On Shooting Bertie Ahern With Bullets Of His Own Shite

It’s been hilarious here in Ireland for the past week or so, if endemic political corruption is the kind of thing that tickles your funny-bone. The results of the Mahon tribunal are in, and even though former taoiseach Bertie Ahern (right, with cheeky chappie Robert - check the fine print on Robert's t-shirt) denies any wrongdoing on his behalf, he has resigned from the Fianna Fail party he led in government for 14 years, this before they can kick him out next Friday. Resigning before you can be booted out being, of course, the only action that a wrongfully libelled innocent man can take.
  For my own part, I don’t believe Bertie Ahern is personally and solely responsible for the economic disaster that is Ireland today, but only because I’m grudgingly forced to provide the muppet with a fool’s pardon. But still - a qualified accountant who, despite rising through the political ranks to become the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Minister for Finance and then Taoiseach for 14 years, somehow never managed to persuade himself that it might be a good idea to open a bank account? Not dodgy at all, that. Not in the slightest. Doesn’t AT ALL suggest a man who shouldn’t have been allowed fumble in the greasy till of Tessie Bear’s sweetshop in Toy Town, let alone get his grubby mitts on the levers of power of a modern democracy. Here's a CAP taster on Bertrand from all the way back in 2007 ...
  Anyhoo, and with apologies to those of the Three Regular Readers who have sensitive stomachs, I pretty much had my say about Bartholomew Ahern in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. To wit:

There being no ‘Family Guy’ to be found on any of the 94 channels available, Cass and I watch a documentary recreation of the latest scandal from the Middle East, which is the assassination of a carload of suspected terrorists by an air-to-ground missile fired from an unmanned drone airplane. An operator, sitting deep in the bowels of a destroyer, controls the drone and launches the rocket.
  ‘That’s complete crap,’ Cassie says. ‘Everyone knows those fuckers are sitting in a bunker in Idaho.’
  Either way, this represents a remarkable feat of engineering. At least Bin Laden got the human touch. This latest requires the identification, targeting and assassination of a carload of human beings from a position hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the state in which the car motors along. This is trial, conviction and execution by remote control.
  This is Phil Dick on a bad hair day. This is George Orwell suffering from migraine. This is Stanislaw Lem with a boil on his anal rim. The holiday cruise of the future involves safaris conducted from offshore destroyers, targeting carloads of suspected Muslim terrorists.
  I like to imagine the operator as he sits deep in the bowels of the destroyer twiddling the buttons of his joy-pad. This is the logic of breeding a generation of couch-bound warriors. Some day presidential candidates will be required to clear all twenty levels of ‘Apocalypse Hence III’, in one sitting and without resorting to cheats, in order to establish their credentials.
  When the programme ends we flick over to the news, to see what Jean Byrne is almost wearing tonight while reading the weather report. A PR flunky for Bord Failte regales us with a good-vibes story about soaring tourist numbers in the wake of visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama.
  I say, ‘Hey, how about this. We stick all the scumbags on an island, say Inishbofin, all the paedophiles and bankers and Real IRA fuckers.’
  ‘Bertie Ahern,’ Cass murmurs, handing across the spliff.
  ‘Nice. So then we sell charter cruises to tourists, who sail around the island all day lobbing rockets at them. Plus, we don’t give them any food, so they’re eating one another. The scumbags, like, not the tourists.’
  ‘We could film it,’ Cass says, ‘sell the broadcast rights.’
  In the end we decide we want Bertie shot with bullets of his own shite, then left on a hospital trolley to rot.
  Sadly, Jean Byrne is a no-show for the weather report. Maybe she turned up naked tonight.

  So there you have it.

  It’s been pretty quiet recently, I have to say, in terms of AZC reviews. In one sense, that’s hardly surprising, seeing as how it was first published way back in August; but it was only officially published in February in the US and Canada, and there’s been precious little by way of reaction. Booklist and the Library Journal were very generous, as were Elizabeth A. White and Glenn Harper, but for the most part it’s been pretty much tumbleweeds.
  So it was nice to hear some good word for AZC this week. First up, the wonderful folk at Crimespree Magazine:

“You will be amused as hell, philosophically aroused and mentally sated as you wonder how Burke can pull it off. And pull it off he does. A courageous, droll and satisfying read.” - Crimespree Magazine

  And then, out of the blue, that very fine author Paul Johnston got in touch to say he’d read the book, and quite liked it:

“Do you know how difficult it is to write a postmodern crime novel that is both funny and moving? The only person I knew to have pulled that off was Robert Coover in his imaginatively titled NOIR. Now Declan Burke has done it even more successfully in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. A true one-off: witty, profound, sad and ... cool as hell.” - Paul Johnston

  In the interest of clarity, transparency, accountability and non-Bertie Ahern-ish shenanigans, I should point out that (a) I write for Crimespree Magazine and (b) I reviewed Paul Johnston’s latest novel, THE SILVER STAIN, very positively last month - the review here is a longer version of an original that appeared in the Irish Times.

