On Putting The Boot Into The Booker Prize

I like to think that Dan Kavanagh got mouldy drunk on Guinness somewhere in London last night. It’s been many years since I’ve read Julian Barnes, who last night won the 2011 Man Booker prize for his latest novel - or novella - THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, and while I vaguely remember liking both FLAUBERT’S PARROT and A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10½ CHAPTERS, I don’t remember an awful lot more about them. Which probably says a lot more about me than it does about Julian Barnes and his novels.
  On the other hand, I do remember hugely enjoying PUTTING THE BOOT IN, a crime novel Barnes published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, not least because said Dan Kavanagh’s official biography made him out to be something of a rogue, and one who hailed from my home patch of County Sligo into the bargain. Anyway, I did a short write-up of PUTTING THE BOOT IN - which is only one of the Dan Kavanagh novels; there were four in total, as far as I know - back in 2008, which you can find roundabout here.
  So there you have it - a Booker Prize winner with a rather decent half-canon of crime novels under his belt, as announced by Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5 and a thriller writer who chaired the judging panel. A cunning black ops sortie by the crime fraternity? Have we shuffled another step closer to the day when a fully-fledged crime writer scoops the establishment’s glittering prize? You’d hope not, or at least I’d hope not - but it is starting to look like an inevitability …

Lost Classic # 264: Putting The Boot In by Dan Kavanagh

A phlegmatic London PI, Duffy is commissioned by the manager of his local professional football club to investigate a series of unfortunate incidents that seem designed to foil the Athletic’s bid to escape relegation to the Fourth Division. In tandem with that plot runs Duffy’s investigation of himself, as the bisexual detective examines his place in the scheme of things when the threat of AIDS looms large over London’s swinging scene of the early ’80s. Beautifully understated, as you might expect when you learn that Dan Kavanagh – allegedly born in Sligo in 1946 and a Sunday football goalkeeper since his failed trial with Accrington Stanley – is in fact a pseudonym for Julian Barnes, Putting The Boot In (1987) features bone-dry wit (“Nor do I,” said Duffy, though as a matter of professional principle he never put anything past anybody.”), a knowing familiarity with crime fiction tropes and very English kitchen-sink dramas, and a delightfully accurate portrayal of the quiet desperation of both Third Division and Sunday league football. The second of a quartet of Duffy stories, this is long out of print but well worth grubbing around the second-hand shops for – and there is a four-novel omnibus available on Amazon UK.- Michael McGowan