First Look: PIMP by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

PIMP (Hard Case Crime) is the fourth collaboration between Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, and features what is likely to be the most eye-popping cover of any Irish crime fiction publication this year. To wit:

DEALING ... PRODUCING ... ALL IN A DAY’S WORK FOR A DRUGLORD. OR IN HOLLYWOOD.
  Ruined and on the lam, former drug kingpin Max Fisher stumbles upon the biggest discovery of his crooked life: a designer drug called PIMP that could put him back on top. Meanwhile, a certain femme fatale from his past is pursuing a comeback dream of her own, setting herself up in Hollywood as producer of a series based on her and Max’s life story. But even in La-La Land, happy endings are hard to come by, especially with both the cops and your enemies in the drug trade coming after you ...

  PIMP will be published on March 18th. For more, including a sample chapter, clickety-click here …

TOWERing Inferno

Is it just me, or is there a distinctly ’70s vibe emanating from the cover of the Ken Bruen / Reed Farrel Coleman collaboration from Busted Flush? Pretty stark artwork for a stark and not very pretty story, it has to be said, and one that puts yours truly in mind of blaxploitation and funkadelia – neither of which, I should probably point out, feature in the novel itself. Herewith be your humble correspondent’s take on it:

“TOWER goes off like a slo-mo explosion, a raging blast of white-heat light. It’s a compelling study of pathologies, and style, and friendship and fate. Fuelled by tenderness and murderous hate, it’s as tender as it is brutal, tender as a savage wound, ragged and raw. Here be monsters, crippled monsters: Nicky and Todd are the truest angels and demons of our mean streets I’ve read for some time. Be afraid.”

  There’s actually two covers for the book, given that there’s two authors, and what’s fascinating about what’s inside the covers is the very different styles employed for the parallel voices. It’s not the same set-up as the Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaborations for Hard Case Crime: here you get the same tale of mutual destruction told twice, in a split narrative reminiscent of Jim Thompson, but filtered through radically diverse mind-sets. It’s a fascinating exercise that packs a hell of a wallop.

A TOWER Rose Up In Brooklyn

I first heard about TOWER at the Baltimore Bouchercon, when I met Reed Farrel Coleman (right) walking around wearing a ‘TOWER’ t-shirt. ‘What’s that?’ says I. ‘A collaboration with Ken Bruen,’ says he, ‘out next year with Busted Flush.’ ‘Christ on a motorised mangle,’ says I, ‘that’s genius.’
  Sir Kenneth of Bruen has been writing twisted noir pastiches with Jason Starr for a few years now, of course, over at Hard Case Crime, but TOWER sounds like a different prospect entirely. Quoth David Thompson at Busted Flush:

“Born into a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood, outsiders in their own families, Nick and Todd forge a lifelong bond that persists in the face of crushing loss, blood, and betrayal. Low-level wiseguys with little ambition and even less of a future, the friends become major players in the potential destruction of an international crime syndicate that stretches from the cargo area at Kennedy Airport to the streets of New York, Belfast, and Boston, to the alleyways of Mexican border towns. Their paths are littered with the bodies of undercover cops, snitches, lovers, and stone-cold killers.
  “In the tradition of THE LONG GOODBYE, MYSTIC RIVER, and THE DEPARTED, TOWER is a powerful meditation on friendship, fate, and fatality. A twice-told tale done in the unique format of parallel narratives that intersect at deadly crossroads, TOWER is like a beautifully crafted knife to the heart.
  “Imagine a Brooklyn rabbi / poet — Reed Farrel Coleman — collaborating with a mad Celt from the West of Ireland — Ken Bruen — to produce a novel unlike anything you’ve ever encountered. A ferocious blast of gut-wrenching passion that blends the fierce granite of Galway and the streetwise rap of Brooklyn. Fasten your seat belts, this is an experience that is as incendiary as it is heart-shriven.”

  Sold! TOWER is due next autumn. Stay tooned for further details …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

The wonderfully generous folk at Hard Case Crime – i.e., Charles Ardai – have been good enough to offer Crime Always Pays three copies to give away of the forthcoming Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaboration, THE MAX, being the third in the increasingly weird ‘n’ wonderful pulp noir series by two of the finest crime fiction scribes in the business. First, the blurb elves:

When last we saw Max Fisher and Angela Petrakos, Max was being arrested by the NYPD for drug trafficking and Angela was fleeing the country in the wake of a brutal murder. Now both are headed for eye-opening encounters with the law—Max in the cell blocks of Attica, Angela in a quaint little prison on the Greek island of Lesbos ...

