Feature: The Irish Spy Novel

I had a feature on the lesser-spotted Irish spy novel published in the Irish Times last week, which featured – among others – Joe Joyce, John Banville, Eoin McNamee, Stephen Burke, Michael Russell, Stuart Neville, Philip Davison, Joseph Hone and Andrew Hughes. To wit:

Brinsley McNamara always claimed that Garradrimna, the village which provides the setting for The Valley of the Squinting Windows, could have been any village in Ireland. Published in 1918, the novel can be read as an expression of a kind of colonial pathology, as the population of Garradrimna engage in constant mutual surveillance, monitoring one another’s weaknesses and ferreting out secrets in order to accrue what passes for power among the powerless.
  Naturally, any of Garradrimna’s upstanding citizens would take mortal offence at being called a spy. To the coloniser, every native is suspect until proven otherwise, and the only way to prove this logically fallacious gambit is to maintain a relentless scrutiny. Spied upon for generations, the colonised learn to abhor the spies, even as they absorb the tradecraft; it’s no coincidence that there are few Irish insults worse than that of tout, or informer.
  Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why, despite the recent upsurge in Irish crime fiction, the Irish spy novel is notable by its absence. There is no Irish equivalent to Ian Fleming, for example, who served with British Naval Intelligence during WWII, or John le Carré, Somerset Maugham (Ashenden) and Graham Greene, all of whom worked with British Intelligence before going on to write spy fiction. The archetypal heroes of modern spy fiction were written from the perspective of the coloniser and empire builder; the methods employed by their protagonists may be less than savoury, of course, but the intelligent reader understands the realpolitik that means some eggs are destined for omelettes.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Jim Kelly

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?
A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, by Sebastien Japrisot.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Sal Paradise in ON THE ROAD.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Tolkien.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting the word “limned” into the next DI Shaw mystery.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, by Erskine Childers.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD by Declan Hughes.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing is there’s no office party. The best thing is being able to play with a sledge for five hours in the snow.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A lonely road. Nine people trapped in a line of cars in a blizzard. One brutal murder. No footprints in the snow. The impossible crime.

Who are you reading right now?
About to start THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER or THE MURDER AT ROAD HILL HOUSE by Kate Summerscale. Just finished MAPS OF MY LIFE by Guy Browning and a biography of WILLIAM THE BASTARD. (Don’t ask).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. (but that’s the Bible out, right ? So there’s an upside.)

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sense of Place.

Jim Kelly’s DEATH WORE WHITE is out now from Penguin.