One Of These Kids Is Doing His Own Thing …

There’s no good reason for republishing this pic from Bristol Crime Fest (l-r: Maxine, Rhian, Karen, El Cheesalero – with Ms Witch lurking with intent, no doubt, just out of picture) except to say that three of the four crime fiction bloggers are superb exponents of what they do, which is to let the world at large know about quality crime fiction writing for no reward but the joy of doing so, while the fourth is only in it for the money. If you’re in the market for insightful, illuminating conversations about contemporary crime writing, click on Petrona, It’s A Crime! and Euro Crime. Oh, and while you’re about it, click on Crime Scraps, whose host – the inimitable Norm – was behind the camera for this epoch-defining snap. He reckons he’s shy, but your secret is safe with us, Salman. Now, the Big Question: can we persuade Peter Rozovsky and Gerard Brennan to make it to Crime Fest 2009? Only time, that notorious tittle-tattler, will tell …

“It’s Like Rai-ai-ain / On Your Wedding Day …”

Rhian from It’s A Crime! is kind enough to whisper in our electronic shell-like about Paul Nagle (right), whom she met at the London Book Fair. Nagle’s debut novel IRONIC is due in October, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Lex Goldman stands accused of killing a young NYPD officer. His trial, set in the full glare of the world’s media, has captured the zeitgeist: the impregnable power of immeasurable wealth against the cold steel edge of justice. But who exactly is the elusive Lex Goldman? From the gold mines of apartheid-era South Africa to the cut and thrust of Wall Street, from Colombia’s notorious cartels to international terrorism, the twists and turns of Lex Goldman’s charmed life leave a deadly trail of intrigue, deception and covert cover-ups, all in the insatiable pursuit of wealth. Has Lex finally overstepped the mark? Has his luck at last run out? The coolheaded young prosecutor Kal Woodson, on a mission to stamp out such abject abuse of power and position, certainly believes so, and will do everything in his power to make it stick. A classic thriller in the true sense of the word, IRONIC, by first-time novelist Paul Nagle, is a roller-coaster ride of a novel, played out on an international stage as it hurtles towards its final bitter irony ...

Hurrah! CAP Towers has been suffering from a severe irony deficit for some months now. Will IRONIC cure our entirely metaphorical anaemia? Only time, that notoriously verbose stoolie canary, will tell …

The Screaming Blue Memies …

Dangblasted memes, eh? Crimefic Reader tags the Grand Vizier for ‘six random things about you’ over at It’s A Crime! and demands we play ball lest a black hole (right) develop in GV’s ceremonial nethergarments and consume the known universe. Gah! Anyhoo, herewith be the rules:

Link to the person that tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about you in a blog post.
Tag six people in your post.
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the taggee know your entry is up.

Righty-o, on with the flummery:

Six Random Facts About The Grand Vizier
1. Within a nine-month period between 1986 and 1987, the formerly dynamic Grand Viz managed to miss penalties in two sports (hurling and soccer) in consecutive All-Ireland finals. These occurred at the age of 16 and 17, respectively. Both finals were lost. In retrospect, the moments were (koff) marvellous character builders.
2. The Grand Vizier’s desert island novel would be PETER PAN by J.M. Barrie.
3. The Grand Viz has a tattoo of Wile E. Coyote on his left shoulder, on the basis that Wile E. is much, much funnier than Samuel Beckett’s existentialist mantra, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
4. If the Grand Vizier could choose to live in any place and at any time in history, it would be on any of the Cycladic Greek islands during cocktail hour.
5. The Grand Vizier’s middle names are ‘James’ and ‘Henry’. Funnily enough, he’s never been too impressed by Henry James’ novels.
6. In 15 years working as a freelance journalist, the Grand Vizier’s favourite interview was the one he conducted with Leonard Cohen, who was as dryly funny, self-deprecating and Homerically tolerant of a blithering young fanboy as you could expect a living genius to be.

And now - trumpet parp, maestro - for the taggees / fellow bloggers. Apologies in advance to: Gerard Brennan; Shawn Patrick Bagley; Critical Mick; Jen Jordan; Sinead Gleeson; and Brian McGilloway.

Not All Crimes Are Actually Illegal

Crime Fic at It’s A Crime! has supported some noble causes in the past, but few so noble as her current one, which picks up on a campaign being run by Norm at Crime Scraps. Quoth Crime Fic:

"CARE Blackerton House is registered to provide care to people under 65 years of age with learning disabilities. It is run by the charity CARE which states on its home page:

“Our aim is to assist men and women with learning disabilities to live a full and purposeful life at the heart of society and to help them to gain independence through the encouragement of further training in everyday and vocational skills.”

  "Norm at Crime Scraps has recently been writing about the risks to such people in the community and CARE’s proposal to sell the site and move its residents to another location, which he argues is of less quality with the disruption of the move likely to cause immense stress to the residents. He has now started an online petition and in his post to announce this, he also lists his previous posts which cover his thoughts on the proposal and its background. You can find it here along with a link to the petition. I think Norm makes a strong case.
  "Alas, whatever the government tries to tell us, we live in a period where certain crimes are mounting and it is easy to prey on the vulnerable. Indeed, Disability Now is maintaining a “hate crime dossier” to support its arguments for its hate crime campaign.
  "If you feel you already know enough to add weight to the petition, you can go directly here. But please read Norm’s posts and if you have a blog and feel empathy, please link as I have done."

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 …

Hot-Stepping Morris Dancing

Yet more Christmas books flummery from It’s A Crime!, folks. This time out Crimefic rat-a-tatted bullets at the feet of the hot-stepping Roger Morris (right) until he ’fessed up to loving Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS. To wit:

“Like many others, I was impressed by Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE. The voice is both brutal and lyrical and he writes with a terse precision that at times almost incapacitated me with envy. I also liked the poodles and the distinctly Australian swearin’. But ideally a great Christmas book would be a great read that also happens to be set at Christmas. Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS fulfils both criteria splendidly. There’s an extra dimension of seasonal pleasure that comes from realising that however bad your own yuletide mishaps – fairy-lights not working, turkey a bit burnt on one side – they don’t come close to the unstoppable hell on wheels that is Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin’s Christmas. It doesn’t surprise me that McGilloway is a fan of James Lee Burke (whose PEGASUS DESCENDING provided another highlight of my crime-reading year). McGilloway’s Devlin, like Burke’s Robicheaux, is given a convincing home life, which far from detracting from the twists and excitement of the murder case, adds a thematic counterpoint, as well as a psychological and moral point. In McGilloway’s concern for the domestic we understand what drives Devlin to pit himself against the forces of chaos beyond his front door.”

Beautifully put, Mr Morris sir. Now dance some more. We said DANCE! Please?

Brought To Book(er): A Disgruntled Reader Speaks

It’s always nice to get a comment or two, but Crimefic (of the rather wonderful It’s A Crime! Or A Mystery! interweb yokeybus) took the concept into a whole new realm when offering her two cents on the Man Booker Prize post below. And, given that it’s longer, smarter and far more passionate that the usual tripe we serve up, we thought it only right to repeat it in full. To wit:

“Not to detract from or devalue Anne Enright’s [pictured right, the attractive lady in the middle] win – I have not read anything on the Booker shortlist for this year - but I do think the Booker proved itself to be lacking any real excitement this year. It’s almost like “welcome and have some champagne” but the bottles had been opened 24 hrs before ... Perhaps the comments of the chairman of the judges and literary newspaper hacks served to add some fire to proceedings, but all in all it was a damp squib that caught little of readers’ imaginations and attention. Sometimes the death knell croaks and I suspect the Booker prize has faced that this year. I hope the organisers take the time to perform some navel gazing and revisit what it’s all about. Perhaps a clearer statement on objective and eligibility criteria will result. Booksellers seem hell-bent on “commercial” these days; courting and cosseting celeb authors and their ghosts. This all seems a divergence from supporting literary talent. Then the Booker embraces one or two best-selling lit authors, plus a band of what can only be described as the “obscure”. The latter may be really good and worth the promotion of being on the long or short lists, but it’s hard to be hungry for these when that’s the only balance on the lists. Mark Lawson has written an article indicating that the Booker is about pushing the spotlight onto the less known, but you won’t read that on Booker’s own web pages. Then there’s the lack of crime fiction (annually, ad infinitum). Is it so hard to cut the mustard if you write in that genre? Not sure who to chuck the accountability tag at here – the organisers, judges or the publishers who submit the novels for consideration – but there’s a group of people out there who miss the sailing of the RORO ferry every year. And hidden within the cargo on that celebratory ferry are many gems of damn good writing and storytelling. Because it’s perceived as contraband it deserves to remain outside the scope of this prize? Come on Booker, get real and broaden your horizons. The tastes of the reading public should be reflected too. They ain’t all bad, you know! Finally, am I the only one to wonder occasionally at the choice of the judges? (A question not based on this year alone, I emphasise.) That’s another area I think they should revisit. And when they present biographies of what they perceive to be “the great and the good” for those put on a pedestal for judging purposes, they might like to add why these judges qualify in the reading arena. The Booker now seems to diverge from annual event of excitement to small fry exhibit with big prize … They really need to reconnect with the reading public for next year’s round. Otherwise, I suspect, the death knell will croak again.”

Is Crimefic right or wrong? Have you enjoyed any of the Booker’s shortlist nominees this year? Have you even heard of the Booker bunfight? Pray tell, people …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of ‘Weekend Ho!’ Interweb Baloohaha

Greetings and salutations to muso-head, glamarama media babe and all-round good elf Sinead Gleeson (right), back on the interweb from blogging’s equivalent of maternity leave at the award-winning The Sigla Blog … huzzah! And felicitations too to Rhian over at It’s A Crime! (Or A Mystery!), back in the blogging saddle (the 'bladdle'?) after way too long away. Nice to have you back, ma’am. Please don’t go away again … Would you get away with murder? Try the quiz over at Quiz Galaxy, which the pesky elves discovered when they were slacking off and perusing The Rap Sheet instead of slaving in the dungeon … Kelli Stanley, who recently stood up to the best that the Crime Always Pays’ interrogation elves could throw at her, has Convivium, a short story in her unique Roman Noir style, available over at the very fine Hard Luck Stories … The Childrens' Books Ireland website had a major overhaul last week; drop by and say hello ... Staying with kids’ books, why not drop by The Third Pig Detective Agency, where Harry Pigg – y’know, the little piggie who was smart enough to build his house out of bricks – is snuffling for truffles on the mean streets of fairytale-land. The elves are bigging him up Irish-style, in the vain hope he’ll one day get around to investigating their abduction and incarceration in the Crime Always Pays palace. Aye, and pigs will … oh. Erm, forget that - here's a sample chapter from Bob Burke (aka Mr Pigg) instead ... Finally, to mark the occasion of the UK release of 3:10 to Yuma, we just felt like an Elmore Leonard fix – check out the first part of World Class Detroiters, wherein Dutch gets interviewed, does a reading, and humbly avoids acknowledging he’s the Greatest Living Writer on the Planet. “When Leonard releases a new book, it’s like Christmas morning.” Amen, brother …

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?