Erm, just as well this ain’t a family-friendly blog, eh? Anyhoo, to be in with a chance of winning a copy, just answer the following question.

Is the classical Greek poet Sappho most closely associated with the island of:
(a) Lesbos;
(b) Sapphos;
(c) never mind that oul’ shite, is THE MAX illustrated?

To enter, just leave your answer in the comment box below with a contact email address (please use (at) rather than @ to confound the spam-munchkins) before noon on Wednesday, June 11. Et bon chance, mes amis …

The Best Things In Life Are Free ... Books

Slide, the latest collaboration between Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, is published this week by Hard Case Crime, and to celebrate Crime Always Pays is diving head-first into a vat of Pimms. Before we slip into the Speedos, however, there’s the matter of the free copies being given away by Hard Case Crime, one of which could be yours if you just answer a simple question, to wit:

What is the name of the first Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaboration?

To be in with a chance of winning a copy, just email us the answer at the address in the top right of this blog, with ‘Bruen / Starr competition’ in the subject line, before noon on September 25. Meanwhile, here’s a sample chapter to get you onto Slide’s slippery slope …

Sliding For Home

That rascally pair of rapscallious ragamuffins, Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, have the follow-up to their first collaboration, Bust, on the way in October courtesy of Hard Case Crime, but already the hup-ya big-ups having been coming in like the proverbial choppers at Da Nang. “A full-tilt, rocking homage to noir novels of the 1950s, taking full advantage of the neo-pulp Hard Case Crime imprint ... A seamless blend of Bruen’s dead-on Irish underworld and Starr’s hellish vision of the Big Apple, Hard Case’s latest release is smart, trashy fun, fulfilling ably the series’ irresistible promise,” says Publisher’s Weekly, while the Library Journal is on the case too, to wit: “Fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the bumpy ride of double- and triple-crosses, blackmail, and murder. If Quentin Tarantino is looking for another movie project, this novel with its mix of shocking violence and black comedy would be the perfect candidate.” For quite a bit more in the same vein, Slide on over here.

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: How Do We Love Thee, Friday? Let Us Count The Ways …

It’s a Ken Bruen mini-mash-up, folks: there’s an interview over at Pulp Pusher, and a short story – Loaded, from the London Noir anthology – available at The Barcelona Review. Meanwhile, Detectives Beyond Borders is delighted Ken is on his way to Philadelphia to receive the David Goodis Award at Noir Con 2008 (scroll down), and there’s fierce excitement entirely, as they might say in Galway, about his upcoming appearance on Craig Ferguson’s The Late Late Show on July 9. Here’s hoping Ireland’s very own Charlie Bucket crashes through that glass ceiling, Wonkavator-style … In other news, they’re giving away free copies of I Predict A Riot by The Artist Formerly Known as Bateman over at Meet the Author … There’s a smashing interview with Hard Case Crime co-publisher Charles Ardai (right) at Murderati, conducted by Mike MacLean, that kicks off with, “Grifters and pimps. Pushers and killers. Dirty angels and righteous whores …” Sigh. Why can’t all interviews begin that way, eh? … If you’re around the Bath area in England on July 5, you could do worse than toddle along to the Jim Kelly reading at the Long Gallery at The Old Palace, organised by Topping Books … Maxine Clarke is kind enough to let us all know, via her blog Petrona, that she’s looking forward to Ingrid Black’s The Judas Heart and the paperback of Tana French’s In the Woods, due in November … which is nice. On to the world of movies, and the word around the Anton campfire is that there’s a rough draft of three hours just begging to be trimmed down to two hours or thereabouts, and the official trailer is on the way – we’ll have it about two seconds after YouTube, people … A humble thank you kindly, ma’am, to Rhian over at It’s A Crime, for bigging-up Crime Always Pays in no uncertain fashion – despite everything … Finally, what better way to ease into the weekend than via some classic noir? Erm, via a pint of Pimms and a snakebite chaser, say the CAP elves. Nonetheless, here’s Fred ‘n’ Babs in Double Innuendo, sorry, Indemnity, to wit: “I wonder if I know what you mean.” “I wonder if you wonder.” They really don’t write ’em like that any more. Enjoy the weekend folks, and y’all take care to come back now, y’hear?

