Writing Advice: Highsmith, Plotting and (Re)Living Your Dreams

One of the main issues that tends to come up when I’m teaching creative writing is that of plot – as in, many new and aspiring writers generally believe that they don’t know how to plot and/or tell a story. And it’s no use telling them that they’ve been listening to stories since before they knew they were listening to stories, or that they have been absorbing plots ever since they first started watching TV, or that our species thrived, evolutionarily speaking, because our minds are hardwired to think in narrative terms. Most new writers are conditioned to believe that the secret to great writing is plotting, and they’re depending on me to reveal the great secret.
 There is no great secret, of course, but because people appreciate concrete detail and examples, I’m very happy to break down the basic plot mechanics and talk about seven-point plot arcs (other plot arcs are available) – I tend to use Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley as a case study, because (a) it’s a brilliant book and (b) it allows for a neat contrast between the novel and Anthony Minghella’s film due to one crucial scene change (no spoilers, etc.) in Minghella’s adaptation.
 And then, at the end of that class, I’ll give them a task: remember a dream and write down as much of it as you can, trying to capture its weirdness and bright colours and its random twists and turns (if you dream in seven-point plot arcs, so much the better).
 Some of them follow through on this homework, some of them don’t (some people, like me, rarely remember their dreams). And some of the results can be fantastic. But none of the results are anywhere near as fantastic as the wild idea that humans are so hardwired to tell stories that we do it even when we’re asleep; that even when we’re unconscious, we’re still telling ourselves stories.
 Do we know how and why it happens? I’ll wager that most of us don’t, and – unless the dreams become traumatising nightmares – we don’t much care. And in this context it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we understand we already know everything we know about the storytelling basics at the unconscious level; that we appreciate and accept that, in our most fundamental sense of self, we are storytelling beings.

Review: Your Closest Friend by Karen Perry

Hauled off the streets to safety during a terrorist attack on a London street as Karen Perry’s Your Closest Friend opens, radio producer Cara shares her most intimate secrets with her rescuer, Amy. When Amy, a young American woman, begins to worm her way into Cara’s life in the aftermath, Cara’s life begins to unravel in spectacular fashion. Previously the writing partnership of Karen Gillece and Paul Perry, ‘Karen Perry’ is now Gillece working alone, but the quality of the Karen Perry psychological thrillers remains undiminished. Your Closest Friend (Penguin Ireland) owes a considerable debt to Patricia Highsmith, being something of a blend of The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, the tension ramping up as Cara and Amy narrate alternate chapters, the former tangled up in a cat’s-cradle of infidelity and deceit, the latter a lesbian sociopath who hears voices in her head. Some of the twists in the latter stages strain credulity, but readers who enjoy being wrong-footed by labyrinthine plotting will savour this to the very last page. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times, along with reviews of new titles by Val McDermid, Megan Abbott, Tod Goldberg and Richard Anderson.

One to Watch: TANGERINE by Christine Mangan

Set in 1950’s Morocco, Christine Mangan’s debut TANGERINE (Little, Brown) is billed as a blend of Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier. To wit:

The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven’t spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right.
  Perhaps Alice should be happy. She has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy, always fearless and independent, helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country.
  But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice - she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice’s husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her: her relationship with her enigmatic friend, her decision to ever come to Tangier, and her very own state of mind.

  According to Joyce Carol Oates, TANGERINE is ‘As if Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn and Patricia Highsmith had collaborated in a screenplay to be filmed by Hitchcock.’ The movie rights have already been sold, with Scarlet Johansson slated to star, and George Clooney producing.
  TANGERINE will be published in March.

Review: HOFFER by Tim Glencross

Aesthete, fraud, mooch and fixer, William Hoffer is the latest in a long line of charming sociopaths cast in the mould of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. Tim Glencross’s Hoffer (John Murray) opens in contemporary London, with William Hoffer moving in the rarefied circles of international finance, friend to aristocrats and confidante of Russian oligarchs. Ex-West Point, ex-CIA, Hoffer’s shady past as a go-between facilitating the money-laundering of Mexican drug cartels catches up with him when Diana Dominguez Saavedra, the daughter of one of Hoffman’s old sparring partners in Mexico, is discovered dead in his Onslow Square flat. Languidly paced, deliciously arch in tone, Hoffer delivers an anti-hero who is indeed a 21st century Tom Ripley, a genteel killer who makes the rounds of London’s galleries and clubs, all the while frantically plotting his escape from the web spun by his lies. What elevates Glencross above his fellow Highsmith disciples, however, is the novel’s bone-dry humour. “The last time I experienced something similar had been a cantina in Oaxaca,” says Hoffer of a dizzy spell, “the sort of place where the urinal by the bar was not a Duchampian whimsy.” ~ Declan Burke

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Alan Walsh

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?
Definitely The Talented Mr. Ripley. I’m a huge Patricia Highsmith fan and there’s a cool, aloofness to her writing that I’ve often unsuccessfully tried to mimic. There’s so much to love about the book too, the destinations, the unlovable characters and easy, almost effortless way the plot meanders along. I love the power rivalries between her characters too and I think they show up best maybe in this book.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Part of me really wants to answer Nick Corey, from Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. But that would make me sound like a psychopath, wouldn’t it? Still, the element of charm Thompson gives these absolute maniacs is probably best represented in Nick, and he does get a laugh or two along the way.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Umberto Eco. I keep rereading Foucault’s Pendulum. It’s like the DaVinci Code for anyone who’s actually interested in all that hoodoo, and I definitely am. I keep unearthing weird new facts each time I read it too.