The Organ Grinder’s Monkey And Me

God bless Glenn Harper. These days, when contemplating the Hesperian-like wreckage of what used to be a writing career, it’s very easy to slip from pessimism into a paralysing funk. Matters are improved not one whit when you receive missives from fellow scribes letting you know that their agents have suggested they rewrite (say) ULYSSES with added radioactive werewolves, and in a forthright, accessible style akin to that of James Patterson. Most days, in fact, news from the outside world tends to filter through as confirmation of the fact that, in this brave new world of books we live in, writers are increasingly likely to succeed as the publishing industry’s equivalent of the organ grinder’s monkey. Yes, you’re the one that’s front of house, and you’re the one going around with the tin cup; but the music is getting wonkier by the day, and that organ grinder isn’t noted for his enlightened view on going splitsies with the monkey.
  Being an incorrigible romantic / naïve no-hoper, I have a fairly jaundiced take on market-driven publishing. I won’t, for example, be reading the Jane Austen / zombie novels in this lifetime, and nor will be I be reading any other half-baked, crass, formulaic horseshit, or not unless someone pays me to review it. The reasons for this include my being a literary snob and life being too short, but there’s also, I think, the fact that I have an in-built resistance to simplistic, short-term answers to complex questions. There’s also the fact that, other than our kids, books are the most precious things we have the capacity to create, and if you disagree with that then you’re probably best off visiting another blog.
  Put simply, books are not just another commodity. You can argue the case for music, art, sculpture, theatre and so forth at your leisure, but books are unique. If Western scholars had ‘rediscovered’ great symphonies or paintings in the chambers and galleries of the Muslim world during the 12th and 13th centuries, would the Renaissance have flourished as a result? It’s possible, but unlikely. Books are the thing, and even though the format might change from parchment and scroll to book and digital screen, there is nothing quite like a book for offering up a comprehensive breadth and depth of information, be that information trading in emotion, psychology, logic, philosophy or technology.
  I deal for the most part in fiction here at Crime Always Pays, so with that in mind, and one eye on the market-driven publishing model currently holding sway, let me ask this: where would the world be if JM Barrie, say, had consulted market trends before writing PETER PAN? Or Kurt Vonnegut and SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5? Or JD Salinger and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE? Or Jim Crace with QUARANTINE, or William Golding with THE LORD OF THE FLIES, or Milan Kundera with THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, Nikos Kazantstakis with ZORBA THE GREEK, John Fowles with THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT’S WOMAN? How much would have been lost had Flannery O’Connor’s editor suggested she needed a few vampires to brighten up her tales? THE BUTCHER BOY, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, GONE WITH THE WIND, MOBY DICK, AMONGST WOMEN, RIDDLEY WALKER … You catch my drift. Great books are not written with one eye on the latest Nielsen results. Great books are the product of a singular vision unpolluted by any concern other than that of the story itself. That most of the books above (a very personal list, and one taken from glancing at the shelves around me, but you’ll have your own variation) became bestsellers despite the marketplace and not because of it is something to celebrate; and it’s pertinent too that they’re the kind of bestsellers that aren’t here and gone in six months, but consistently sell across decades and generations.
  Speaking of which, and going back to Glenn Harper – my Kindle-only novel CRIME ALWAYS PAYS has virtually nothing in common with the above list of books other than it’s available to read in the English language (I can’t even claim a paper-and-ink connection), being a modestly humorous crime caper set in the Greek islands. Given that its predecessor, THE BIG O, was written to contain the absolute minimum of death and violence for a crime novel, it does have a very tenuous parallel with the novels mentioned above, in that it has no interest in following trends and suchlike. Which may explain why THE BIG O sank like the proverbial granite submarine on publication, and why its Kindle-only follow-up currently languishes (as of Saturday evening, January 30th) at # 49,163 on the Kindle charts.
  But lo, there’s a ray of light, and it comes all delightfully Glenn Harper-shaped. Quoth Glenn:

Good news for those who, like myself, don’t own a Kindle (and thus have up to now not been able to get Declan Burke’s Kindle-only crime novel, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS). Kindle is now available as an i-phone or ipod-touch app (free), and Crime Always Pays is quite legible on an ipod-touch screen (plus it’s only US$1.25. PLUS Kindle is now also available as a free downloadable application for the PC, and soon to be available for Mac. Is this Kindle-strikes-back, after the rollout of the iPad?

  Erm, I dunno. But if you want to make an incorrigibly romantic pessimist a happy-ish man, feel free to let all your iPhone-wielding friends and family know that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is available in all sorts of new formats (techie details available here). All nods, winks, links and plugs welcome.
  Meanwhile, apologies for the rant, and it’s back to capering about a-top the organ grinder’s organ (oo-er, Missus), and working on a story that features the bare minimum of radioactive werewolves. Wish me luck, people …

Jacobean Mayhem, Gothic Noir

After the debacle of the Adrian McKinty review yesterday, it’s nice to report that there are still some reviewers out there whose heads aren’t jammed up their fundament. First, Glenn Harper of International Noir on Declan Hughes’ latest, ALL THE DEAD VOICES:

“The plot goes off in some unexpected directions: just when you think you’re headed for a predictable or operatic crescendo, Hughes undercuts that expectation with casual violence or the withdrawal of an expected twist. And at the end, amid the nearly Jacobean mayhem, there’s a hint of redemption for Loy and those around him.”

