“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: J. Sydney Jones

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Can we stretch it to thrillers? HARRY’S GAME, by Gerald Seymour. He can do dialogue and pacing like no other. Or perhaps Le Carré’s A MURDER OF QUALITY. Ditto the dialogue. You can almost taste it.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Prince Myshkin. He runs under the radar.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Guilty as accused: mysteries and thrillers.

Most satisfying writing moment?
I’ve published a dozen books over the years, but getting my first royalty check for my narrative history, HITLER IN VIENNA, thirty years after publication was definitely a high point. No lie. That book was sold I don’t know how many times from the German original, translated, sold in revised editions (without my blessings) and I never saw a dime. Only financials for years were the photo rights I had to pay for with each new edition. But patience pays out. I now can afford five bottles of plonk.

No. On second thoughts, I believe I will frame the check.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is promotion - endless, ceaseless (is it even productive?) promotion. The best is that feeling of getting it right, nailing a scene or character with exactly the right words.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Here’s for book four of my Viennese Mysteries series, set around 1900: THE KEEPER OF THE HANDS is a murder mystery that quickly morphs into a thriller of assumed names, false identities, and internecine turf battles between espionage arms of the state, employing the technology and tradecraft of a century ago. It is also a work of social and political commentary in which the demands of state power trump the privacy of its citizens, a scenario that is prescient of our own times.

Who are you reading right now?
Perhaps this is my guilty pleasure: I always have several books going at the same time, fiction and nonfiction. Nabokov’s SPEAK MEMORY, THE AGE OF WONDER by Richard Holmes, and Jonathan Littel’s THE KINDLY ONES.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Neither. Don’t believe in God.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’m breaking the rules (so I can’t count, so sue me) and quoting from Kirkus about my last novel, REQUIEM IN VIENNA: “Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber.”

J. Sydney Jones’ THE EMPTY MIRROR is published by Minotaur Books.

I Will Arise And Go Now, And Go To Innisfree …

J. Sydney Jones (right), author of REQUIEM IN VIENNA and THE EMPTY MIRROR, was kind enough to host an interview with yours truly over at his blog, Scene of the Crime. The gist of Sydney’s interviews concern themselves with settings, and how a particular setting influences a novel. I talked mostly about my home town, Sligo, the setting for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG EMPTY. To wit:

“Historically, Sligo town is a fascinating place. There are records of the ancient Greeks trading at Sligo port; Sligo Abbey was founded in 1252. It’s an old town, then, and the centre of the town reflects that: the streets are narrow, and there are plenty of interesting alleyways down which a man might wander who is not himself mean. The modern town incorporates many sprawling suburbs, some of which are more salubrious than others, which again makes for an interesting juxtaposition. In certain parts of Sligo, literally crossing the road can make the difference between real estate selling for €80,000 and €400,000. That in itself creates a certain tension.
  “There’s a saying in the West of Ireland that the Celtic Tiger never learned in swim, which is why it never crossed the Shannon into Connacht (said Tiger, presumably, being too dim to use one of the many bridges that cross the Shannon). Sligo was one of those towns that didn’t benefit hugely from the boom years, although it has transformed itself in the last decade or so. Today it’s a brash, progressive place – you can sip your café mocha on the remodelled riverfront with the best of them – but there is a sense that many of the changes are superficial, and you don’t have to go very far from the centre of town before you notice the shabby and threadbare corners, the boarded-up shop-fronts. All in all, I find it a fascinating place – but then, I’m biased. I love it.”

  Not that you’d know it from the excerpt Sydney posts from THE BIG EMPTY, a Harry Rigby private eye novel of mine currently out under consideration. To wit:

It was better out in the suburbs, and it was mostly all suburbs, but the town was a heart-attack of concrete and chrome. Old streets, high and narrow, arteries that had thickened and gnarled so the traffic trickled or didn’t move at all. The light a frozen glare shot with greens and reds, blinking pink neon, fluorescent blues. Boom-boom blasting from rolled-down windows, the deep bass pulsing out muscles of sound.
  On a bad night it took fifteen minutes to crawl the two hundred yards along Castle Street into Grafton Street. The mob shuffling out of the chippers wore hoodies over baggy denims, the dragging hems frayed. Night of the Living McDead. The girls in cropped tops over bulging bellies with hipster jeans showcasing cheese-cutter thongs. In case someone might think they weren’t wearing any underwear at all, maybe.
  I skipped O’Connell Street, heading east along John Street, turning north down Adelaide and then west at the new bridge onto Lynn’s Dock, a grapefruit moon hanging low above the quays. Finn playing The Northern Pikes, Place That’s Insane. On along Ballast Quay to the docks proper, a spit of land jutting out into the sea, maybe forty acres of crumbling warehouse facing open water. Behind the warehouses lay a marshy jungle of weeds. Once in a while there was talk of turning it into a nature preserve, a bird sanctuary, but no one ever did anything about it. The birds came and went anyway.
  Down at the breakwater the Port Authority building was nine stories of black concrete, a finger flipping the bird to the town. Sligo’s Ozymandias, our monument to hubris, built back in the ’60s when Lemass had all boats on a rising tide and the docks were buzzing, a North Atlantic entry point for Polish coal, Norwegian pine, Jamaican sugar, Australian wool. Oil tankers moored down at the deepwater. Russians slipped ashore and never went to sea again. The first African, a Nigerian, was a celebrity. They called him Paddy Dubh and he never had to pay when he bought a pint of stout.
  Then the ’70s slithered in. Crude oil went through the roof. The coal stopped coming, then the sugar. The channel silted up. Paddy had to buy his own stout. Things got so bad the Industrial Development Authority had to buy the PA building and then lease back two of the nine stories to the Port Authority. Even that was a farce, the IDA loaning the PA the money to pay the lease.
  Then the ’80s, a good decade to be a weed or a rat. Everyone forgot about the docks, or tried to …”

  For the interview in its entirety, clickety-click here ...