Crime Fiction At The Dublin Writers Festival

I’m very much looking forward to taking part in the Dublin Writers’ Festival this evening, when I’ll be hosting a conversation between Arne Dahl, Sinead Crowley and Brian McGilloway. To wit:

Bestselling Swedish novelist Arne Dahl joins forces with two Irish writers to consider the dark arts of the crime thriller. In such a competitive field, what makes a thriller stand out, and how do you keep the reader turning the pages?
  RTÉ correspondent-turned-crime novelist Sinead Crowley’s debut is attracting all the right buzz. CAN ANYBODY HELP ME? tells the story of a young Dublin mother whose addiction to an online forum leaves her vulnerable to a terrifying killer.
  Brian McGilloway is the New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin and DS Lucy Black series. His sixth novel, HURT, was published in 2013. Earlier this year he won the Tony Doyle Award for his screenplay Little Emperors.
  Presented in association with Dublin City Public Libraries.

  The event takes place at the Central Library at 6pm on May 19th. For all the details, including how to book your free tickets, clickety-click here …

Dahl A For Murder

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I will, on the evening of May 19th, be hosting a conversation between Brian McGilloway, Sinead Crowley and Arne Dahl as part of the Dublin Writers’ Festival. It should be a terrific evening, and I’m very much looking forward to it. For all the details, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, Arne Dahl – whose latest novel is TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN – will be taking to the stage at Smock Alley on May 18th, when he will take part in a public interview chaired by Brian McGilloway. To wit:

“Arne Dahl combines global intrigue with intelligence, suspense and genuine literary quality.” – Lars Kepler

Chairperson: Brian McGilloway

In recent years Swedish crime drama has swept all before it, and now Arne Dahl has become the latest writer to join the likes of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell on bestseller lists across the globe. His Intercrime series, about an elite team of detectives investigating the dark underbelly of Swedish society, has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide and been made into an award-winning TV series (due to air on TG4 later this year). The English language editions of the first two Intercrime novels were released last year and now Dahl comes to Dublin with the third instalment, TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, which finds the Intercrime team disbanded and their leader forced into early retirement. But when a man is blown up in a high-security prison, and a massacre takes place in a dark suburb, the team is urgently reconvened to face a new and terrifying threat.

Date Sunday 18 May // Time 4pm // Venue Smock Alley Theatre // Tickets €12/ €10 concession

  For all the details, including how to book tickets, clickety-click here …

Down These Green Streets A Man Must Go …

They say a week is a long time in politics, but a day can be a hell of a time in the writing business too. In the last 24 hours or so, I’ve had one novel rejected by an American publisher; interest expressed in a different novel by another American publisher; and strong interest expressed by an Irish publisher in the non-fiction project DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS. I’ve also moderated a panel of Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy for the Dublin Writers’ Festival, and had my plans for world domination thwarted by Amazon / Kindle (you can’t publish to Kindle unless you have a U.S. bank account - boo). Meanwhile, I’m lightly redrafting a novel I’d kind of forgotten about – this is the one I propose to upload to Kindle – and finding myself pleasantly surprised with it. I might even post the first chapter up hereabouts, just for some feedback … because I really don’t have enough going on right now.

Methinks I need a holiday, folks ...

Semantics, She Wrote

One of the benefits of running a books blog is that you get sent free books all the time, which is absolutely terrific. I received a copy of Aifric Campbell’s THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER last year, when it was first published, but – the demands on everyone’s reading time being what they are – I simply didn’t get around to reading it. Happily, circumstance has forced my hand, as I’m moderating a panel at next week’s Dublin Writers’ Festival, doing my best not to get myself blinded as Aifric Campbell, Ed O’Loughlin and Peter Murphy dazzle their audience.
  Anyway, being the consummate pro that I am (koff), I read THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to have a right good novel-of-ideas to mull over, the kind that you’d read in two days if only you weren’t breaking off to stare out the window every five minutes going, ‘Hmmmm, that’s interesting …’. Example thereof:

“The truth was that creative writers were more qualified to explain humanity than psychiatrists and philosophers. This was what Levi the chemist had eventually realised, that he would have to resort to fiction and poetry to communicate the horror of Auschwitz. The psychologists and psychoanalysts who had staked out their territorial claim knew no more than the great novelists …” – Aifric Campbell, THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER

  I’m currently a third of the way through Peter Murphy’s JOHN THE REVELATOR, and enjoying that hugely too. There’s a beautiful narrative voice that puts me in mind of Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, and a whimsical note that suggests a tincture of Flann O’Brien. All of which is most excellent …
  As for Ed O’Loughlin’s NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND, clickety-click here …
  That panel, by the way, takes place next Wednesday, June 3rd, at 6pm at the Project Arts Centre. Tickets are €12 / €10. Of which, sadly, I don’t see a red cent. Boo …
  In other Dublin Writers’ Festival News, the impossibly gorgeous Arlene Hunt moderates a panel composed of Val McDermid and Kate Summerscale on Sunday, June 7th, at 5pm at The Abbey, which is quite posh for crime writers, but there you go. Val McDermid is plugging her latest novel, whatever that happens to be, while Kate Summerscale will be talking about THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER, which I’ve yet to read but I’m hearing great things about … Again, tickets are €12 / €10, which is a bargain for The Abbey. Plus, you get Arlene Hunt, and very possibly Val McDermid on a feminist rant. What more could any red-blooded male want?

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being An Occasional Interweb Bangers and Mash-Up

There was a time when Bloomsday took place on June 16 and was basically a pub crawl with fried kidneys on the side. No more! These days the organisers, bless their cotton socks, have extended Bloomsday so that it runs for the full week it actually takes to wade through Ulysses. Lateral thinking, chaps. The trio to your right are Anthony Cronin, John Ryan and Flann O’Brien, conniving over the schedule for ye firste evere Bloomsday pub crawle way back in 1954 (Paddy Kavanagh just out of picture, stealing pints). If you’re in Dublin tomorrow, beware you don’t get run down by a horde of stately, plump Buck Mulligans. Seriously, Grafton Street gets like Pamplona around tea-time … Still stately, no longer plump, Adrian McKinty of The Bloomsday Dead fame gets a nice big-up over at Page Turner, which runs a nifty Kirkus Review of Dead I Well May Be (“McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream. Top-drawer.”) AND the opening chapter from the novel. Value for money, eh? Which reminds us: where the hell is the movie of DIWMB? Last we heard, Anonymous Content had picked it up, with Steve Gaghan on board to adapt and direct. Can anyone out there shed a little light? … The Dublin Writers’ Festival concludes this weekend, with Derek Landy of Skulduggery Pleasant fame yakking it up about his plans for world domination at The Ark, Temple Bar, at 3pm on Sunday. Book ahead, it’ll be a full house … Bad news for Charlie Parker fans: interviewed by The Sacramento Bee, John Connolly says, “I kind of have an idea of how it’s going to end. I don’t think I want to write 30 years of Charlie Parker.” Okay, but what’s the chances Parker returns as a supernatural PI some day? … Finally, Crime Always Pays regular George Zip sends us this two minute version of The Big Lebowski, courtesy of YouTube, in which the dialogue consists almost entirely of for unlawful carnal knowledge. To wit: “Dude, do you have to use so many cusswords?” “What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Or words to that effect. And that’s all for this week, folks – have a very fine weekend and y’all come here now, y’hear?

Crime Writing: Even Real Writers Do It, Y’Know

Call it reverse snobbery if you will, but there we were last week banging on about how the Listowel Writers’ Week fiction prize had ignored Irish crime fiction bar Benjamin Black’s (aka John Banville’s) Christine Falls. How wrong were we? Erm, very. Since then it’s been pointed out to us (ad nauseum) that, of the other four nominees, Claire Kilroy’s thriller Tenderwire (right) has garnered Patricia Highsmith comparisons, Gerard Donovan’s Julius Winsome might well be the crime novel of the year, and Patrick McCabe’s Winterwood is a first-person(s) account of schizophrenic psychosis. Which means that only the winning novel, Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer, wasn’t a crime novel … Hmmm, consider us suitably chastened. All of which is a roundabout way of reminding you that the Dublin Writers’ Festival kicks off tomorrow, with Gerard Donovan and Rose Tremain opening proceedings at The Project, Temple Bar, at 6pm. Will the dreaded phrase ‘crime fiction’ be uttered? Probably not …

