Public Interview: Michael Connelly at City Hall, Dublin

I’m hugely looking forward to interviewing Michael Connelly later this month, when he appears at City Hall, Dublin, as part of his tour to promote the new Harry Bosch / Renee Ballard novel, DARK SACRED NIGHT (Orion).
  Michael appears as part of the Murder One festival, which takes place in Dublin from November 2nd-4th, and which will feature Lynda la Plante, Mark Billingham, Jane Casey, Sinead Crowley, Mick Herron, Declan Hughes, Peter James, Ali Land, Val McDermid, Liz Nugent, Niamh O’Connor, Julie Parsons, Anthony Quinn, Jo Spain, William Ryan and Ruth Ware, among many others.
  To book tickets for Michael Connelly interview, clickety-click here …
  For all the details on Murder One, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Siobhan MacDonald

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?
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. An excellently woven and deeply atmospheric novel. Still resonates all these decades later.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Probably a cross between Lynda La Plante’s Jane Tennison and a rehabilitated Claire Underwood from House of Cards. Jane Tennison because she’s focused, clever, and sticks to the task in hand. She’s also pretty cool. She doesn’t flap and is decisive as those around lose their heads. Claire Underwood from House of Cards - for her comportment and delivery, not her Machiavellian machinations, fascinating though they may be.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I try to keep up with the goings-on of the redoubtable Ross O’Carroll Kelly, aka Rosser.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Occasionally when I revisit a sentence or a passage in editing and think to myself – Oooh, did I write that? That’s really not so bad.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Too many great Irish crime novels by female authors in particular to single just one out. “Here come the girls …” I say.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR. Moody tension all the way.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is fretting that your work will never reach the world at large. Then being terrified when it does. The best thing is convincing yourself that you really earned another latté and a slice of carrot cake after all that typing.

The pitch for your next book is …?
There are two sides to every story, but sometimes, just sometimes, you find that there are three.

Who are you reading right now?
Anne Enright’s THE GREEN ROAD.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Come back when you’re in a better mood.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Punchy. Pacy. Pithy.

Siobhan MacDonald’s debut TWISTED RIVER is published by Penguin (US) and Canelo (UK).

Review: The Best Crime Novels of 2015

“And so this is Christmas,” as John Lennon once so astutely observed, “and what have you done?” Well, as always, I mostly read. Herewith be the list of my favourite / most enjoyable / most memorable crime novels from 2015:

The crime fiction year opened with a bang, appropriately enough, with Adrian McKinty’s Gun Street Girl (Serpent’s Tail), the fourth in a series featuring Sean Duffy. A Catholic detective with the RUC, Duffy investigates a double-killing as the news of the impending Anglo-Irish Agreement sends Northern Ireland into a turmoil of strikes, riots and violence.

Set in the 1970s, Celeste Ng’s impressive debut Everything I Never Told You (Black Friars) investigates the tragic life and death of Ohio teen Lydia Lee, creating a heartbreaking portrait of a teenage girl struggling to cope with unbearable and conflicting pressures.
  Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) was an equally impressive first outing, and one of the year’s publishing sensations (touted as this year’s Gone Girl), as alcoholic Rachel turns amateur sleuth when a woman goes missing. Steve Cavanagh’s The Defence (Orion) was another debut, a rollicking tale of New York lawyer Eddie Flynn going into court with a bomb strapped to his back to defend a Russian mobster. Attica Locke’s third offering, Pleasantville (Serpent’s Tail), is another to feature a lawyer, as Jay Porter tries to extricate the personal from the political as reluctantly defends an alleged killer during a mayoral election in Houston, Texas, against the backdrop of a campaign of very dirty tricks.

  A Song of Shadows (Hodder & Stoughton) was John Connolly’s 13th novel to feature private eye Charlie Parker, and arguably his best, as Parker – no stranger to evil – finds himself immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust and evolving into something of a Christ-like figure. The Shut Eye (Bantam Press) was Belinda Bauer’s sixth novel, and another tinged with the supernatural, in which hard-nosed DCI John Marvel finds his scepticism tested to the limit in a thoughtful meditation on faith, hope and belief. Over in Colorado, FBI agent Ren Bryce returned in Killing Ways (Harper Collins), Alex Barclay’s seventh novel. Bryce tracks a serial killer in an unusually poignant thriller featuring moments of poetic horror.

