“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Richard Beard

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?

I love the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels (‘you remember more stuff that doesn’t make you money than anyone I know’). I’m also a big fan of the Australian crime writer Peter Temple. My favourite of his has to be The Fatal Shore, and if I were Australian and utterly brilliant, that’s the novel I’d like to have written.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?

Ah, I know the answer to this one - not anyone realistic. Otherwise I could become that person in real life. I’d like to be someone so obviously fictional that I’d live an entirely novel experience. Maybe one of the characters from The Da Vinci Code, though none of the ones that get killed (though how would it feel to be killed, if I were fictional?)

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?

Most writers will tell you, a little righteously, that no reading should feel guilty. I’m not among them. When nothing else hits the spot I go to the library and take out a celebrity biography. I’m a sucker for the rags (not always that raggy) to riches (usually surprisingly rich). Recent under-the-cover reads have included Chris Evans and Alex James. But like McDonalds, one is enough for a while.

Most satisfying writing moment?

There comes a time towards the end of writing a novel when it feels as if the plane is coming into land. The effort of getting this unwieldy contraption off the ground, then finding a destination, then managing the fuel (add other flying metaphors to taste) is almost at an end. Now there are small tweaks that can make significant improvements, and my fingers feel the music in the keyboard. I’m overcome by a physical sense of elation. The euphoria doesn’t last, but that’s the best bit.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?

This feels the wrong way round – Crime Always Pays should be recommending Irish crime novels to me. I’m pretty up to speed on the brilliant Stuart Neville, and would recommend him to anyone who enjoys a bit of finely-crafted mayhem.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?

Kevin Barry’s City of Bohane, with its dapper gangsters and eternal grudges, has to count as a crime novel (among other possible classifications). And even though the rhythms of the language are one of the great pleasures of the Kevin Barry reading experience, the world he creates is intensely visual. He writes a future in techni-colour, and a daring film-maker who could combine the Bohane plot with a cinematic equivalent to Barry’s language could make a film like no other.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?

I like being in charge of my own time, when I am. Not so keen on the anxiety, but mustn’t grumble.

The pitch for your next book is …?

Italian-born Claudia Moretti, as she approaches retirement as a state-employed Speculator, is assigned to Messiah Watch. In particular, she responds to reports of cults where the leader claims to be immortal - from experience the government knows that immortality is trouble. There’s an easy way to refute the claim to immortality, but when Claudia is sent to small town Ephesus in bible-belt Georgia, nothing is quite as it seems.

Acts of the Assassins is the second book in a trilogy, following Lazarus is Dead. This is a ‘trilogy’ in a very loose sense – all three books are self-contained. At the end of Acts of the Assassins all the disciples are dead, except John. This is his story. (Which doesn’t yet have a title – suggestions welcome).

Who are you reading right now?

I’m reading a Bible commentary by Richard Bauckham called The Theology of the Book of Revelation, and alternating that chapter by chapter with an idiot’s guide to physics: The Quantum Universe: Everything that Can Happen Does Happen, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. You did ask.

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

Would have to be reading. Other writers (especially all of them gathered together) have much more of interest to say than I do.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Never knowingly unedited.

Acts of the Assassins by Richard Beard is published by Harvill Secker.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Matt McGuire

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?
Peter Temple, TRUTH. An Aussie crime novel that won the Miles Franklin Award in 2010, their version of the Booker Prize!

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

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY.

Most satisfying writing moment?
A very short email from an agent to whom I had sent the 3 chapters of my first book - ‘Is very good. Send rest. Peter.’

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Colin Bateman, MYSTERY MAN.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
BORDERLANDS by Brian McGilloway

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing - the blank page. Best thing - the blank page.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Police corruption in the new Northern Ireland. Can you ever really shake off the hand of history?

Who are you reading right now?
Northern Irish writer David Park’s new novel, THE LIGHT OF AMSTERDAM.

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

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Tight, lean, original.

