“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee“This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019“The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent“Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.” – Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian
Showing posts with label George Pelecanos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Pelecanos. Show all posts
The latest crime fiction column in the Irish Times was published last weekend, featuring offerings from George Pelecanos, Laura Wilson, DA Mishani and Margie Orford. It also included UNRAVELLING OLIVER, the debut novel from Irish author Liz Nugent. To wit:
Liz Nugent’s Unravelling Oliver (Penguin Ireland, €14.99) opens with Dublin-based writer Oliver Ryan viciously beating his wife Alice. The assault is described in the first person by Oliver himself, but Oliver’s is only one of a number of first-person accounts on offer here, each one a piece of the jigsaw that gradually assembles itself into portrait of a pathetic young boy who grew up to become a monster who writes best-selling children’s books. The reader is given no framing device relating to who might have collated the various accounts, or why, but the narrative gambit pays off handsomely. Oliver Ryan may be a vain, shallow and ultimately violent sociopath, but his story grows more compelling and nuanced the more we learn about him and the factors that influenced the man he would become, some of which were set in train even before he was born. More an investigation into psychology than a conventional crime thriller, Unravelling Oliver is a formidable debut. ~ Declan Burke
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 …
In the final part of Alan Glynn’s spectacular loose-trilogy of conspiracy thrillers, someone is assassinating the most powerful players in the global financial markets.
A Wall Street investment banker is shot dead while jogging in Central Park. Later that night, one of the savviest hedge-fund managers in the city is gunned down outside a fancy Upper West Side restaurant. Are these killings part of a coordinated terrorist attack, or just coincidence? Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey has a hunch that it’s neither. Days later, when an attempt is made on the life of another CEO, the story blows wide open ...
Racing to stay ahead of the curve, Ellen encounters Frank Bishop, a recession-hit architect, whose daughter has gone missing. The search for Lizzie and her boyfriend takes Frank and Ellen from a quiet campus to the blazing spotlight of a national media storm - and into the devastating crucible of a personal and a public tragedy.
Meanwhile, lurking in the shadows once again is James Vaughn, legendary CEO of private equity firm the Oberon Capital Group. Despite his failing health, Vaughan is refusing to give up control easily, and we soon see just how far-reaching and pervasive his influence really is.
Set deep in the place where corrupt global business and radical politics clash, Alan Glynn’s GRAVELAND is an explosive and hugely topical thriller.
If you haven’t read either of the previous two novels, by the way, I can heartily recommend both - BLOODLAND, of course, won the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year at last year’s Irish Book Awards, and deservedly so.
Incidentally, the cover of GRAVELAND - the image above suggests that it’ll be the US cover - carried a very nice encomium from a certain George Pelecanos, who declares the novel to be, ‘A terrific read … completely involving.’ So there you have it - if it’s good enough for George Pelecanos, etc.
McKinty is a very fine writer, as many have pointed out before (he is currently on the longlist for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for his previous offering, FIFTY GRAND), and he invests his hardboiled prose with a muscular poetry that lends itself to deliciously black humour (Chapter Six opens with the memorable line, “The place stank of dead Mexicans and no one was even dead yet.”). All of which would have made for an excellent crime novel, and the Pavee’s nomadic lifestyle provides a neat backdrop for Killian’s peripatetic wanderings; but as always with McKinty, there’s more: his novels are as much novels of ideas as they are page-turning thrillers, and here he provides a rare insight into the world of the Pavee, its traditions, mythologies and language.
There’s a lot more in that vein, you won’t be at all surprised to learn, around about here. But for a more up-to-date take on FALLING GLASS, try next week’s Booklist review, the gist of which runs thusly:
“The mystical and marginalized Pavee subculture is molded brilliantly by McKinty into the perfect pivot for a novel exploring the concept of honour outside the law. A sure bet for Lee Child’s crew, but there’s also a scratchy whisper in McKinty’s voice calling to George Pelecanos’ fans.” — Christine Tran, Booklist
You may or may not know that tonight is World Book Night, in which tons of books are given away free to stimulate reading. A good idea, I think, no matter how you look at it.
