“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Val McDermid

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?
ON BEULAH HEIGHT by Reginald Hill. Fascinating characters with real depth, terrific story-telling, beautifully written, it’s as much an elegy to love and loss as it is a crime novel.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jim Hawkins, in TREASURE ISLAND. A great adventure, then coming home to a lifetime of possibilities.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Solving the structural difficulties of writing TRICK OF THE DARK. Took me 12 years to figure it out.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s IN THE WOODS. That would creep me out.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing? Doing the accounts. Best thing? Everything else.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A skeleton is discovered in an apparently inaccessible gothic pinnacle. It’s surprising identity takes us by twists and turns to the Balkan wars and their tragic aftermath. The protagonist is a geography professor, which is a lot more exciting than it sounds!

Who are you reading right now?
Eleanor Catton, THE LUMINARIES. I loved her first novel, THE REHEARSAL. Clever structure, interesting characters, great prose.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. Because I can still listen, right?

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Lights on reading.

Val McDermid’s CROSS AND BURN is published by Little, Brown.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Val McDermid

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?
If I was a mercenary bitch, I’d say THE DA VINCI CODE. But I’m not, so I’ll go with Reginald Hill’s ON BEULAH HEIGHT. Tender, savage, clever, funny and moving. Beautifully written and immaculately plotted. What’s not to envy?

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jim Hawkins. So I could play inside the perfect novel.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I go back to childhood and read the Chalet School books by Elinor M Brent Dyer, and Agatha Christie.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I figured out a structure that would allow me to tell the story of A PLACE OF EXECUTION. That was a beautiful moment in itself, but it also made me trust myself and not worry that sometimes it takes years to find the right way to tell the story.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Oh yeah, right. Like I’m going to stick my neck out like that just before I visit Ireland ... That wouldn’t have been too tough a call ten years ago. But now? Seriously, there’s been so much quality crime fiction coming out of Ireland in the past few years it would be invidious to single out any one book. I love youse all. Well, most of youse.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
If you’d just let my throat go ... Thank you. I think Adrian McKinty’s Dead trilogy would make a great sequence of films. But so would many others. What’s more important is that Irish writers keep on writing great books.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Working alone. I love my own company but I’m also a very social animal. Sometimes I spend so long with characters I can push around that I forget how to interact properly with real people ...

The pitch for your next book is …?
A woman is going through US airport security with her kid. She sets off the metal detector and while she’s waiting in the perspex box to be patted down and wanded, someone walks up to her kid by the X-ray belt and walks off with him. As she attempts pursuit, she’s thrown to the ground and tasered. When she comes round, the kid is long gone. That’s next year’s book.

Who are you reading right now?
It’s the time of year when I read mostly debut novels so I can put together my wish-list for next year’s Harrogate Festival new blood panel. So I’ve just started the proof of a first novel called TIDELINE by Penny Hancock which is not out till January. I’ve just finished a proof of Stuart Neville’s third novel, STOLEN SOULS, which somehow sneaked into the pile. And I can exclusively reveal that it’s nail-biting, gut-wrenching and nearly made me miss my stop on the train. Next up will be something called ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL by some Irish guy who claims he’s holding my wife, my kid and my dog hostage.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’m not as arrogant as people might think I am; I’d read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’d rather leave that to other people. Preferably those to whom I have already slipped a £20 note.

Val McDermid’s THE RETRIBUTION is published by Little, Brown. Val will be appearing at the Mountains to Sea Festival, in conversation with Declan Hughes, on Saturday, September 10th. For all the details, clickety-click here …

Hurls At Ten Paces In The Misty Russian Dawn: Cuddly Duddly Vs Benny Blanco, Round 4-Ish

Misquoted, traduced and wounded by the ricocheting fall-out from Banvillegate, Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) isn’t taking it lying down. Not content with having her say last week on Crime Always Pays – and let’s be honest, even I’m not content with having my say on CAP – she’s gone for the jugular courtesy of the Sunday Independent. To wit:

“I published my first crime novel in 1981 and was short-listed for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Best First Novel Award. Since then I’ve published another 10, I’ve performed at innumerable crime conventions and crime bookshops in Britain, Ireland and the US, I’ve been on the committee of the Crime Writers' Association, I love the good-natured, egalitarian crime-fiction world and have great friends among writers and readers.
  “I am, if anything, more proud of my Last Laugh Award than of the James Tait Black memorial prize for biography.
  “Under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, John Banville published his first crime novel in 2006. At the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, which we both attended last month, he annoyed most of his audience, yet he had the brass neck to patronise me in The Guardian …”

  For the rest – and it does get a bit salty – clickety-click here …

John Banville Vs The World # 1,017: Ruth Dudley Edwards Steps In

Ruth Dudley Edwards (right) gets in touch to see if I’d be interesting in hosting her version of events in Banvillegate (See what I did there? It was John Banville, right, at Harrogate, and … oh. Okay). Erm, Ruth? Yes, please. To wit:

“Tony Benn never opens his mouth without switching on his tape-recorder, and after this business with John Banville, who represented me as saying the precise opposite of what I believe, I fear he is wise. At the risk of being balls-achingly tedious, my historian’s instincts make me want to set the record straight.
  “Banville got up the noses of the Harrogate audience by – no doubt unwittingly – giving the impression that he was rather embarrassed by his Benjamin Black persona. It’s is hard not to bristle when you hear that because Banville agonises over every sentence that he does well to write 100 words a day, but Black merrily bashes out 2,000.
  “Being an out-and-proud crime writer myself, who misses no opportunity to assail those who disparage the genre, I displayed my irritation when moderating the Emerald Noir panel the following morning by asking Declan Hughes whether he thought Banville was denying that he felt he was slumming it, although he really believed he was. Dec, being more streetwise than me, refused to get involved in this fight.
  “In the Daily Telegraph on 28 July, Jake Kerridge got the wrong end of the stick by saying: ‘The writer Ruth Dudley Edwards commented at one event that “he may insist he’s not slumming it, but he’s slumming it.’ On the Guardian books blog this turned into: ‘”He’s slumming it,”’ author Ruth Dudley Edwards said the following day. “He says he isn’t, but he is.”’ Which in Banville’s Guardian article on 1 August - which was trailed on the front of the Review section as ‘’John Banville: ‘I’m not “slumming it” as a crime writer’ - became ‘Another blogger did a survey among attendees [of the event where he and Reginald Hill were interviewed by Mark Lawson]. One of them, Ruth Dudley Edwards, a good writer who should have known better, allowed herself to be quoted as saying that I was slumming it as Benjamin Black. The inevitable implication of this is that Dudley Edwards considers crime writers to be slum dwellers.’ He then proceeded to defend crime writing against me and people like me.
  “Mind you, if he’d stayed for Emerald Noir he wouldn’t have got this wrong. And if he’d looked at my website, he’d have found some impassioned defences of crime writing. But, hey, as Reg Hill wrote when I moaned to him about this: ‘There’s nothing like a good misunderstanding for promoting misunderstanding among people.’” - Ruth Dudley Edwards

  At the risk of getting splinters up my fundament, I genuinely think what’s happening here is a misunderstanding. Mind you, I’ve no problem with a good old-fashioned literary spat, either, especially when crime writers are pretty much universally nice people. I mean, seriously, crime writing festivals can get a bit Stepford at times, no?

Yon Banville’s A Miserable Old – Sssh, He’s Here

Further to the crime fic / lit fic debate of last week, in which it was argued that John Banville (right) demeans crime writing and its writers by admitting that he writes quicker as Benjamin Black than John Banville, the man himself had a right-to-reply piece in The Guardian yesterday. To wit:

“A sheep should not venture into a pen of wolves. Not the least of the reasons I agreed to attend the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing festival 2009 in Harrogate was that the name charmed me. Also it was a chance to revisit Yorkshire, a part of the world I greatly like, if only for the rough poetry of the common speech there - for instance, on the train from Leeds to Harrogate a woman in the seat behind me was speaking of a fickle friend and said: "She coomes on lak a dyin' swan and then puffs oop."
  “My event was a public interview with Mark Lawson, an expert conductor of the third degree; also on stage was that fine writer Reginald Hill. We had a large and attentive audience, consisting mostly of fans of Reg, I suspect. During the hour-long conversation I described my differing work methods as John Banville and Benjamin Black, saying how the former writes painfully slowly while the latter is fluent and fast. I am told that many in the audience took offence at this, imagining, I presume, that I was making a disparaging comparison between my "literary" books and my crime fiction. I also made a joke - limp, I admit - to the effect that I fully expected Black to win the Nobel prize; this has been blogged as my saying that I expected to win it. Imagine a weary sigh.
  “Another blogger did a survey among attendees. One of them, Ruth Dudley Edwards, a good writer who should have known better, allowed herself to be quoted as saying that I was slumming it as Benjamin Black. The inevitable implication of this is that Dudley Edwards considers crime writers to be slum dwellers. I prefer to think of Benjamin B. as lording it among aristocrats such as Georges Simenon, James M Cain, and my much-missed friend, the lavishly talented, late Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark.
  “I deplore the apartheid that has been imposed on fiction writing, so that in shops the "crime books" are segregated from the "proper" novels. Of course, there are bad crime novels, many of which seem to have been written with the blunt end of a burnt stick, but the same is true of so-called literary fiction. The distinction between good writing and bad is the only one worth making. I revel in the challenge of crafting my crime books, trying to make something new in an old convention - for is that not what any artist does? Baa.”