DARK DAWN: KILLING IN COLD LIGHT by Matt McGuire is published by Corsair, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, price €16.99

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: John J. Gaynard

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

Editor’s Note: I received a rather interesting review of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL by John J. Gaynard during the week; when I investigated further, I discovered that John J. Gaynard is himself the author of what sounds like a rather fascinating novel. Now read on …

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
The Bible. Although I’d put more effort into improving on the lazy Sunday draft that gets the whole thing off to the sexist, incestuous, start and I’d make sure that it’s, Abel, the eater of sacrificial meat and not Cain, the vegetarian brother, who gets murdered. The book’s greatest accomplishment, apart from the spinoffs, is that you’ve got this schizophrenic Stalin-like figure, sending down floods of hate, revenge, betrayal and plagues of locusts, whenever it suits him, while the head-scratchers in the Gulag he’s created can’t come up with the right question: “Did we invent him or did he invent us?” Every good cop who turns up, in the shape of a prophet, gets sold out by his own side. But the main reason this is the book I would have liked to write is the sales and the number of boondoogles you’d get invited to. The Bible study industry is still bigger than the James Joyce or Shakespeare industries.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Gulley Jimson, the painter, in the Anglo-Irish writer Joyce Cary’s 1940s trilogy: HERSELF SURPRISED, TO BE A PILGRIM and, in what I think is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, THE HORSE’S MOUTH. At the beginning of THE HORSE’S MOUTH, Gulley Jimson has just got out of jail. Collectors would pay thousands for any painting he could produce. But Jimson couldn’t give a damn about them, he paints for himself, not for anybody else, the problem is he hasn’t got a penny to buy brushes, paint or a palette. He borrows or scams money from any old acquaintance who will still talk to him, similar to a character in a Ken Bruen novel, and tries to get back some of the paintings he gave away before he went broke. His new passion is for painting on people’s walls. I suppose you could call him the original tagger. He destroys himself, but he never has a minute of guilt or regret. His whole life is either spent getting his hands on a brush and paints, or in painting itself and nearly getting killed by the people who think he’s desecrated their houses. It’s one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read. At the end, when he’s on his deathbed, a nun criticizes him for laughing instead of praying and he tells her that they’re the same thing.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Suzanne Tyrpak, the author of DATING MY VIBRATOR. DATING MY VIBRATOR is a small book of hilarious short stories about a lady who went through a messy divorce, hit the online dating sites and then discovered, as do many innocent young divorcees, that all men, not only the ex-husband, are congenital liars. The book’s about the mental and physical deficiencies of the sex-hungry slobs the hero meets, and you couldn’t call any of the descriptions complimentary. After the book came out, one of the slobs recognized himself in one of the stories, and since then he’s been giving Suzanne really bad reviews on Amazon, and any other website he can come across. There’s a big phenomenon in France of women becoming call girls after they’ve had some experience on online dating sites. They say they might as well get paid for doing what they have to do anyway

Most satisfying writing moment?
There have been many of them, ranging from when I got a story published in the old London Evening News, through when I got my first satirical article published by Le Monde, or when a French translation of Allen Ginsberg’s meeting with Ezra Pound was published. In those days I was using a nom de plume. The latest most satisfactory moment is when I saw the Kirkus Review of THE IMITATION OF PATSY BURKE. Maybe once in a lifetime you get a reviewer who really understands what you were trying to write: “A rich, darkly comic send-up of the art world and the megalomaniacal souls that populate it.” The only quibble I might have with that review is that it might not prepare readers for the novel’s really dark side.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Of all time, I would say THE INFORMER by Liam O’Flaherty. The best one I’ve read over the past few years is Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE, published in the States as THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST. I like a novel that contains an element of psychopathy and some good fight scenes. The fight, or maybe I should say massacre scene, towards the end of THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST is second to none.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Every day I realize that there are a hell of a lot of Irish crime novels I still haven’t read. Tana French’s IN THE WOODS would make a great movie, but you’d have to make sure that Cecilia Ahern wasn’t taken on to write the script.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing, apart from French women writers who’ve fallen out of love with you making you a character in their books, is that it’s easy to become isolated from the rest of humanity. To avoid that I get up very early, every morning in Paris and I spend a couple of hours doing a café crawl, meeting up with friends like taxi drivers, plumbers, illegal African immigrants working on the building sites, and transsexual night club bouncers or heterosexual hostesses, who clock off at six o’clock in the morning and who like to sit around and talk shop in the cafés for a couple of hours before they head home for bed. One of the transsexual bouncers used to run the newspaper shop in the European Commission building in Luxemburg and, s/he tells me, the stuff that went on there was weirder than any club in the whole of the European Union. Once the office workers come out, at about eight-thirty, I head back to my own work. One of my favorite songs is Jacques Dutronc’s, “It’s 5 a.m. Paris Awakes”. It’s about a young man walking down from Pigalle, as it used to be, after a night in the clubs. The best thing is raising your head after ten or eleven hours of work and realizing that you’ve been so captivated by what you’re doing that you’ve lived life to the full. Then you can sit down to three or four hours of reading before you go contentedly to bed.

