Feature: The Irish Spy Novel

I had a feature on the lesser-spotted Irish spy novel published in the Irish Times last week, which featured – among others – Joe Joyce, John Banville, Eoin McNamee, Stephen Burke, Michael Russell, Stuart Neville, Philip Davison, Joseph Hone and Andrew Hughes. To wit:

Brinsley McNamara always claimed that Garradrimna, the village which provides the setting for The Valley of the Squinting Windows, could have been any village in Ireland. Published in 1918, the novel can be read as an expression of a kind of colonial pathology, as the population of Garradrimna engage in constant mutual surveillance, monitoring one another’s weaknesses and ferreting out secrets in order to accrue what passes for power among the powerless.
  Naturally, any of Garradrimna’s upstanding citizens would take mortal offence at being called a spy. To the coloniser, every native is suspect until proven otherwise, and the only way to prove this logically fallacious gambit is to maintain a relentless scrutiny. Spied upon for generations, the colonised learn to abhor the spies, even as they absorb the tradecraft; it’s no coincidence that there are few Irish insults worse than that of tout, or informer.
  Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why, despite the recent upsurge in Irish crime fiction, the Irish spy novel is notable by its absence. There is no Irish equivalent to Ian Fleming, for example, who served with British Naval Intelligence during WWII, or John le Carré, Somerset Maugham (Ashenden) and Graham Greene, all of whom worked with British Intelligence before going on to write spy fiction. The archetypal heroes of modern spy fiction were written from the perspective of the coloniser and empire builder; the methods employed by their protagonists may be less than savoury, of course, but the intelligent reader understands the realpolitik that means some eggs are destined for omelettes.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Local Heroes: Philip Davison

We’re all familiar with the huge strides taken by Irish crime fiction over the past decade or so, but there were quite a few Irish authors writing crime / mystery / thriller novels before it was fashionable and / or (koff) profitable.
  Philip Davison (author, playwright and screenwriter, and currently a member of Aosdána) is one of them, possibly overlooked in terms of his contribution to Irish crime writing because the hero of his four spy novels, Harry Fielding, was an ‘understrapper’ for MI5.
  Davison published four novels with Fielding as his protagonist: THE CROOKED MAN (1997), MCKENZIE’S FRIEND (2000), THE LONG SUIT (2003) and A BURNABLE TOWN (2006). The reviews, such as those below for MCKENZIE’S FRIEND, were rather impressive:

“Chilly, elegant and disconcertingly comic. Rather like a collaboration between two notable Green(e)s – Graham and Henry – and quite safely described as original.” ~ Literary Review

“Davison shares Beckett’s knack for making the down-at-the-heel appear surreal.” ~ Times Literary Supplement

  THE LONG SUIT, meanwhile, was compared with John le Carré, Len Deighton and that man Graham Greene again. You get the picture: we’re in the realm of the literary spy thriller. THE LONG SUIT opens thusly:

“I had my own troubles, some of which I had addressed. When they lifted me my plan had been to go to ground, let time pass and be vigilant. Like a Druid, I had come to count nights instead of days. I watched Clements talking to somebody at the end of the corridor. He was loud, but I couldn’t make out the words. The lower jaw seemed to have just the one spring action. He was like a thirsty dog drinking from a water pistol …”

  For more on Philip Davison, clickety-click here …

UPDATE: Mel Healy has a very nice appraisal of Philip Davison’s style (along with a tangent or two about his food consumption) over here …

Saints, Scholars, Cops And Killers

Given that it’s Paddy’s Day (hic), and we’re supposed to be celebrating Irishness in all its wonderful manifestations (the lovely caílín, right, being a prime example), Crime Always Pays would like to take this opportunity to direct your attention to some Irish crime writers that we believe were woefully neglected in years gone by. To wit, and in no particular order:

Seamus Smyth: “This is not just a great crime novel, it’s one hell of a novel, full stop. QUINN should be THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for this decade, it’s that good and fresh and innovative.” – Ken Bruen

Eugene McEldowney: “The novel was a reaction to some of the awful books that had been written about Northern Ireland and which made no effort to place the political violence in any kind of context.” – Dublin Quarterly

Vincent Banville: John Blaine was the original hardboiled Irish private eye. He may yet sue Declan Hughes for being younger and thus better placed to capitalise on Ireland’s newly minted mean streets.

Philip Davison: “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene … thoroughly compelling… cracking dialogue.” – The Independent. “Each word in this bleakly humorous novel promises to explode and bring light to the shadows … Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit.” - The Times Literary Supplement

TS O’Rourke: “History is written in stone. I know that history is also written by the victor, but the truth, the whole story of these terrible times, is now emerging and I have tried to present at least a small picture of what the Civil War was like for a foot soldier, a volunteer, in Dublin City.” – Dublin Quarterly

There’s many more, of course, but right now we’re blogging from the pub and some amateur has just spilled a pint of green beer onto our laptop and fhizz signal seems to be crrssshsprcklefrtz … Arrah, bollocks. Hic. Another bucket of porter there, Jamesey, and don’t shpare the horshes …

“Doctor? I Think We’ve Got A Heartbeat …”

Philip Davison remains one of Ireland’s unsung thriller writers, sadly, his latest being last year’s A Burnable Town, which got the “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene… thoroughly compelling,” treatment from The Independent, and a “Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit,” big-up from the Times Literary Supplement. You can download a taster chapter at the Irish Literary Revival, if you’re so inclined, but the better news is that you can download Davison’s immaculate debut The Book-Thief’s Heartbeat in its entirety courtesy of the ILR’s mission, aka ‘Out-of-print books, returned to the world.’ To resurrect a Heartbeat – how noble is that, eh? Think an entire battalion of Don Quixotes tilting at a world full of windmills and you’re halfway there … Oh, and did we mention that The Book-Thief's Heartbeat is currently selling on Amazon at £45 a pop?

Remembrance Of Almond Buns Past

Philip Davison’s (right) The Book-Thief’s Heartbeat (1981) is one of our favourite novels of Dublin, a snapshot of a time and place long gone ever since the Celtic Tiger chewed up and spat out the old Bewley’s on Grafton Street, haven to its hero, the job-dodging, almond bun-scoffing Oliver Power. Students looking to write a thesis on the impact of the Celtic Tiger on Irish fiction might want to consider Davison as a subject: The Book-Thief’s Heartbeat was a beautifully weighted piece of whimsical comedy which sank without a trace, while his crime writing has gone from strength to strength in the last decade. “Each word in this bleakly humorous novel promises to explode and bring light to the shadows. Philip Davison’s control is that of a spymaster, deftly arranging inconspicuous elements into a thrilling whole ... Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit,” reckoned the Times Literary Review of A Burnable Town (2006), while the Independent on Sunday weighed in with “Davison is at his best when he’s writing about the nuances of human behaviour … some thoroughly compelling scenes … cracking dialogue.” So when is Davison – variously compared to Graham Greene, Sam Beckett and John Le Carré – likely to grace us with the fifth instalment in his globe-trotting Harry Fielding series? Give us a call, Phil: we’ll hook up in Bewley’s for an almond bun.