Reviewing The Evidence

There were a couple of very interesting reviews of Keith Ridgway’s HAWTHORN & CHILD (Granta Books) in the Irish Independent and Irish Times yesterday. What piqued my interest was that the phrase ‘crime fiction’ was conspicuous by its absence in both cases, even though our eponymous heroes are police detectives. Quoth the blurb elves:

Hawthorn and Child are mid-ranking detectives tasked with finding significance in the scattered facts. They appear and disappear in the fragments of this book along with a ghost car, a crime boss, a pick-pocket, a dead racing driver and a pack of wolves. The mysteries are everywhere, but the biggest of all is our mysterious compulsion to solve them. In HAWTHORN & CHILD, the only certainty is that we’ve all misunderstood everything.

  It’s not true, of course, that every novel to feature a police detective (or two) is a crime or mystery novel. Neither is it true that a book becomes a crime novel simply because crimes are committed or investigated during the course of the story. So I’m not entirely sure that HAWTHORN & CHILD qualifies as an Irish crime novel, or that Keith Ridgway would want it to be considered as such. Keith Ridgway is Irish, the novel is set in London, and Ridgway writes in the literary genre (I’ve already seen a call for it to be longlisted for the Booker Prize on Wednesday). That said, an earlier novel, THE PARTS, also dabbled in crime fiction tropes; and anyway, who the hell really knows what’s bubbling away at the back of a writer’s mind?
  Here’s a flavour of both reviews:

“Ridgway’s new book, HAWTHORN & CHILD, is strange, unsettling, fragmented, confusing, at times dreamlike (these are all good things, by the way). You won’t find sentimental stories of Irish emigrants here, nor self-flagellating clichés about dysfunctional families. […]
  “The story, or rather stories, concern two London policemen, the titular detectives Hawthorn and Child. It opens with them being called to a shooting, but this is just the beginning for a series of incidents both violent and tender, strange occurrences, stranger characters, shifts in time, shifts in perspective, shifts in tone and tempo.
  “The different threads are connected, but tenuously so, though of course this is deliberately done: it’s not as if Ridgway has lost control of his own stories.
  “The book makes the reader work hard, much like its two heroes: sifting through the facts, piecing together clues, trying to shape a cohesive narrative out of seemingly random bits of information. And it’s all the more satisfying for that.” - Darragh McManus, Irish Independent

“HAWTHORN & CHILD is a working partnership of two very different policemen. Together they patrol a seething present-day, utterly tangible London by car [...]
  “It is a novel of contrasts: darkness and light. The daily and mundane balanced against the sheer hell of evil. One man, who is good with accounts, has secured an easy life – admittedly working for a gangster – but then he finds himself pinned under a car that could fall on him. Elsewhere a baby who is about to be rescued is thrown down a stairs. A woman who lives in a neat, spacious flat hangs herself over a cooker while the gas rings burn her from beneath.” - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

  I haven’t read the novel yet - I’ll be trotting along to my local independent bookseller tomorrow, as fast as my little legs will allow - but it sounds like a fascinating prospect, similar in theme and tone to two of my favourite novels from last year, Sara Gran’s CITY OF THE DEAD and James Sallis’ THE KILLER IS DYING. Both were vaguely surreal in their approach and existential in tone, but - and here we can draw parallels in an Irish context with Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN, or the work of Ken Bruen, Eoin McNamee and Colin Bateman’s ‘Mystery Man’ series - tapped into an uncompromising realism in acknowledging that, despite our culture’s plaintive protestations to the contrary, justice is a fiction, evidence is arbitrary, and any conclusions drawn can only be subjective and thus fictions in their own right. All of which, of course, is the true subject matter and governing philosophy of every great crime novel.
  If HAWTHORN & CHILD is in the same ballpark, I’m in for a treat.

Less Is Moore

With all the hoo-hah over the Irish Book Awards, it very nearly snuck under my radar that Bloomsbury is in the process of reissuing a series of Brian Moore’s novels, including NO OTHER LIFE, THE MAGICIAN’S WIFE and I AM MARY DUNNE. Of chief interest to crime fans will be THE STATEMENT, which was originally published in 1995, and about which the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

Condemned to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, Pierre Brossard has lived in the shadows for more than forty years. Now, at last, his past is threatening to catch up with him. A new breed of government officials is determined to break decades of silence and expose the crimes of Vichy. Under the harsh glare of the Provencal sun, Brossard is forced to abandon the monastery where he has been hiding and turn to old friends for support - but can he really outrun his past?