The pitch for your next book is …?
It’s going to be about a testosterone-fuelled Irish Guard, Timothy O’Mahony, who first came to life in my first novel, ANOTHER LIFE. O’Mahony is the son of a French woman and an Irish father, from Charlestown. After a scandalous liaison with a Northern Irish woman politician, he was demoted from a senior position in Dublin and exiled to the Garda station in Bangor, Erris. He’s now put in charge of investigating the murder of a young African girl, whose body washed up on the shoreline of County Mayo. The story will take O’Mahony into that part of French life in which presidential candidates, policemen, prostitutes and jaded middle-class political groupies engage in group sex, freemasonry, corruption and conversations about Ireland’s refusal to extradite people strongly suspected of killing beautiful French women. Any resemblance to what is going on at the moment in Ireland, France, or what recently happened in New York, will be purely fortuitous. I’m still deciding to what extent O’Mahony will be allowed to participate in the group sex.

Who are you reading right now?
I just finished reading the Australian crime writer Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE. It’s the prototypical hard-bitten crime novel, with a lot of guilt about how much unspoken homosexuality underlies the Australian need for mateship. The dialogue reminded me of Allan Guthrie’s writing. I just started on William Boyd’s ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS, because I’ve always liked the comic element of Boyd’s novels and then I’ll probably read the recent Goncourt Prize winner, THE FRENCH ART OF WAR, even though, the other day, when I asked a guy in a train sitting with the book in front of him and looking out the window, how he was enjoying it he told me he hadn’t been able to get past the first two pages …

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d tell her to go to hell. If she wouldn’t take that for an answer, I would opt for writing, write her out of her own story and then go back to reading.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Whatever it takes! At times, the story needs sex, booze, brawling and schizophrenia, and at other times it needs some pathos.

John J Gaynard’s THE IMITATION OF PATSY BURKE is published by Createspace.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Ruby Barnes

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 GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson, of course. Money, money, money. Except I don’t want to be dead, so any of Colin Bateman because I love his combination of crime and absurd humour. I’ll pick DIVORCING JACK because that’s the first time I discovered him. Or there’s THE BROKEN SHORE by Peter Temple for its great Aussie tones. I’d like to have written them all. Ken Bruen. Help! I’m a compulsive reader.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
That’s more straightforward. Without hesitation, Thomas Covenant, White Gold Wielder. He’s the impotent leper with reluctant magic powers from THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT THE UNBELIEVER by Stephen Donaldson. I chose white gold for my (first) wedding band in the belief that I might follow in his steps and walked my golden retriever under the Sun of Pestilence. Wow, that’s opened up a whole fantasy reading history that I’d completely forgotten about. How much am I paying for this therapy session?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
My indulgence reading is the macabre, the grotesque. Patrick McGrath’s SPIDER and his THE GROTESQUE, Patrick Susskind’s PERFUME, Patrick McCabe’s THE BUTCHER BOY and his WINTERWOOD. Anything by blokes named Patrick.

