The Neville Will Find Work For Idle Hands To Do

I interviewed Stuart Neville (right) last week, and a very pleasant experience it was too, not least because Stuart is in a very good place these days. Recently married, he’s on the shortlist for tonight’s LA Times’ Mystery / Thriller Book Awards with COLLUSION, a gong he scooped last year for his debut novel, THE TWELVE, aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST. Could he possibly win two years running? It’s a big ask, as they say, particularly given the quality of the opposition: our own Tana French, for FAITHFUL PLACE; Kelli Stanley for CITY OF DRAGONS; Laura Lippman for I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE; and Tom Franklin for CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, which is the best novel I’ve read this year to date (although my current read, IRON HOUSE by John Hart, is running it close).
  Meanwhile, Stuart is also gearing up to the release of his third novel, STOLEN SOULS, which he describes as ‘a much more streamlined, ticking-clock kind of thriller’, influenced by classic ’70s thrillers such as William Goldman’s MARATHON MAN, and the early novels of Thomas Harris. Sounds tasty. For more on STOLEN SOULS, clickety-click here …
  Anyway, I asked Stuart in passing if he’d like to nominate an Irish crime title to recommend to readers, to which he responded thusly:

“The new Gene Kerrigan book, THE RAGE, is absolutely terrific. It captures that sense of Ireland on the down-slope of the rollercoaster, he’s done that very, very well. But also, his journalistic background makes it seem like there’s almost a documentary feel to it. You feel like you could be reading an actual description of a crime in it, as opposed to a fictional crime. It has a real core of authenticity to it. It’s very impressive. I’d hope that the Irish Book Awards win last year, and the CWA nomination, will help raise his profile. He’s a terrific writer.”

  That makes Stuart’s nod the third very positive recommendation for THE RAGE I’ve heard in the last couple of weeks. It isn’t released until June 2nd, but already it seems set to catapult Gene Kerrigan into the stratosphere. Here’s hoping.
  What I love most about Gene Kerrigan’s books, I think, is the ring of authenticity Stuart refers to, which is very probably derived from his years spent as a court reporter. Not for Kerrigan the demonising of criminals, little or otherwise. I never tire of repeating the line Kerrigan used during a conversation on crime writing a few years ago, when he suggested that the typical criminal isn’t all that different to law-abiding folk. “This guy will babysit your kids on a Friday night,” he said, “then go to work on Saturday morning with a gun in his pocket.”
  I always get an image of some uncle-type babysitter driven demented by an unruly brood who refuse to go to bed on time, whose shoulders straighten the next morning as he leaves the house, checking the safety on his Glock before he slouches off, some rough beast, headed for the mean streets to be born again …

UPDATE: Tom Franklin’s CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER won the LA Times’ Book Awards Best Mystery / Thriller last night, and while I’m disappointed on behalf of our own Stuart Neville and Tana French, there’s no disputing the fact that Franklin’s is a wonderful novel. Here’s the review I wrote back in February as part of that month’s Irish Times column:

Set in rural Mississippi, Tom Franklin’s CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER (Macmillan, £11.99, pb) opens with the shooting of small town mechanic Larry Ott, a semi-recluse who has long been suspected of the abduction and murder of a local girl some decades before. Local deputy Silas Jones is reluctant to lead the investigation into the shooting, as he and Larry were childhood friends before an ugly racial incident drove them apart, but the disappearance of another young girl overrules Silas’s personal distaste for the case. Ostensibly a police procedural, Franklin’s third novel deploys the genre’s narrative conventions as a framework for a much deeper exploration of the psychology of small-town America and its recent racist past. Both Larry and Silas are superbly drawn and fully fleshed characters, their personalities and conflict chthonic to rural Mississippi but luminously relevant, in Franklin’s hands, to any locale on the planet. Factor in a mesmerising evocation of rural Mississippi, language of sinuous and shimmering elegance, and a finely tuned ear for the nuances of dialogue, and you have a novel that is an early contender for one of the great novels of the year. - Declan Burke