Most satisfying writing moment?
You know, I think it’s when I realise I’ve gone wrong, where I’ve gone wrong and the cathartic effect of scrapping the whole chapter, letting it wash away and getting it right next time, wondering how you ever have been so dumb as to think that previous direction was the way to go.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
It would have to be the Book of Evidence. I read it when I was too young to properly appreciate just how good Banville is, but I’ve reread it since and it has the same effect each time.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I actually think the Book of Evidence could make a great movie. It would take a virtuoso performance from a lead actor though, and a steady director, gradually building tension.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst is definitely always wanting to write. All the time. You’re out on the peer with friends, enjoying an amazing afternoon of ice cream and laughter and there’s this voice, deep within, whispering about how good it would be to sit down in front of a blank page. The best part is when you get to sit down.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A young girl realises her past is a carefully constructed lie and her future has been already mapped out by the powers that be.

Who are you reading right now?
I’ve just finished Ways of Seeing by John Berger, which was a Christmas treat and next I feel like starting up a Graham Greene, or maybe Louise Phillips’ latest, which I still haven’t read.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. because I can always write the stories in my head. Then maybe tell them, rather than type. I hope that’s cheating.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Unorthodox, unexpected, uncommon!

Alan Walsh’s SOUR is published by Pillar. For more, clickety-click here …

Interview: Douglas Kennedy, author of THE HEAT OF BETRAYAL

I had an interview with Douglas Kennedy (right) published in the Irish Examiner last week, on the publication of his latest novel, THE HEAT OF BETRAYAL (Hutchinson). In the novel, married couple Robin and Paul travel to Morocco for a working holiday, only for Robin to discover a particularly cruel ‘intimate betrayal’ by Paul:

What follows is a thrilling tale as Robin sets off alone in a strange land to find her husband. The opening, which moves from Casablanca to Essaouira, is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, but Douglas also had more literary inspirations to draw upon.
  “There were two novels that were in my mind, or two writers I should say. The first was Paul Bowles, with The Sheltering Sky, which is an extraordinary book. But I was also thinking about Patricia Highsmith, and Highsmith was always very interesting on Americans abroad, especially a couple in trouble, with secrets. I also had in mind [VS] Naipaul, who in one of his books talked about a certain kind of Leftist from the West, who would always turn up in centres of revolution with return air-tickets,” he laughs.

  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Peter James

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?
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. Set in my home town of Brighton, it is the book that made me want to become a crime novelist.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Gary Soneji, from the early James Patterson novels. He’s the shrewdest, smartest villain ever created and it would be fun to be evil in a fictional world.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t know if you’d call it a guilty pleasure or rubbernecking! But I love dipping into Vernon Geberth’s massive tome, Practical Homicide, packed with no holds barred crime scene photographs.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I figure out how everything is going to fit together.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Brian Moore’s Lies Of Silence. It has one of the most brilliant human dilemmas I’ve ever read in a novel.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Brian McGilloway’s Hurt.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing: being stuck in a room, forcing yourself to write. Best thing: shutting out the outside world and writing in peace.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A girl disappears from an underground car park in Brighton. On the same night, the 30-year-old remains of a young woman are unearthed by builders. Has Brighton got its first serial killer in 80 years? Has Roy Grace finally met his match?

Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading Patricia Highsmith and finding her fantastic! I have seen Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley, but never read her novels. She is such a brilliant writer.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. I’ve been a compulsive writer since I could first hold a pen. But I think that would make him a very cruel God indeed to force that choice on someone!

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Character. Research. Plot.

Peter James’ YOU ARE DEAD is published by Macmillan.

Oliver’s Twist

An Irish crime fiction debut to watch for this year is Liz Nugent’s UNRAVELLING OLIVER (Penguin Ireland), which is billed as ‘a gripping novel of psychological suspense’. Quoth the blurb elves:

‘I expected more of a reaction the first time I hit her.’
  Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the leafy suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children’s books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and puts her into a coma.
  In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is a story of shame, envy, breath-taking deception and masterful manipulation.
  Only Oliver knows the lengths to which he has had to go to get the life to which he felt entitled. But even he is in for a shock when the past catches up with him.
  Liz Nugent’s gripping novel of psychological suspense, UNRAVELLING OLIVER, is a complex and elegant study of the making of a sociopath in the tradition of Barbara Vine and Patricia Highsmith.