Most satisfying writing moment?
That was during Christmas 2010. I had worried about how I could feed the monster whilst crowded by family and managed to ring-fence a couple of hours per day. A chapter of my current project emerged and I knew as the words appeared on the screen that it was something special. Two escaped lunatics making love in a castle ruin. The first group review of 2011 and the stunned silence of the members had me close to tears. They hated it! Then they began to applaud. I’m tearful at the memory. Pretentious, moi?

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Actually, I’m not a huge crime reader as my tastes are cross-genre. If I have to give an answer then THE MAGDALENE MARTYRS by Ken Bruen was my first discovery of his writing and I’ll put my honest vote on that one for now.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I’m not a movie buff and don’t usually do that see the film of the book thing. THE GROTESQUE by Patrick McGrath but wasn’t that done with Sting and it isn’t really crime. Haven’t seen it.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing about being a writer is the purpose that it adds to life. It’s a purpose and a goal that you, as author, don’t explicitly know is missing until you embark upon the journey. I felt the same way when my daughter was born. Until then I had been hollow, a shell of a man passing through life, picking up the trappings of society and treading the mill towards an uncertain end. Her coming into being put sense and meaning into everything and helped me fill the emptiness. Writing is a constant articulation of hopes, lusts, loves, fears and fantasies. It feels like a vocation. Where’s my wimple? The worst thing about being a writer is that it can consume you. Sacrifices have to be made, threatening the balance of work, family and guitar playing. Self-doubt and its shadowland colleagues of luck and fate threaten to mock your endeavours as futile. The support structure needed to write well, continuously and successfully has to be embedded in and wedded to all that you hold dear, otherwise terrible choices threaten. Not feeling good now. I need a mug of tea.

The pitch for your next book is …?
THE BAPTIST is my next project and I’m about two thirds through. It’s mostly delivered first person: a serial killer driven by deluded religious zeal. As with PERIL, Detective Inspector Andy McAuliffe is in pursuit of the perpetrator. Here’s the pitch from John Baptist himself:

To deliberately drown your brother in a bathtub is a terrible, if clean, thing. Might it not be excused, if he’s the manifest son of Satan? But that wasn’t the view of the Authorities, when they committed me to Fairfield Mental Institution. I didn’t appreciate the drug-induced fat suit, but it wasn’t all bad; they let me keep my hair long and I met Dirty Mary. We loved, we lost and left. Thank God for Care in the Community. I don’t think Joe McCarthy would agree with that last sentiment; stoned to a watery death when the devil’s mock sun blazed red upon his head. But the last prophet must wander, cleanse. I am not the One. I am merely sent to prepare a way for the One. I am The Baptist.

Who are you reading right now?
A bit of classical fiction: BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh. I developed a taste for the classic several years ago whilst in-between jobs and it’s good to savour from time to time. Like Marmite.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
He’s a cruel and vengeful God, offering such black and white choices. I would rather make offerings to a grey-scale God. Very well. I choose to write as in writing I experience all the emotions of the character when they first commit their evil deeds, have their wicked ways, are surprised to find love and lust and ultimately endure their fate. I get from writing what I get from reading.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Volatile, surprising, satisfying.

Ruby Barnes’ PERIL is available as an ebook via Amazon UK and Amazon US.

TRUTH, The Whole Truth And Nothing But

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

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

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

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

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

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Gerard O’Donovan

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?
So many, from DOUBLE INDEMNITY to LA REQUIEM via the Ripley trilogy and Rebus series. Recently, Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE was enviably great.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Chili Palmer on a good day, Joe Pike on a bad one.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Tabloid reporters.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Getting published, especially by Sphere here and Scribner in the US.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Any of Brian McGilloway’s novels.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
THE PRIEST, but if that’s not allowed, Gene Kerrigan’s LITTLE CRIMINALS.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Effort / reward – and the tightrope between them.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Here, mister, do you want to buy a really cracking crime thriller ...

Who are you reading right now?
Michael Connolly (THE SCARECROW), Simon Lewis (BAD TRAFFIC) and Ruth Dudley Edwards (AFTERMATH).

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read, although I think God might have other issues to tackle me on first.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Roller… coaster… ride.

