“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Frank McGrath

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?
FREAKY DEAKY (Elmore Leonard). The opening is so well done.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jason Bourne.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
James Schuyler (NY poet), Billy Collins, Roger McGough … (“Time wounds all heels.”)

Most satisfying writing moment?
Having a poem published in the TLS - and getting paid £25 for it - in 1981!

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
CHRISTINE FALLS - Benjamin Black.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
CHRISTINE FALLS - Benjamin Black.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - when you look back on a piece of work that seemed inspired when you wrote it, to discover it is dross. Best - when you look back on a piece of work that seemed rubbish when you wrote it, to discover it is quite good.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Meet Daniel Hennessy - artist, mental patient, sociopath. Released on compassionate grounds due to terminal illness, Danny has one last mission to perform,

Who are you reading right now?
Short Stories (Chekhov); THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Jordan Belfort); THE REASON I JUMP (Naoki Higashida); CADILLAC JUKEBOX (James Lee Burke)

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read.

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

Frank McGrath’s THE CUT is published by Longboat Publishing.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

I’d imagine that CUT by Frank McGrath (Longboat Publishing) is a crime debut with a difference, given that Frank McGrath is a pseudonym for Alan Moore, a poet whose first collection, OPIA (1986) was a UK Poetry Book Society choice – not bad going for a first collection.
  As for CUT, which is set in Dublin, Hong Kong and Macau, the blurb runs like this:

A savage killing. A girl missing. A clock ticking.
  A cop who sees the world differently.
  Detective Jack Grogan investigates the disappearance of the Chinese Trade Minister’s 15-year-old daughter, following the brutal murder of her bodyguard.
  He soon discovers that Lynsey Tao is a pawn in a game where no one can be trusted and nothing is what it seems.

  For more, clickety-click here …

The French Connection

You won’t have noticed, of course, but yours truly and his long-suffering family went off on holidays at the start of July, swanning down to the Cote d’Azur for a fortnight of sun, fun, good food and frolics (sample of said frolics, right, taken on the prom in Monaco).
  To be honest, I’m not the best of it yet – I’m still struggling in low gear and trying to get back into the swing of things, which is why this space will very probably remain quiet for the next few days. That said, I should really kick-start myself: I missed a host of stuff while I was away, including a couple of CWA longlist nominations for Stuart Neville and Michael Russell, the announcement of launches for novels by Louise Phillips and Joe Joyce (both of which appear to be launching on August 7th, which is a pity), and the very quiet release of CUT by Frank McGrath, which I suspect will be a crime novel a cut (oh yes) above the ordinary.
  It was a good fortnight, though, a goodly chunk of which was spent on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean with a notebook (and perhaps a cold beer or two) on the table, pen in hand, sketching out the next book. All very pleasant, of course, but I’ve been putting off said book for more than a few months now, and I need to buckle down and write it. I’m dreading the prospect of starting it, because it seems forever since I began writing a new book, and I seem to have forgotten how to do so. Happily enough, that’s generally the case, and a couple of weeks of eating my eyebrows in front of a blank page should soon sort that out.
  Anyway, it’s good to be back. Everyone else well, I trust?

Absolute Zero Cool: ‘Serious As The World Series’, Apparently

It’s been a very strange week, folks. The good vibes for ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL have continued to seep in through the ether, with which I am well pleased, as you can imagine, particularly as the Irish Times and Irish Independent were so generous in their reviews last weekend (sample AZC cover blushing furiously, right). It’s also gratifying to see a book that took so long to get published, mainly because many publishers made the decision that readers wouldn’t ‘get’ the story, receive so many early positive reviews.
  For my part, I don’t ‘get’ why so many publishers felt that readers wouldn’t ‘get’ the book. AZC is a pretty straightforward story, a black comedy about a hospital porter who decides to blow up ‘his’ hospital. Yes, it pokes a bit of fun at literary conventions of all stripes, but that class of a malarkey is almost as old as the novel itself, the classic example being our old friend Tristram Shandy, the first volumes of which were first published in 1759. Yes, it’s fair to say, as Rob Kitchin does in his review over at The Blue House, that ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL won’t be for everybody; but then, what book is? But the assumption made by publishers that readers aren’t interested / smart enough / self-challenging enough to read anything that doesn’t conform to exactly everything they’ve read in the past is to my mind lazy at best, and prejudiced at worst.
  Anyway, on to the reviews that have popped up on the interweb in the last few days. First up, the aforementioned Rob Kitchin over at The View From the Blue House, a fine author himself and a reader who has proved himself a quietly astute observer of the crime novel over the last couple of years*. Quoth Rob:

“Satire and high art meets screwball noir … The result is a very clever book, that’s at once fun and challenging. The prose and plot has been honed within an inch of its life, full of lovely turns of phrases, philosophical depth and keen observational insight … ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL takes the crime genre and its many tropes and stereotypes and throws them out the window. It’s a genuinely unique tale … Five stars all the way for me.” - Rob Kitchin

  Meanwhile, Malcolm Berry, also an author, has this to say at his interweb lair The Foulks Rebellion:

“My point is, there is room for that, and there is increasing room for super-consciousness, post-rational literature -- particularly in our post-rational world -- along the lines of Woyzeck, Bertold Brecht, Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, and others. Most recently, Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. My kind of book. Maybe it could be called Gonzolit. Serious as the World Series, clean as Van Gogh’s ear surgery, worthy of our times.” - Malcolm Berry