  Very nice indeed – and why-oh-why did they pull the plug on the trippy cover? It’s Cover of the Year for yours truly so far (hat-tip to Glenn Harper for the image) ... Oh, and is John Connolly about to rebrand himself, a la Colin Bateman, as ‘Jon Connolly’? Say it ain’t so, Jon, sorry, John …
  Meanwhile, over at The Independent, Rebecca Armstrong likes John Connolly’s THE LOVERS:

“It’s not all crooks and spooks; Connolly is far too skilled a writer to create mere schlock-horror. He’s at his best getting inside his characters’ heads … Connolly’s latest novel is unashamedly gothic, but ultimately manages to be believable and moving too.”

  I couldn’t agree more. If THE GATES is half as good, it’ll be a vintage year for Connolly fans …

Irish Crime Writing: Lost In Translation?

Glenn Harper over at International Noir is always worth listening to on the subject of crime fiction, and he recently ran the rule over Brian McGilloway’s latest, BLEED A RIVER DEEP, with the gist running thusly:

“It is Devlin’s empathy and conscience that make the books interesting and give them depth beyond the average police procedural … McGilloway deserves the attention he has been getting for his Devlin novels: he’s stretching the boundaries of the crime novel without condescending to the genre, and his novels deserve even wider recognition among crime fans and general readers.”

  For the full review, clickety-click here. Meanwhile, Glenn finishes up with a question:

“A question for those who know better than I what’s happening in the translations of the new Irish crime wave: are readers outside the English-speaking world getting access to the fine crime fiction of McGilloway, Declan Hughes, Declan Burke, Gene Kerrigan, etc?”

  Speaking for myself, I can only say that readers inside the English-speaking world aren’t getting access to my crime fiction, fine or otherwise, and I’d imagine readers in the non-English-speaking world will be waiting quite a while to read THE BIG O or any of its follow-ups. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE was published in France and Holland, much to my surprise and delight, and THE BIG O was scheduled to be published in Hungary, of all places, later this year, although the current economic climate has put the kibosh on that one. Boo, etc.   As for the other writers, I really can’t say if they’re being translated or not. Can anyone else help?
  One Irish crime writer who is definitely being translated is Benjamin Black, whose CHRISTINE FALLS I saw in a Bergamo bookshop during my recent trip to Italy. Funnily enough, the Italian version of CHRISTINE FALLS was published under the nom-de-plume ‘John Banville’. Cheeky sods …

Now That’s What I Call A Review # 2,034: DARK TIMES IN THE CITY By Gene Kerrigan

You know the score – a reviewer not entirely steeped in the crime fic genre gets hold of an Adrian McKinty novel, say, and praises it to the sky by comparing it to Agatha Christie / James Patterson / Klarence the Klue-Seeking Kitten … or, worse, damns it for not being as reader-friendly as Klarence, say. I had a review for my first book that claimed I was a disciple of Mickey Spillane, when in fact I’d only ever read one Mickey Spillane novel at that point, and didn’t like it. Anyhoo, it’s always nice when a reviewer gets the genre, and nicer still when said reviewer gets his teeth into a novel that showcases the best the genre can offer. Glenn Harper over at International Noir tends do it right, when he’s not gallivanting around Peru, and Paddy Kenny at the Sunday Tribune did Gene Kerrigan’s latest full justice, with the gist running thusly:

“The test of any great novel should be its verisimilitude, and Kerrigan is the one Irish writer in recent years who has come closest to re-creating the underbelly of Irish society. There are no speeches here about the scourge of new money and development. There are no cranes and flash cars symbolising a world embracing greed heartily to its nouveau riche bosom. Instead he gives us a tight, grim microcosm; and a brutal, vivid, and unforgiving authenticity made all the more convincing because of his consistent effort to strive for realism. Kerrigan prefers to pare things down to the bone with writing that is disciplined and infused with real moral awareness and honesty. It’s also an unnerving read in which the realism takes on an extra resonance. When Mackendrick threatens to kill the members of someone’s family you can’t help but think about recent gangland murders. It further heightens the almost disgusting ordinariness of the people Kerrigan writes about. More than any other book of its kind in recent memory, this is a book that asks hard questions about how a supposedly civil society has facilitated the growth of a sub-culture which is allowed to play by its own rules. There has been a huge surge in the number of successful Irish thriller writers in the past few years; each in their own way has tried to address this question, but no one has addressed in it as brave, forceful, and articulate a manner as Kerrigan.”

  Nice stuff, squire. Very nice indeed. For the full review, clickety-click here …

The Sunday Review

One of these kids has to be wrong, and for once I’m hoping it’s Myles McWeeney. Reviewing the new Declan Hughes novel, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, in the Irish Independent, McWeeney says: “This is the fourth Ed Loy mystery and Declan Hughes continues to up the Irish noir ante with this assured and gory examination of the relationship between IRA splinter groups and crime in Dublin.”
  Nice. But then Claire Kilroy, in the Irish Times, has this: “Hughes’s four previous Loy novels were characterised by a strain of high Gothic which centred around the Big House, the notion of fate, and of corrupted bloodlines … Loy is a winning combination of caustic cynicism and romantic idealism, an adept at Beckettian failing better … Hughes gives the reader an ending which confounds the expectations of the genre, and which is all the more satisfying for it.”
  So – is ALL THE DEAD VOICES the fourth or fifth Ed Loy novel? Does Claire Kilroy know something we don’t know? And if so, how come Squire Hughes is holding out on us? Was it something we said? Something we didn’t say? Questions, questions …
  Anyhoos, upward and onward to the new Derek Landy, THE FACELESS ONES, being the third in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, which Sarah Webb in the Irish Independent likes a lot. To wit: “It’s non-stop action from the first page on … Landy’s dialogue crackles with authenticity and wit … If you want to keep your youngster reading, look no further. It’s Landy to the rescue again.”
  Nice. Over at RTE, Tara Loughrey-Grant is loving Twenty Major’s second novel, ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER: “As shockingly entertaining as his debut novel was, ABSINTHE is a better read. The plot is tighter, more mature with added suspense keeping the reader glued until the very last page. Twenty brings Barcelona to live, in full 3D colour, enabling the reader to become part of his hedonistic, dysfunctional team.”
  Lovely. Meanwhile, Henry Sutton at the Daily Mirror is bigging up Gene Kerrigan’s rather marvellous DARK TIMES IN THE CITY thusly: “The dark side of Dublin is the star in this brilliantly written slice of Irish noir, featuring a good man who gets himself on the wrong side of a very bad lot.”
  Gorgeous. Last word this week goes to the inimitable Glenn Harper over at International Noir, who’s been perusing the latest from The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman: “Bateman’s last novel, ORPHEUS RISING, was magic realism rather than crime fiction, and in the new one, he has come back to crime with a comic vengeance … Good news, since MYSTERY MAN is the funniest crime novel since Bateman’s own DIVORCING JACK and CYCLE OF VIOLENCE.”
  Lovely jubbly.

100,000 Not Out

Given that Crime Always Pays came into being to celebrate (mostly) Irish fiction as a platform to promote our humble offering THE BIG O, it’s appropriate that the stats passed the 100,000 mark for page impressions while I was away in the States on a Toronto-Baltimore road-trip designed to mark the publication of said tome in the U.S. Now, 100,000 page impressions in 18 months isn’t exactly the kind of stat to set the interweb aflame, but by the same token – as Twenty Major once pointed out – a blog dedicated to Irish crime fiction is a niche-niche-niche sell, particularly when you’re not actually selling anything.
  Anyhoos, I’m quietly pleased at having reached that mark, not least because many of CAP’s regular visitors have become good mates. I’d been warned by some Bouchercon veterans that the first experience can be overwhelming, given the scale of the operation and the numbers of people there, but when John McFetridge and I finally pulled into Baltimore, the experience was more akin to a reunion.
  Peter Rozovsky I’d met before, during his sojourn to Ireland, and it would have been nice to hook up with him again even if he hadn’t sweated blood organising the Philly leg of John and Dec’s Most Excellent Adventure. Peter? Now that you’re au fait with ‘shite’ and ‘gobshite’, I really must introduce you to ‘shitehawking’ the next time.
  I’d met Donna Moore before too, at Bristol Fest, and it was smashing to meet up with her again, partly because I’d read her terrific GO TO HELENA HANDBASKET in the interim, but mainly because I want her to play Diane Lane when they come to make the movie of my life. There’s nothing like a hug from a flame-haired beauty to make you feel like you belong in Baltimore. Apart from the daily hugs (“Oi, I haven’t had my hug today!”), the best part of seeing the poker maven again was the news that her follow-up novel is currently with her agent, and that she’s mailing me a copy as soon as I sign up for Bristol Fest 2009. Yon Donna Moore, she drives a hard bargain …
  It was nice to meet Jen Jordan, too, my first experience of whom was having my shoulder nuzzled by some random hottie in the convention’s main thoroughfare. But lo! It wasn’t a random hottie, it was Jen Jordan. Nice …
  Sarah Weinman was something of a disappointment, given that I was expecting her to be a matronly ball-breaker of indeterminate age. Dang my britches if she’s not cute as a junebug, and prone to enveloping a man in a hug even before he’s been properly introduced. Nice …
  Back to Bouchercon, which I’ve actually been reluctant to write about this week, on the basis that the experience was something of a bubble I’ve been afraid to puncture. Friendly people willing and eager to talk books all day and all night – sounds like hell, I know, but you get used to anything after a while. Readers, reviewers, bloggers, writers, editors, publicists, publishers and – crucially – booksellers, all mingling freely. Anyone who hasn’t yet grasped how the chaos of minute particles colliding at random at the quantum level can translate into a solid object or force at the macro level should get along to the next Bouchercon in Indianapolis.
  I suppose it helped that I had a foot in a few camps. I was there as a reader, of course, but also as a writer and a blogger / reviewer; and technically speaking, given that THE BIG O was originally a co-publication with Hag’s Head Press, I also had a foot in the publishing / publicity / distribution / selling side of things. So there were a lot of people I was hoping to see.
  Jeff Pierce was one, and it was nice to hang out with him on a couple of occasions. Glenn Harper was another, although we didn’t actually get to sit down and talk books – next time, Glenn, hopefully. I also got to meet Angie Johnson-Schmidt, who was kind enough to help me try to find tobacco in late-night Baltimore, as was Dana King, albeit in vain. It was cool to meet Brian Lindemuth and Sandra Ruttan too – Sandra’s another blogger with a foot in more than one camp. And then there was the effervescent and damn near omniscient Ali Karim, and Clair Lamb, and Janet Rudolph … The inimitable Joe Long came down from New York, to greet me with the words, “So where’s the other prick, Hughes?” And it was terrific to hook up with Jon Jordan and be able to say thanks in person for all the support he’s given me ever since way back when, aka the publication of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. Jon? You’re a gent, squire.
  Greg Gillespie of Philly’s Port Richmond Books came down to Baltimore on the Saturday, and nice it was to make his acquaintance again, given that he’d brought the troops out in force to Wednesday night’s Noir at the Bar at Fergie’s. Greg was supposed to sleep on the floor of our hotel room that night, but with an 8.30am panel on Sunday morning looming, I cracked around 2am and went to bed, and haven’t seen him since. Can anyone confirm that Greg is okay?
  Incidentally, McFetridge was great company on the road-trip, apart from his insistence in talking up the Toronto Blue Leafs, which plays some weird hybrid of hockey, football and baseball. Well, that and the fact that the Y he booked us into in New York had the noisiest bunk-beds ever made, and that one of the three communal showers was festooned with crime scene-style tape. Other than that, though, he was no more boring than you’d imagine a Canadian writer to be. We may even road-trip again, one day.
  As for the rest, well, this post is already too long – suffice to say that Bouchercon 2008 was a tremendous experience. Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik deserve all the credit going, and more.
  It did occur to me at one point that the attendees as a group were heavily skewed towards an older demographic, although that’s easily enough explained when you consider the cost of travelling to a four-day convention that’s a sheer indulgence. And you could also say that crime fiction is a conservative genre, concerned for the most part with upholding the status quo, and that older generations are more likely to be of a conservative bent.
  But here’s the thing – I’ve never had anyone say to me, “Yeah, I got into crime fiction in my fifties.” I was a teenager when the crime bug bit, and I thought I was pretty radical back then, as most teenagers tend to do. Maybe it’s because it’s the most popular kind of writing, and therefore the most accessible, and because the world of gats, molls and grift has a certain surface cool that appeals to the impressionable mind. But once it gets you hooked, it doesn’t let go. It’s odd, especially when you consider that you don’t listen to the same kind of music twenty, thirty or forty years on from your teens, or watch the same kind of movies, or like the same artists, etc. But when I read Ray Chandler today, I enjoy him even more than I did twenty years ago.
  The Big Question: any theories as to why crime fiction takes such a compelling grip as to last you an entire lifetime? Over to you, people ...