TRUTH, The Whole Truth And Nothing But

Hmmm. You go away on holidays and the world turns upside down. Brazil and Argentina go out of the World Cup at the quarter-final stage, Sligo beat Galway (after hammering Mayo in the previous round) to make the Connacht Final, and a crime writer wins Australia’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award.
  This being a books blog, we’ll concentrate on Peter Temple. First off, hearty congrats to the man. Not only is he a terrific writer, but a little birdie tells me he’s a decent human being to boot.
  I’m a little bit wary, though, of the way the crime fiction niche of the blogosphere has been jumping up and down about TRUTH’s success. The general impression appears to be that crime fiction is finally getting its turn in the sun, and that the barriers between genre fiction and prestigious prizes are being broken down.
  I doubt very much if that is the case. Rather, I’d imagine it’s the case that Peter Temple’s TRUTH is an excellent novel, and has been rewarded as such. Those who think that TRUTH has breached the ivory tower of the literary establishment, and that crime fiction is about to pour through the gap, will be sorely disappointed.
  The Guardian had an excellent piece last week on Peter Temple’s win, following up on the news with a query as to whether a crime novel will ever win the Booker Prize, for example. Contributors included Ian Rankin and John Banville, but the most pertinent comment came from Morag Fraser. To wit:

For Morag Fraser, a Miles Franklin judge for the past six years, it is simply a question of quality. “Most crime novels that I have read (and I read one a week, often more) will never win the Miles Franklin or any other ‘literary’ prize because they do not work language hard enough, and they do not think originally and with sufficient depth and imagination,” she said. “They may gratify but they do not surprise the way great literature does.”
  “In the case of Peter Temple’s TRUTH, the divide was so comprehensively crossed that we did not think much about the conventions of crime fiction except to note that Temple was able to observe them rather as a poet observes the 14-line convention of the sonnet or a musician the sonata form: as a useful disciplinary structure from which to expand, bend or depart.”

  All of which should be patently obvious to crime writers, but is patently not. Of the 25 or so crime novels I’ve read so far this year, only three - Alan Furst’s SPIES OF THE BALKANS, John Hart’s THE LAST CHILD and Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE - allowed me to forget that I was reading crime fiction. In other words, and despite working within the parameters of crime fiction, they were simply novels, rather than a specific type of novel.
  There is a tension inherent in writing genre fiction, of course. Every author writes the best novel he or she can, but the commercial imperative at the heart of genre fiction means that, in order to appeal to as big an audience as possible, the best of intentions are often compromised in order to fit a story or a character into a particular format. That well may prove successful and profitable in the short-term, but in the long run, an adherence to formula is undermining crime writing. It’s worth quoting Morag Fraser again: “Most crime novels … do not think originally and with sufficient depth and imagination. They may gratify but they do not surprise the way great literature does.”
  Not every novel can be great literature, of course, just as not every novel can win a prize. But here’s the thing: originality, and depth and imagination, can surprise, even if they ‘fail’ to gratify. And here’s the other thing: there’s only so many brass rings to be grasped at. The thousand, or ten thousand, wannabes chasing Lee Child’s coattails, or the thousand, or ten thousand, bandwagon-jumpers currently labouring over their version of THE GIRL WITH THE DA VINCI TATTOO, are far more likely to be commercially successful with an original work than a second- or third-rate knock-off of a proven winner.
  I’ve written elsewhere on this blog (in a comments box, I think) that the novel is the most potent tool we have when it comes to understanding, or trying to, what it means to be human and alive. You can argue for music and theatre and psychology and whatever you’re having yourself - I’m biased in favour of the novel. The point being that Peter Temple was rewarded with the Miles Franklin Award not for writing a crime novel, or an excellent crime novel, but for writing a superb novel that explores the human condition.
  Last month, writing about the plethora of crime fiction awards, I said this:

I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits.

  These days, more often than not, I’m reading crime fiction out of a sense of duty, and turning to ‘literary’ fiction for my kicks.
  It may be hard for some crime writing fans to stomach, but Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin Award not because he is a crime writer, or even a very good crime writer, but because he is the exception to the rule.

Myth This One At Your Peril

Yours truly had a piece in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago about REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, a collection of contemporary crime stories based on Irish myths and mythology. The launch of said tome, which is co-edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, takes place this coming Thursday, June 10th, at No Alibis in Belfast, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch of Irish crime fiction anthology, REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, on Thursday 10th June at 6:30PM.
  Along with co-editor Gerard Brennan (of Crime Scene NI fame), we’re expecting appearances from the following contributors: Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, T.A. Moore, Tony Bailie, John McAllister and Garbhan Downey, so this is sure to be an evening to remember.
  Book your spot now by emailing David (david@noalibis.com), or calling the shop on 9031 9607.

  Lately I have been mostly reading: THE LAST CHILD by John Hart, THE HOLY THIEF by William Ryan, ISLAND UNDER THE SEA by Isabel Allende, THE LADY OF SORROWS by Anne Zouroudi, THE PLEASURE SEEKERS by Tishani Doshi, NEMESIS by Lindsey Davis, and THEODORE BOONE by John Grisham.