Gerard O’Donovan’s THE PRIEST is published by Sphere.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Mike Nicol

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?
James Ellroy’s LA CONFIDENTIAL.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Boone Daniels in Don Winslow’s THE DAWN PATROL because he’s such a damn good surfer.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
George V Higgins, Elmore Leonard, Don Winslow, Peter Temple, Ken Bruen, James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Anthony Bourdain.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When the plot resolves itself unaided.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
You think I’m crazy, you think I’m gonna say anything other than THE BIG O?

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Have to say THE TWELVE by Stuart Neville – partly because I read it recently, am still raving about it, and reckon it could be set in South Africa.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst – when I answer the phone after six hours work and the caller apologies for waking me up! Best – when I head off to the beach in the middle of the morning.

The pitch for your next book is …?
I need to paint the house, please buy my novel, PAYBACK.

Who are you reading right now?
SA writer called Andrew Brown whose book REFUGE contains one of the best sex scenes ever and a jail rape that out Bunkers Edward Bunker.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read. I’m assuming that God would oblige and take away the obsession.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Ever so cool.

Mike Nicol’s PAYBACK will be published in January by Old Street Publishing.

Hot-Stepping Morris Dancing

Yet more Christmas books flummery from It’s A Crime!, folks. This time out Crimefic rat-a-tatted bullets at the feet of the hot-stepping Roger Morris (right) until he ’fessed up to loving Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS. To wit:

“Like many others, I was impressed by Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE. The voice is both brutal and lyrical and he writes with a terse precision that at times almost incapacitated me with envy. I also liked the poodles and the distinctly Australian swearin’. But ideally a great Christmas book would be a great read that also happens to be set at Christmas. Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS fulfils both criteria splendidly. There’s an extra dimension of seasonal pleasure that comes from realising that however bad your own yuletide mishaps – fairy-lights not working, turkey a bit burnt on one side – they don’t come close to the unstoppable hell on wheels that is Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin’s Christmas. It doesn’t surprise me that McGilloway is a fan of James Lee Burke (whose PEGASUS DESCENDING provided another highlight of my crime-reading year). McGilloway’s Devlin, like Burke’s Robicheaux, is given a convincing home life, which far from detracting from the twists and excitement of the murder case, adds a thematic counterpoint, as well as a psychological and moral point. In McGilloway’s concern for the domestic we understand what drives Devlin to pit himself against the forces of chaos beyond his front door.”

Beautifully put, Mr Morris sir. Now dance some more. We said DANCE! Please?

More Irish Than The I-reich Themselves, Apparently

So there we were congratulating Peter Temple (right) on winning the CWA Dagger for Best Ever Crime Novel Of The Year, Like, Ever for The Broken Shore and in the process lamenting the fact that the surname of his long-standing hero Jack Irish is actually pronounced ‘I-reich’, when lo! We were proved wrong! By the Wizard of Oz himself! Quoth Peter:

“Declan: I’m happy to report that Jack Irish’s name is pronounced in the ordinary way. Irish is, however, a corruption of an earlier family name. Thank you for your generous words.”

Criminy! Is it possible to be simultaneously stoked, humbled and flabbergasted? And what say you now, Mr After Dark My Sweet (if that is, in fact, your real name) who peddled the erroneous info in the first place? Don’t make us go down under there, pal. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry. You wouldn’t even like us when we’re not angry. Because we’re not likeable. You have been warned, sirrah …

The Temple Of Doom

Yep, Peter Temple (right) slid the CWA’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger into his entirely metaphorical scabbard for The Broken Shore, voted best crime novel of the year on Thursday night. There’s one in the eye for the bloody Poms, eh? In a doom-laden night for Irish crime writing, neither Declan Hughes or Brian McGilloway managed to get their hands on the New Blood Dagger, Gillian Flynn winning that award, and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, for Sharp Objects, appropriately enough. Worst of all, though, was our belated discovery that our lame pun – y’know, Peter Temple writes the Jack Irish novels – is a non-runner given that Temple’s 'Irish' is actually pronounced 'I-reich'. Buggery … Mind you, we can now blame the man we stole the lame pun from, the one and only Mr After Dark, My Sweet …