  UNRAVELLING OLIVER arrives in early March. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Who Dares Wins

As All Three Regular Readers will be aware, Megan Abbott’s THE END OF EVERYTHING was one of my favourite novels of last year, and if you haven’t read it yet I advise you to do so at your first available opportunity. It’s a masterpiece in a minor key.
  Megan’s latest offering is DARE ME, a dark tale of ambition and murder set in the world of high school cheerleading, the film rights to which have already been snapped up by Fox.
  I had an interview with Megan published in the Evening Herald recently, during the course of which I asked her about a curious anomaly when it comes to reviews of her award-winning titles. To wit:

All three of her early novels [DIE A LITTLE (2005), THE SONG IS YOU (2007) and QUEENPIN (2008)] were written in the hardboiled noir style of the classic American crime novel, and earned Abbott praise that compared her to some of the genre’s greats, such as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.
  Did she find it odd that as a woman she was being compared to male writers rather than her female predecessors, such as Dorothy B. Hughes or Margaret Millar?
  “Writers like Dorothy Hughes or Margaret Millar -- people are shocked when they read these women, at how powerful they are,” she says. “It’s very rare still that I’m ever compared to other women writers and I don’t know why that is, because there are so many who have always been writing in this field.”

  I can’t imagine any writer, man or woman, complaining about being compared to Chandler and Cain, but it does seem a little off that a woman who writes so powerfully about young women in the crime / mystery genre should be compared exclusively to male writers.
  Then again, would I be complaining if I was lucky enough to have my books compared with, say, Dorothy Hughes or Patricia Highsmith? Not likely.
  For the rest of that Evening Herald interview, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Andrew Taylor

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 TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Like any storyteller, I’m tempted to say God but on the other hand He might have the last laugh.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
PG Wodehouse, Josephine Tey.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When Livia Gollancz said she’d publish my first novel ... also, in one sense far more satisfying, anytime the writing’s going well.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE THIRD POLICEMAN by Flann O’Brien.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’d love to see a movie based on Declan Hughes’ Ed Loy series. Or maybe a TV series.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Writing / writing. Of course.

The pitch for your next book is …?
NYGB - noir and nasty in the last months of British New York in the 18th century. Due in February 2013.

Who are you reading right now?
Laura Lippman’s THE INNOCENTS, Barry Forshaw’s GUNS FOR HIRE, and - wait for it - E. Nesbit’s THE ENCHANTED CASTLE.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write (I shall need to rewrite the Bible, for a start).

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Don’t. Ask. Me.

Andrew Taylor’s Cold War thrillers - THE SECOND MIDNIGHT, TOYSHOP and BLACKLIST - are now available in e-book format.

ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL: So It Goes

Is it really five months since the publication of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL? Jayz. Seems like it happened only a couple of weeks ago, and at the same time it feels like half a lifetime ago. Weird. Anyway, 2012 is off to a good start, review-wise; my cup fairly ran over last weekend.
  First up was the inimitable Glenn Harper of International Noir, who opened his review by referencing a number of authors who dabbled in meta-fiction, most of whom (to be perfectly frank) I’d never even heard of. Glenn finished up something like this:

“Among the many crime fiction references, it’s [Patricia] Highsmith that resonates most with ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (for me) … Declan Burke has cemented his central position in the current wave of neo-noir and contemporary crime fiction.” - Glenn Harper, International Noir

  As you can imagine, I was pretty pleased with that; Glenn Harper knows of what he speaks. Then a review popped up from an Irish blogger, Alex Donald. Now, I should declare an interest here: about 18 months ago, Alex and I were two of a quartet of writers who sat down to establish a writing group, essentially to motivate one another into finding the time to write. As it happens, I was working on a different book entirely for that writing group, and only managed to make it along to two sessions; despite the writers being a smart and funny bunch, the truth was that I didn’t have the time to devote to any motivational sessions designed to find me time to write. Anyway, cutting a long and not very interesting story short, Alex was kind enough to review AZC over at her blog, with the gist running thusly:

“Darkly funny, superbly written, meta-fictional and with more than a passing nod to Paul Auster, Flann O’Brien and (dare I say it) Chuck Palahniuk’s FIGHT CLUB, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL fuses literary and crime fiction to create something utterly original.” - Alex Donald

  Last weekend, incidentally, Dufour Editions was good enough to declare AZC its Book of the Week. I’m not really sure what that means, to be honest, although it was very nice indeed of the Dufour people to republish the Publishers Weekly review of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL that compares it (favourably) to Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF.
  Also last weekend, the Sunday Independent carried a review of AZC, under the headline, ‘Darkly hilarious classic takes modern crime writing to a whole new level’. As you can probably imagine, the review that followed was broadly positive. To wit:

“Stylistically removed from anything being attempted by his peers … [a] darkly hilarious amalgam of classic crime riffing (hep Elmore Leonard-isms and screwballing) and the dimension-warping reflections of Charlie Kaufman or Kurt Vonnegut. Like the latter’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL sees another Billy ‘come unstuck’ in what is, frankly, a brilliant premise.” - Hilary White, Sunday Independent

  I have to say, it’s all getting a little confusing in terms of the references. Patricia Highsmith, Paul Auster, Flann O’Brien, Chuck Palahniuk, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Charlie Kaufman, Kurt Vonnegut … that’s a pretty wild brew.