And The Beat Goes On …

The Irish Times published a ‘Crime Beat’ round-up of crime fiction last Saturday, featuring eight novels of Irish and international interest, including three rather fine Irish debuts. To wit:

Three radically different debuts suggest that Irish crime fiction is in a rude state of health. Set in Cork in 1920, Kevin McCarthy’s PEELER (Mercier Press, €10.99, pb) finds the RIC and the IRA pursuing the same killer against the backdrop of the War of Independence. Strong on historical detail and assured in its plotting, PEELER is delivered in an economical style with occasional poetic flourishes. McCarthy hasn’t made things easy for himself in choosing for his protagonist a RIC sergeant who is a veteran of the Great War, and who works alongside Black-and-Tans, but it’s to McCarthy’s credit that Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe emerges as a sympathetic character in a compelling narrative.
  Niamh O’Connor’s IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN (Transworld Ireland, €12.99, pb) is equally authentic, the setting here being the mean streets of contemporary Dublin as Detective Jo Birmingham investigates a series of murders that appear to be the work of a serial killer with a grudge against Dublin’s gangland. A crime correspondent with the Sunday World, O’Connor invests her pacy police procedural with gritty detail, although Birmingham’s struggle to balance the demands of her professional life with her personal circumstance as a single mother raising two boys is as integral to the plot as the traditional crime fiction tropes. Birmingham’s one-woman campaign on behalf of victim’s rights gives the novel its moral ballast.
  Moscow faces into the chilly winter of 1936 in William Ryan’s THE HOLY THIEF (Mantle, £12.99, hb), in which a number of horrific murders coincide with the start of Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’. Militiaman Detective Korolev is assigned to investigate, and soon finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the NKVD, the Orthodox Church, and Moscow’s infamous Thieves. Korolev, a religious man secretly faithful to the Old Regime, makes for an unusually spiritual crime fiction protagonist. Ryan’s stately style belies the page-turning quality of the novel, which compares favourably to Rob Smith’s CHILD 44, not least in terms of Ryan’s evocation of the claustrophobic paranoia of Stalinist Russia.
  Meanwhile, two titans of the contemporary crime fiction novel offer hugely satisfying reads. In 61 HOURS (Bantam, £13.99, hb), Lee Child’s ex-military drifter Jack Reacher fetches up in a South Dakota town during a blizzard, and is quickly pressed into service by a police force besieged by a drug cartel bent on eliminating a murder witness. Terse and laconic in style, the novel’s tale owes a significant debt to the classic western High Noon, but the deadpan Reacher is a charismatic and endlessly resourceful protagonist. The hero’s status as a noble loner reeks of James Bond-style male fantasy, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, 61 HOURS is an expertly crafted entertainment.
  Scott Turow’s INNOCENT(Mantle, £17.99, hb) is a sequel to his best-selling PRESUMED INNOCENT (1987). Now 60, and long after being acquitted of the murder of his mistress, appeals judge Rusty Sabich finds himself being investigated by his old adversary, Tommy Molto, when his wife dies in unusual circumstances. Blending Sabich’s first-person account of events with third-person narratives, and featuring an elliptical structure that jumps back and forth in time, INNOCENT is a mature and insightful exploration of the psychology of crime that makes a mockery of its title, and a gripping thriller to boot.
  Venetian policeman Commissario Guido Brunetti returns in Donna Leon’s A QUESTION OF BELIEF (William Heinemann, £12.99, pb), in which domestic and professional concerns compete for his attention as he investigates the apparently random murder of a court clerk during a sweltering heat wave. Brunetti’s emotional intelligence is both his most effective tool and charming attribute as he negotiates his way through the labyrinthine corridors of power in his search for the truth. While the compassionate Brunetti makes for enjoyable company on his morally complex quest, Leon’s 19th offering lacks a quality of urgency that might have given it a telling edge.
  Donna Moore’s sophomore offering, OLD DOGS (Max Crime, £7.99, pb), is a crime caper that centres on two scheming ladies of a certain age, Letty and Dora, who have decided to steal a pair of jewel-encrusted Tibetan dog statues from a Glasgow museum. Pursued by a ruthless killer, the duo inadvertently gather around them a teeming multitude of scammers, blaggers and thieves, all of whom are inept to a greater or lesser degree. Liberally sprinkled with salty Glaswegian vernacular, the manically twisted tale reads like a contemporary but unusually bawdy Ealing comedy.
  With only three novels under his belt, John Hart has already won two Edgars, the crime writing equivalent of the Oscar, the most recent of which was awarded last month to THE LAST CHILD (John Murray, £9.99, pb). Set in a small American town where a number of young girls have gone missing never to be seen again, it features two protagonists, Detective Clyde Hunt and Johnny Merrimon, the 13-year-old twin of one of the missing girls. Their intertwined investigation provides Hart with a propulsive narrative momentum, but this is a complex tale that explores concepts as diverse as the abuse of power, paedophilia, domestic violence and the consequences of slavery. While THE LAST CHILD is first and foremost a compelling police procedural, Hart is a subtle author who is in the final reckoning concerned with excavating the best and worst of the human heart. THE LAST CHILD is as fine a novel as you’ll read all year, crime or otherwise. - Declan Burke

