Launch: GRACE by Paul Lynch

The Fowl Skulduggery Of Lovers In The Woods

Or, your chance to vote for Irish crime fiction. Voting for the Irish Book Awards’ Book of the Decade ends on May 27th, and you - yes, YOU! - can vote for the best Irish book from the last ten years. Of the 50 titles, two can be considered adult crime titles - John Connolly’s THE LOVERS and Tana French’s IN THE WOODS - while there are two young adult crime titles: Eoin Colfer’s ARTEMIS FOWL and Derek Landy’s SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT. Meanwhile, at a stretch, there are two titles that could be considered literary crime: Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST and David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER. You know what to do, people: your democratic duty calls here …
  Elsewhere, there was a very nice interview with Declan Hughes in yesterday’s Irish Times, conducted by Arminta Wallace, in which Squire Hughes answers with good grace the perennial question of why crime fiction isn’t taken seriously by those who really should know better. Quote Dec:

“Anyone who reads a page of Chandler and doesn’t realise that it’s better prose than 95 per cent of writers of any kind . . . it’s weird, I think. It’s ignorance, too.”

  Well said, that man. For the rest, clickety-click here …
  In other news, Stuart Neville has got himself a stalker. Jeez, what does a guy have to do to get a stalker around here …?
  Finally, the Only Good Movies blog was kind enough to link to Crime Always Pays in a round-up of crime fiction blogs that review crime movies, so I’d better do the decent thing and review one. To wit:

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (18s)
As the title suggests, Lieutenant Terence McDonagh is not a good man. He spends his days apparently investigating crimes, while in reality he’s busy shaking down civilians to feed his drug, gambling and sex addictions. On occasion he offers flashes of morality, taking the lead on an investigation into a drug-related execution-style killing that claimed the lives of men, women and children, but even that investigation simply opens up opportunities for McDonagh to get his hands on illicit drugs. Crippled physically by back pain, and morally by his addictions, McDonagh begins making the kind of mistakes that even a corrupt police department can’t ignore. With time running out and good and bad guys closing in, McDonagh has big decisions to make about his immediate future - if he has one. Set - superficially - in the wake of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, this finds Nicolas Cage taking on the mantle of Harvey Keitel, who starred in the original Bad Lieutenant (1992), which was a genuinely unsettling tale of human degradation directed by Abel Ferrara. This remake / reimagining, which is directed by Werner Herzog, shows flashes of the original’s brilliance, not least when McDonagh starts hallucinating about iguanas while about to confront a houseful of potential killers. By the same token, and despite a gripping tale, this version lacks the scuzzy quality that made the original so compelling. Cage’s performance is an archly knowing one, and despite his many personal and professional handicaps, it’s hard to believe that he suffers the same quality of spiritual torment that Keitel brought to the screen. Similarly, Eva Mendes is rarely less than luminous playing McDonagh’s prostitute girlfriend. A strong cop thriller, it lacks the authenticity that might have made it great. ***

The Gospel According To Genre

There was a good piece in Publishers Weekly titled ‘Breaking the Wall’, in which a variety of crime writers discuss what Michael Connelly describes as the ‘membrane’ (as opposed to ‘wall’) between genre and literary fiction. For my money, Tana French (right) nails it to the wall:

“When you’re working to make a sentence as perfect as it can be,” says French, “or to make a character real and vivid and three-dimensional, how and whether you do that isn’t dependent on where the book will be shelved.”

  Well said, that woman. Mind you, Tana is one of those writers for whom style appears to be every bit as important as plot or character. Could it be a coincidence that IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS are award-winning best-sellers? Erm, probably not …
  It’s also true that Ireland has its fair share of ‘literary crime fiction’: John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE and THE UNTOUCHABLE, Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN, Pat McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY, Eoin McNamee’s RESURRECTION MAN (and others), Brian Moore’s THE COLOUR OF BLOOD (and others), Liam O’Flaherty’s THE INFORMER and THE ASSASSIN, David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, Kevin Power’s BAD DAY IN BLACKROCK, Gerard Donovan’s JULIUS WINSOME, Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST (and others) … It’s a long and noble tradition.
  Okay, your turn. Your favourite ‘literary crime fiction’ is ...

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jason O’Toole

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?
Anything by Raymond Chandler or James M Cain.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Philip Marlowe.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Charles Bukowski and John Fante.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Interviewing John Gilligan last year for a Hot Press magazine cover story. It was 13,000 words feature that ran over two editions of the magazine, which subsequently resulted in Hot Press being banned from Irish prisons. This feature is in my latest book, CRIME, INK.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Ireland has produced an abundance of excellent crime authors (Connolly, Collins, Bruen, Burke, McNamee, Hughes, Barclay, Bateman, Kerrigan … to name a few) but my personal favourite is THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE by John Banville or Edna O’Brien’s IN THE FOREST.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again, there are several, but I’d suggest LIES OF SILENCE by Brian Moore.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing about writing is the flexibility of working from home and not having to work office hours. However, the downside is you always bring your work home with you, so it’s very hard to just switch off …

The pitch for your next book is …?
I have no idea, but I seem to start every pitch with the following words: “I can turn this around quick …”

Who are you reading right now?
I’m rereading Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD and THE NEW JOURNALISM, edited by Tom Wolfe and EW Johnson.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d probably go insane without being able to write …

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
In your face! The Sunday Independent once described my writing as “in your face”, which I hope was meant as a compliment.

Jason O’Toole’s CRIME, INK is published by Merlin Publishing.

Yet More Independent Publishing, Sort Of

The Irish Independent has launched yet another of in its series of free books, this one focusing on 20 contemporary female Irish writers. First down the road less travelled is Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest, to which the Indo’s legion of blurb elves addressed themselves thusly:

Edna O’Brien’s novel In the Forest tells the dark story of a beautiful young woman and her little son who live in a cottage on the edge of a forest in rural Ireland and are murdered by a deranged killer who has become obsessed with her. The book is based on the true story of Imelda Riney and her son Liam, who were murdered by Brendan O’Donnell in Co Clare in 1994. The mentally disturbed O’Donnell went on to kill local priest Fr Joe Walshe. When the book was first published in 2002 it caused a lot of controversy and O’Brien was accused of exploiting the grief of the families involved. But if the novel makes use of a real life event, it does so for a valid artistic reason. This book is a brilliant exploration of exactly how such a horror -- and others that have happened since then -- can come to pass. It takes us deep into the mind of the killer and makes us feel the unspeakable terror of the victims. It is told in a calm and factual way, but in language of such intensity that the reader feels part of what is happening. It is at once terrifying and spell-binding to read.

All of which leads us to wonder when the Indo will get around to a series of contemporary Irish crime novels. Our humble suggestion runs, in no particular order and excluding novels currently in the first flush of publication, thusly:

1. Quinn by Seamus Smyth
2. The Guards by Ken Bruen
3. Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty
4. The Dead by Ingrid Black
5. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
6. The Polling of the Dead by John Kelly
7. Little Criminals by Gene Kerrigan
8. Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman
9. The Guilty Heart by Julie Parsons
10. Bogmail by Patrick McGinley
11. Death the Pale Rider by Vincent Banville
12. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
13. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
14. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
15. The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore
16. Revenge by KT McCaffrey
17. The Assassin by Liam O’Flaherty
18. Resurrection Man by Eoin McNamee
19. Death Call by TS O’Rourke
20. A Carra King by John Brady

Anyone you think we might have left out? As always, canvassing will immediately qualify …