“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” John Lawton

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?
THE LAWS OF OUR FATHERS by Scott Turow. One of the few novels about us old hippies that is worth your time.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Barbarella.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Zoe Sharp … levels of shit-kicking violence that I cannot emulate and urban street-grot that make me want to live up a mountain in wilderness.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Sitting on a doorstep in Bloomsbury circa 1994 waiting for a 38 bus to Islington, armed only with a pencil and a receipt for a garden hose. A page sprang fully-formed into me head and having nowt else to write on I jotted it down on the back of the receipt. Then I thought ‘what da fukk do I do with this?’ It became the final page of OLD FLAMES and I changed not a word. Arsy and versy might apply, but a good moment all the same.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I’m go to be very old-fashioned and betray all my contemporaries by saying THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY by Oscar Wilde. It must be one of the most influential tales ever written and perhaps the most invoked allusion.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Alas I know zilch about modern cinema and go about once a year. I emerge sea-sick from the pace of things, wondering if I have seen The Hobbit Part XIII, Carry On Captain Sparrow or Iron Man on the Planet of the Apes. Can I cop out and say, “Whatever Martin McDonagh decides to film next” … ?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The Best Thing has to be just the doing of it, the act of writing. The Worst Thing is definitely dealing with the question I get asked most often … “Why did you never write another novel after BLACK OUT?”

The pitch for your next book is …?
Troy is back … younger, smaller … just as insufferable.

Who are you reading right now?
Volume 4 of Robert Caro’s THE LIVES OF LYNDON JOHNSON: 1960-64. A bit of a cheat as I have not read Vol. 3 and only bits of 1 & 2.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Oh … I’d rather be dead than make that choice. I’d say return me to star dust and zaps of interstellar carbon.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
‘Could do better’ … exactly as it said on my school reports 55 years ago. I hate to think the old bastards who pretended to teach me were right. They were a bad-mannered bunch of fascists with no respect for anyone, and violent tendencies that would see them in the lock-up ward of a loony bin these days … but I cannot deny the insight. Fukkem.

John Lawton’s THEN WE TAKE BERLIN is published by Grove Press.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Todd Ritter

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?
MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane. Damn, that guy can write, and the book deserved a Pulitzer.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
The Man in the Yellow Hat from CURIOUS GEORGE, because it would be pretty cool to have a monkey.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Sandra Brown. She’s like fast food. I don’t have it often and it’s really bad for me, but it tastes so good.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Writing the last sentence of my debut novel and knowing that the whole thing didn’t suck.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ll have to go with THE LIKENESS by Tana French, because she impresses the hell out of me.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’m not sure if this is allowed, since it’s not a novel (sorry!), but Martin McDonagh’s THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE would be a fantastic movie. Or maybe that’s too bloody. I really flubbed this question, didn’t I?

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: Entertaining readers by giving them a good yarn. Worst: Facing that blank screen and knowing I have to fill it.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A cop and a private investigator look into a series of child abductions from decades ago, all of which coincided with NASA moon landings. Coincidence? Probably not.

Who are you reading right now?
FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen. When a book gets this much press, I have to read it.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, because I like to be surprised by others.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Morbid. Surprising. Sympathetic.

Todd Ritter’s DEATH NOTICE is published by Minotaur Books.

Old Big-Ed

If he scoops the Big One on April 29th, Declan Hughes (right) will be forever known in these here parts as Mr Ed. For lo! It has come to pass, and not a moment too soon, that the Venerable Other Declan has been nominated for an Edgar in the Best Novel category, for last year’s Ed Loy tale, THE PRICE OF BLOOD (aka THE DYING BREED). Naturally, being a work-shy slug-a-bed, I haven’t read any of the other novels nominated, but I have read THE PRICE OF BLOOD and it’ll be a fine, fine novel indeed that pips it at the post by a short head (the novel deals in part with the murky world of Irish horse-racing, see).
  Dec was kind enough to ring yours truly yesterday afternoon with the hot-off-the-presses news, to give me the scoop, but unfortunately I was here all day yesterday, and not so concerned with books and stuff. Thankfully, Lilyput is on the mend and coming back to herself again, and thanks to everyone who has been in touch offering their best wishes.
  Elsewhere in the Edgars, Siobhan Dowd’s BOG CHILD has been nominated in the Juvenile section, while Martin McDonagh has been nominated for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, for In Bruges.
  Incidentally, Dec Hughes’ fourth Ed Loy offering, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, will be released in June. Quoth Dec:

Ed Loy is hired by the beautiful Anne Fogarty to find the man who killed her father fifteen years ago: it could be a gangland IRA boss, it could be a property developer with Sinn Fein and government connections, it could be semi-reformed gangster George Halligan. Plunged into a murky world of post-peace process evasions and half-truths where no-one is who he appears to be, Loy eventually finds himself digging his own grave on a deserted farm in the dead of night, his options dwindled to nothing more than the fight for mere survival.

  I’m betting he makes it …

The Popcorn Interlude: IN BRUGES

It boasts an Irish writer-director in Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh and Irish talent in the form of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, but it’s a Belgian setting and it’s funded by British moolah – is it strictly correct to call IN BRUGES an Irish crime caper movie? On the basis that we never ask where the wonga is coming from to fund the various Irish writers out there, we’ll say a tentative yes, and give IN BRUGES (jump here for the trailer) the traditional ‘four thumbs aloft’ verdict (above, right). Gleeson and Farrell play a pair of odd couple London-based hitmen ordered to Bruges after a botched hit, during which Farrell’s character accidentally kills a young boy, there to await further instructions from their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes. Lob in an art-house Dutch flick filming dwarves, a drug-dealing femme fatale and a jealous boyfriend, and you have the basis for a knowing romp that isn’t afraid to turn dark and twisted. The finale is a little too neatly tied up, and the convenient coincidences come thick and fast, but there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, a breakneck pace, a superb performance from Gleeson, a beautiful setting expertly captured by cinematographer Eigil Bryld, and some cracking dialogue (“Retract that bit about my cunt fucking kids!”). Oh, and it also has Townes Van Zandt’s St. John the Gambler on the soundtrack. It wowed ’em at Sundance, and it’ll very probably thrill you too. Wanna see Bren & Col on the red carpet? Roll it there, Collette …

Looking Good, Feeling Belgian

The Unquiet Man, aka Gavin Burke of Technicolour Talkies of Hibernia, reports that IN BRUGES is to open the Sundance Film Festival on January 17. Directed by Martin McDonagh, who won an Oscar in 2006 for his short SIX-SHOOTER, the movie features a pair of hapless hitmen – Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, right – on sabbatical in the Belgian capital after a hit becomes a miss. Despite the relatively tiny budget of €1m, TToH reports, IN BRUGES also managed to shoehorn one Ralph Fiennes into the cast – and while there’s no trailer available yet, TToH is featuring some handheld footage shot by a bystander while Fiennes was going through his paces. “In the background,” says the Unquiet Man, “and with the right kind of eyes, you can just make out Bigfoot.” Erm – you’re definite that’s not Brendan Gleeson, right?