  Richard Beard’s superb Acts of the Assassins (Harvill Secker) was a time-bending tale employing modern weaponry and infrastructure in which Roman investigator Gallio searches for the rabble-rousers who stole the corpse of the local mystic Jesus from his tomb in the wake of the prophet’s crucifixion. Camille (MacLehose) concluded Pierre Lemaitre’s impressive trilogy about the diminutive Parisian police detective, Camille Verhoeven, with Camille racing to track down a killer while constantly second-guessing his own motives and capabilities.
  In June, the ever reliable Karin Fossum delivered The Drowned Boy (Harvill Secker), in which her series detective, the brooding Norwegian Inspector Sejer, investigates the tragic death of a toddler with Down’s syndrome. Dennis Lehane concluded his excellent Joe Coughlin trilogy with World Gone By (Little, Brown), which was set in Florida and Cuba, and charted the turbulent transition of America’s criminal fraternity from the riotous gangster era to the more organised crime of the Mafia.

  Elmer Mendoza’s Silver Bullets (MacLehose) was a Mexican ‘narco’ novel featuring Detective Edgar ‘Lefty’ Mendieta, a bracingly bleak but blackly comic tale of murder investigation set in a country where “nothing is true, nothing is false.” Set in Belfast, Those We Left Behind (Harvill Secker), Stuart Neville’s sixth novel, featured DCI Serena Flanagan and explored the physical and psychological damage wrought by the actions of two apparently sociopathic – but heartbreakingly vulnerable – young boys. Simon Mawer’s Tightrope (Little, Brown) was a superior spy novel set in the post-WWII years, an absorbing tale about Marian Sutro, a former war hero whose notions of patriotism and honour are ripped apart as the Cold War chills to deep freeze.

  Even the Dead (Penguin) was Benjamin Black’s seventh offering in the increasingly impressive series featuring the pathologist Quirke. Here the depiction of a genteel 1950s Dublin belie a brutally noir moral relativism, as Quirke sinks into a quicksand of politics and religion. Sinead Crowley’s sophomore offering, Are You Watching Me? (Quercus), was an assured take on the ‘domestic noir’ genre, as Garda Detective Claire Boyle tracks the stalker who is making life hell for media ingénue Liz Cafferky. Jon Steele concluded with another trilogy with the fantastic (and fantastical) The Way of Sorrows (Blue Rider Press), as Harper, an angel in human form, complete with Chandleresque quips, goes to war against the forces of Evil for humanity’s soul.
  Jane Casey’s After the Fire (Ebury Press) featured her series heroine, London-based DC Maeve Kerrigan. “Casey writes with a deft wit and immense skill,” wrote Declan Hughes in these pages. “The Maeve Kerrigan books keep getting better and better.” Mark Henshaw’s The Snow Kimono (Tinder Press) centred on retired Parisian police inspector Auguste Jovert in an unusual crime novel, with Jovert playing the part of reluctant confessor to an elaborately detailed declaration of guilt. Julia Heaberlin’s third novel, Black-Eyed Susans (Penguin), was a brilliantly constructed tale of parallel narratives as teenager Tessie and adult Tess recount their horrific story of being abducted and left for dead by a seasoned serial killer in an engrossing exploration of the morality of the death penalty.

  Lynda La Plante returned to the iconic heroine of Prime Suspect for Tennison (Simon & Schuster), offering a tale of how Tennison came of age as a policewoman in the early 1970s when she is seconded to an investigation into the murder of a 17-year-old girl found naked and strangled on Hackney Marshes. In a good year for Irish crime fiction, Jo Spain’s With Our Blessing (Quercus) was a remarkably assured debut that introduced Inspector Tom Reynolds in an old-fashioned murder mystery (albeit one freighted with the pain of recent Irish history) set in a convent.

  This article was first published in the Irish Times.

  So there it is, folks. It’s been another great year, and thank you kindly to everyone who dropped by ye olde blogge. A happy and peaceful Christmas to you all, and I’ll see you all back here come the New Year …

Reviews: Lynda La Plante, Stuart Neville, Cara Black, Robert Littell

Best known, perhaps, as the writer of the TV series Prime Suspect, Lynda La Plante has published over 30 novels. Twisted (Simon & Schuster, €27.50) is probably her most complete offering to date. Ostensibly a police procedural, it opens with Lena and Marcus Fulford in the early stages of what promises to be a very messy divorce. Distracted by their bickering, neither parent notices when their only daughter, Amy, fails to appear home from boarding school for the weekend. When the alarm is finally raised, DI Reid of the Richmond Missing Persons’ Unit discovers some very disturbing entries in Amy’s private journal. As the search for Amy criss-crosses London, and friends of Lena and Marcus begin to die, DI Reid isn’t entirely sure if he’s trying to find a victim or hunting a killer. Told in a straightforward and unadorned style, the story drives relentlessly forward as it implicates a number of characters in Amy’s disappearance, broadening out from its police procedural origins to incorporate a fascinating psychological investigation into the damaged mind of a killer who is as much a victim of circumstance as those murdered. Compassion appears to be La Plante’s watchword here, as she contrives a series of revelations designed to force even the most seasoned of crime fiction readers to reappraise their expectations. Some of the revelations are a little more contrived than others, it’s true, but what’s most impressive about Twisted is La Plante’s treatment of the missing Amy. In less experienced hands, the ‘wandering daughter’ angle would serve as little more than an introductory hook to hang an investigation on. Absent though she might be for most of the story, Amy nevertheless becomes a more absorbing, poignant and complex character the further DI Reid’s investigation progresses.

  The Final Silence (Harvill Secker, €14.99) is Stuart Neville’s fifth novel, and the third to feature DI Jack Lennon of the PSNI as its central character. The story opens with Rea Carlisle, an old flame of Lennon’s, clearing out the house of her recently deceased uncle, Raymond. When Rea discovers evidence of horrific murders she contacts Lennon, unaware that he is currently suspended from duty and that her discovery, and her instinct to publicise it, has marked her out as problem to be disposed of. Neville’s most recent novel, Ratlines (2013), was set in the 1960s, but otherwise his novels tend to revolve around contemporary crimes that have their roots buried deep in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’. The Final Silence is no exception, its succinct and pacy storytelling stretched taut across a morass of unresolved tensions and motives for murder that don’t necessarily fit the prevailing post-Peace Process narrative. Indeed, Lennon himself could well serve as a poster boy for conflict resolution, a deeply flawed man who has in the past been his own worst enemy, and is now battered and scarred, physically and emotionally, as he pursues truth and justice by any means necessary.
  American author Cara Black sets her Aimée Leduc series of novels in Paris, where the effortlessly chic Aimée works as a private investigator. Murder Below Montparnasse (Soho Crime, €27.50) is her 13th outing, which opens with Aimée commissioned by Yuri, a ‘stubborn old Cossack’ Russian émigré, to protect a long-lost Modigliani. It sounds like a straightforward job, but when Aimée discovers Yuri murdered – apparently tortured to death – and the painting gone, she discovers that the art world can be a lethal place to do business. What follows is a breathless tale of double-, triple- and quadruple-crosses as the private eye finds herself at the heart of a century-old plot that incorporates not only the great painters of the avant-garde but also one Vladimir Illyich Lenin. Black sketches in the Montparnasse backdrop with considerable style, contrasting its contemporary political turmoil with its bohemian origins in the early part of the 20th century, and weaves a host of sub-plots through the main story, including one involving the heroine’s long-absent mother, who may or may not be a hired killer for the CIA. It all makes for an exhilarating read, although the sheer volume of intricately plotted twists, turns and revelations that send Aimée ricocheting through the Parisian streets and make Murder Below Montparnasse the proverbial page-turner might well frustrate a more patient reader.

  The exploits of Adrian Russell ‘Kim’ Philby have been picked over many times, but Robert Littell’s Young Philby (Duckworth Overlook, €11.50) takes an intriguing approach to exploring the motivations of the notorious British spy, who defected to the Soviet Union when his cover was finally blown in 1963. The novel begins with a Prologue in 1938, with a Russian ‘handler’ of Philby being interrogated in a Moscow prison, before going back to 1933, and Philby’s arrival in Vienna as Fascism begins to take hold in Austria. Essentially a series of portraits of Philby offered by those he worked with, the story comprises fictionalised encounters between, among others, Philby and his first wife Litzi Friedman, Guy Burgess, Teodor Maly, who first recruited Philby in London, and Evelyn Sinclair, the secretary who recorded conversations at the heart of the British secret service. This last account is the most fascinating of a beautifully detailed mosaic, offering as it does a revolutionary theory on Philby’s career and activities. Littell, who has published 18 novels to date, also offers a beguiling range of narrative styles as his clutch of narrators follow Philby from Austria to London and on to the Spanish Civil War, deftly recreating the claustrophobic atmosphere of the pre-WWII years and the fluid political sympathies of the British ruling class. In re-imagining one of the most familiar figures of the Cold War landscape, Robert Littell has given us a spy thriller of the very highest order. ~ Declan Burke

  This column first appeared in the Irish Times.

Taken, Not Stirred

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself referring frequently to an Irish Top Ten bestsellers list from about two months ago, in which eight of the ten titles were crime fiction. Proof positive of the Irish public’s voracious appetite for crime fiction, although none of the titles, unfortunately, were by Irish writers. Exactly why Irish readers have remained so resistant to the fine body of Irish crime writers is something of a mystery, especially given the best-selling and prize-winning calibre of some of said writers in the US, UK and Germany, in particular.
  The following week, Niamh O’Connor’s TAKEN catapulted into the Top Ten, landing with its feet firmly planted in the # 2 slot. I haven’t read TAKEN yet, but the unnamed reviewer at this link from the Irish Independent (although I suspect that said reviewer is the redoubtable Myles McWeeney) obviously approves. To wit:

“Niamh O’Connor, the true crime editor of the Sunday World, has written five successful true crime books, and burst onto the burgeoning Irish thriller scene last year with her first Jo Birmingham adventure, IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN, which was a best-seller. With TAKEN, O’Connor has pulled off the elusive feat of delivering a second novel that betters the original.”

  O’Connor writes police procedurals, has been compared to Lynda La Plante, and TAKEN bears a blurb from no less a writer than Tess Gerritsen, who acclaims the novel as gripping and terrifying. All of which explains why Niamh O’Connor is one of the few Irish crime writers to crack the Top Ten this year. The Big Question is, why so few others? Answers on a used twenty to Declan Burke’s Funny Money Stash, c/o Dodgy Facilitators Inc., Freeport, Grand Bahama. Or you could just leave a comment …

A Jones For Casey

There’s an interesting theme beginning to weave its way into Irish crime fiction, said theme being meditations on the nature of justice, and more importantly, the subversion of same by those supposed to serve and protect. Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE springs to mind, as does Gene Kerrigan’s THE RAGE. Jane Casey’s latest offering, THE RECKONING, which features her series heroine DC Maeve Kerrigan, appears to be engaged in a similar pursuit. Quoth the blurb elves:

To the public, he’s a hero: a killer who targets convicted paedophiles. Two men are dead already - tortured to death. Even the police don’t regard the cases as a priority. Most feel that two dead paedophiles is a step in the right direction. But to DC Maeve Kerrigan, no one should be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Young and inexperienced, Kerrigan wants to believe that murder is murder no matter what the sins of the victim. Only, as the killer’s violence begins to escalate, she is forced to confront exactly how far she’s prepared to go to ensure justice is served …

  I read Jane Casey’s second novel, THE BURNING, late last year, and I thought it was terrific, and was more than happy to say so when reviewing it for the Irish Times. The Maeve Kerrigan novels are set in London, but as the name suggests, Maeve Kerrigan has more than a drop of Irish blood in her veins. Her background is only one aspect of a fascinating character, though, a feisty, ambitious and fragile woman who seemed extraordinarily well drawn to me. Sophie Hannah obviously agrees: ‘Compulsive, menacing … very satisfying’ runs Ms Hannah’s blurb on the front of THE RECKONING.
  The novel is due to hit a shelf near you around this time next month. If you’re a fan of Lynda La Plante, but sometimes wish she was more ambitious in her writing and exploration of character, you could do a hell of a lot worse than check it out …