  Brian Moore, who was born in Northern Ireland and emigrated to Canada in 1948, cut his teeth as an author writing crime novels, under the pseudonyms Bernard Mara and Michael Bryan. Frequently and favourably compared to Graham Greene, Moore was, like Greene, disposed towards writing both literary titles and more thriller-style tales. His best books, in my opinion, combined his gift for language and a serious moral investigation with a stripped-back, less-is-more narrative - the ideal crime thriller, in other words, as in the case of Moore’s political thrillers, LIES OF SILENCE and THE COLOUR OF BLOOD.
  I picked up a copy of THE STATEMENT in a second-hand bookshop in Dun Laoghaire yesterday, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in, just as soon as I get all the work-related reading on the shelf out of the way. Which means, I suppose, that THE STATEMENT will be this Christmas’s reading treat, although I’d already lined up some Charles McCarry, Megan Abbott, Daniel Woodrell and James Sallis for that particular indulgence …

You Can’t Spell Megan Without, Um, Mega

Before I read THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbott was one of those writers I’d been meaning to get to for a couple of years - fair to say, I think, that her reputation (BURY ME DEEP, QUEENPIN) precedes her. Anyway, THE END OF EVERYTHING more than matched my expectations; actually, it’ll probably be my favourite read of the year. Here’s a short review from this month’s Irish Times’ crime fiction column, which was published last Saturday:

Megan Abbott’s THE END OF EVERYTHING (Picador, £7.99) is another unusual offering, a novel about the abduction of a pubescent girl by a male neighbour as seen through the eyes of Lizzie, the best friend of the abducted girl. This is Abbott’s fifth novel, and it’s a superb piece of characterisation, which is given an added dimension courtesy of Lizzie’s entirely frank account of her growing sexual obsession with the father of the abducted girl. It’s an unsettling tale, as the reader is torn between Lizzie’s endearing naivety and her beautifully detailed reminiscing about her idyllic suburban life, and the darkness that lurks behind the apparently normal facades of her neighbourhood, which Lizzie insists on probing. Laced with poetic asides, and shot through with black humour and a bleak acceptance of the dangers that accompany a young woman’s puberty, THE END OF EVERYTHING is one of the most compelling novels you’ll read this year.

  Of course, the trouble with reading a terrific novel like that is that you immediately want to go back to the start of the author’s back catalogue and dive in. A luxury that a lack of time, unfortunately, doesn’t allow me these days. The good news there, I suppose, is that Megan Abbott has a new title, DARE ME, on the way next summer, which should nicely brighten up those long, damp, dreary Irish summer days.
  Elsewhere in the Irish Times’ column, I reviewed THE RETRIBUTION by Val McDermid, THE AFFAIR by Lee Child, THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis, THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina and STOLEN SOULS by our own Stuart Neville. Top stuff, all in all; one of the best month’s reading I’ve had in a long, long time. For the full piece, clickety-click here …

That’s Entertainment?

Maybe we can blame Graham Greene, who famously - or infamously - labelled his crime novels ‘entertainments’, although I suspect it goes back a lot further than that. I’m talking about the notion that crime novels - all genre novels, really, but we deal in crime writing here - are obliged to be entertaining, as if it’s incumbent upon crime novelists, or their books, to be clowns, regardless of how sad the clown might be behind the garish make-up.
  A recent and very positive review of Alan Glynn’s BLOODLAND in the Irish Times is a case in point. Anna Carey wrote the review, and did a very fine job too, in my opinion, finishing up thusly:

“A good thriller is there to entertain the reader as well as make her think - and [BLOODLAND] is a very entertaining book.” - Anna Carey, Irish Times