  I should also say that Hilary White was inspired, in terms of references, in his choice of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. The Billy in AZC is so called as a homage to Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s classic, which is one of my favourite novels from one of my favourite writers; Vonnegut is one of those very rare writers who combines hugely entertaining and accessible stories with great profundity. In my head, Kurt Vonnegut’s fingerprints are all over AZC, to the extent that I went out of my way to erase all traces of his influence in the final drafts - apart, of course, from renaming Karlsson ‘Billy’.
  God, I wish I had the time to go read a Vonnegut RIGHT NOW …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: JJ DeCeglie

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 GETAWAY by Jim Thompson (very tough to pick just one, I tell you!).

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
If I say Nick Corey from Thompson’s POP. 1280, does that make me a psycho? If so pretend I said Highsmith’s Tom Ripley.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I try to avoid this situation.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When someone tells you that what you wrote hit them right in the balls.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ll give you two that jawed me - THE GUARDS by Ken Bruen, and DEAD I WELL MAY BE by Adrian McKinty.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I think McKinty’s sleeper FALLING GLASS would adapt very, very well.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Constant rejection and misinterpretation. Flashes of praise and occasional absolute understanding.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A slow-burn psycho, a big bet gone wrong in Vegas, booze, madness and Mexico ... oh, and a beautiful young trophy wife that my boy stupidly falls ass over for (including all the mayhem, punishment and revenge that comes with it).

Who are you reading right now?
THE SHARK-INFESTED CUSTARD by Charles Willeford.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Uh ... suicide?

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Unremitting, thoughtful, fecund. (If you’re thinking ‘Boy, what an asshole’, know that I thought it first).

JJ Deceglie’s DRAWING DEAD is available as an e-book on Amazon.com.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: DEXTER IS DELICIOUS by Jeff Lindsay

Jeff Lindsay is the bestselling author of five ‘Dexter’ novels: DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (2004), DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER (2005), DEXTER IN THE DARK (2007), DEXTER BY DESIGN (2009) and DEXTER IS DELICIOUS (2010). The novels are set in contemporary Florida.
  The first Dexter novel, DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, wasn’t just a popular success, it was also nominated for a ‘Best First Novel’ Edgar. It was subsequently dropped from the category, however, when it was discovered that Jeff Lindsay had previously published novels under a different name.
  The character of Dexter is an intriguing one. He is a broadly sympathetic sociopath, and can be read as a linear descendant of both Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Robert Harris’s Hannibal Lecter.
  Where Dexter differs from these characters is in the way he harnesses his homicidal impulses in order to kill only those particularly vile criminals who are a threat to society. In effect, and while works a day job as a forensic technician for the Miami Police Department specialising in blood traces, his true calling is as a vigilante who believes himself to be reinforcing the thin blue line.
  Dexter was taught at an early age to control and channel his homicidal instincts by his father, Harry, who was himself a Miami cop. Dexter operates to a strictly observed ‘Code’ of ethics, according to which he only ever kills other killers.
  The novels are told in the first person. The tone is jaunty, with Dexter acutely aware of his failings, and also of how incongruous his nature is. The first-person narrative allows for plenty of asides to the reader, and lashings of morbidly black humour. The pace is swift, with short, snappy chapters maintaining the momentum.
  He is married to Rita, who has two young children (Astor and Cody) from a previous relationship. Rita is oblivious to Dexter’s true nature. Her children, however, share his dark secret and his instincts.
  The current novel, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS, offers a number of twists on the standard Dexter story. The story opens with the birth of Dexter’s child, Lily Anne, which has the effect of ‘humanising’ him to a degree that he previously considered impossible (Dexter frequently refers to himself as ‘inhuman’). The novel also introduces Dexter’s long-lost brother, Brian, who appears to have a malign interest in Cody and Astor.
  The narrative thrust of the story has Dexter helping his foster-sister, Detective Sgt Deborah Morgan, investigate a series of gruesome murders perpetrated by a group of Miami-based cannibals.
  Lindsay treads a very fine line in the Dexter novels. Readers respond well to the fact that Dexter privately cuts through a lot of red tape and the usual boring detail of police procedural work in order to render a very crude form of natural justice.
  By the same token, Dexter himself works for the Miami Police Department, and is publicly bound by a more conventional expression of law and order. It is also to his credit that, as the novels have progressed, Dexter has become more aware of his own failings.
  What is interesting about the Dexter novels is that they present the reader with a moral conundrum. The anti-heroes in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Robert Harris and Jim Thompson, for example, are sympathetically drawn, but it’s always clear that they are not intended to be read as forces for good.
  Dexter, on the other hand, is a serial killer, yet Lindsay wants the reader to accept that Dexter is a positive character, and that the world is enhanced by his acting on his murderous impulses, regardless of how refined and sophisticated he has rendered those impulses. For all the jaunty humour and self-deprecating asides, this conceit never fully works for me.
  I also had issues with the extent to which Dexter, a crime scene technician, was free to accompany Detective Sgt Morgan as she sped around Miami investigating the case of the feasting cannibals. Dexter spends far more time out of his office than in it, with no superior asking questions about his absences, and while Lindsay makes great play of the adversarial relationship between Dexter and Morgan, and the extent to which she bullies him into going along with her whims (she detests her new partner, for example, and prefers Dexter’s company and insights), the frequency of such trips make the story increasingly implausible.
  That said, Lindsay is not aiming for gritty realism here. The Dexter novels (and the spin-off TV series) have far more in common with CSI Miami than The Wire, say. The novels are intended, you’d have to assume, as wish-fulfilment hokum, and for the most part they fulfil their remit.
  Dexter’s black humour begins to grate after a while, particularly in terms of his self-deprecating references to his weaknesses when compared with the stronger women in his life, and especially as we know that he is capable of tremendous savagery. Humour is a very personal thing, of course, but I did find that it detracted from the character rather than added to him.
  Much more interesting is Lindsay’s take on Dexter’s extended family, even if very few of the characters are linked to Dexter by flesh and blood. The latest arrival, Lily Anne, is the exception.
  His father, Harry, was an adoptive father; he has a foster-sister, Sgt Deborah Morgan; his ‘children’ previous to Lily Anne are Cody and Astor, Rita’s son and daughter from a previous relationship. His brother, Brian, turns up in the new novel, after a long period of estrangement.
  Other than Lily Anne, Brian is Dexter’s “only biological relative, as far as I knew, although considering the little I had uncovered about our round-heeled mother, anything was possible.”
  While this extended, complex family offers the promise of some insights into the nature of the contemporary fracturing of the traditional nuclear family unit, Lindsay does very little to develop it. His frequent declarations of love for his new baby sound heartfelt at first, although they do become rather banal through repetition.
  More significantly, perhaps, the construction of the novel - the swift pace, the short chapters, the jocular tone - are not conducive to Lindsay exploring any theme or subject in any great depth. This is as true of Dexter’s own psychological complexities as it is of his complicated family.
  All told, DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is a fun, breezy read that demands too little, given the seriousness of its subject matter, of the reader. For a more profound take on the mind of a psychopathic killer, read Patricia Highsmith or Jim Thompson instead. - Declan Burke

  Jeff Lindsay’s DEXTER IS DELICIOUS is published by Orion

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime-Store Dostoevsky?

Robert Polito’s SAVAGE ART is one of the best literary biographies I’ve ever read, although it’s fair to say that Jim Thompson (right) gave Polito plenty of material to work with. Below is a very brief overview of Thompson’s career, which was published last Friday in the Irish Times in advance of the release of Michael Winterbottom’s reboot of THE KILLER INSIDE ME. To wit:

Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me had a torrid time at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. Based on a novel by Jim Thompson, the film sharply divided critics, being booed for its portrayal of excessive violence against women and praised for its fidelity to its source material. In this much at least, the film is true to Jim Thompson form. Thompson has always divided people, and never more so than when creating his grotesque characters.
  Played by Casey Affleck in the movie, Sheriff Lou Ford is a split-personality psychotic. Amiable and soft-spoken in public, he is privately a monster. In the 1952 novel, Ford is the prototype for what would become the archetypal Thompson creation, being a nihilistic and violent loner with a perverse philosophy which is accessed in frightening detail via a first-person narrative. But Thompson wasn’t simply writing schlock-horror. His peer Geoffrey O’Brien dubbed him ‘the dime-store Dostoevsky’ for his fascination with the Russian author, while Stephen Frears, who directed The Grifters in 1990, claimed that Thompson’s work had uncanny parallels with Greek tragedy.
  Born in 1906 in Oklahoma into a well-to-do family which subsequently fell from grace, Thompson spent his formative years drifting through middle America taking on a variety of jobs that exposed him to the sordid underbelly of the American Dream. He finally settled in California, and in the 1940s published two literary novels that were critically well-received but sold little. A graduate of the lurid pulp magazines, Thompson turned his hand to the more lucrative crime fiction market when he published Nothing More Than Murder in 1949. Then, in 1952, The Killer Inside Me appeared.
  Hard-boiled crime writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain had by then long since taken murder out of the drawing room, as Chandler said of Hammett, and dropped it in the alleyway, where it belonged. What Thompson achieved was to personalise the criminal mind to an unprecedented degree, not simply offering a first-person take on the kind of deranged mind that kills for fun, but exploring in the process the existential extremes to which an unhinged imagination can run. Lou Ford was the precursor to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Robert Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. If good crime writing offers an analysis of a nation’s mental health, Jim Thompson was crime fiction’s Sigmund Freud, contributing a fevered, overwrought and compelling account of the killer inside us all.
  The quality of Thompson’s output was uneven, which isn’t surprising given that he wrote in a furious outpouring. Between 1952 and 1954, for example, he penned four to five novels per year. Bedevilled by demons, not least of them a life-time’s alcoholism, his novels were often sloppily written. His best work, however - Savage Night, The Getaway, The Grifters, Pop. 1280 - are among the finest and most disturbing crime novels ever written.
  Hollywood picked up on Thompson’s skewed vision, with the author first working with Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay for The Killing (1956). Thompson got minimal credit from Kubrick, although that didn’t prevent him from writing the screenplay for Paths of Glory (1957), when Kubrick again denied Thompson his full credit. Disillusioned, Thompson eventually drifted into writing for TV, although by the late 1960s he was virtually destitute and unemployable as a result of his heavy drinking.
  Sam Peckinpah adapted Thompson’s The Getaway (1972) in a film starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. The tale of a heist gone wrong, the movie is hailed as a classic example of minimalist crime cinema. Yet the film, and the 1994 remake starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, ended where Thompson’s novel started to get truly interesting, when the pair of mutually suspicious runaways fetch up in a surreal Mexican bolt-hole, doomed to watch their swag dwindle and suffer through Sartre’s version of hell in a microcosm.
  Thompson died in 1977 after a series of strokes, a few short years before he was discovered by French filmmakers. In 1979, Alain Corneau adapted A Hell of a Woman to make Série Noire, which was followed in 1981 by Bernard Tavernier’s Coup de Torchon, adapted from Pop. 1280. Thompson again found favour in Hollywood, with the pick of a slew of adaptations being Stephen Frears’ The Grifters (1990). The film starred John Cusack and Angelica Huston and garnered four Academy nominations.
  Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, which was first made by Burt Kennedy in 1976 and starred Stacy Keach as a lacklustre Lou Ford, might yet find Thompson the subject of a long overdue reappraisal. Be warned, however - you may require a strong stomach. And a pair of earplugs to drown out the boos might be advisable. - Declan Burke

Jim Thompson on Celluloid

The Killing (1956)
A seminal film noir about a racetrack heist doomed to failure, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Sterling Hayden and noir stalwart Elisha Cook Jnr. Clocking in at 85 minutes, there literally isn’t a wasted second.

The Getaway (1976)
Sam Peckinpah directed Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in a doomed bank heist. McQueen rejected Thompson’s script as dialogue-heavy, and had the film rewritten to include a happy ending.

Série Noire (1979)
Franck Poupart plays a door-to-door salesman drawn into murder by a teenager prostituted by her aunt. The mood of bleak existential gloom degenerates into utter despair.

Coup de Torchon (1981)
Bernard Tavernier relocated Thompson’s small-town 1950’s America setting to a French African colony in 1938. Racism, simmering tension and psychotic impulses make for a modern classic.

The Grifters (1990)
John Cusack and Angelica Huston play a couple of con artists who just so happen to be incestuous lovers. The final scene is a bleakly harrowing as anything mainstream Hollywood has ever produced.

  Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me is released on June 4.

  This feature first appeared in the Irish Times.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mehmet Murat Somer

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?
Definitely the Ripley’s of Patricia Highsmith. If these are taken, I’ll go for the ANIMAL LOVER’S BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Quite content as myself. Really. But if I must choose a name: Vautrin of Balzac.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Porn!

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I stop typing with a wide silly smile on my face!

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Whichever one is not in the blood ‘n’ gore genre.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
The one Steven Spielberg or Pedro Almodovar will direct.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst are: Sleeping less – my natural condition; spending more time with my laptop – not fun. And my recent habit of making additions, changes or twists according to reader requests. Best? No idea.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Working simultaneously on two: Completion of my Champagne Trilogy, after THE HOLDING AND THE CATWALK, with the grand finale THE BACKSTAGE. Every piece gets in order as like a jigsaw puzzle. And another Hop-Çiki-Yaya thriller, the 8th, where my sleuth, with his Audrey Hepburn alter-ego, finds a murder in her family past.

Who are you reading right now?
Right now? The questions on this Q&A! But nowadays I am going over again COUSINE BETTE of Balzac, and enjoying the grande-dame of modern Turkish literature Ayşe Kulin’s VEDA (THE FAREWELL).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
God shouldn’t be so cruel. I’ll do my best to persuade.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Life is joy!

Mehmet Murat Somer’s THE GIGOLO MURDER is published by Serpent’s Tail.

Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: John Banville

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?
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT – though I would have smartened up Dostoyevsky’s tin-eared prose style.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Adrian Leverkuhn, in Thomas Mann’s DOCTOR FAUSTUS: an utter monster but a supremely great artist. I would have worked at helping him to find his inner nice person. Ha.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t know, really. I find bad books hard to read.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Putting down the first notes for my new novel, which I did a few days ago. At this stage, all is possibility, conviction, confidence, happiness. In a year or two I’ll be wading through mud up to my armpits.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
THE THIRD POLICEMAN, Flann O’Brien.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ditto.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is never being able to get it just right, best is being able, occasionally, to get it not entirely wrong.

The pitch for your next book is …?
My next book will be another Benjamin, called ELEGY FOR APRIL. “Quirke on the trail of another dead girl, though the real cliff-hanging question is, Will he go back on the booze?”

Who are you reading right now?
LIBERTY, by Isaiah Berlin, FROM THE OTHER SHORE by Alexander Herzen, INSIDE THE SKY by William Langewiesche, and THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith. Utter pleasures, utterly guiltless.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d say, You don’t exist, so forget it.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Since I’m two-in-one I get six words, yes? Poetic, graceful, irresistible. Dour, dark, misanthropic. You decide which set fits JB and which BB. Or do a mix and match?

John Banville’s THE INFINITIES is published by Picador.

The Devil Wears Prada. And A Red Dress, Apparently.

I mentioned a couple of days back that Niamh O’Connor has a new non-fiction tome out about Sharon Collins, aka ‘Lyin’ Eyes’, and now arrives news of Abigail Rieley’s take on the same story, THE DEVIL IN A RED DRESS, courtesy of Maverick House. Quoth the blurb elves:

Ireland has been gripped by the story of a housewife from County Clare who, when her millionaire partner refused to marry her, googled a hitman and arranged to have him killed. Over the course of almost two months, the story of Lyingeyes and Hire_hitman unfolded in a flurry of emails. The website, hitmanforhire.net might have looked amateurish and carried a disclaimer but it attracted serious interest. One person who was interested was Sharon Collins, the ‘devil in the red dress’. Desperate to get her hands on a share of her partner’s fortune, she took drastic action. She turned to Google to solve her problem. A Mexican marriage certificate was obtained but wasn’t enough. On 8 August 2006, she contacted hitmanforhire.net and started to arrange the hit. This is one of the most bizarre stories to ever appear before an Irish court. Filled with intrigue, betrayal, sex, money and would-be murder, it has all the ingredients for a best-selling thriller. This book will prove to its readers that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

  Or that the truth is, indeed, at least as interesting as a good Patricia Highsmith novel, whichever is more likely to tickle your fancy ...

On Crime Fiction And Respectability

When an author references another writer’s novel twice in one book, it’s fair to presume that he or she is drawing attention and inviting comparisons. In THE KILLING CIRCLE, Andrew Pyper twice refers to THE MAGUS, the John Fowles novel which blends a number of genre staples, among them the thriller, the war novel, the supernatural and quasi-scientific propositions.
  Asked at an advanced age what he would change if he could live his life over again, Kingsley Amis thought for a moment and said, “Well, I wouldn’t read THE MAGUS.” I love it, although I know a lot of people hate it. But the point about THE MAGUS is that it’s a literary novel that has a hell of a lot of fun with mashing up genres.
  THE KILLING CIRCLE also blends genres, most obviously those of crime and horror, although, given that its narrator is an aspiring author who lacks the imagination to create a unique story, it’s also intended as a serious meditation on the writing process. In that context, the references to THE MAGUS are presumably intended as reminders to the reader that Andrew Pyper is engaged in a literary activity, despite the genre staples.
  Which brings me to a comment Adrian McKinty – yep, him again – left on a post further down the page, vis-à-vis the consecration of crime fiction as ‘interesting and important’. To wit:

“One thing though about Banville, Rushdie, Chabon etc. writing crime novels is that they would never have ventured into the territory in the first place had not the zeitgeist begun to see crime books not as disposable pulp fiction but actually as interesting and important. When the Library of America started bringing out Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Highsmith in annotated quality hardbacks, it was a sign that the critical community had embraced those writers and no longer despised them. The rising tide began to float the boats of the whole genre.”

  Writing about the inclusion of Rob Smith’s CHILD 44 on the Booker Prize long-list for the LA Times recently, Sarah Weinman made a similar point:

“And yet, if CHILD 44 -- a serial killer novel that takes place in the last years of Stalin’s Russia -- appears at first glance to be a brash upstart, a closer look suggests that its inclusion might not be so unlikely after all. Indeed, this is the most recent example of the blurring of the line between crime fiction and literature, which raises hope that the so-called genre wars are lurching toward, if not an end, then at least a tentative cease-fire.”

  Yes, yes – but is this actually a good thing? Crime writing has always had stylists as fine as anything the literary world can offer, if only the reader has eyes to see, but the idea that respectability is about to be conferred on the genre seems somehow grotesque, and not least because the respectability is to be conferred by the literary types.
  I write crime fiction, but I’m not a crime fiction nut. As I’ve said elsewhere, crime fiction only accounts for about a quarter of my reading, or maybe as much as a third. I read for all kinds of reasons, although mainly because I’d probably go blind if I didn’t. I can read Salman Rushdie and John McFetridge, say, as I did earlier this year, and be equally impressed by both.
  But when I read crime fiction, I read it for the adrenaline buzz of knowing that it is getting under the skin of the world we live in, broaching taboos and creeping down the dark alleyways that we’d prefer weren’t so dark, or there at all, and doing it with an authenticity and immediacy that makes it utterly believable, even if I’d rather it wasn’t true. And as far as I’m concerned, respectability is far more likely to blunt that edge than hone it. To mangle Groucho Marx, I don’t want to be in any club that’d have me.
  Every writer should aspire to be as good as Rushdie, Chandler, Highsmith and Fowles. But that’s not the same thing as aspiring to write a Booker Prize nominee, or to write a novel worthy of the approval of the self-anointed adjudicators of quality.
  I hope for Rob Smith’s sake that he wins the Booker Prize. But I hope for crime fiction’s sake that he doesn’t.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD by Adrian McKinty

The concluding part of Adrian McKinty’s ‘Dead’ trilogy – following on from DEAD I WELL MAY BE (2003) and THE DEAD YARD (2006) – finds his series protagonist, the Belfast-born Michael Forsythe, back in Ireland for the first time since he left Ireland in 1991. In the first novel, a betrayed Forsythe destroyed the Bronx-based gang of Darkey White in a succession of revenge killings; in the second, while hiding out on a FBI witness protection programme, he infiltrated a U.S.-based crew of rogue Republican paramilitaries with the same net result.
  Compelling thrillers written in a hard-bitten, muscular style, the novels are given an unconventional twist by virtue of Forsythe’s unusually perceptive insights. A seemingly indestructible former British soldier, the complex and well-read character is as likely to quote Euripides, Melville or James Joyce as he is to cold-bloodedly garrotte anyone who gets in his way. A borderline sociopath, he is a fascinating blend of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne and Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley.
  In THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD, Forsythe responds to a call from Bridget, his ex-lover and the former girlfriend of Darkey White, who requests his presence in Belfast to help her find her abducted daughter. Arriving in Dublin on June 16 – Bloomsday, honouring the hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses – Michael has 24 hours to find Bridget’s daughter and thus cancel his debt of blood or face the fatal consequences.
  McKinty is a rare writer, one who can combine the often limiting staccato rhythms of crime fiction with a lyrical flair for language. Forsythe is brusque and blunt in his public exchanges, lethal when trapped in a tight spot (of which there are many in this furiously paced tale, which loosely follows the path laid down by both Leopold Bloom and Odysseus), and yet he is possessed of a poet’s soul during his frequent interior monologues. The violence is etched into the page, as if stamped there by the force of its authenticity, but McKinty never forgets that his first priority is to entertain, and he leavens the bleakness with flashes of mordant humour.
  It’s not a perfect novel by any means. McKinty, born and raised in Northern Ireland but living the U.S. for over a decade, has Forsythe rediscovering post-Celtic Tiger Dublin through an exile’s eyes, but even so there are minor omissions and distracting details. It’s possible, for example, that a young Trinity student from Kerry might refer to her mobile phone as ‘my cell’, but it’s unlikely nonetheless. And while there is no faulting the author’s ambition in his attempt to splice the post-Troubles Irish crime novel to the great literary text of the 20th century, the reader travels more in hope than anticipation that he will succeed.
  That he fails in this regard is perhaps inevitable but there is no denying that even in his failure McKinty has made an strong contribution to the fertile ground that lies between populist genre writing and esoteric literary fiction. Indeed, in the very last line, with his downbeat, tongue-in-cheek homage to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, it becomes clear that McKinty is self-deprecatingly aware of both the necessity and the impossibility of aspiring to emulate the very best a novel can be: Her throat was hoarse from crying and she couldn’t speak, but her head bobbed the affirmative, and finally, in that husky, tired New York whisper, she said simply: “Yes.” – Declan Burke

This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE REAPERS by John Connolly

Black people could be seen in town, but they were always moving: carrying, delivering, lifting, hauling. Only white people were allowed to stand still. Black people did what they had to do, then left. After nightfall, there were only white folk on the streets [ … ] Justice might be blind, but the law wasn’t. Justice was aspirational, but the law was actual. The law was real. It had uniforms, and weapons. It smelt of sweat and tobacco. It drove a big car with a star on the door. White people had justice. Black folks had the law.
  John Connolly, THE REAPERS, pg 70

Is it too late to call John Connolly an angry young man? Beneath the quietly mannered prose, THE REAPERS seethes. It seethes in a way Jim Thompson did when he was at his best, with a coolly ironic detachment. Louis, whose story THE REAPERS is, could easily have graced one of Thompson’s tales of charming psychopathic killers. Neither would he be out of place in a Highsmith novel, perhaps as Ripley’s perfect foil.
  But Louis, like Parker, is uniquely a John Connolly character. It’s possible to be fascinated and even obsessed with Thompson and Highsmith’s characters, but it is impossible to love them. Louis may not crave your love, but he deserves it.
  The reapers of the title are ‘the elite among killers’, of which Louis is one, and the plot revolves around a reckoning in blood facilitated by dying businessman who has good reason to see Louis dead. Parker hardly shows. Instead we get large chunks of Louis’ back-story, including his recruitment as a reaper and the experience that made him a sublime killer; an insight into the dynamics of Louis and Angel’s relationship, which is as much Lou ‘n’ Bud as it is Didi and Gogo; and an extended introduction to one of Angel and Louis’ associates, the blue-collar mechanic Willie Brew, who seems to have sauntered in from an Elmore Leonard novel.
  As a result the minimalist plot is very much character-driven. Connolly’s eye for the unusual, his ear for an unworn phrase and the apparently casual accumulation of subtle detail when fleshing out a character takes care of the rest.
  It’s a terrific page-turner, a charismatic exercise in the grand old art of storytelling. John Gardner, who was notoriously sniffy about genre fiction in general, and crime and mystery fiction in particular, once said that the novel should be a vivid, continuous dream. There’s more than a hint of a nightmare lurking behind THE REAPERS, and perhaps it’s that nightmare which fuels the deadpan rage between every line, but THE REAPERS is certainly the kind of compelling tale John Gardner had in mind. – Declan Burke