The Embiggened O # 3,119: Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You

Given the day that’s in it, with our humble tome THE BIG O being published in hardback in the U.S. by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I thought I’d take the opportunity to blow my own trumpet so hard that I squish both lungs out through said trumpet in little sausage-y links. Maestro? In your own time, please …
  Actually, no – there’ll be no trumpet-parping today. Today is a day for feeling quietly positive about the human race in general and the crime fiction community in particular. Why so? Well, the way said community has rallied around yours truly in the last week or 10 days has been heartwarming to say the least, and I’m currently basking in the glow of the kind of good vibes Brian Wilson could only dream about while he scratched about in his sandpit. To wit:

Jeff Kingston asked me to deface / guest-blog at The Rap Sheet for the last week;
The Book Witch has updated her review of THE BIG O;
Gerard Brennan at CSNI republished his review, and tossed in a major shout-out to boot;
Stuart Neville gave me a bejasus big-up;
Marshal Zeringue pulled out all the stops at America Reads;
Glenn Harper did me proud over at International Noir;
Barbara Fister was kind enough to invite me to host the Crime Carnival again;
And Peter Rozovsky has been log-rolling THE BIG O to beat the band over at Detectives Beyond Borders.

  If I’ve forgotten anyone, my sincerest apologies – I’m just a bit light-headed from all the good karma. Peace, people – your reward will come in heaven …

The Embiggened O # 12,309: In Which A Harper Tugs At Our Heart-Strings

It’s going to look like it was planned this way, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it wasn’t. I thought I’d love-bombed Glenn Harper at International Noir into submission with my mini-Crime Carnival post, but the guy’s tougher than I thought – not only does he go and republish his original review of THE BIG O without so much as a by-your-leave, he also gives the cover a bejaysus big-up, to wit:

“I don’t know if the new cover is an image photographed specially for this book or came from stock photography (increasingly the source for book covers, as has been noted on several blogs with reference to different books using the same imagery), but the new cover is quite striking—congratulations to all concerned, on the cover as well as the release next week.”