  Now, I’m sure Alan Glynn was very happy with that review, but I do wonder about the distinction being made in that line. There’s no good reason, for example, why the word ‘book’ couldn’t be substituted for ‘thriller’. After all, it’s the function of every book to ‘entertain the reader as well as make her think’. Crime, sci-fi, chick-lit, literary, fantasy, romance, historical biography, quantum physics - if a book on any given topic isn’t entertaining, which is to say enjoyable to read, then why would anyone read it? Are there books that are deliberately written not to entertain? Has any writer ever sat down at the desk with the express intention of writing a book that will bore his or her reader into a coma?
  I do hate the notion of ‘special pleading’ on behalf of crime fiction, but I think there’s a case to be made for declaring a moratorium on the use of ‘entertaining’ when it comes to reviewing the genre. I mean, if the book receives a positive review, then surely the fact that the reviewer was entertained is implicit in the good vibes. The moratorium might even be extended to the phrase ‘page-turning’. No, seriously - how else are you going to read a book if it doesn’t involve turning pages?
  I suppose what I’m suggesting, and not for the first time, is that crime fiction requires a more rigorous analysis than it generally gets. ‘An entertaining, page-turning read’ is a description that could apply to any good book, from Noddy to ULYSSES. Is it the case that crime fiction is more about breadth than depth, than it’s prime function is to entertain, and saying so suffices as a valid review? Is it the case that the genre doesn’t actually require or deserve a more subtle, nuanced lexicon? Or is it the case that the genre, being perceived as little more than a lurid distraction, and particularly by comparison with other kinds of books, is being ill-served by a self-perpetuating simplification, as often as not by the readers and fans of the genre itself?
  In the last month or so, I’ve read a number of books - among them BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn, THE BURNING SOUL by John Connolly, THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott, THE KILLER IS DYING by James Sallis and THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina - that are as good as any novel of any stripe I’ve read in the last few years. They are all unmistakably crime fiction titles; all are beautifully written, first and foremost; they also have in common a rare quality of psychological insight as they pursue the flaws and foibles of the human condition. All of which are the essential elements of any good novel, it seems to me.
  Anyway, I opened up talking about Alan Glynn, and there’s a lot him about right now. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with the Faber blog, The Thought Fox:

[TF] BLOODLAND has the kind of plot where tiny details at the start lead to huge revelations by the end. How hard is it when writing a story like this to keep back secrets from your readers?

[AG] “It’s not easy. I continually re-read, re-write and revise. At the same time it’s an organic process and the subconscious does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. A connection that in the context of the story might seem inevitable, something meticulously and very deliberately placed there by the author, will often in fact have occurred to me at the very last minute. Maybe it was there all along, waiting to be discovered but the poor sap at the keyboard isn’t necessarily the first one to see it. But then when it all becomes clear, you have the luxury of being able to go back and re-arrange stuff, to re-weight and re-calibrate scenes in the overall context of the story. As the writer, you just have to pay attention, which I suppose isn’t too much to ask. Another way of keeping secrets back from the reader, of course is by not knowing them yourself, as you go along. No plan, therefore, no outline. It’s a good way of keeping things fresh and unpredictable, but it’s also fraught with danger. You can write yourself into a corner. Or fall off the tightrope.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, you can bag yourself a free signed copy of BLOODLAND over at the Harrogate Festival’s interweb lair, with the competition running until October 9th.
  For a couple of nifty reviews to complement Anna Carey’s take in the Irish Times, there’s one here at International Noir, and another courtesy of Laura Wilson at The Guardian.
  Finally, for Alan Glynn’s take on his ‘Book of a Lifetime’, aka THE GREAT GATSBY, jump on over to The Independent …
  Oh, and as I mentioned a day or so ago, I’ll be doing an event with Alan Glynn at The Rathgar Bookshop this coming Thursday, October 6th, at 7.30pm. He’ll be reading from BLOODLAND, I’ll be reading from ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, and if there’s anyone still awake after that little lot, we’ll be talking about, y’know, good books and stuff. If you’re around, I’d love to see you there …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Johnny Shaw

