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 …

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 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?”

All The Fun Of The Fayre: Yep, ’Tis Ye Olde Crime Carnivale!

“Ta-ra-ra-boo-ki-yay / Ta-ra-ra- boo-ki-yay …” Yessiree Sideshow Bob, it’s the latest leg of the Crime Carnival, and sincere apologies if our calliope music sounds a little wonky, not to mention nothing like any music you’ve heard before at any carnival. Here at Crime Always Pays Towers, however, wonkiness is the new black, courtesy of the elves’ patented Elf-Wonking Juice. Stick around, you just might get used to it …

Before we plunge down the dark alleyway that is the crime writing blogosphere, however, we’d like to doff our caps / pay our dues / offer you a little history. Ye Olde Crime Carnivale is the brainchild of criminal mastermind Barbara Fister, who thought that it might be a rather spiffing idea for like-minded people to share their favourite blogs, websites, writers and all things crime-‘n’-interweb-related. Karen Chisholm at AustCrimeFiction took up the poisoned chalice in her beautifully manicured hand, before passing it on to the strong and silent (but deadly) J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet. Sadly, he got himself hooked up with a load of Femmes Fatales (left), and brother, that was all she (or they, for that matter) wrote.

Anyhoo, moving swiftly along … First, a brief history of Crime Always Pays. Last April, the Grand Vizier, Declan Burke, co-published THE BIG O with the tiny but perfectly formed Irish publishing house Hag’s Head Press on a 50-50 costs and profits deal. There being zip, zilch and nada in the promotion budget, and Declan Burke having a yen to start telling the world at large about the thriving Irish crime fiction scene, a blog was born. Naturally, the first thing we discovered was that someone else had got there before us. Critical Mick – for lo! It is he! – is a veritable Golden Cornflake of Irish crime fiction blogging, being the original and the best. Irascible, spicily opinionated, never less than original and mad as a box of frogs, Critical Mick should be the first port of call for anyone looking for updates on Irish crime writing or confirmation that they are, in fact, the second-biggest loony on the planet. Ah, and an honourable mention in terms of an Irish crime fiction resource goes to author Cormac Millar, who compensates for his irregular updates with a comprehensive database of all things Irish crime writing.

Coming as we do from an independent publishing viewpoint, we generally like to support the kind of lone wolves who pretty much march to their own drum, and so – trumpet parp please, maestro – it’s off to Philly to drop in on Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Beyond Borders. Given that he’s likely to celebrate anything from Eoin Colfer’s young adult fiction to crime tropes in Shakespeare, we like to imagine that yon Rozovsky has a brain like the Mekon from the old Dan Dare comics, albeit with Dan Dare’s square chin and dreamy eyes. Or is that just us? Hmmmm …

Anyway, off we go again with hop, a skip and a jump across the blogosphere to the man we believe is either Rozovsky’s evil twin / alter ego or his dastardly nemesis, Glenn Harper at International Noir. Glenn doesn’t like Michael Dibdin, but don’t hold that against him – in the last fortnight alone he’s been bigging up fiction from Australia, Iceland, the UK and Italy, and should really be put on a retainer by International Publishers Inc., if and when such a corporation comes into being.

Meanwhile, Nathan Cain over at Independent Crime gets a well-deserved plug for (a) his resolute support for independent crime and (b) his ‘Wednesday Paperback Cover’ slot (left), the less said about which the better lest the elves start drooling into the keyboard again. Oh, and while we’re on the subject of drooling, two words: Jen Jordan. Hell, her profile even describes her as ‘friend to all elves’. If we weren’t currently stalking Ruth Dudley Edwards, Jen Jordan would be reaching for the barring order as you read. Logging on to Human Under Construction is a mini-Crime Carnival every time, a veritable cornucopia of generalised weirdness that even includes crime fiction-related material once in a while …

Out with the inflatable rubber raft, then, and it’s high-ho back across the Atlantic to the UK, and Petrona, an indispensable resource run by the ubiquitous Maxine Clarke, without whose perpetual motion the entire interweb would very probably collapse in on itself in a black hole. The great fear, of course, is that one day Maxine will stop for a snooze, and then we’ll all be scuppered. In the meantime, she’s hosting an exhaustive list of blogs and websites pertaining to a bewildering variety of crime fiction and science-related topics …

Maxine regularly reviews (said he with a barely perceptible segue) for Euro Crime, hosted by Karen Meek, a site that offers a treasure trove of info on all things (yep!) Euro + Crime, not least of which is the weekly update (usually on a Sunday evening) of a slew of new reviews. In fact, Karen is very probably the evil twin sister / dastardly nemesis of the chaps at Detectives Beyond Borders and International Noir, and for all we know they’re plotting to subvert democracy and are sending messages in code via their reviews. Still, it can’t be Mills & Boon (right) all the time, right?

One last UK resource, this being one Welsh, which is reason enough for celebration – Crimefic at It’s A Crime! Or A Mystery! is currently hosting a series in which writers chose their favourite books of the year for a ‘Christmas Books’ selection, and most of her blogspace is taken up by that project at the moment. At quieter times of the year, however, you can catch all sorts of thoughtful and incisive pieces on the book industry from the perspective of a dedicated crime fiction fan. Unfortunately, as regular readers will be aware, Crimefic has recently suffered a bereavement. Our sincere condolences go out to one of the leading ladies of the crime fiction blogosphere ...

Finally, we’re going to mention International Crime, a German outpost of all things skulduggerish and hardboiled, run by Bernd Kochanowski. The gist of his manifesto runneth thusly: Gedanken über Krimis, insbesondere aus den USA, Großbritannien und Irland. As you’ve probably guessed, the site is in German, and given that our command of German is only marginally worse than our command of English, we haven’t a buggery’s idea as to what’s going on over there except to say the man’s working hard to keep the crime fiction flame a-burning bright, which is the whole point of Ye Olde Crime Carnivale. Right? All together now: Unten müssen jene Mittelstraßen ein Mann gehen...

By the way – the next Carnival? It’s Material Witness, people. And they’re serious about crime fiction. Don’t say you weren’t warned …

The Unbearable Likeness Of Being

The word around the pastry table is that the rather sultry Tana French (right) is whipping up a tasty dessert to complement her meaty debut In The Woods. Quoth Glenn Harper of International Noir:

“Unlikely as it may seem (to anyone who has read Irish writer Tana French’s In the Woods), French is working on a sequel or maybe a series. The next volume, titled The Likeness, is due out next spring, featuring the female partner (Cassie) of Ryan, the detective narrator of In the Woods. Cassie has her own dark past (to match Ryan’s childhood secrets), both in her college years and in her undercover work prior to joining the fictional murder squad. I have to say I’m intrigued ...”

‘The Likeness’, eh? Could the title be a tongue-in-cheek nod to all those writers who simply replicate the formula of their first success? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …