A Leo In Winter

Mark O’Sullivan (right) is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, but for his next offering he’s turning to the world of crime fiction. CROCODILE TEARS (Transworld Ireland) is due in April, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

In the freezing winter of 2010, with the Irish recession in full flow, property tycoon Dermot Brennan is found dead at his Dublin home. Leading the murder investigation is fifty-six-year-old Detective Inspector Leo Woods – ‘the Ugly Detective’ - an embittered former UN soldier with a cocaine habit, a penchant for collecting masks and a face disfigured by Bell’s Palsy. DI Woods meets his match in Detective Sergeant Helen Troy, a bright and ambitious but impetuous young policewoman with a troubled family. A host of suspects quickly emerge - Brennan’s estranged son; two of the dead man’s former business associates with grudges against him; a young man whose life was ruined after his house, built by Brennan, was flooded; an arrogant sculptor who may or may not have been having an affair with Anna Brennan (and with their neighbour); and an ex-pat American gardener. Together, Woods and Troy weave their way through this tangled web to get to the shocking truth. Mark O’Sullivan is an exciting new voice in literary crime fiction. Already an acclaimed children’s fiction writer, he has produced in CROCODILE TEARS an excellent murder mystery, which has the depth of character of Kate Atkinson combined with the plotting and ambiguous moral codes of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse.

  I like the sound of Leo Woods, I have to say. An embittered ex-soldier with a coke habit and disfigured face would be the villain in most conventional crime / mystery novels, so perhaps Mark O’Sullivan has something subversive and a little out of kilter with the police procedural tropes lined up for us. Here’s hoping …

Scandinavian Crime Fiction: Whither The Mavericks?

I’m reading Barry Forshaw’s DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE at the moment, and a fine piece of work it is too, being a forensically detailed account of the rise and rise of Scandinavian crime fiction. One interesting aspect is the short interviews dotted throughout the text with British-based editors who have signed Scandinavian authors, who respond to Forshaw’s question of whether the current trend for Scandinavian crime fiction is running out of steam with variations on a standard response of, ‘Well, all good things must end, but my guy / gal is different to the rest because …’ Yes. But you would say that, wouldn’t you?
  The book has got me thinking about the future of Irish crime fiction, though - or rather, about the fact that ‘Irish crime fiction’ doesn’t really have a future. A couple of weeks ago I posted a comment on a website which was asking about which country was likely to break through as the ‘next Scandi crime’ phenomenon, suggesting that it had to be Ireland. Now I’m not so sure; in fact, I’m pretty certain it won’t happen.
  That’s not to say that Irish writers aren’t on a par with their peers all over the world; they are, and then some. I honestly believe that some of the Irish crime writers currently plying their trade are some of the finest writers working in the genre.
  The problem, in terms of the break-out to mass commercial success, is also one of Irish crime writing’s greatest strengths: its diversity.
  Over the last year or so I’ve read novels by Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackberg, Roslund & Hellström, Liza Marklund, Jan Costin Wagner, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Anne Holt. Some were better than others; some were very good indeed.
  What struck me most forcibly, however, is how narrow are the parameters of Scandinavian crime fiction. That’s not to say that all the writers are working off the one palette - Karin Fossum’s novels are very different to Liza Marklund’s, for example, and there’s a marked difference in the urban- and rural-based police procedurals written by Jo Nesbo and Camilla Lackberg, respectively.
  Essentially, though, the Scandinavian novels I’ve read have been for the greater part characterised by the classic crime fiction model: a state-sanctioned investigator (cop, private eye, lawyer, etc.) charting the symptoms of turbulence in society and persuading us that the (admittedly tarnished) status quo is better than the alternative.
  There’s nothing wrong with that story-telling model, of course. I’m a fan of many writers who employ it. But it does seem to me, from my limited reading of Scandinavian crime writing, that there’s a homogeneity to the ‘brand’.
  I find that odd. It’s not as if the current crop of Scandinavian crime writers only began writing last year, or the year before. Hakan Nesser published his first novel in 1988; Henning Mankell’s first Wallander novel appeared in 1991; Karin Fossum’s first Inspector Sejer novel arrived in 1995; Anne Holt’s first novel came in 1993. Which is to say that the earliest pioneers have been working in the field for the best part of two decades. Shouldn’t a few mavericks have appeared at this stage, writers keen to subvert the established form by playing with narrative structure, or humour? Are there any Scandinavians working in the historical crime fiction realms that predate WWII, say? Is it the case that there are Scandinavian writers who take a decidedly post-modern take on the crime narrative, in the way Ken Bruen or Colin Bateman does, or in the way that John Connolly blends genres, but simply aren’t translated into English?
  Where are the Scandinavian comedy crime capers? The classical noirs that take the part of the wretched and doomed criminal as he seeks in vain for an escape from the labyrinth?
  If they’re out there, and I’m simply not aware of them, please do let me know.

  In the meantime, the whole reason I started writing this post was to celebrate the fact that Eoin Colfer’s postmodern comedy crime caper about a wretchedly balding bouncer, PLUGGED, has been shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prizes in the ‘Mystery / Thriller’ category. The full shortlist runs as follows:

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson
PLUGGED by Eoin Colfer
11 / 22 / 63 by Stephen King
SNOWDROPS: A NOVEL by AD Miller
THE END OF THE WASP SEASON by Denise Mina

  Nice one, Mr Colfer sir. The prizes will be awarded on April 20th, by the way, and here’s hoping that Eoin will emulate Stuart Neville, whose THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) won said category back in 2009.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Bill Loehfelm

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?
That’s a tough one; there are a lot to choose from. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy is one, for sure. It approaches the level of American mythology, the way it examines evil, greed, and violence. Also, CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson, simply because it’s so utterly brilliant and gut-wrenching from the first word. Those two and a lesser-known book called CHEAP TICKET TO HEAVEN by Charlie Smith, about a bank robbing couple on the run through the US. It’s surreal, dark, philosophical, and one of the most unique novels I’ve ever read, crime or not. If I had to pick one, I’d say CHEAP TICKET, because it pushes the limits of the crime novel the furthest.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
This one is easy. Batman. Not that I don’t love my parents, but the ability to kick that much ass on people who really deserve it is pretty tempting. Plus, there’s Catwoman.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I like sports writing about baseball. In another life, if I couldn’t play the game, I’d be a beat writer for the New York Mets.

Most satisfying writing moment?
That live moment when it’s really flowing and you know it’s good. That fleeting, ephemeral high is the best, when you’re free from wondering about the final result of it. Also, I have to say, sending a manuscript to my editor or my agent – knowing it doesn’t have to be letter perfect to impress and that I don’t have write three dozen friggin’ query letters—that’s pretty damn satisfying.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Can I put a vote in for Roddy Doyle’s THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS? There’s a mysterious death and plenty of bad behavior. Maybe not the best, but certainly most underrated, at least in the States. Everyone knows the Barrytown trilogy, but I think the Paula Spencer novels are brilliant.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
CHRISTINE FALLS by Benjamin Black. Very noir. Intriguing story with all kinds of twists, and I think that era in Dublin would make such a compelling setting. The way Black renders it reminds me of Chandler’s L.A. I’d imagine, after the way Dublin’s changed over the past couple of decades, that those days in Dublin seem even further back and more foreign than ever. Might be fun to look closely at them.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Being your own boss. That’s the best and the worst of it. Making all my own hours. In a way, I never have to go to work, but in another way I’m never not at work, either. So I’ve never got nothing to do, but – I never have nothing to do.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A world-weary NYC cocktail waitress sees something she shouldn’t after work one night, putting her and her mother on the wrong side of some very bad people.

Who are you reading right now?
Right now, I’m getting towards the end of Kate Atkinson’s STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG. I’ve got Walter Mosley’s second Leonid Magill novel and a debut novel called LEARNING TO SWIM by Sara J Henry on my TBR pile.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Maybe this is a cop-out, but having published a couple of books already, I’d have to choose read. Not that I don’t feel I have plenty more books in me, but not as many as I would miss if I couldn’t read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sharp, authoritative, efficient. (I hope)

Bill Loehfelm’s THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS is published by Farar, Straus and Giroux

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

Now that’s what I call service. Not one but two complimentary copies of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH MYSTERIES (Book 8), edited by Maxim Jakubowski, arrived in the post on Friday, which is rather decent, as I’m sure you’ll agree. The full roll-call of contributors can be found below, with yours truly’s name popping up rather incongruously in the company of some stellar talent. To wit:

The must-have annual anthology for every crime fiction fan – the year’s top new British short stories selected by leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski.
  This great annual covers the full range of mystery fiction, from noir and hardboiled crime to ingenious puzzles and amateur sleuthing. Packed with top names such as: Ian Rankin (including a new Rebus), Alexander McCall Smith, David Hewson, Christopher Brookmyre, Simon Kernick, A.L. Kennedy, Louise Walsh, Kate Atkinson, Colin Bateman, Stuart McBride and Andrew Taylor.
  The full list of contributors is as follows: Ian Rankin, Mick Herron, Denise Mina, Edward Marston, Marilyn Todd, Kate Atkinson, Stuart MacBride, David Hewson, Alexander McCall Smith, Nigel Bird, Robert Barnard, Lin Anderson, Allan Guthrie, A.L. Kennedy, Simon Kernick, Roz Southey, Andrew Taylor, Sheila Quigley, Phil Lovesey, Declan Burke, Keith McCarthy, Christopher Brookmyre, Gerard Brennan, Matthew J. Elliott, Colin Bateman, Ray Banks, Simon Brett, Adrian Magson, Jay Stringer, Amy Myers, Nick Quantrill, Stephen Booth, Paul Johnston, Zoë Sharp, Paul D. Brazill, Peter Lovesey, Louise Welsh, Liza Cody, Peter Turnbull and Nicholas Royle.

  Nice. Given that the good people at Running Press were kind enough to send me two copies, I’m going to go crazy and give one of them away. To be in with a chance of winning it, just answer the following question:

What’s the greatest short story you’ve ever read, and why?

  Answers in the comment box below, please, leaving a contact email address (using (at) rather than @ to confuse the spam munchkins), before noon on Thursday, April 7th. Et bon chance, mes amis …

A Burning Ambition

Jane Casey’s (right) debut novel, THE MISSING, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards crime fiction category, and her new offering, the very fine THE BURNING, should be landing on a shelf near you right about now. Yours truly met with Jane last week, and a very pleasant experience it was too, for your humble host at least. To wit:

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and a similar warning should apply to authors. Quietly spoken and impeccably mannered, Jane Casey is a doe-eyed beauty who could well have popped up as some hack writer’s notion of what a serial killer’s victim should look like. Until, that is, she starts to talk about why she was drawn to write about an arsonist-cum-serial killer in her new novel, THE BURNING.
  “My husband is a criminal barrister,” she says, “and he always gets very annoyed when you get this incredibly gothic killer with a complex backstory in books and films. He says, and it’s true, that people who kill in this fashion do it because they enjoy it, full stop. So I wanted to write about the reality of what it’s like to look for someone who just likes to kill.
  “It’s like the case of Levi Bellfield,” she continues, “it all happened quite close to where I used to live in London. It was a really nice area, a part of Richmond, near Twickenham, very expensive, and it was there that he beat two girls to death. He’s an incredibly sinister person, and yet he has no complicated motive for murdering women. He’s just a very violent man. And I wanted to have a character who was just a killer who liked to kill, and how do you find a person like that in a place the size of London? Because they’re not standing on a corner twirling their moustache, or leaving clues for the police to give themselves away.”
  The 33-year-old Casey is Irish born and was raised in Castleknock. “Not very interesting,” she deadpans, “a typical suburb.” Except the suburbs, of course, are where all the quality fictional killers hide out behind their twitching curtains. “Actually, I think the suburbs are really creepy,” she says. “You don’t know what these apparently respectable people are thinking, or how they’re really living.”
  After getting the highest marks in the country in English when she did her Leaving Certificate, Casey had the pleasure of having a medal awarded by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney.
  “It was just brilliant,” she says. “I sat and listened to him reading his poetry and it was just the most amazing experience. Except my father fell asleep. I could have murdered him! And Heaney obviously spotted this, we were sitting in the fifth row, and as he was winding down he said something very nice about how people had come a long way and were tired of listening to him. Except then he came over and was introduced to us, and asked where we were from, and Dad said, ‘Oh, from just down the road, in Castleknock.’ But Heaney didn’t bat an eyelid. A lovely man.”
  Casey went on to read English at Oxford, and has lived in England for some years now. Her debut novel, THE MISSING, which is set in London, was shortlisted for the Crime Fiction section in this year’s Irish Book Awards.
  “I know that people always says this, and that it can sound trite, but it really does mean so much to me to be included,” she says. “Mainly, I think, because a lot of people didn’t realise I am Irish, and it’s nice to have it recognised that I am, even though THE MISSING is set in London, and it has a totally English cast.
  “THE BURNING is a bit different,” she says, “because Maeve Kerrigan has an Irish background, and it draws from the two cultures, playing them off one against the other, which is something I’ll be looking to do more of in later books.”
  “Somebody who’s quite young and ambitious, and trying her best to get her head around the job,” according to Casey, Maeve Kerrigan is the heroine of THE BURNING, a woman who isn’t particularly skilled in any one sphere of policing but brings a rare quality of empathy to the way she goes about her job. Despite her telling eye for detail, Maeve is always likely to be battling for credibility with her male workmates.
  “I think for women working in that kind of environment, they have some stark choices,” says Casey. “They can either be very girly or they can be quite butch, or they can try and just be neutral. Maeve is trying to be taken seriously, she doesn’t want to be seen as one of the girlies going off and acting as bait for the killer - she’s one of the lads, in her mind at least. But of course, they don’t care about that. And she’s always coming up against that.”
  If Maeve Kerrigan is at times a contradiction in terms, so too is Jane Casey’s writing. A children’s books editor who took an mPhil in Anglo-Irish literature at Trinity College, THE BURNING somehow manages to blend a horrifyingly authentic tale of arson and serial killing with a deceptively light storytelling touch that is studded with nuggets of the blackest humour.
  “I think it was partly the desire to keep it entertaining,” she says, “to keep a little bit of Maeve’s humour coming through. Police officers generally use humour to get through the things that they’re dealing with, and I think the banter is very important. I think that that’s something that Kate Atkinson does very well, that ability to entertain you as she’s telling the story, and I think you can let the story have that light touch it you want, and still deal with big themes and have dark events.”

  Jane Casey’s THE BURNING is published by the Ebury Press.

  This interview was first published in the Evening Herald.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson

Former policewoman and now a security guard at a Leeds shopping centre, Tracy Waterhouse makes a shocking, split-second decision on an otherwise ordinary day. In ‘buying’ a child from a junkie, Tracy puts herself on the other side of the thin blue line she has defended ever since she left school. Fifty-something, lonely, and living a life that grows increasingly meaningless with every passing day, Tracy is fully aware of the enormity of her decision, and yet every instinct screams at her to protect the half-starved mite, Courtney.
  A number of stories run parallel to Tracy’s. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator and a recurring character in Atkinson’s novels, criss-crosses the Northeast of England as he attempts to track down the genealogical roots of a client who was adopted at a very young age, and whose parents subsequently emigrated to New Zealand. Tilly, an aging actress who suffers from early dementia / Alzheimer’s, witnesses Tracy’s ‘purchase’ of Courtney, but can barely differentiate between who she is and the character she is playing, let alone help the police with their enquiries.
  A further narrative strand takes us back to the mid-’70s, when the Yorkshire Ripper was at large in the Northeast. Tracy’s first case, as a young policewoman on the beat, involves discovering a woman dead in her flat, and a young, half-starved boy who has been left alone with the mouldering remains of his mother for a number of weeks.
  It’s something of an understatement to say that STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, the follow-up to Atkinson’s runaway smash WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, is an unusual crime novel. On the face of it, and given that it features a policewoman (both as an ex-policewoman and, in flashbacks, when she was actively working the beat) and a private eye, the novel appears to be adopting the standard tropes of both the police procedural and the private detective novel. Once you get under the skin of the novel, however, it quickly becomes clear that Atkinson employs these tropes in order to subvert them. Although she gains our sympathy very early in the story, and retains it throughout, Tracy Waterhouse is far from a typical copper. To begin with, her ‘buying’ of a young child is a shocking development mere pages into the story, regardless of how noble her motives are, or how desperate the circumstances Courtney is escaping. Atkinson never shies clear of how outrageous Tracy’s actions are, and yet still manages to generate reader sympathy for her self-imposed plight.
  Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie is arguably the most whimsical private detective in contemporary fiction. His past, which is alluded to in a number of tangential sections, suggests that he is by no means a man to be messed with, and yet his internal monologues, and the ‘conversations’ he carries on in his head with his ex-wife, often border on pure farce. Brodie, incidentally, is the man who ‘adopts’ the dog of the title, when he rescues a terrier from a bullying owner. His ‘adoption’ of the dog runs parallel to Tracy’s ‘adoption’ of Courtney, and much of the black humour of the novel derives from their lack of understanding of their new charges.
  Tilly, the aging actress, is also presented largely by way of internal monologue, although Tilly’s version of events tends to be cloudy at best, given that she is suffering from short-term memory loss and incipient dementia. Tilly is currently shooting a TV series called Collier, which is set in the Northeast and features the kind of hard-nosed, rebellious copper beloved of screen crime writers. Here, again, Atkinson has plenty of inter-textual fun poking jibes at fictional representations of crime in mainstream media, particularly in terms of how TV cop dramas tend to be chock-a-block with incident, whereas Atkinson’s story is positively mundane by comparison.
  Atkinson writes in a deceptively elegant style, with the musings of her characters rendered almost conversational. The easy flow and apparently disjointed thought process masks precise plotting and superb attention to detail, although the style does become more staccato in the flashback sequences that take us back to the mid-’70s, when the writing - deliberately or otherwise - echoes the more impressionistic but simultaneously brutal style of David Peace’s haunting ‘Red Riding’ quartet, which also employed the Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror for backdrop.
  Atkinson’s subversive treatment of the tropes of crime fiction, and particularly those of the staple narratives of police procedural and private eye, is very much to her credit. Many crime fiction fans read little other than crime stories, and many are very happy to re-read the same kind of story over and over again. In playfully deconstructing the police procedural (Tracy, for example, uses her skills as a policewoman in order to keep herself beyond the reach of the long arm of the law), Atkinson is tapping into a zeitgeist in which concepts of law and order grow more fluid by the day. That sense of fluidity can be something as simple as the downgrading / upgrading of a particular drug from Class A to Class B, or vice versa, with the penalty for possession and / or dealing very much dependent on the political will of the day; or it can emerge from a much more important philosophical point of view, given that Britain - for example, and whether the majority of its citizens like it or not - played a major part in the illegal invasion of Iraq. If it’s okay for a government to flout international law, runs the theory, then why should the citizens of its country feel obliged to obey domestic laws? When the particular case explored here, that of Tracy’s rescuing the stray waif Courtney from horrible domestic circumstances, is an example of doing the right thing regardless of what the law demands, then the line between right and wrong is further blurred.
  This is especially the case when Tracy’s actions are set against the historical backdrop of the novel, in which corruption, murder and cover-up go right to the heart of the policing establishment.
  Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie’s private investigator is in many ways a parody of the conventional private eye. Yes, he is dogged, and yes, he follows through on his case to uncover the truth for his client. By the same token, Brodie has been commissioned to discover the truth about a woman’s birth details, which is hardly the kind of mission any self-respecting fictional private eye would concern him or herself with. Moreover, Brodie appears to be using the case as an excuse to visit monasteries and castles and other tourist traps. And while Brodie does deliver the information required, his emotional commitment in the novel is to the stray waif of a dog he has rescued from a bullying owner. This sub-plot strand is apparently designed to parallel that of Tracy and her rescue of Courtney, and Atkinson seems to be saying that, in the grand scheme of things, one more or less rescued child is worth no more or less than a rescued dog.
  It’s also possible that the reverse is true, and that Atkinson is suggesting that a society can be judged on how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable, and that that applies not just to its human beings. If Brodie, a hard-nosed cynic with a dubious past, is prepared to go the extra mile and learn to live with his new best friend on its terms, then society is far more robust in terms of doing the right thing at its grass roots level than it is in its higher echelons.
  Despite its picaresque structure and its flaunting of the standard crime novel tropes (and perhaps because of this), STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG is never less than a compelling page turner. It’s also a very good novel of any stripe, genre or otherwise, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Atkinson’s debut novel BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM (1995) won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Atkinson, of course, isn’t the first literary author to turn her hand to crime fiction, and she won’t be the last. What makes this offering so satisfying is very obviously immersed in the genre, to the extent that she can afford to stand its conventions on their head and still turn in a pulsating, thoughtful, intelligent thriller. - Declan Burke

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ Crime Beat

Being the latest in a series of columns on crime writing compiled by your humble scribe, which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Irish Times. To wit:

On the Trail of the Killers

The complex nature of its hierarchies can make the world of Italian policing a daunting place for the inexperienced reader, but making a virtue of such complexities while also rendering them accessible is one of the strengths of Conor Fitzgerald’s debut offering, THE DOGS OF ROME (Bloomsbury Publishing, £11.99). Called to investigate the apparent murder of a Senator’s husband, Commissario Alec Blume quickly finds himself tip-toeing through a singularly Roman political minefield. Fitzgerald is an Irish writer long domiciled in Rome, Blume is an American-born Chief Inspector, and both men bring their sceptical outsider’s eye to bear on a city in which the art of compromise is as essential as oxygen. Written in a spare but elegant style, THE DOGS OF ROME is a very promising debut indeed.
  Yvonne Cassidy’s THE OTHER BOY (Hachette Books Ireland, £12.99) is another Irish debut, a novel of suspense that aims to bridge the gap between the conventional crime novel and more mainstream fare. JP Whelan should be the happiest man in London when his girlfriend Katie gets pregnant, but then JP’s brother Dessie appears, threatening to blow the lid on the ugly truth of JP’s youth. Cassidy ratchets up the tension as Dessie tightens his grip on JP’s life, all the while offering flashback snippets of what happened back in Dublin when the brothers were boys. Fans of Tana French will find much to enjoy here, even if Cassidy’s prose lacks French’s ambition and inventiveness.
  Jan Costin Wagner’s second novel, SILENCE (Harvill Secker, £12.99), is set in Finland, and opens with an extended prologue in which an unidentified man is party to the rape and murder of a young girl. When a similar crime takes place in the same spot 33 years later, Detective Kimmo Joentaa calls on the experience of his recently retired partner Ketola, whose first big case was the original crime. Wagner delivers his tale in a taut, dry style, utilising multiple points of view to explore the psychology of criminality from both sides of the thin blue line. Similar in tone to Henning Mankell’s early Wallander novels, this one drifts up off the page with all the deadly intensity of mustard gas.
  Matt Rees’s series protagonist Omar Yussef generally prowls the mean streets of Palestine, but his fourth outing, THE FOURTH ASSASSIN (Atlantic Books, £11.99), finds him in New York as part of a Palestinian delegation to the United Nations. There, Yussef is reunited with his son, only to discover that one of his son’s friends has been brutally murdered. Plodding the bitterly cold thoroughfares of Brooklyn, Yussef must track down the killer before his son is framed for the crime, all the while striving to subvert a Jihadi assassination plot. Rees’s first novel won the CWA ‘New Blood Dagger’ in 2008, and Omar Yussef remains hugely enjoyable company, equal parts fussy Poirot and the tarnished knight of Philip Marlowe. As always, Yussef’s love of Muslim culture, and the irascible temperament that allows him to poke fun at himself and his co-religionists, makes for a winning blend.
  Simon Johnson gets attacked in his apartment one night by a doppelganger who wants him dead. That’s all the information payroll accountant Simon has to work with in Ryan David Jahn’s second novel, LOW LIFE (Macmillan, £12.99), as he sets out to discover who might have ordered his killing, and why. Fans of noirish tales of paranoia by the likes of Gil Brewer and David Goodis will enjoy the Kafkaesque twists and doom-laden tone, but the appeal of Jahn’s tale quickly begins to pall as the improbable absurdities pile up.
  A town on an island off the Icelandic coast long buried by a volcanic eruption yields some macabre artefacts when its excavation begins, in particular the three corpses and one severed head discovered in the basement of Markus Magnusson’s old home. Attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir agrees to take up Markus’s case in Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s third novel, ASHES TO DUST (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99), only to discover that her faith in his innocence looks increasingly misplaced. Sigurdardottir neatly dovetails Thora’s humdrum domestic concerns with the gruesome details she uncovers, and patiently builds up a superbly detailed backdrop to the crime. The sedate pace may frustrate at times, but Sigurdardottir compensates with elegant prose studded with nuggets of mordant humour.
  SAVAGES (William Heinemann, £12.99) is Don Winslow’s fourteenth novel, and reads like a Ken Bruen redraft of Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers. Specialists in manufacturing high quality dope, philanthropist Ben and ex-Navy SEAL Chon go to war with the Baja Cartel as the Mexican drug war spills over the border into Southern California. The tale could have been ripped from yesterday’s headlines, and Winslow’s irreverent style and linguistic pyrotechnics maintain a breathless pace throughout. Given that the pair are in love with the same woman, however, and that all three find themselves at the mercy of a terrifyingly ruthless foe, the tale is frustratingly shallow when it comes to emotional depth.
  Former Whitbread Prize winner Kate Atkinson’s previous offering, WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, was something of a phenomenon, and her latest, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG (Doubleday, £17.99), is a beguiling follow-up. Opening with retired policewoman Tracy Waterhouse ‘buying’ a young girl, the novel expands to incorporate a number of parallel narratives, chief among them private eye Jackson Brodie’s attempt to trace a client’s parentage. Brodie is a recurring character in Atkinson’s novels, and his whimsical internal monologues are only one of the joys to be had in a riveting page-turner that blends biting social commentary with an off-beat take on current developments in both the traditional PI and police procedural novels, even as it harks back to Ripper-era Yorkshire of the 1970s. - Declan Burke

  This article first appeared in The Irish Times.

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Tickets

John Banville (right) will be appearing at this coming weekend’s Mountains to Sea literary festival in Dun Laoghaire, presumably in his Benjamin Black incarnation, given the latest BB offering, ELEGY FOR APRIL, is currently appearing on shelves near you. In the ‘My Week’ feature in last weekend’s Sunday Times, JB / BB had this to say:

“I began the book - it irks me that I have not yet found a title - on May 4. I’m told that real crime novelists grind their teeth in fury when I speak of writing the BB books quickly, but the great Simenon used to knock off a Maigret in a couple of weeks, and would have considered me a slacker and a sloth.”

  Anyhoo, JB / BB will be appearing - alongside a host of non-crime fiction writers - on Saturday and Sunday. Among the notable crime writers will be Kate Atkinson, whose latest offering, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, is as brilliant as its title is quirky.
  What I’m looking forward to most, however, is the conversation between Stuart Neville and Eoin McNamee. Stuart published COLLUSION, the follow-up to THE TWELVE, earlier this year, and a terrific read it is too, while Eoin publishes the excellent ORCHID BLUE in November. Ensuring that there’ll be no eye-gouging and below-the-belt strokes between the pair will be Squire Declan Hughes, who will moderate the conversation in an appropriately (we hope) immoderate style.
  The good news is that there are a limited number of free tickets available for this particular gig. If you’re interested, contact Bert Wright on bwcc(at)eircom.net and let him know your details …

Smarter Than The Average Bears

It’s a pic-a-nic, Boo-Boo. If you do happen to be in the vicinity of the Electric Picnic this coming Saturday, September 4th, here’s a gentle reminder that the crème-de-la-crème of Irish crime writing (and one clot) will be yakking it up over at the Arts Council Literary Stage as part of the Mindfield offerings over the weekend. Yours truly is said clot, hosting a conversation between the inseparable Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes (above right) and Gene Kerrigan about the books that inspired them to take reading and writing seriously when they were kids, so expect more than one reference to Enid Blyton. As for your humble host, and given the way the writing career isn’t exactly working out as anticipated, I’m planning on breaking out my radical ‘trapped-in-a-box’ mime routine. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …
  The following weekend, Dun Laoghaire hosts the Mountains to Sea literary festival, and I’ll be front and centre at 12 noon on Saturday 11th for what promises to be an enthralling hour of conversation between Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville - providing, of course, the Dun Laoghaire folks provide an interpreter that allows our delicate Southern ears to decipher those beguiling Norn Iron accents. Stuart Neville’s COLLUSION is one of the finest thrillers I’ve read so far this year, and is even better than his many-splendoured debut, THE TWELVE, while McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE, which is published in November and offers a fictionalised version of a true crime that occurred in 1950’s Newry, is probably his best novel yet. All in all, a tantalising prospect.
  I’m also hoping to get along to see Kate Atkinson at the Mountains to Sea festival. I missed out on WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, but Atkinson’s recent release, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, is a tremendous piece of work. She’ll be in conversation with Mia Gallagher at 3pm on Saturday afternoon, the 11th, at the Pavilion Theatre …

On Mammoths And Woolly Thinking

I was thinking of writing a post full of mock-bluster and bravado about the inclusion of a story of mine in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 (ed. Maxim Jakubowski), claiming that, all things considered (other than the fact that I’m not actually British, unless you’re talking about how the UK and Ireland together make up the British Isles), I’m perfectly entitled to consider myself on a par with very fine writers like Ian Rankin, Colin Bateman, Kate Atkinson, Simon Kernick, Louise Welsh, Andrew Taylor, et al.
  I’m not, of course. I’m long way off par with those writers, and many others in the compilation, and all false modesty aside, I’m not entitled to delude myself that I am either.
  That said, it’s a massive shot in the arm. Not a shot of confidence, but the far more dangerous speedball-style blend of hope and conviction. Because the story wasn’t written as a conventional crime story, and remains, to me at least, something of an oddity - and right now, I have a novel out on spec that wasn’t written as a conventional crime novel, and is something of an oddity. And not only that, but I’m currently in the early stages of rewriting a novel that wasn’t written as a crime novel, which looks as if it too will become - my best intentions of lashing it into genre straitjacket notwithstanding - something a little off-kilter.
  And while it’s a massive leap of faith to believe that the publication of one story will necessarily lead to the publication of a novel, or novels, the inclusion of my story in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 offers just enough hope to give me the courage of my convictions.
  They do say, of course, that it’s the hope that kills you in the end …
  Anyway, I’m off back to the writing. In the meantime, here’s the full rundown on THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 8 - and congrats, by the way, to fellow Irish Brits Gerard Brennan and The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman on their inclusion:

The must-have annual anthology for every crime fiction fan – the year’s top new British short stories selected by leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski. This great annual covers the full range of mystery fiction, from noir and hardboiled crime to ingenious puzzles and amateur sleuthing. Packed with top names such as: Ian Rankin (including a new Rebus), Alexander McCall Smith, David Hewson, Christopher Brookmyre, Simon Kernick, A.L. Kennedy, Louise Walsh, Kate Atkinson, Colin Bateman, Stuart McBride and Andrew Taylor. The full list of contributors is as follows: Sheila Quigley, Nigel Bird, Jay Stringer, Paul D. Brazill, Adrian Magson, Colin Bateman, Gerard Brennan, Matthew J. Elliott, Andrew Taylor, Lin Anderson, Christopher Brookmyre, Ray Banks, Declan Burke, Liza Cody, Simon Kernick, Stuart MacBride, Allan Guthrie, Ian Rankin (two stories, including a new Rebus), Nick Quantrill, Edward Marston, Nicholas Royle, Zoe Sharp, Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey, A.L. Kennedy, Roz Southey, Phil Lovesey, David Hewson, Amy Myers, Marilyn Todd, Peter Turnbull, Keith McCarthy, Alexander McCall Smith, Stephen Booth, Denise Mina, Mick Herron, Kate Atkinson and Louise Welsh.

On Bill Badger, And Other Favourite Bukes

A couple of dates for your crime fic diaries, folks. On September 4th, Irish crime writing takes to the stage at the Electric Picnic, when Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt and Gene Kerrigan assemble to talk about the business of books and writing, with yours truly standing by to make sure they all colour inside the lines. The idea of the gig is to talk to crime writers about books in general, and not just crime writing, with each of the authors offering a couple of examples of the novels that first inspired them to start reading and writing … although there’s every chance, of course, that they will be crime novels.
  The first book I can remember having a profound impact on me was about a guy called Bill Badger, he was an actual badger who lived on a barge moored on a canal … I can’t remember anything about the story, I was only about four at the time, but it was pretty riveting stuff.
  (Holy Moly, I’ve just discovered that there were nine Bill Badger books! Right, that’s Lily’s bedtime reading sorted for the next couple of months.)
  Anyway, I’ll also be asking the trio about Irish crime novels that they think deserve rehabilitating, or possibly republishing, in light of the recent explosion of Irish crime fiction. Some suggestions I’ll be making: Seamus Smyth’s QUINN; John Kelly’s THE POLLING OF THE DEAD; TS O’Rourke’s DEATH CALL; Hugo Hamilton’s SAD BASTARD; and Vincent Banville’s DEATH THE PALE RIDER.
  Elsewhere, Dun Laoghaire’s Mountains to the Sea literary festival runs from September 7th to 12th, and boasts a small but perfectly formed crime contingent, with Kate Atkinson in conversation with HELLFIRE author Mia Gallagher on Saturday the 11th. I read Atkinson’s latest, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG last week, and it’s terrific stuff. The gig I’ll be getting along to, though, is the fascinating pair-up of Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville (noon, Saturday the 11th), gnarled veteran and callow lieutenant, respectively, of Norn Iron letters. I read McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE last month, and it’s probably his finest novel yet; while Neville’s latest, COLLUSION, is a superior offering to his very fine debut, THE TWELVE. All in all, should be a cracking afternoon. For all the Mountains to the Sea details, clickety-click here …
  Finally, for those of you scratching the itch to write a novel of your own, the Author Rights Agency, under the aegis of Svetlana Pironko and Kevin Stevens, is offering a 26-week course in ‘The Making of a Novel’, which comes complete with an individual assessment from the course directors on your work. The fee - brace yourself, Bridget - is €2,000, but course contributors include Ken Bruen, Siobhan Parkinson, Catherine Dunne and Marita Conlon-McKenna. Do bear in mind that your humble host has absolutely no connection with said course, and is simply doing a mate a favour by giving it a shout-out. All the details can be found here …
  I am reminded, though, every time I hear about writing courses, about the (hopefully apocryphal) story about the tutor who stood up on the very first night of a writing course to address his students.
  “Who here really wants to write?” he said.
  A full show of hands.
  “Who’s willing to get up at five in the morning to write?” he said.
  Maybe half the hands go up.
  “Who’s willing to slough off all their friends and most of their family in order to write?” he said.
  Five or six hands go up.
  “Who’d be willing to let their mother die in order to be able to write about it afterwards?” the tutor said.
  One hand goes up.
  “Okay,” says the tutor. “So why the fuck aren’t you at home, writing?”

On Writing For Fun, And Other Lunacies

Maybe it’s just me, but a chart of this writer’s writing life would probably look a lot like a seismograph during a quake hitting 7.2 on the Richter Scale, or a polygraph attached to Janet Evanovich during an interrogation during which she was asked if she really believed - like, seriously now - that four of her novels were worth an advance of fifty million dollars, or thereabouts.
(What bugs me about the Evanovich demand for $50 million advance - I’ve never read any of her novels, so I’m in no position to say if she’s worth it, although it’s fair to say that you’d need thumbscrews to truly convince me - is that if she’d only asked for $49 million, there’d still have been a spare million left over to divide up between a thousand or so other writers, giving them not necessarily a living wage but the hope that some day, they might just be able to earn a crust from this gig. And you’d have to imagine that, out of that thousand, at least one would be able to come up with something a little fresher than a tired reworking of a raddled old post-feminist parody. But I digress.)
  Anyway, that seismograph chart - the life of a struggling wannabe writer is one of rapid and violent ups and downs, and far more downs than ups. That goes with the territory, puts fire in your belly, and if nothing else, gives you an overwhelming desire to succeed even if it’s just to prove the bastards wrong.
  The last week or so has been pretty much typical. A little birdie whispers the very bad news that one of the best Irish crime writers has had his / her American contract cancelled for lack of sales. Shameful stuff, totally unexpected and utterly depressing, given that he / she is a terrific writer who is never less than entertaining and also pretty illuminating about the world we live in right now.
  That’s the biz, I suppose.
  For me personally, it’s been a decent week. I got a green-ish light on a project I’ve been working on for about two years, of which more anon. I also heard that there are two US publishers taking a good long squint at BAD FOR GOOD, and that initial reactions have been very positive. Not that that amounts to a molehill of beans, in real terms, but still, it’s good to know that someone out there is reading it, and liking it.
  I’ve also been doing quite a bit of writing, largely because I joined a ‘writing group’ last month. Four people, decent skins all, coming together to pool resources and give one another a helping hand over the various humps and hillocks that get in the way of putting words on paper. We all have our own agendas, and we’re all at different stages of the publishing game, which will be very healthy, I think. For my own part, my needs are threefold. One, that said decent skins apply shoe leather to my skinny white ass and get me writing again; two, that that process will help me rewrite a novel currently labouring under the weight of its 149,000 words into something more taut, elegant and accessible; and three, that I can get back to writing the way I used to write in the good old days before I ever got published, and start telling stories just for the fun of it.
  That might sound a little naïve, but during the last two years or so, I’ve started at least five different novels, investing anything between 10,000 and 30,000 words in each. Every time I came grinding to a halt, worn down by the constant process of second-guessing the industry, particularly the bean counters to whom most editors have to answer these days, worrying if what I was doing was commercial (very probably), or commercial enough (hard to say), or if I wouldn’t be more profitably employed shouting down a well (very probably).
  Fun. Not a word you hear very often when people talk about writing in particular and the publishing industry in general. But it’s why I started writing, way back when, those halcyon days when the process of putting words in their best order was enjoyable for its own sake. A very serious kind of fun, of course, given that writing is a serious business, whether or not the business takes you seriously. But fun.
  My little girl arrived home yesterday from crèche with a paper folder full of drawings and doodles and paintings and sparkly stuff, my favourite of which you can see above. Bright, colourful, bold, fun. Was Lily worried about what anyone thought about her picture when she was painting? Hardly, given that she’s only two years-and-a-bit old. Had she any idea that when her silly old sentimental Dad saw it, his heart would feel like it might explode? Probably not. Did she just get stuck in and splash the paint around and do the best job that fun would allow? I’d imagine so. Will anyone ever pay for it? Not that I’d ever sell it, but no.
  The ‘writing group’ met for the first time last month, and the plan is that we assemble in mid-September with 2,000 words each to show for our efforts this month. The good news there is that I’ve already racked up 15,000 words in the last three weeks, although the bad news - given that I’m supposed to be rewriting the damn thing - is that said 15,000 words are all brand new and freshly minted. Mind you, the process of writing that section has allowed me to identify not only a massive, glaring flaw in the novel, but also how to rectify it. I’d say that that 15,000 words will save me about 40,000 by the time I get into the heart of the story.
  Anyway, good news / bad news. This week it’s mostly good, and high-ho for upward and onward, at least until next week, when I’ll very probably plummet off the precipice again.
  The main thing, though, is that it’s all good, that I’ve started to rediscover that sense of fun again. Maybe, given the fact that none of my previous offerings have overly taxed the boys ‘n’ gals at Nielsen, I’ll have to send out the redrafted novel under a pseudonym, as I’ve discussed before. And maybe (very probably) it’ll never see the light of day, because I’m already a beaten docket as a published writer at the age of 41.
  And so what? What I get from writing - fun, joy, self-worth, all the good stuff you tend to forget about after too long at the coal-face - is far too precious to entrust to the publishing industry, or at least the publishing industry in its current, ultra-conservative incarnation. As the quote from Isak Dinesen I’ve tacked to my PC monitor says, “I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.”

  Lately I have been mostly reading: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay; COLLUSION by Stuart Neville; FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French; RIVER OF SHADOWS by Valerio Varesi; DON’T BLINK by James Patterson; TIGERLILY’S ORCHIDS by Ruth Rendell, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson, and THE DOGS OF ROME by Conor Fitzgerald.

Come All Ye FAITHFUL

Currently the shining peak of Mt TBR here at CAP Towers, Tana French’s FAITHFUL PLACE has been garnering some tasty reviews, not least from Laura Miller over at Salon.com, where she describes French as ‘the Kurt Gödel of crime fiction’. Excerpts run thusly:

“French’s hypnotic storytelling remains in full force in this novel, despite having shaken off the dreaminess that suffused IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS. This is Roddy Doyle territory, an excavation of that particular torture experienced by those who want to break out of a hopeless, working-class world but keep getting sucked back in by the loyalty that is its one redeeming quality. FAITHFUL PLACE is wrenching to a degree that detective fiction rarely achieves: Frank -- a cocky devil who prides himself on his skilful lying and ability to play other people -- gets pulled apart psychologically as he pursues Rosie’s killer, and the reader undergoes it with him. By the end, it’s difficult to distinguish what the real crime is or who committed it …
  “Which is not to say that French doesn’t solve the novel’s technical mystery or that the answer isn’t tightly cinched into her larger themes. Like Kate Atkinson, who has grafted the contemporary novel of manners onto the bones of the detective story in her Jackson Brodie series, French sticks to the genre’s brief while conveying it into new territory. But where the Brodie books are all pretty much the same in tone and subject matter, French does something fresh with every novel, each one as powerful as the last but in a very different manner. Perhaps she has superpowers of her own? Whatever the source of her gift, it’s only growing more miraculous with every book.” - Laura Miller

  All of which is very nice indeed. For the full review, clickety-click here …
  So, the Big Question: Will we be hearing Tana French’s name being spoken in the hushed tones reserved for literary prize winners some day soon? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …

The Embiggened O # 31,461: We’re Not In Kansas Anymore, Toto. Oh, Hold On …

“And I know / It ain’t gonna last …” warbled the Mercury Revsters at one point, so I’ll make hay while the sun shines and / or post up the reviews of our humble tome THE BIG O as they arrive. The weekend just passed was a particularly good one, with the generous folk at Booklist leading the way, to wit:

“Burke has married hard-boiled crime with noir sensibility and seasoned it with humour and crackling dialogue … fans of comic noir will find plenty to enjoy here.” – Booklist

“Burke’s the latest – and one of the best – bad-boy Irish writers to hit our shores … the pieces of THE BIG O fall flawlessly into place. Burke’s characters are as unpredictable as stray bullets and the dialogue is nothing short of electric. This caper is so stylish, so hilarious, that it could have been written by the love-child of Elmore Leonard and Oscar Wilde.” – Killer Books

“A noir hybrid of murder and merriment … as if Quentin Tarantino and Buster Keaton had a love-child who could write … There have been few novelists who could plot tightly, create well-developed characters and write laugh-out-loud dialogue – Burke is a welcome new addition. ” – Mystery on Main Street

  Finally, Leslie McGill at the Kansas City Star did us proud, not least because THE BIG O was her Pick of the Week over such luminaries as Kate Atkinson, Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin, the gist of the review running thusly:

“Delightful … darkly funny … Burke’s style is evocative of Elmore Leonard, but with an Irish accent and more of a sense of humour … Here’s hoping we see lots more of Declan Burke soon.” – Leslie McGill, Kansas City Star

  All of which is very, very nice indeed. Folks? We thank you kindly, one and all …