Naturally, being something of a contrarian, I decided that it’d be nice notion to look into the possibility of an Alternative World Book Night - i.e., to ask a number of writers, poets et al to nominate a recently published book that they consider to be unjustly overlooked by the critics and public alike. The result was published in the Irish Times on Saturday, with the most fascinating / totally bonkers answer coming from poet David Lordan. To wit:
CYCLONOPEDIA: COMPLICITY WITH ANONYMOUS MATERIALS
By Reza Negarestani (re.press, 2008)
“I’d like to plump for the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani’s genre-bending ‘Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials’. It’s one for active readers and fans of “difficult work”. A continuously inventive and artistically ambitious work that, like many great literary refoundations, is simultaneously a reimagining of reality and a reorientating of literature against currently dominant trends. Negarestani draws on a polyglot engagement with contemporary theory and on a schizophrenic, inhumanist literary heritage including Lovecraft, Stein, Burroughs and Pynchon, to give us an astounding depiction of history as a minor subplot within a struggle of much older, more vast forces. Cyclonopedia refreshed my paranoia and left me more doubtful and contemptuous of things-as-they-are than ever before, something the most sustaining works of art have always done for me.” - David Lordan
For the rest, which includes nominations from George Pelecanos, Aifric Campbell, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, China Miéville, Sara Paretsky, Mark Billingham and more, clickety-click here …
The latest ‘Crime Beat’ column appeared in the Irish Times on Saturday, offering short reviews of the latest offerings from Michael Connelly, Aly Monroe, Susan Hill, Roslund & Hellstrom, George Pelecanos and The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman. I’ll quote you the Bateman, if I may:
Another former journalist, Colin Bateman, resurrects the mouthy newspaperman Dan Starkey for his first outing in six years in NINE INCHES (Headline, £19.99). No longer a reporter, Starkey has set up as a private detective, in which capacity he is commissioned by a shock-jock radio host, Jack Caramac, to discover who kidnapped his young son. A slew of nefarious characters hove into sight as Starkey’s investigation moves from the well-heeled suburbs to working-class loyalist enclaves, in the process proffering a rather jaundiced view of the officially peaceful Northern Ireland landscape. Oddly, the ex-paramilitaries Starkey encounters are far more terrifying than those he outwitted when Bateman was writing during the Troubles, perhaps because, back then, there was always the hope the psychopathic parasites might melt back into the shadows when the new dispensation dawned. Dotted with Starkey’s blackly comic observations, NINE INCHES is an unsettling, breathless and very funny novel.
Pray silence for the Kindle-only publication of Allan Guthrie’s modern classic, TWO-WAY SPLIT, a debut novel which won the Theakston’s Old Peculier award in 2007. If you haven’t stumbled across Allan Guthrie before, this was Crime Always Pays’ take at the time:
“The holdall sat on the bed like an ugly brown bag of conscience.” Fans of classic crime writing will get a kick or five out of TWO-WAY SPLIT, and we’re talking classic: Allan Guthrie’s multi-character exploration of Edinburgh’s underbelly marries the spare, laconic prose of James M. Cain with the psychological grotesqueries of Jim Thompson at his most lurid … The result is a gut-knotting finale that unfurls with the inevitability of all great tragedy and the best nasty sex – it’ll leave you devastated, hollowed out, aching to cry and craving more. – Declan Burke
For more in the same vein, clickety-click here … And if you don’t believe me - I wouldn’t - then how about these two encomiums?
“Seek him out and buy his book.” - Ian Rankin “Excellent.” - George Pelecanos
So there you have it. TWO-WAY SPLIT for 99p on Amazon UK, or 99c on Amazon US. Buy it now, or Big Al will come around and bat his eyelashes at you … Or is it that if you do buy it, Big Al will come around and bat the eyelashes? I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter. Just buy it. You won’t regret it.