  This article was first published in the Irish Times.

French Kissing In The USA*

So there we were at 6.30am trying to make a funny out of the Edgars and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and the fact that Tana French’s (right) second name is, well, you follow our drift, when we realised that trying to make funnies before the first bucket of coffee goes down the hatch may well cause our collective spinal cords to leap up and strangle what’s left of our pitiful collective brains. So, instead, we’ll just give it to you straight – Sarah Weinman reports that Tana French’s debut novel IN THE WOODS has won the Edgar for Best First Novel By An American Author. Hoo-rah! Of course, the downside to Tana’s win means that we’ll have to disinclude her from the roster of Irish crime fiction writers, but that’s a small price to pay. Run wild, Tana, run free! Meanwhile, the winner of the Best Novel award was John Hart’s DOWN RIVER, and Megan Abbott scooped the Best Paperback Original with QUEENPIN. Bernd Kochanowski? We still love you, but you’re sacked. For all the Edgar details, jump on over here …

* How long have we been waiting use that header? Way too long, that’s how long ...

Mi Casa, Su Casa – Bernd Kochanowski

The continuing stooooooory of how the Grand Vizier puts his feet up and lets other people talk some sense for a change. This week: Bernd Kochanowski (right) makes his Edgar predictions.

“On May 1st, the mystery writers of America (MWA) will announce this year’s winners of the Edgar Awards. Compared to other crime fiction awards it seems especially difficult to predict winners for the Edgar Award; not only might one’s own preferences send one awry, but the expectations of the juries change from year to year more than that of other.”

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
“Last year in this category, highly unusual (but fine) crime fiction novels were nominated. That might have been the reason that a rather bland book won. This year’s books are modern, sometimes bold but still more to the liking of the conventional crime fiction reader. In ROBBIE’S WIFE, Russel Hill tells the story of an older American writer who comes to England to find his peace and rebuild his shattered career. There he meets a young attractive woman who revives and stimulates him and leads him back to writing, a woman worth fighting for. It is a fine, but rather a conventional book and not on a par with earlier Edgar Award winners in this category.
  “WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?, written by Kevin Wignall, is an altogether different matter. It is a thriller that plays with the expectations of the reader and tells the story of a man who lost himself, became a killer and wants to find himself again. It is not so much a suspenseful and gripping book as well constructed and told. I missed a bit the great emotion and would assume that this slightly cool book has only a small chance.
  ”Two of the books are written by female authors, not only with heroines but with a female twist of the genre, with women who life lives and behave in a way not typically attributed to them. Megan Abbott’s QUEENPIN is a female variation of the ’50s pulp fiction. In a fine language it tells the story of a young woman who learns the ways of the criminal world and who makes her first own steps. It is a hardboiled story with a hint of noir but not enough speed to sustain this notion. The heroine is not really engaging and the plot itself has certain flaws. Obviously this should be no realistic candidate but the book has been much praised in the English-speaking world. In direct comparison, CRUEL POETRY by Vicki Hendricks is as noir, female, exciting and self-contained as only the best books. Renata provides sex for joy and money until a client wants more than he gets. With its explicit sex scenes and as a noir, it is not necessarily palatable to the majority of readers, but it would be a worthy winner.
  “In this panel, BLOOD OF PARADISE by David Corbett is the classical thriller. It is a book with a political proposition which is stated in a dossier that is found at the end of the book. Some of its quality lies in the fact that this proposition is not obvious for a reader who does not read the dossier. BLOOD OF PARADISE is a story of an US bodyguard who works in El Salvador and is confronted with his own past and is getting between the lines. This story describes a reality of which the USA and its security services are partly responsible. It is a story full of esprit and a has fair chance to win.
  “Therefore: CRUEL POETRY almost head to head with BLOOD PARADISE and clearly ahead of WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?. QUEENPIN would be a mistake and ROBBIE’S WIFE not understandable.

