Going Underground-ish

As regular readers (hi, mum) of Crime Always Pays will be aware, we’re big, big fans of Seamus Smyth. Not the elves, obviously – they’re tiny big fans. But we think QUINN was one of the defining Irish crime narratives of the last decade, and we never could work out why Smyth was only big in Japan. Three cheers, two stools and resounding huzzah, then, for those impeccably tasteful French, where – a little mole-shaped birdie tells us – Smyth has recently signed a three-book deal for QUINN, RED DOCK and THE MOLE’S CAGE. Quoth Seamus:

“The best part is, they’re already written. And all three were bestsellers in Japan. Let’s hope the French are as enthusiastic.”

Being, erm, diligent researchers, the elves have winkled out the synopsis to THE MOLE’S CAGE, which runneth thusly:

In July 1972, 17-year-old Michael Hill is arrested crossing the border into the Irish Republic, interrogated and interned in Long Kesh, an ex-RAF airfield ten miles west of Belfast. The compounds (or ‘cages’), some two dozen, house several thousand men. He is put into Cage 5, nicknamed ‘the Moles’ Cage’ because inmates are forever doing what moles do – burrowing. They live in corrugated-iron Nissan huts – ovens in summer, fridges in winter. Conditions are akin, according to the Red Cross permanently stationed outside, to those of a WW2 POW camp. The only way out for Michael is to convince the army he is not IRA. Naturally they believe the IRA when they back him up. Many men are in the same Catch-22. And many of them are known to Michael. For him, walking into Long Kesh is like walking into a pub on the Falls Road – a sea of familiar faces, kids he went to school with, in some cases their fathers. One pal was interned because he had fuse wire in his toolbag, which can be used to make detonators – he’s an apprentice electrician. Another was interned because he delivered bread in Catholic areas and therefore, according to army logic, had to be in a position to know who was in the IRA and what they were planning. Milkmen got the same treatment. It’s a crazy world where justice has been removed and there’s nowhere to go for it. Michael’s forever trying to escape, but the IRA control the escape committees and they want their own men out, not non-members. Countless tunnels cave in because there’s no shoring. After years of fighting for decent food and better conditions, the IRA CO orders the place burnt to the ground. The men survive living out in all weathers for months, under ‘tents’ made from corrugated iron. But the charred remains bring opportunities – they can be used for shoring. A plan is hatched to dig a 200 foot tunnel, for the whole cage to escape, then each cage in turn under the cover of darkness …

Quoth Seamus:

“THE MOLE’S CAGE focuses on the experiences of the thousands of Catholics wrongly interned without charge or recourse to legal representation, not on the IRA. A lot’s been written about the H-Blocks but this story covers the four years before they were built, about which comparatively little has been written. It’s a first-person narrative told through the eyes of a streetwise teenager.”

Bon chance, Monsieur Smyth …

Books Of The Year # 1: CROSS, by Ken Bruen

We’re always the last to know. Like, couldn’t someone have mentioned, even in passing, that it’s coming up to Christmas? Now here’s us with nary a child in the house washed and no sign of a ‘2007 Round-Up Of Books Wot My Friends Wrote’ compilation to fill a gap. Bah blummin’ humbug, etc. Anyhoo, here’s the first of our Books of the Year – Seamus Smyth on Ken Bruen’s CROSS. To wit:

“Like all gifted writers, Ken Bruen is big on atmosphere. He wallops you with it on page one – not with a character wearing a cross, but with a cross wearing him – and never lets up. And try this for characterisation: “I didn’t enquire how the barman knew my order. I was afraid he’d tell me … You sit behind a pint like that, a pure gift, with the Jameson already weaving its dark magic on your eyes, you can believe that Iraq is indeed on the other side of the world, that winter isn’t coming, that the Galway light will always hold that beautiful fascination and that priests are our protectors, not predators. You won’t have the illusion for very long, but the moment is priceless.” Bruen stalks Galway with the eye of a jackal, scouring the city’s ever-changing cultural and social scene and rancid underbelly, and weaves it into a thought-provoking sleuth yarn which is an indictment on modern-day Ireland. And he’s very visual. You see everything. The ‘half-crouch young people adopt’, the tree in the centre of McSwiggan’s pub reassuring us that the ‘country still has a sense of the absurd’. Bruen adds to the genre a voice that’s as challenging and unsettling as it is original. No genre-writing for this guy. He writes as if he’s sitting over a beer talking to a mate. It’s as subtle a piece of crime-writing as you’re likely to get. Nothing’s forced. It’s a masterclass in pace. Many writers are compared to writers who spawned their own sub-genre. Not Bruen. He’s spawning his own for others to aspire to. How many of us can claim that?”- Seamus Smyth

Seamus Smyth is the author of QUINN.

The Mighty Quinn: Just Got That Bit Mightier

Ain’t technology wonderful? Courtesy of the statcounting doohickey the CAP elves use to justify their criminal indolence, it’s possible for the Chief Google-Watching Elf to keep an eye on the names people are searching for in order to arrive at our humble blog. The first two names in the Top Three won’t surprise anyone, being John Connolly and Ken Bruen, but the third name might. Take a bow Seamus Smyth, author of the cult classic QUINN and long-suffering beneficiary of CAP’s ongoing campaign to have QUINN republished (scroll down, scan left). Who’d a thunk it, eh? Now comes the news that the reclusive Smyth – Irish crime fiction’s JD Salinger, basically, albeit with 97% less bananafish – has written a second tome, which is currently abroad amidst the unsuspecting publishers of Europe. Consider it a particularly bloody bucket of chum dumped into shark-infested waters, and brace yourself for the feeding frenzy. Meanwhile, even as you read this, a detachment of commando elves are scaling the walls of Smyth’s remote mansion, their mission to return with a m/s copy of said tome or die trying. Our money’s on the latter – yon Smyth, he takes no prisoners ...

The Weekly Seamus Smith Update: You’ve Not Seen Nothing Like The Mighty Quinn

So what more do we have to do to convince you of Quinn’s greatness? What’s that? You want actual proof in the form of reviews? Okeley-dokely … The folks over at Amazon are only drooling, to wit: “Quinn encompasses both intense bluntness and delicious irony … alongside moments of sharp humour. Harrowing and enlightening, Quinn cleverly shows the shock and the appeal of altered perception.” And then there’s: “By turns exciting, intriguing and horrifying the book never fails to keep you hooked.” But stay! There’s more! “While American Psycho shocked through the creativity of the various murders, Quinn shocks through its cold-hearted premeditation.” And our own Ken Bruen, who should know a thing or seventeen about fictional psycho killers, reckons that, “The hero, Gerd Quinn, is straight from the tradition of Goodis through Thompson to the wry, sly humour of a Willeford.” Quoth the Times: “For all its lightning exposition of Quinn’s swaggering amorality, this first novel proves Smyth to be a truly original, febrile talent.” As for ourselves, you know where we stand: on a pulpit proclaiming Quinn’s genius. Do the right thing, people – you know it makes sense.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 419: Seamus Smyth

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

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
The one that sold most.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
My bank statements, when there’s money enough to indulge myself in them.
Most satisfying writing moment?
I’ve never written anything I was satisfied with.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I like Ken Bruen’s way with a pen.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Wish I knew. It would mean I’ve read a ‘great’ book.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Punching the keys and a story not turning up.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
I used a pseudonym once, because I didn’t want anyone to know I wrote it.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
It never brags.

Seamus Smyth’s Quinn is a stone-cold classic. Fact.