This morning I woke to breakfast in bed (well, coffee) served by the Lovely Ladies (right) and a rousing rendition of ‘Appy bird-day to Daggy’ courtesy of the Princess Lilyput. I may never have a finer morning again. I’ll leave the existential ruminations on turning 41 to another day, and just say ta kindly to everyone who’s been in touch with good wishes. Much obliged, folks. Meanwhile, a rare birthday treat awaits me later tonight, when the Dark Lord, aka John Connolly, is the subject of an Arts Lives documentary on RTE TV. Swish stuff – surely it’s only a matter of time before Connolly is elected to (koff) Aosdána. Anyway, I’ve seen the trailer, in which Connolly claims that evil exists, not as an entity but as the absence of empathy, which is a fascinating concept, and Connolly’s natural gift as a raconteur suggests that the documentary could well be a cracker. Quoth the blurb elves:
Shot in Dublin, Maine, Baltimore and Washington, John Connolly: Of Blood and Lost Things traces 40-year-old Connolly’s literary trajectory from jobbing freelance with The Irish Times newspaper to publishing superstardom on the sale of his first novel, Every Dead Thing, which launched his flawed protagonist, P.I., Charlie (Bird) Parker. The roots of the novel and its location go back some years to his coverage for the Irish Times of the murder of Sri Lankan prostitute Belinda Perreira in Dublin and a student summer spent in Portland, Maine … Featuring dramatised readings from his work John Connolly: Of Blood and Lost Things examines the sense of place and atmosphere in Connolly’s work but also includes a biographical narrative of his Dublin childhood and journey toward becoming a writer. The documentary features interviews with iconic American crime writer George Pelecanos; David Simon, creator of TV’s The Wire; American novelist and friend Laura Lippman, and fellow Irish crime writer Declan Hughes.
Nice. The documentary goes out at 10:15pm tonight (Tuesday) on RTE1; if you happened to miss it, it’ll be available on the RTE iPlayer for three weeks after the broadcast date. Enjoy …
UPDATE: John Connolly’s THE GATES has just been nominated for the Bisto Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year, with Bob ‘No Relation’ Burke’s THE THIRD PIG DETECTIVE AGENCY nestling in there snugly too. Nice one, chaps ...
Good news for Alan Glynn, people – the movie based on his debut novel, DARK FIELDS, is up and running again. The project was to have starred Shia LaBeouf, but that didn’t happen after LaBeouf broke his arm, but now it’s green lights for filming to start next spring, with Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, The A-Team) playing the lead in a tale that is being described as ‘Fight Club meets The Game’. Nice. It’s a terrific novel, so do yourself a favour and check it out before it hits the silver screen … In other Glynn-related news, WINTERLAND gets its official launch on Tuesday, November 17th, at the Dubray Bookshop on Grafton Street, Dublin (kick-off 6.30pm). Lauded to the heavens by the likes of John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Val McDermid and George Pelecanos, WINTERLAND deserves all the plaudits going, and more. Mark it down in your diary now – this is one you’ll want to tell the grandkids about …
UPDATE: Laura Wilson reviews WINTERLAND in The Guardian. To wit:
“ … a heavyweight, grown-up thriller set in Dublin against a background of dirty politics and even dirtier business dealings … Emotionally truthful, with a plausible cast, and told in wonderfully fluent prose, WINTERLAND is a gripping tale of a world of greed and secrets.”
You will, if you’re one of CAP’s three regular readers, have encountered the name of Alan Glynn before, as often as not in conjunction with the latest rave for his forthcoming novel, WINTERLAND – John Connolly, George Pelecanos, Val McDermid and Ken Bruen are among those who just about stop short of acclaiming it a cure for all mankind’s ills. I interviewed Alan for the Evening Herald last week, with the opening gambit running thusly:
Alan Glynn is a man of many talents. Not only has he written two superb novels, one of which has been optioned in Hollywood, he has also, in writing the prophetic novel WINTERLAND, pretty much single-handedly caused the crippling Irish recession. “Oooops,” he says, “sorry about that. But you’re right, the first draft of WINTERLAND was written during the boom, although I don’t think I was trying to predict anything or be Cassandra-ish. I did revise it in the light of what has happened more recently, but the central concern, or target, of the story is something that applies equally in times of boom or bust -- which is that all-too-familiar dynamic in Irish life where people tell lies, cover them up and create all sorts of collateral damage, sometimes spread out over decades, and never take responsibility.”