  Incidentally, and while we’re on the subject – Gerard Brennan brings news of an upcoming Elmore Leonard flick based on KILLSHOT, which is news to us …
  Anyhoos, cue the review. Maestro? Trumpets, please …

THE BIG O moves out of the classic pulp-noir territory of Declan Burke’s first novel, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, into a kidnap caper with style and plotting more like Elmore Leonard (or maybe Donald Westlake) than Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. The narrative is actually mostly dialogue: even the non-dialogue sections, if you look closely, are internal monologues by the various characters. The voices are snappy, and the novel is divided into short sections, each from the point of view of one of the characters. The result is a kaleidoscopic narrative that moves forward at a rapid pace--and the result is also quite funny, in the way that Leonard’s novels are frequently funny: expectations are overturned, characters move inexorably toward an unforeseen climax, and we glide past unbelievable coincidences without hesitation. None of these characters are master criminals, and the attraction of some of them for others is that of ordinary men and women. THE BIG O is, ultimately, a crime farce of the first order. The violence is postponed, riding along with the converging characters and plot lines until the ending that, though impossible to entirely foresee, seems inevitable once you’ve gotten to it. The plotting seems casual, unplanned, with the random pattern of life--but looking back, the story is as tightly structured as a jigsaw puzzle. I may not be making myself perfectly clear, here, but THE BIG O is a lot of fun, hence the earlier mention of Westlake--the elements of the plot lock together as the story moves forward with an increasingly comic effect (as, for example, the plot of Pulp Fiction moves forward), and the “blackout” quality of the short sections and alternating voices adds an additional liveliness. I frequently talk about the settings of crime novels, and this one has a carefully ambiguous setting--sometimes it seems like Ireland, but not clearly or overtly so. Sometimes THE BIG O’s story could be happening in the U.S., except that some idioms are clearly not U.S. English (“chemist” for what would be “drug store” here, among other examples). The ambiguity works effectively with the technique of the novel, though, focusing our attention on the progressively complicated story rather than on a definite setting.

  Y’know, if I was any kind of decent human being, I’d be too modest to write this kind of post. But who can afford to be a decent human being at a time like this?
  Oh, and by the way – Marsha Swan’s book launch for THE PUNCHING MAN / BOYS ARE ELASTIC, GIRLS ARE FANTASTIC happens today at Toner’s of Baggot Street, Dublin, Ireland, at 6.30pm. All are welcome …

The Crime Carnival Cometh. Again

Barbara Fister (right), the ever-radiant mastermind behind the Crime Carnival concept, was kind enough to get in touch about a month ago to ask if I’d be interested in hosting another Crime Carnival. My reply ran thusly:

“I certainly wouldn’t mind hosting the carnival again, although I’d probably do a different kind of job on it ... I think the concept has probably exhausted most of the crime fic sites out there. Maybe phase two could be about generating discussion and debate on the merits or otherwise of crime fic blogs and sites, get us asking one another what it is exactly we’re trying to achieve ... and how best to achieve it?”

  Barbara thought that that was a good idea, in principle at least, and so here we are …
  The problem now, of course, is that I have to back up my initially whimsical suggestion with some hard facts and examples. I think the first thing to be said is that every blog and site is different, a diversity which is in itself one of the joys of the crime / mystery fic community. It further needs to be said that the notions I outline below don’t apply to all blogs and sites, on the basis that most of us have a set of well-defined parameters we work within, and are quite happy to keep on doing so.
  For example, Crime Always Pays is for the most part dedicated to Irish crime fiction, but I’m always delighted to feature non-Irish crime writers on it. Further, I tend to broaden the parameters on a whim, and in the last couple of weeks have blogged about quantum physics, Lawrence Durrell and Marsha Swan’s new book, all of which have nothing whatsoever to do with crime fiction. Further again, anyone familiar with Crime Always Pays understands that I blog about Irish crime fiction in general in order to promote my own writing in particular – it’s not about the hard sell, but it would be disingenuous of me to suggest otherwise.
  In other words, different blogs have different objectives, and the last thing I want to do is offend anyone by suggesting that their work doesn’t come up to a certain standard or mark. That is most definitely not the point of this exercise.
  So what is the point? Well, it’s about where crime fiction itself is going, and what blogs and sites can do to help it get there. For the most part, as you well know, crime / mystery fiction has not, historically, been taken as seriously as it should be by the gatekeepers of the traditional media. Those gatekeepers also tend to man the portals of the various awards available to fiction writers, which is why there was such a furore recently when Tom Rob Smith’s CHILD 44 breached the Booker Prize defences.
  With a few notable exceptions, crime / mystery writing tends to get short shrift in the mainstream press, and as often as not finds itself shoehorned into a review ghetto, wherein five or six titles will be briefly assessed in the same kind of space that would be given over to single, more ‘literary’ title. That very fact, of course, is one of the main reasons for the proliferation of crime / mystery fiction blogs and sites available on-line, and in a perverse way, it should be celebrated for inadvertently creating such a dynamic and vibrate on-line crime / mystery community.
  By the same token, many mainstream commentators have suggested that the blogging format doesn’t lend itself to the quality of commentary available in mainstream media. To a certain extent, this is true. The blogging paradigm lends itself to shorter, more direct forms of communication than that of the traditional mainstream press. Further, most bloggers are not being paid to read and review books, and are for the most part doing it as a labour of love in their spare time. Another factor involved is that to be a ‘successful’ blogger – i.e., to achieve the kind of exposure that makes your time and effort worthwhile – it is necessary to blog on a regular basis, or at least far more regularly than the traditional media reviewer needs to review. For all these reasons, and more, the on-line community lacks the resources (but mainly space, time and money) that has allowed the more literary community build up a corpus of critical work on literary novels.
  That’s not to say that there isn’t superb critical work available. There is, and there’s plenty of it. By comparison with the literary corpus, however, which has not only colonised the traditional media and its prize-giving off-shoots, but also the libraries and campuses, and which has a head-start on crime / mystery fiction that can be measured in hundreds of years, the critical work on crime / mystery fiction is very much in its infancy.
  One point, before we go further: I am NOT saying that crime / mystery fiction should strive to be taken seriously by the literary establishment. They do what they do, and good luck to them; my personal reading habits involve quite a lot of what would be considered literary fiction, and I have no beef with what they do or how they do it. By the same token, and speaking only for myself, the last thing I need or want is a pat on the head from the literary establishment. What I AM saying is that the critical work on crime fiction needs to develop of and through its own metier, that the Johnsons of the crime / mystery community require their Boswells, and that I believe heart and soul that crime / mystery fiction needs and deserves the kind of widespread, top-to-bottom critical work that would in turn inspire the writers to strive towards ever-higher standards of work.
  Here I need to hold my hand up and admit that Crime Always Pays does not offer the kind of critical work that I’m talking about. In mitigation I plead that (a) the blog was always intended as an information resource, (b) I blog in those precious few cracks I can find in my daily schedule, and (c) I’m nowhere near as smart as I’d need to be in order to raise my game to that standard. I’m sure that most bloggers would say the same thing, excepting (c).
  But here’s the thing – crime / mystery fiction is the most popular genre on the planet, it is inarguably the most relevant and important fiction out there, and that’s why I believe it deserves more. It deserves more from me, certainly, than reviews that run along the lines of, “This is a great book because I liked it and I liked it because it’s a great book.” It deserves the kind of dynamic, rigorous, extensive and constantly evolving critical work that the interweb is perfectly placed to provide, and it deserves to be critiqued, justified and praised not by the kind of commentator who will suggest that a particular novel has (koff) ‘transcended the genre’, but by those who understand that good crime / mystery fiction is simultaneously scourge and balm, panacea and drug, a fiction for the world we live in that is also its truth.
  I’m going to leave you with an example of the quality of work I’m talking about, and I sincerely hope I haven’t offended anyone’s sensibilities with what has gone before, or by mentioning only one blog. It’s Glenn Harper’s outlet at International Noir – when I dropped by today to check it out, this is what he had to say for himself …