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?
It’s a tie between THE LAST GOOD KISS by James Crumley and THE LONG-LEGGED FLY by James Sallis. THE LAST GOOD KISS was one of the first books that showed me that a crime novel could have a grounded emotional story and still be fun. And as far as Sallis goes, you might as well put every book up there. Jim Sallis (he said I could call him Jim and I have the email to prove it) is truly in his own league.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
My favorite characters aren’t people I’d want to be. They’re too messed up or violent or flawed. Great characters like Lew Griffin, Nick Stefanos, Cal Innes, Jack Carter, Hoke Moseley, etc., just don’t have fulfilling lives. So I guess I’m going to have to go with Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. At the very least, sociopaths can just get more done in the course of a day.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
You’re interviewing a guy who still buys Iron Maiden albums the day they come out. In terms of pleasures, I’m not capable of guilt. However, I will admit to a soft spot for men’s serial adventures of the ’70s & ’80s. And I’m not talking the A-list books like The Executioner, Remo Williams, or Nick Carter. I really dig the second and third tier characters like The Pusher, The Revenger, The Penetrator, and The Butcher. I mean, how can you go wrong with a book starring The Swamp Master (set in a post-apocalyptic Cajun hell—Look it up!)? I’m actually in the process of setting up an online magazine devoted to new short stories in the same vein as these characters. It’s called BLOOD & TACOS. Retro, but with new characters and new stories. As well as, reviews of some of the original paperbacks.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing a really great pub quiz question. I used to write pub quizzes on the side for fun and money. A good question was answerable, but required some thought on the part of the player. Sadly, it’s probably my best writing medium. Here is one of my best questions: What Academy Award-winning movie’s title is a homonym for two different sounds made by asses? (The answer is at the bottom)

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’m sure that half the people you interview give this answer, but I’m going to have to go with THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (I believe it was titled THE TWELVE over there) by Stuart Neville. It’s just a damn good book.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Adrian McKinty’s DEAD I WELL MAY BE. The pace and scope lends itself to a movie. It’s action-driven with just enough character to keep it grounded. The scenes are very cinematic and as you read, you can just see the whole thing. McKinty writes a mean violence.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best and worst thing about writing is that I have no one to complain to. While I have real-life problems just like anyone else, the problems that come with writing are enviable in comparison. If the worst part of my day is that I wrote a bunch of crap pages or some reviewer didn’t like my book or I’m pissy about some marketing thing, then that’s a good day. I’ve had real problems, and brother, writing ain’t one of them.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A dying man might ask for anything: forgiveness, a compassionate ear, a cold glass of water. Jimmy Veeder's father asked him for a Mexican prostitute. DOVE SEASON: A JIMMY VEEDER FIASCO is a contemporary crime novel set on both sides of the Mexican border. It has been twelve years since Jimmy set foot in the desert. But as his father's cancer spreads, Jimmy returns to share what little time they have left. He never expected to be sent into the Mexicali underworld in search of a hooker named Yolanda. With the help of an erratic-at-best childhood friend and too much beer, Jimmy stumbles among the violent, the exploited and the corrupted. The investigation and the events that follow ultimately force Jimmy to confront family secrets and question everything he held to be true about his father.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m just starting Charlie Williams’ BOOZE AND BURN (originally published as FAGS AND LAGER), the second Royston Blake book. We have the same publisher, so I was stoked (chuffed, for your readers) to get advance copies. After that, depending on reading obligations, I’ve got I WAS LOOKING FOR A STREET by Charles Willeford and KINDNESS GOES UNPUNISHED by Craig Johnson on the top of the stack.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. Reading is pleasure. Writing is work.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
“Drinky. Fighty. Fun.” Oh, and the answer to the quiz question is: Braveheart (Bray-Fart).

Johnny Shaw’s DOVE SEASON is published by Amazon Encore.