The worse things get here in Ireland – and the place is disintegrating by the day, with worse (Nama, the Lisbon referendum, the increasingly unfunny Tweedledum ‘n’ Tweedledee act that is the Fianna Fail / Green Party coalition) coming down the pike – the more appropriate becomes the title of Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND. Contemporary and brutally relevant, it is set against a Dublin backdrop in which the worlds of crime, big business and politics collide, with Joe O’Schmoe (and his comely missus, Josephine) bearing the brunt of the fall-out, as always. WINTERLAND isn’t due out until November 5th, but the covers (UK above, US below) have appeared and the big-ups keeping on coming. To wit:
“Timely, topical, and thrilling.” – John Connolly
“A terrific read ... completely involving.” – George Pelecanos
“A dark and terrifying slice of Dublin noir. I loved it.” – RJ Ellory
“This is the colossus of Irish crime fiction. What MYSTIC RIVER did for Dennis Lehane, WINTERLAND should do for Alan Glynn. It is a noir masterpiece, the bar against which all future works will be judged.” – Ken Bruen
And while we’re on the subject of Ken Bruen, Gerard Brennan has news over at CSNI about a forthcoming TV series based on the Jack Taylor novels. Clickety-click here for the inside skinny …
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? Well as so many people say Chandler, I’ll be awkward and plump for Hammett. Almost eighty years on and THE MALTESE FALCON is still nigh-on perfect. It’s fizzing, fat-free and I sometimes think the key to its longevity and brilliance is the fact that there aren’t really any nice people in it at all.
What fictional character would you most like to have been? Oh, Tom Ripley, definitely. Money, fine wine, French cheese, a harpsichord, a deliciously ambiguous sexuality and the ability to murder anyone who gets in your way without a moment’s guilt. What’s not to like?
Who do you read for guilty pleasures? I’m not really guilty about anything I read, though I would probably need a long hot shower if I lost my mind temporarily and accidentally read any Jeffrey Archer. I read a lot of crime fiction, probably way too much, but many good friends are crime writers and I’m going to read their books anyway, because they’re mates. So the crime novel usually wins out if it’s a toss up between that and a slim volume of indescribably moving poetry. Actually, the poetry would make me feel guilty...
Most satisfying writing moment? Generally, finishing something, or getting some piece of feedback from a reader or a colleague that validates something you’ve tried to do. When I was at school I did something fairly beastly, involving a frog and a cricket bat. Look, I was a KID, OK, and a bigger kid made me do it. Anyway. I used that scenario in a book and a writer called Kevin Wignall, when he read the book, mailed me and said “You did that, didn’t you?”. I was really chuffed that I’d obviously managed to put across the shame and horror of that moment so vividly. Or maybe Kevin just saw through my sad attempt at catharsis. It was a HELL of a shot though ... The best Irish crime novel is ...? I think John Connolly is a unique voice (he’ll be REALLY mad at me for saying that) and his are always books that I will rush to read. I’m going to plump for the first, EVERY DEAD THING. I read it while I was struggling with my first book, and I almost gave up trying because EDT was so bloody good.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie? John is understandably protective of Charlie Parker, so I’d love to see his stand-alone BAD MEN at the movies, but if he ever does let the rights go, THE BLACK ANGEL could be a wonderful film. And I know it’s not a crime novel, but if Guillermo Del Toro got hold of THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS ...
Worst / best thing about being a writer? Best? It’s a close-run thing between the free books and being asked where you get your ideas from. There aren’t too many bad things (let’s face it, it’s a bloody marvellous way to make a living) but I’ve never got used to the creative schizophrenia; the fact that you look at something you wrote the day before and thought you were happy with, and it suddenly appears to be unpublishable rubbish.
The pitch for your next book is ...? It’s tricky because there are different books coming out here and in the US. They’re a book behind in the states, so they’ll be publishing DEATH MESSAGE, while the newest book, BLOODLINE, will be out in the UK this August. Er ... both will have Tom Thorne in, and a body or two. There may be some country music. And the murder will not be solved by a cat.
Who are you reading right now? OK, the best thing is actually getting free books that haven’t even been published yet. So, once I’ve finished THE SMOKING DIARIES by Simon Gray (shock, horror: not crime at all, but an attempt to enjoy cigarettes vicariously) I’ll be getting stuck into the forthcoming books by George Pelecanos and the aforementioned Mr Connolly. Can’t wait.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be? Oh, read, no question. Reading is always an enormous pleasure and sometimes, writing ... isn’t. The three best words to describe your own writing are ...? Better than Archer’s.