Classical Unities and Crime Fiction

“I’ve just finished Peter Craig’s HOT PLASTIC, published a few years ago. The novel shares a good deal with Jim Thompson’s great THE GRIFTERS, but I didn’t like HOT PLASTIC very much. I’m wondering why it didn’t satisfy, though I usually find grifter novels appealing. One thing that occurred to me is that it violates a modern version of the classical unities, while THE GRIFTERS does not. Aristotle said that tragedy should not violate three rules, unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time. That is, one main action or plot with few subplots, one setting, and a time-frame of no more than 24 hours. Obviously, the modern novel violates those rules in all but a few cases (ULYSSES, for example), and some forms of the novel (the picaresque, for example) violate all the rules most of the time. But keeping those rules in mind nevertheless provides focus for fiction as well as drama, but crime fiction actually adheres to the rules more closely than a lot of so-called mainstream fiction (think of those family dramas covering four generations and three continents). The biggest difference between THE GRIFTERS and HOT PLASTIC is that Thompson maintains enough of the unities to give the novel a sharp, while Craig’s novel is more of a picaresque or romance, following several characters through a number of adventures that don’t follow a common plot though they eventually lead back to a kind of repetition of the original situation. HOT PLASTIC has more of the structure of a mainstream novel, following the relationships of the characters more than any coherent story. Fine, if that’s what you’re after, but to me it suits the crime genre less well. Even when a crime novel covers a large-ish frame of time; to use just two famous examples, ROSEANNA by Sjöwall & Wahlöö or FACELESS KILLERS by Mankell stretch a police investigation over a considerable time and numerous false leads, but the doggedness of the investigator and the concentration on a single crime maintain a unity of story or action. Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD obviously derives its unity of time from Ulysses, but many other crime novels, from the famous FAST ONE by Paul Cain onward, adhere to a tight time-frame. And when subplots seem to be more important or as important as a main plot in a crime novel, there’s a coherence provided by those plots moving toward a common endpoint or in their relation to an investigation or a crime (as in false leads). Unity of place is possibly the most adhered to of the rules in the kind of crime fiction that I like best (that is to say, localized stories rather than globe-hopping thrillers). So what do you think: Are crime novels Aristotelian? Or should they be?”