  Well said, that man. “I prefer to think of Benjamin B. as lording it among aristocrats …” Nice.
  As for Ruth Dudley Edwards and the ‘slumming it’ bit, and on the basis that she wasn’t being ironic, or quoted out of context – what’s so wrong with the idea that John Banville is slumming it as Benjamin Black? I find the idea that Banville is writing from an ivory tower and Benny Blanco in a tenement slum very appealing, actually; it puts me in mind of Chandler’s take on Hammett, that he took murder out of the drawing room and dropped it back in the alley, where it belonged. To me the crime novel – and I make the distinction between crime novel and mystery novel, or thriller – belongs in the slums, its sewers thronged with rats made mad by poverty and poisons and doomed to drown, sooner or later, in the endless flow of shit.
  A very broad generalisation, I know, and it very probably says more about me than I’m willing to examine too closely that that’s not only my idea of a good time, but a metaphor for life itself and the universe at large.
  John Banville says he’s not slumming it, and good enough for me. In the long run, though, it’s a moot point. He’ll be judged by the books, not on his attitude or what he did or didn’t say. And it’d be a shame if some kind of inverted snobbery were to deny him a fair hearing.

John Banville’s THE INFINITIES is published on September 4.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

I’m only grumbling because I wasn’t invited, of course, but there’s a touch of the tired old blarney about ‘Emerald Noir’, next Saturday morning’s panel on Irish crime writing at Harrogate, which will be moderated by Ruth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley Edwards (right). Quoth the Harrogate interweb malarkey:

Crime fiction is for many identified with big, brash urban landscapes, but some of the hottest properties in contemporary crime fiction come from and write about the greenest of all lands, Ireland. But what is it about the Emerald Isle that makes it the perfect place for crime of all types? Four top names – Declan Hughes, Gene Kerrigan, Ava McCarthy and Brian McGilloway – talk about their influences and background, the importance of landscape and history, and the place of politics and religion in their work with veteran (and often controversial) commentator on Irish life, Ruth Dudley Edwards.

  Now, Ireland may be green in places, certainly, but Hughes and McCarthy both set their novels for the most part in Dublin, while it’s debatable as to whether city boy Gene Kerrigan has ever seen a real field in his entire life. Turf bogs and boreens aren’t a notable feature of Ruth Dudley Edwards’ novels, either.
  I’m not sure if any of the writers involved write ‘about’ Ireland. They may set their novels here, but that’s not necessarily the same as writing about the place. The stories they write aren’t unique to their setting, and to the extent that they use current and recent Irish events for backdrop, they function as implicit criticisms of an urban existence that could apply to most cities anywhere in the world. Even Brian McGilloway, who sketches the distinctive rural hinterland of Donegal and Derry with some aplomb, is writing stories that could apply to most international borders, and particularly those borders between countries with a history of conflict.
  This is a good thing, I think. I like it that these writers are of a generation confident enough to get their heads up and have a good look around, and write stories that aren’t necessarily beholden to their place. There was a time when being an ‘Irish writer’ meant writing about Ireland, which makes a certain amount of sense given that the country is a relatively young one, and still trying to establish an identity; by the same token, it smacked of the insularity of self-consciousness and maybe even an inferiority complex.
  Happily, that’s no longer the case. There’s no reason why a crime novel needs to be ‘about’ its setting any more than a crime novel needs to be some kind of political statement, or social commentary.
  That caveat aside, the ‘Emerald Noir’ panel looks like – no, hold up, there’s another caveat. About this time last month, when I first looked in on the Harrogate website, said ‘Emerald Noir’ entry included Ken Bruen. Erm, where’s Sir Kenneth of Bruen, folks? Was he waylaid on the way to the festival? Will there be a ransom demand any time soon? Talk to us – we can be the honest broker in this deal …
  Where was I? Oh yes, Ruth Dudley Edwards, and AFTERMATH, her new book about the Omagh atrocity. Clickety-click over here for some pics of the launch party, and a rather interesting video of Peter Mandelson trying to be humble. No kidding, it looks like Mandy’s about to turn inside-out and in the process rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
  And while we’re on the subject of Harrogate et al, John Banville may or may not be in Benjamin Black mode for his conversation with Reginald Hill, scheduled for Friday evening, 8pm, but if you’re in the vicinity, I urge you to go. His new Banville novel, THE INFINITIES, is due out this autumn, and it sounds like an absolute cracker, and if my experience of interviewing him is anything to go by, he’s funny, self-deprecating and occasionally illuminating about the business of writing. Not everyone will agree with me, I know, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles …
  Finally, it’s still not too late to VOTE FOR DECLAN HUGHES for Crime Novel of the Year. You know it makes sense …

On Equal Writes For Wimmin

I recently interviewed four Irish female crime writers – Ruth Dudley-Edwards (right), Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay and Ingrid Black – for the Sunday Independent about being, y’know, crime writers who are Irish and women. Anyhoos, one of the questions was about why Irish crime writing has so far been dominated by men. Quoth ‘Cuddly’ Dudley-Edwards:

“It may be that Irish crime fiction is dominated by men because so far, it has tended toward the noir,” suggests Dudley-Edwards. “Certainly, very many of the most famous names in classical English crime fiction are female: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, PD James, Ruth Rendell. Indeed Reginald Hill has a story of being at a cultural event in France where an earnest man rose to ask why most of the writers of the Golden Age [the Thirties] of detection were women. ‘Because,’ explained Reg, ‘all the men were dead.’”

  Oh, and Arlene Hunt is adamant that women no longer need fainting couches. For the rest, clickety-click here.