David Thompson of the Busted Flush Press gets in touch to give us a sneak preview of their forthcoming reprint of THE JAMES DEANS, the cover art of which is only sumptuous (it also features a foreword from Michael Connelly). It follows on from their reprint of WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE, about which George Pelecanos had this to say:
“Reed Farrel Coleman is one of the more original voices to emerge from the crime fiction field in the last ten years. For the uninitiated, WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE is the place to start.” – George Pelecanos
Which is very nice indeed. I read THE JAMES DEANS last year, in Croatia, on a day of lowering skies and fine mist that made it pointless to go sight-seeing, and yet was perfect for sitting out on a veranda on a swing-seat with coffee, cigarettes and strong reading to hand. I read it in the proverbial one sitting, and put it down a little dazed. I meant to write it up for the blog when I got back from Croatia, but on the couple of tries I made, it seemed beyond me. It’s a Moe Prager novel, a private eye story set in 1983. Prager is an ex-NYPD cop turned private eye, albeit of the reluctant variety. The plot, which begins with the murder of a young political intern, has plenty of twists and turns, and the style is pleasingly aware of, without being deferential to, its sense of history and its place in the lineage of Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald et al. All of which would have made THE JAMES DEANS eminently readable. What made it compulsive, however, was the voice of Moe Prager. This was Coleman’s third novel, I think, and yet he had slipped inside the skin of his character in a way that is very difficult to achieve and impossible to fake. It’s not that Moe is gratifyingly human, although he is, because there are no superhuman feats of endurance and / or soaking up of punishment. It’s not that he is the vulnerable Everyman, doing his best in shitty circumstances, because he is, and there’s very little by way of artificial Eureka! moments and savant-like puzzle-solving. For me, what made Moe Prager such a compelling character was his realism. It’s a difficult thing to describe, and perhaps I was identifying too much with the character, but Coleman has the ability to synchronise Prager’s heartbeat with your own, so that you pulse and twitch and shudder as he does. Yes, THE JAMES DEANS is a crime fiction novel, and a superb example of same, and a terrific private eye tale that was nominated for the Edgar and Gumshoe awards. But Moe Prager could just as easily have been an accountant, or an Alaskan park ranger, or a road-sweeper, and his story would have been a fascinating one. At the end of the day, novels are about people and the consequences of how they live their lives. Some writers can make you feel that they have inhabited their characters to a degree associated with demonic possession, but Reed Farrel Coleman’s gift is to graft that sensation onto the reader, so that he or she feels they’re wearing the character like skin. In the interests of openness, transparency and accountability, I should mention that Reed Farrel Coleman was gracious enough to read and blurb THE BIG O, and in very generous terms too, simply on the basis that we had a mutual friend in Ken Bruen. At the time I thought it was a lovely gesture, and indicative of how hospitable the crime fiction community is; but what made his blurb so powerful to yours truly was that, after reading THE JAMES DEANS, I already knew he was so far ahead of the posse that there was no favour he could require of me in return. A nice guy, then, and a terrific writer, one of the finest of his generation. If you haven’t read THE JAMES DEANS yet, do yourself a favour and do so. It’s how books are supposed to be.
The Philadelphia City Paper drops by – not in person, y’understand – to ask if we’d be interested in hosting some of its recent interview with Gorgeous George Pelecanos (right, pic taken by the inimitable Jon Jordan), on the occasion of the publication of his latest tome, THE TURNAROUND. Which was very nice of them, although it’ll be even nicer still if they agree to interview yours truly when I’m passing through Philly on my most excellent adventure road-trip in the company of one John McFetridge on the way to the Baltimore Bouchercon. But we’ll worry about that anon. In the spirit of brotherly love, herewith be an excerpt from said interview, the full version of which can be found here. To wit:
CP: What makes a character resonate for you? Is there a moment when you know you’ve hit upon something? GP: “I don’t outline or anything, I just write my books. It can be kind of scary but sometimes you don’t find the character until late in the book. Historically, I’ve always hit it somewhere in the book but while you’re writing it you’re saying to yourself, ‘I don’t know who this is yet, this person is not complete.’ I’m just going to write my way through it and find the character. Eventually you do, and you go back and rewrite and change little things. That’s how it works. It can be something as little as a piece of dialogue that just comes to you and you say, ‘Wait a minute, now I know who this is.’” CP: One of the things I’ve always been so impressed by is your ability to use space and render D.C. almost like a character. In reading the work of some of your peers, I’m struck by how important place is to the success of a book. How much of your D.C. is real and founded in the streets and how much is created in your mind? GP: “Of course the characters are fictional and they’re sort of walking through this fictional world, but as far as the grid goes, it’s all pretty much real. I go out and check stupid things like, Is there a T in that alley behind Otis Place NW? I have to go to the alley and make sure that there is. In the historical books like Hard Revolution, if a character is walking down the street in April ‘68 in a particular week of that month, and the movie theater marquee says Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner or something, it was playing in that movie theater on that day. I can guarantee you that. I don’t make shit like that up. Even where it’s crippling. In other words, [in THE TURNAROUND] when Alex walks into the diner for the first time when he’s a kid and the James Brown song is playing, and it’s June in the book — if that song was released not until September of that year, I don’t put it in there. It wouldn’t have been coming through the radio. It’s a long-winded way of saying I’m trying to leave a record.”