If You’re Irish, Come Into The Parlour. And Get A Cap In Yo Ass

The Mystery Readers’ Journal goes forty shades of green for its summer issue, as ever-radiant editor Janet Rudolph brings together a veritable Who’s Who of Irish crime fiction to celebrate the current boom in dubh noir (three of the usual suspects pictured, right – yours truly, Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley-Edwards, and Declan Hughes). The magazine is for the most part subscription, but there’s a few free tasters available web-side, among them Glenn Harper’s ‘Ordinary Decent Criminals: Irish Noir Fiction in the 21st Century’, which kicks off with a few names unfamiliar to yours truly. To wit:

“There are a couple of literary thrillers from the last decades of the 20th century worth mentioning in passing because they approach noir in distinctive ways. M.S. Power’s CHILDREN OF THE NORTH is an intense, complex trilogy on the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland, in a dark, Graham Greene vein and with a rich sense of both tragedy and comedy. Another novel on the Troubles, THE PSALM KILLER by Christopher Petit, has an eerie quality of being both a documentary novel about the convoluted politics of Northern Ireland and a brutal thriller that has some common ground with SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It’s also worth mentioning a few noir-ish late 20th-century Irish novels that aren’t exactly crime novels: Hugo Hamilton’s HEADBANGER and SAD BASTARD (featuring a cop and a noir atmosphere as well as considerable black comedy) and Seamus Smyth’s QUINN (featuring a career criminal and a lot of even blacker comedy).”

  Glenn? I love you like a mother from another brother, etc., but I have no idea of how Hugo Hamilton’s Pat Coyne tales, and that of Seamus Smyth’s QUINN, ‘aren’t exactly crime novels’. Hamilton, you could argue, offers a crude but quixotic protagonist raging against the world at large, and one who could just as easily be a middle-management figure as an Irish police detective tilting at the windmills of Irish justice or lack of same. But QUINN (1999), a first-person account of a killer-for-hire, is one of the defining Irish crime fiction novels of the current outpouring. Jump here for Ken Bruen’s verdict.
  Anyhoo, Tana French also features on the freebie list, and here ponders on why Irish writers took so long to embrace crime writing:

“Ireland had a deep, passionate resistance to bringing its problems out in the open. Maybe because of centuries of living under British rule, this country had an intense culture of secrecy: whatever you say, say nothing. Anything shameful or dangerous belonged tightly under wraps, unmentioned. To write about a murder, even a fictional one, would have gone very strongly against the grain. That mentality comes through even in one of the few pieces of Irish crime writing I can think of from before about 1990: John B. Keane’s powerful play The Field, in which a couple of local men kill an outsider for trying to buy a field that they feel belongs to them, and the community covers up the murder. Even the absence of crime writing can tell you a lot about a place.”

  Aye, sure we were all too busy slaughtering each other and starving to death to bother our collective arse writing about it. But lo! No more! For yea, verily, the full list of the MRJ’s contents runneth thusly:

• Shadows of Guilt: Ireland in the 1950s by John Banville, aka Benjamin Black
• Distance Lends Perspective by Colin Bateman
• Billy Boyle Goes to Ireland by James R. Benn
• An Irish Heroine by Rhys Bowen
• Crime Pays—On the Page by Declan Burke
• No, Not the Blarney Stone by Ken Bruen
• An Irishman's Lot by Doug M. Cummings
• The Importance of Being Irish by David Dickinson
• When Irish Writing Roots Are Showing... by Carole Nelson Douglas
• Where Fact Meets Fiction by Garbhan Downey
• Killing the Peace Process by Ruth Dudley Edwards
• The Roots of Murder by Tana French
• Rachel O'Reilly's Murder by Jenny Friel
• Josephine Tey and Nuala Anne McGrail by Father Andrew M. Greeley
• Finding Mythic Ireland by Lyn Hamilton
• Foxes, Cabbages & the Ancient Laws of Ireland by Cora Harrison
• Stumbling on a Body in the Bog by Erin Hart
• How the Irish Created My Civilization by Jeremiah Healy
• I Owe My Life to an Irish Criminal by Eoin Hennigan
• Irish Soul by Tobsha Learner
• A Literary Tour of One Dublin Author by Stephen Leather
• The Irish in P.I. Frank Johnson's Debut Outing by Ed Lynskey
• Casting a Cold Eye on the Gloss of Modern Ireland by K.T. McCaffrey
• Irish Connection by John McEvoy
• Patrolling the Border by Brian McGilloway
• The Absence of Death by Cormac Millar
• Writing and Ireland by Pat Mullan
• The Elusive Irishman by Teagan Oliver
• An Arresting Tale by Ralph Robb
• The Irish in Me by Les Roberts
• Balancing the Book by Zoë Sharp
• Lark and the Quaker Connection by Sheila Simonson
• Interwoven Irish by Therese Szymanski
• Irish Crime Writing: Truth Sells Better Than Fiction by Neville Thompson
• Sister Fidelma, 7th-Century Supersleuth by Peter Tremayne

Hmmm, colour us impressed. Meanwhile, the Macavity Award nominees have been announced, and John Connolly and – oh yes! – the ever-radiant Tana French are among the front-runners. To wit:

Best Novel
SOUL PATCH by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House)
THE UNQUIET by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton*/Atria)
BLOOD OF PARADISE by David Corbett (Ballantine Mortalis)
WATER LIKE A STONE by Deborah Crombie (HarperCollins)
WHAT THE DEAD KNOW by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

Best First Mystery
IN THE WOODS by Tana French (Hodder & Stoughton*/Viking)
HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
THE SPELLMAN FILES by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)
STEALING THE DRAGON by Tim Maleeny (Midnight Ink)
THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM by Matt Beynon Rees (Soho)

  So there you have it. Irish crime fiction – we finally pulled our heads out of the sand and thumbs out of our asses and started talking about what’s really happening in modern Ireland. Sure aren’t we only marvellous all the same?