  ‘Serious as the World Series’? Now that’s what I call a cover blurb …
  Finally, fellow Irish scribe Frank McGrath was good enough to post his review of AZC to the Amazon.com Kindle page, where the gist of his spake runs thusly:

“This is not a ‘crime’ book in the normal sense of having a detective, a killer and an easy to follow plot. It is a stunningly beautiful and achingly funny work which probes the type of existential questions raised by works like NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Dostoyevsky, and works by Sartre, Camus (THE PLAGUE), Kafka, and Ireland’s Beckett and Flann O’Brien.” - Frank McGrath

  Now, those three gentlemen bandy around some fairly heavyweight names, but the one word which keeps popping up, and which I’m most delighted about is, ‘fun’. Because you can be as serious as you want about writing books, in terms of the craft and whatever it is you have to say, but ultimately, if a book isn’t enjoyable to read, what’s the point? Life’s too short to spend grinding through some eminently worthy but excruciating dull text.
  Finally, a quick reminder to any Belfast readers out there that I’ll be appearing at No Alibis this evening, at 6pm, in the company of Adrian McKinty. Being honest, and unless I win the lottery between now and 6pm, the double-hander with McKinty will be the highlight of my week. See you there …
  * Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

UPDATE: Frank McGrath’s kind words appear to have disappeared from the Amazon page since yesterday. Um, Frank? Any ideas? Anyone?

Life, The Universe And Everything

It’s my birthday today, according to Facebook, and if Facebook says so then it must be true. The best present of the day actually arrived last night, when I went in to check on the sleeping Princess Lilyput (right), and discovered that, like her silly ol’ Dad, she just doesn’t know when to quit on a good book.
  Elsewhere, Mrs Lovely Wife presented me with a Kindle to mark the occasion. A strange feeling: why should I feel like a traitor for liking my birthday present so much? Anyway, the early signs are good, and the actual reading experience was so positive that it was only afterwards I realised I’d had no issues with reading off a machine. Unsurprising, perhaps, when I spend 10-12 hours per day reading off machines, but I was worried that the Kindle might somehow make the reading of books a more mechanical or clinical experience than reading good old-fashioned dead trees. Not so.
  Naturally, the first ebook I downloaded was EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, mainly because I’ve been plugging the bejasus out of said tome for the last few weeks, and I wanted to make sure it looked the part, and that no one is being cheated when they fork over their hard-earned $0.99c or £0.86p.
  The readers’ reviews suggest that they’re not, and pardon me for a moment while I dust down ye olde trumpet and give it a lung-bursting blast. There have been four readers’ reviews to date, which isn’t a lot, but I’ll take quality over quantity any day, and they’ve all been five-star big-ups. Here’s the skinny from Kindle UK:

Eightball Masterclass *****
“You want a book with heart, humour and brains then look no further than EIGHTBALL BOOGIE … I am quite frankly in awe of Declan Burke’s ability with a sentence. His writing is at turns lyrical and succinct; his dialogue snaps in your ear and his characters are so real they stay in your head long after you’ve turned the last page. Simply can’t praise this writer enough. Get yourself a copy now!” - Michael Malone

Boogie On Down *****
“Harry Rigby. Great protagonist. Wish I had his knack for one-liners. They’re a defining feature of the novel. I didn’t do a formal count, but there has to be at least a couple of wisecracks on every page. Wise mouth, cocky attitude, low self-esteem … I loved the book.” - Gerard Brennan

An Irish Crime Classic *****
“Much has been written about the new wave of quality crime fiction coming out of Ireland at the moment and arguably, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE is the novel that kicked it all off. EIGHTBALL is a blistering amalgam of hardboiled, Irish noir reminiscent of Chandler, Hammett, Willeford or Elmore Leonard but wholly unique and wholly Irish at the same time. In EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, Burke is one of the first writers to recognise just how ‘noir’ life can be in Irish towns - Ken Bruen is another … What elevates EIGHTBALL BOOGIE to its status as a small classic of Irish crime writing, however, is its prescience. In its portrait of an Ireland at the height of its slow, self-satisfied orgy of consumption - of cocaine, dodgy property deals, dodgier sex, Mercs and facelifts (EIGHTBALL does them all well and more) - it is as if the novel was written with the coming crash in mind. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE is witty, hilarious at times, violent, biting social commentary which also manages to be a little bit sad and brilliant at the same time. An outrider for the sub-genre of Irish crime fiction and a small classic of the genre. Buy it.” - Kevin McCarthy

  And, over on Kindle US:

Noir at its Finest *****
“At times the book is like a phantasmagoria, with vivid characters and lurid scenes appearing out of the murky Northwest Ireland winter, and fading again. The dialogue sparkles with one-line zingers, the exposition (descriptions of snow, ice, winter) is perfect, and the sense of menace is all-pervading. A scintillating read -highly recommended.” - Frank McGrath

  I thank you all kindly, folks. Meanwhile, if you’re of a mind to dip a metaphorical toe into EIGHTBALL but don’t own a Kindle, there’s always the option of getting a paperback copy for free (plus postage & packaging). For more, clickety-click here …
  So there it is. The title of this post will give most of you a fair idea of how old I am, although I have to say I’m a tad disappointed that the wisdom of the ages and / or cosmos has yet to seep through. Maybe that comes after the cake.