One of the truly great things about blogging – the greatest, actually – is that it lets you be Holden Caulfield once in a while. In THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, Holden muses on how great it would be to be able to ring up an author whose book you’d just finished, just to shoot the breeze – so long as the guy wasn’t a phoney, of course. A few months back I read the first page of John McFetridge’s EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE and closed the book, went downstairs and told my wife that this guy McFetridge is the real deal. I didn’t know at the time that Elmore Leonard liked his stuff, or that Sarah Weinman had compared him to ‘Elmore Leonard meets James Ellroy’. I just knew. So I read the book and dropped him a line. He’s published in the U.S. by Harcourt, as THE BIG O will be come September. We got on well by email, so well that we’re doing a road-trip from Toronto to Baltimore for this year’s Bouchercon. So the danger is that we’re getting into log-rolling territory when I tell you that his debut, DIRTY SWEET, and his as-yet-unpublished GO ROUND, are some of the best crime novels I’ve ever read. I finished GO ROUND last night, and for those of you who’ve read McFetridge, the good news is that it’s the best of his first two novels condensed and streamlined into a stunning piece of fiction that put me in mind of George Pelecanos’ early Washington DC novels. Do I care about the log-rolling? Nope. My conscience is clear in that I read the guy’s book before I knew him. And what am I going to say – that his books aren’t great, just because I know him and someone might think I’m biased? Bullshit. John McFetridge is a star ascending and a terrific writer. End of story. The same applies to Adrian McKinty, who must have missed out on the Mystery Readers’ Journal ‘Irish Mysteries’ issue because he was relocating from Denver to Oz. His is a glaring absence from what’s virtually a Who’s Who of Irish crime fiction, because he offers a rare blend, that of a literary style with a convincingly brutal thuggishness. As with John McFetridge, I contacted Adrian McKinty after reading DEAD I WELL MAY BE, which seemed to me to represent a new departure for Irish crime fiction. Apart from being a brilliant writer, he’s a sound bloke with a good attitude, and his subsequent novels have delivered on the promise of his debut. He’s also written a number of excellent posts for Crime Always Pays. Should I pretend I don’t like McKinty’s novels because he is, at this stage, a mate? Should I refrain from telling you that his upcoming FIFTY GRAND is his most challenging, ambitious novel yet? No. And even if I should, I won’t. What’s the point in having a blog about books and writing if you can’t tell the world about great books and great writers? Mind you, with McKinty, it’s fairly common knowledge that he’s the good stuff. His newest fan is Peter Rozovsky over at Detectives Beyond Borders, who offers this pithy summation of DEAD I WELL MAY BE: “Michael’s grim, sometimes hellish journey through the last two thirds of the book may evoke for the literary-minded any number of the world’s great epics. Think of the book as Dirty Harry meets Dante if you must.” ‘Dirty Harry meets Dante’. Beautiful. We said Parker written by Cormac McCarthy, but what do we know? Finally, it’s a swift jaunt to Scotland for our latest Tony Black extravaganza. Tony doesn’t fit into the mould here, because we haven’t read his debut PAYING FOR IT yet, although it’s due a perusal in the next week or so. On the other hand, Tony Black seems to be a sound bloke who was unusually generous with his time and effort when I was trying to get some web oxygen for THE BIG O. And it’d be disgracefully churlish not to return the favour, to wit:
“Assuming (and hoping) that this is the first of many featuring the tortured Gus Dury, we’ve NEVER seen a series character so richly and honestly drawn from the get-go. The emotional punches connect solidly … as the pains of being a father and the pains of being a son are laid bare. The debut of the year.” – Thug Lit
“Tony Black’s first novel hits the ground running, combining a sympathetic ear for the surreal dialogue of the dispossessed with a portrait of a city painted in the blackest of humour.” – Cathi Unsworth, The Observer
Nice. The vid below, you won’t be surprised to learn, is Tony Black’s book-trailer for PAYING FOR IT, and it’s a rather attractive example of said form. If the book was written with the same quality of care, craft and love that went into the promo, we’re very probably going to love it. Roll it there, Collette …
There’s good writing, there’s terrific writing, and then there’s writing that doesn’t read like writing. As with Elmore Leonard, John McFetridge’s writing reads as if you’re eavesdropping on the half-formed thoughts and conversations of ordinary people in extraordinary situations. True communication is not about breaking down barriers; it sneaks under the wire, slips in the back door, filters in through wormholes. Both McFetridge and Leonard understand that the best writing bypasses – or appears to bypass – the eyes and the ears, in the process diverting past the brain to address itself straight to the heart. DIRTY SWEET concerns itself with three main characters. Roxanne is a real estate vendor working in a depressed market, owing big and keeping her eyes open for a score to boomerang her back into the good times again. Vince is an ex-con with a quietly successful internet porn business humming away in the building he rents from Roxanne. Boris, a Russian immigrant, runs a strip joint as a front for the various scams he has going on, chief among them the export of stolen cars. When Boris orders a hit on a lieutenant who’s been skimming too much off the top, and the murder – in the middle of Toronto, in broad daylight – is witnessed by Roxanne, a chain reaction is set off that will have seismic repercussions for all three, particularly when it attracts the attention of cops Price and Loewen and the gang of Hell’s Angels who are looking for any opportunity to legitimise their dirty money … Notwithstanding the fact that McFetridge is a veteran screenwriter, DIRTY SWEET is an astonishingly assured debut. Laced throughout with a dark but understated black humour, the story opens in the wake of the hit and quickly, but almost invisibly, ratchets up the tension page-by-page. For a crime novel there is precious little violence on display; McFetridge is accomplished enough to thrive on threats, nuances, suggestions. Instead we get subtle character development, each personality growing in stature via their interactions with the others, and what their dialogue doesn’t say rather than what it does. McFetridge understands the power of suggestion, the tease, how the what’s-left-out exerts a compelling squeeze on what he puts in. As is the case with his second novel, EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWWHERE, Toronto itself is one of the main characters of the story. On the fact of it a beacon of multi-cultural integration, the city is something of a candy store for the world’s criminal fraternity:
This is a new city, a new country, and it’s so fucking ripe. People have been coming in here and taking what they want since the fucking fur traders. They took it all, every damned beaver, they took all the fish, they’re going to cut down all the trees, drain all the water, this country is so fucking stupid they’re just going to let it all go. Yeah, Boris thought, and I just need my piece …
Later, two minor characters take a meeting:
They were sitting on the patio of one of those Foxhound and Fricken places, this one out by the airport, so the only view was of an eight-lane highway and an endless stream of trucks. But patios were the only place you could smoke in this town now.