The Thick Plottens: Yep, ’Tis Another Midweek Interweb Mash-Up

Why are we telling you about the Hard Case Crime ‘vintage pulp’ stand (co-publisher Charles Ardai on the left, right) at last weekend’s Book Expo America tradeshow in New York? Because (a) we love that Hard Case Crime is republishing the likes of Gil Brewer and David Goodis AND publishing the Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaborations (Slide is due in October), and (b) they dropped us a line and asked for a plug. Yep, it’s that easy … Maverick House release another non-fiction cracker, Kill The Tiger, which gives the inside scoop on a failed British-Australian mission to bomb Singapore Harbour with midget-subs during WWII: “This is the truth about Operation Rimau. It is written in anger, and justifiably so,” says the Daily Telegraph … Nick Laird, he of Utterly Monkey fame (or infamy, depending on your take on crime fiction) releases Glover’s Mistake in March 2008 … Spooky goings-on with John Boyne’s The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas: not only did he complete the book in a three-day burst that finished on April 30, 2004 – John’s birthday and the anniversary of Hitler’s death – but the movie of the book started shooting on April 30 this year. “The day just has these bizarre coincidences,” Boyne tells The Age … Ed Moloney’s A Secret History of the IRA (left) goes into a second edition in July: “Remarkably comprehensive yet coolly incisive ... an extraordinarily courageous and ultimately optimistic book that brilliantly elucidates past horrors,” says the Boston Globe, while the Washington Post made it ‘A Rave’: “Moloney brings a sharply intelligent reporter’s eye to a tangled history often baffling to outsiders.” … Philip Bray won the Tubridy Show / Gill and Macmillan True Story Competition ‘for his story about the horrendous, violent and sometimes humorous world of life in the prison service’ reports the Irish Indo (scroll down). Philip joined the service in 1977, working in Limerick Prison. The story stood out “as being insightful, honest and intriguing,” says Sarah Libby of Gill and Macmillan … Staying with prisons: Michael Higgins’ The Great Escape is published in the Sunday Tribune as part of the Trib’s New Irish Writing, and will now be eligible for the Hennessy Literary Awards, to be announced in April 2008. Anyone wishing to submit a story (2,500 words or less) should hit up Ciaran Carty, New Irish Writing, Sunday Tribune, 15 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2 … The Dublin Writers’ Festival opens on at The Project in Temple Bar on June 13, with Gerard Donovan (right) and Rose Tremain first up at 6pm. Book ahead, because Donovan’s Julius Winsome is getting the kind of reviews that should propel him into the stratosphere … Finally, FOCAP (Friend of Crime Always Pays, natch) Siobhan Dowd launches her kiddie-crime tale The London Eye Mystery tomorrow at, yep, the London Eye, and she’ll be in the Trafalgar Square Waterstone’s later in the evening for a signing if you happen to be in the vicinity. Warning: bring your own bubbly. You go, gal …

DWF: WTF?

’Twas a sordid ‘n’ shameful dalliance and perhaps it’s best that the twisted relationship between crime fiction and the Dublin Writers’ Festival (June 13-17) has ended, for the sake of the kids if nothing else. Mind you, the kids are all growed up now and well capable of looking after themselves – skulking around Eason’s last week, Crime Always Pays counted nine Irish crime fiction authors on the new release wall, as compared with six Irish chick lit writers. Has Irish crime fiction reached some kind of tipping point? Is it time for a Crime Writers Ireland association thingymabob? Only time, that notorious tittle-tattler, will tell … Elsewhere on the festival circuit, Ruth Dudley ‘Do-Wrong’ Edwards (left) of Murdering Americans fame will very probably be a model of decorous restraint when she debates ‘Multi Cultural Ireland – Is There A Limit To Tolerance?’ with Brian Lenihan, TD, and Anna Lo, MLA, on Saturday, June 2, at the Goldsmith International Literary Festival, while John Blandville will be able to take a break from all that pesky talk of crime fiction scribbling when he fetches up at the John Hewitt International Summer School in the company of Fintan O’Toole, TP Flanagan and Kenneth Bloomfield. Blandville (right), who is quickly becoming notorious among the crime writing cognoscenti for his – to put it politely – disdainful attitude to crime fiction and the grubby urchins who read it, should find himself right at home in the rarefied atmosphere of Armagh’s Market Place Theatre from July 23rd to the 27th. Which is nice …