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
“There is a very tough competition in this category and each book would (more or less) deserve to win. SNITCH JACKET by Christopher Goffard is the story of a loser who is on remand and explains to his lawyer why it was not so as it seems. It is a fine book in a style reminiscent of Jim Nisbet, but more stringently plotted. It is full of witty remarks, elaborate language and clever observations of the US-American culture. Because of the language, if at all, only with small odds.
  ”Craig MacDonald’s HEAD GAMES is full of homage and historical allusions. The story describes the hunt for the head of a former Mexican general. It is a road movie that hides under the disguise of a typical American crime story an ambitious literary novel. As the quality of this book is more hidden than plainly obvious, it is also only with small odds.
  “Tana French’s book IN THE WOODS reads like a crossbreed of a classical Whodunit and James Ellroy’s BLACK DAHLIA, a bit psycho-thriller, a bit police procedural, told with literary ambition. It describes the investigations of a murder of a young girl but ends with a daring finish where the different strands of the plot are whirled and shuffled and an emotional cauldron is created. At the end not all riddles are solved, which didn’t find the approval of all readers but I think that’s life. IN THE WOODS is multilayered, moves from one subgenre to another, and pleases again and again with opulent and felicitous phrases. It has a fair chance to win, and as much as MISSING WITNESS by Gordon Campbell. A courthouse drama that celebrates the US-American trial as a performance and demonstrates that all the scheming can backfire and that then a lawyer has to face the results of his own doings. Here is an author who tells a tricky story convincingly and can generate a cogent atmosphere.
  “In pole position in this category I would see PYRES by Derek Nikitas, a story about a young girl whose father is shot in front of her and whose mother is trying to kill herself and in time regresses to an infant state. It (like IN THE WOODS) draws from an astonishing range of subgenres, is well plotted, is full of sensitive descriptions of characters and (again like IN THE WOODS) is a formidable literary book. Pyres ends furiously and puts all the different strands convincingly to bed.
  “Therefore PYRES ahead of IN THE WOODS and MISSING WITNESS followed by HEAD GAMES. SNITCH JACKET would be a surprise.

BEST NOVEL
“The five candidates in this category all a penchant for the literary infused style and they are all viewed by the reader of mainstream genre with reservation. Two of the books are written by writers who had already success outside of the crime fiction world. “[...] there are sentences, whole passages, where he give the genre crime fiction coaching lessons,” writes Franz Schuh about Benjamin Black’s   “CHRISTINE FALLS. It is a book that reads as if its author compiled a list of genre specifications that he than worked off. It is stuffed with clichés and because of its opulent descriptions, real suspense is almost absent.
  “By comparison it looks as if Michael Chabon’s THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION is authentic: If you read this book you get a real Chabon; Yiddish in Alaska. The book constructs a world of its own and tells about it with a volley of anecdotes; it is entertaining and exploring. That there are authors who write more suspenseful is not the point. The book is a likely candidate.
  “Two of the books are written almost in an classical (crime fiction) mood. DOWN RIVER by John Hart states its literary program in the acknowledgements and fails in this regard completely. It is not an analysis of choices (as stated) but the demonstration of stereotypical reactions. It is a wonderful atmospheric book, though; still, the Edgar would be a big surprise.
  “Reed Farrel Coleman’s SOUL PATCH is a dark book, well written, well structured, with a fine plot; but still, those who read THE JAMES DEANS might be a bit disappointed. As it combines literary style and classical genre themes, there is a small possibility that this book wins.
  “In between falls Ken Bruen’s PRIEST. As usual there are some small cases to solve and as usual the story is a canvass on which Jack Taylor’s life is drawn. He wonders about the influence of America’s language and culture on Ireland’s intellectual life and sees the long life of old crimes’ memory. It is told in Bruen’s poetical voice, emotionally intense and rooted in the modern pop culture. All in all it seems to me that it is so far the best book in the Taylor series and stands a real chance to win the Edgar.
  “Therefore PRIEST with a small head-start, followed by THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION and then SOUL PATCH. DOWN RIVER would be a surprise, CHRISTINE FALLS more than that.”

Bernd Kochanowski blogs at Internationale Krimis