In two short sentences McFetridge sketches in a strip-mined environment, the pretensions of the upwardly mobile, the false frontage of the franchise-riddled city, and the black joke of two Hell’s Angels, willing and keen to rape the city and murder anyone who stands in their way, meekly obeying the no smoking laws. DIRTY SWEET is a classic example of why crime fiction is the most important genre in literature today. It offers an entertaining page-turner, certainly, and one crafted by a rare talent. But what makes it vital is its portrayal of its milieu, which is as vividly depicted as that of Chandler or Ellroy’s LA, or Pelecanos’ Washington DC, and how everything – laws, rules, history, morality, lives – is fair game when money hits a boomtown. Toronto, of course, is only a metaphor for Canada itself, and Canada is only a metaphor for how the First World is dealing, or not dealing, with the issue of criminality emanating from the Second and Third Worlds. Not for nothing does McFetridge twice mention America’s prohibition era, and the rise of Canadian bootleggers to take advantage of the demand for booze. DIRTY SWEET is itself potent stuff, an illicit brew that’s as dirty as it’s sweet. It may kick like moonshine but it’s very much the real deal. – Declan Burke
Last week we wrote a feature article for the Evening Herald to a pretty tight deadline, which was why Reed Farrel Coleman’s reply to our query, in the wake of the Edgar nominations, about why Irish writers are becoming so popular in the US of A arrived a little late. Ditto the answer from Ruth and Jon Jordan of the indispensable CrimeSpree Magazine (right, clutching the prestigious Anthony Award for ‘Cutest Couple in Crime Fiction’), both of whom have been cheerleading for Irish crime writing since God was a boy. Herewith follows their rather generous two cents on why Irish writing is becoming so popular:
“The economic and political status of Ireland today is much in line with that of the time in which American crime classics were written. A poor-to-affluent generation living in a post-violent but pre-pacific time, remembering the religious ironies and icons with equal resonance and enwrapping them in a story like a taco bell quesadilla. The Irish story is updated with generations more of ennui and religious acceptance behind it, the precarious situation that is refracted by words of today flirted with, exposed and uniquely discovered by a group of writers who embrace the crime novel as the way to tell their story for all the world. “The talent for words is remarkable and embraced by a United States at once ahead and behind a continent we’ve pretended to understand for three generations. Our story, told with more history and depth. Yet Ireland is unique, as are the people writing of it in crime form. Different voices tell the story and make it stronger, more complete. You charm us to sorrow and make us examine where we are today. “The background of many of today’s Irish crime fiction writers includes not only a reading of ‘literary fiction’ but also almost all have found the literary brilliance within American crime fiction, be it recent greats like Lehane, Pelecanos, Connelly, Lippman, Rozan, Paretsky and James Lee Burke (to name a few), or the classics (Chandler, Hammett, Cain). They elevate their novels’ structure from the debut and almost always add a fresh voice to the genre. They don’t want to emulate as much as pay tribute to this often overlooked genre of fiction. Pay it forward and make it better, to use an American phrase. They see the possibilities of one flawed man/woman trying to solve a unique and usually violent problem. The writing jumps off the page and connects with the American reader because Irish authors use the entire environment of the crime and make it resonate. “The first author I fell in love with from Ireland is John Connolly, an Irishman who set his fiction in a relatively remote American locale. John has said he loved the work of James Lee Burke and many others. He grabbed a location he knew and made it his own. Last year’s work is remarkable in any time: THE UNQUIET is a true literary novel and I cannot think of many recent reads who express the joy of reading and the possibility it has to soothe, but THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved a book and lost a loved one. “From Connolly I went to L. Welch, who strips bare any pretences in her prose to expose the baldness of story, and Declan Burke, whose approach to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was as refreshing as THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE in its time. Ken Bruen’s arrival on our shores made everyone take notice. From THE GUARDS forward, Ken has infused admiration and anticipation for a writing style so unique it cannot be compared to anyone else writing today. Full of bon mots and cultural references that put you into the being of his characters, only someone so sharp of pen could get away with it. “America came full circle with the words of one Declan Hughes, whose third novel [THE PRICE OF BLOOD] is about to launch in the States. Instead of taking an Irish sensibility and applying it to the American detective, he brought an Irishman home who has been an American P.I. “The possibilities are just beginning and yet we’ve already come full circle.”
"I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of," Dashiell Hammett once said, but there's a writer or twenty over at January Magazine who begs to differ. "I think there is the truth of the streets in Hammett that Chandler never got to," says Ed Gorman, somewhat controversially, while, "the writing pummelled me," says our own Ken Bruen of his first Hammett experience, The Dain Curse. Others contributing include George Pelecanos, Bill Crider, Peter Robinson and Ray Banks, who likes to think of Hammett "as one of the first great growlers of crime fiction." Which is nice ...
The latest Irish crime fiction up-'n'-comer to hit the streets is Kevin McCarthy, folks - he's putting the finishing touches to his novel Peeler as you read, a mystery set during the Irish War of Independence. The guy's got a way with words - check out his short story Work To Live over on the tough-as-shark-shit Thuglit (motto: Writing About Wrongs). Sample quote: "When the girl regained her balance under Jimmy Mack’s guiding hand, she smiled and he noticed she was wearing braces on her teeth. Might be a problem, he thought, time came to bake the Jimster premium, downhome sausage. But what the fuck? Girl was a weedho, no doubt. Other places, man can cook a sausage…" We’re thinking Pelecanos meets Willeford, people …