The Thick Plottens: Yep, ’Tis Another Midweek Interweb Mash-Up

Why are we telling you about the Hard Case Crime ‘vintage pulp’ stand (co-publisher Charles Ardai on the left, right) at last weekend’s Book Expo America tradeshow in New York? Because (a) we love that Hard Case Crime is republishing the likes of Gil Brewer and David Goodis AND publishing the Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaborations (Slide is due in October), and (b) they dropped us a line and asked for a plug. Yep, it’s that easy … Maverick House release another non-fiction cracker, Kill The Tiger, which gives the inside scoop on a failed British-Australian mission to bomb Singapore Harbour with midget-subs during WWII: “This is the truth about Operation Rimau. It is written in anger, and justifiably so,” says the Daily Telegraph … Nick Laird, he of Utterly Monkey fame (or infamy, depending on your take on crime fiction) releases Glover’s Mistake in March 2008 … Spooky goings-on with John Boyne’s The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas: not only did he complete the book in a three-day burst that finished on April 30, 2004 – John’s birthday and the anniversary of Hitler’s death – but the movie of the book started shooting on April 30 this year. “The day just has these bizarre coincidences,” Boyne tells The Age … Ed Moloney’s A Secret History of the IRA (left) goes into a second edition in July: “Remarkably comprehensive yet coolly incisive ... an extraordinarily courageous and ultimately optimistic book that brilliantly elucidates past horrors,” says the Boston Globe, while the Washington Post made it ‘A Rave’: “Moloney brings a sharply intelligent reporter’s eye to a tangled history often baffling to outsiders.” … Philip Bray won the Tubridy Show / Gill and Macmillan True Story Competition ‘for his story about the horrendous, violent and sometimes humorous world of life in the prison service’ reports the Irish Indo (scroll down). Philip joined the service in 1977, working in Limerick Prison. The story stood out “as being insightful, honest and intriguing,” says Sarah Libby of Gill and Macmillan … Staying with prisons: Michael Higgins’ The Great Escape is published in the Sunday Tribune as part of the Trib’s New Irish Writing, and will now be eligible for the Hennessy Literary Awards, to be announced in April 2008. Anyone wishing to submit a story (2,500 words or less) should hit up Ciaran Carty, New Irish Writing, Sunday Tribune, 15 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2 … The Dublin Writers’ Festival opens on at The Project in Temple Bar on June 13, with Gerard Donovan (right) and Rose Tremain first up at 6pm. Book ahead, because Donovan’s Julius Winsome is getting the kind of reviews that should propel him into the stratosphere … Finally, FOCAP (Friend of Crime Always Pays, natch) Siobhan Dowd launches her kiddie-crime tale The London Eye Mystery tomorrow at, yep, the London Eye, and she’ll be in the Trafalgar Square Waterstone’s later in the evening for a signing if you happen to be in the vicinity. Warning: bring your own bubbly. You go, gal …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 214: Charles Ardai

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire pick-‘n’-mix Q&A for those
shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
The Big Sleep.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Dan Brown.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Appending the words ‘The End’ to the final page of a book I’ve worked on for years.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I can’t pretend an exhaustive enough knowledge of the contenders to make this determination – but it wouldn’t surprise me if the right answer was a book with the words “by Ken Bruen” on its spine.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
The Guards, Ken Bruen.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: Rarely possible to make a living at it, even if you’re good. Best: If you do it right, a little piece of you will live forever.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
Damned if I know. I only know why I do: because I'm a sucker for clever anagrams.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sorrowful, disillusioned, bleak.

Charles Ardai is an Edgar-winning writer and co-publisher of Hard Case Crime

The Vengeful Virgin (Ahem) Rides Again: Who Else But Hard Case Crime?

If the names Day Keene, David Goodis, Wade Miller and Gil Brewer mean anything to you, you'll understand why we're all a-quiver about Hard Case Crime - even if they'd done nothing else but republish Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin (right, complete with 'tastefully titillating' factor intact) after 40 years, they'd still be sanctified in our eyes. But lo! - there's more ... Following on from their collaboration on Bust, Ken Bruen and Jason Starr release Slide (left) through Hard Case this coming October. Our cup overrunneth, floweth down our manly chests and trickleth through our thick undergrowth(eth) ... oops, sorry. Ahem. Jump over here for an advance preview / extract thingy from Slide, and try not to dribble over the keyboard while you're at it.