Don Winslow, Peter Temple, Ken Bruen, James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Anthony Bourdain.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When the plot resolves itself unaided.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
You think I’m crazy, you think I’m gonna say anything other than THE BIG O?

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Have to say THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville – partly because I read it recently, am still raving about it, and reckon it could be set in South Africa.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst – when I answer the phone after six hours work and the caller apologies for waking me up! Best – when I head off to the beach in the middle of the morning.

The pitch for your next book is …?
I need to paint the house, please buy my novel, PAYBACK.

Who are you reading right now?
SA writer called Andrew Brown whose book REFUGE contains one of the best sex scenes ever and a jail rape that out Bunkers Edward Bunker.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. I’m assuming that God would oblige and take away the obsession.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Ever so cool.

Mike Nicol’s PAYBACK will be published in January by Old Street Publishing.