The Future Is Bright, The Future Is THE BLUE ORANGE

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: It’s been a week of minor landmarks, people, what with Crime Always Pays being nominated for Best Specialist Blog at the Irish Blog Awards just as the witless witterings of the elves propelled the blog past the humble figure of 40,000 page impressions since it kicked off in April, 2007. The Grand Vizier also acquired a new editor at Harcourt, the very well spoken of Thomas Bouman, and finished the latest draft of the sequel to THE BIG O, which is currently labouring under the unlikely working title of THE BLUE ORANGE.
  It’s a time of taking stock at CAP Towers, then, and not least because the Grand Vizier and Mrs Vizier (right) are due to be delivered Baby Vizier in roughly three weeks time. Which means that we’re all feeling unduly optimistic about life in general here at Crime Always Pays. We’re feeling mostly pleased about the current draft of THE BLUE ORANGE, which is an unusual state of affairs at Chez Vizier. We’re disappointed Stacia Decker has left Harcourt, naturally, but we’re very much looking forward to working with Thomas Bouman. We’re also looking forward to proving wrong Sarah Weinman’s gloomy prognosis for the writers Stacia signed to Harcourt, on the basis that the novels we’ve read of Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks and John McFetridge are top class examples of modern crime fiction (we’ve yet to read James Sallis, but according to a Ken Bruen-shaped birdie, “With Jim Sallis, CYPRUS GROVE is a masterpiece and his Lou Griffin series is awesome, not to even mention his biography of Chester Himes.”). We’re also pretty sure, given her unstinting support for crime and mystery fiction, that no one will be happier to see Sarah Weinman proved wrong than Sarah herself.
  So where to now? With the Grand Vizier in unusually honest mode, he has pronounced himself entirely unsure. To date THE BIG O has been a grand adventure, going from its humble beginnings as a co-published novel with the tiny but perfectly formed Irish publisher Hag’s Head Press, under the guiding hand of Marsha Swan, to Harcourt making real the Grand Vizier’s life-long dream, that of having a book published in the U.S., the spiritual home of hardboiled crime. Which is wonderful in itself, but as Lou Reed once croaked, a baby is the beginning of a great adventure. Will writing even matter as much when Baby Vizier arrives? Will it matter at all? Is it possible that the Grand Vizier will come to resent his compulsion to write on the basis that it will eat into the time he can spend with Baby Vizier? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …
  One thing we do know is that the Grand Vizier will not be spending as much time at CAP Towers as of yore. So the elves would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to all crime writers, their agents and publicists to take advantage of all that potential blank space by forwarding suggestions for guest blogging posts to the Minister for Propaganda Elf, c/o dbrodb(at)gmail.com, putting ‘I can do better than that rubbish’ in the subject line (Crime Always Pays offers precisely three molecules of publicity oxygen, but hey, we can’t all be The Rap Sheet).
  Finally, we’d like to offer a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has played their part in bringing us to this point, and we sincerely hope you stay on board to ride the train all the way to the end of the line. Oh, and apologies for all the sentimental guff – normal service will be resumed forthwith. The future, after all, is blue-ish orange …

All Hands On Decker

The rather foxy Stacia Decker (right) was the editor of CAP’s Grand Vizier, Declan Burke, for the five minutes or so between when she signed his humble offering THE BIG O for Harcourt and the merger between Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin. Sadly, Stacia became a casualty of said merger, as Sarah Weinman reports. To wit:

On Friday, Publishers Weekly reported that four editors at the now-combined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt had been laid off, a move anticipated for quite some time after Riverdeep, Houghton Mifflin’s parent company, bought out Harcourt late last year and the two similar but distinct trade devisions were merged together. Later that day Publishers Marketplace cited who they were: Webb Younce, Jane Rosenman and Anton Mueller on the Houghton side, and Stacia Decker on the Harcourt side.
  The Houghton layoffs are bad news on the literary fiction and non-fiction front - authors who count any of the three editors as theirs include Mary Sharratt, Laleh Khadivi, Jonathan Miles, Elinor Lipman, Nicole Mones, Jenefer Shute, Timothy Egan, Mark Slouka, Anchee Min, Jonathan Chait, Taylor Antrim, Steven Sherrill and Colum McCann – but Decker’s dismissal is a huge blow for the mystery genre.
  Not only was Decker tasked with editing most of the books Otto Penzler acquired for his eponymous imprint, an author stable that includes John Harvey, Thomas Perry, Andrew Klavan, Joe Gores and Joyce Carol Oates, but she acquired many excellent and interesting writers treading on the side of noir, such as Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, John McFetridge, James Sallis and Declan Burke, as well as Inger Wolfe. No wonder Spinetingler Magazine recently voted her as “Best Editor” in their inaugural awards given out a few weeks ago.
  What Decker’s leaving means for those authors, as well as Penzler’s imprint, remains to be seen, but I’m not feeling a lot of optimism at this point for an imprint that took care to publishing quality crime fiction exclusively in hardcover and trade paperback. I do feel optimism, however, for Decker, who not only has good editorial taste but some very shrewd instincts that will serve her well at her next editorial job. She’ll also, I hope, continue writing, as her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Nerve, South Dakota Review, Small Spiral Notebook, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and Faultline, among other publications. But once again, this news shows the dark side of publisher consolidation, a side that probably won’t lighten up anytime soon.

All of which is quite doomy and gloomy, but we believe cream always rises to the top and that Stacia will be beating off potential suitors before you can say ‘all hands on Decker’. You go, girl ...