I Wish I Was Back Home In Derry

Gerard Brennan (right), the ever affable host of Crime Scene Norn Iron, drops a line to see if I’ll plug Derry’s ‘Night of Crime’, which takes place at Derry Central Library tomorrow evening, September 24th. To wit:

Thanks to the City’s first ever Culture Night, Libraries NI, in partnership with Derry City Council, is inviting fans of crime thrillers along to Derry Central Library’s ‘Night of Crime’ event.
  Over half a million people are expected to explore and engage with culture on the evening of 24th September and at this Derry Central Library event, fans of crime thrillers will be able to enjoy readings by two renowned local authors of crime fiction, Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville, who read from their work from 8pm to 9.30pm. This will be followed by an open discussion, led by Gerard Brennan of the blog Crime Scene NI, about the emerging crime writing scene in Northern Ireland.
  Trisha Ward, Business Manager with Libraries NI explains:
  “Culture Night is a night of entertainment, discovery and adventure and Derry Central Library is proud to be involved. Arts and cultural organisation, including libraries, will open their doors with hundreds of free events, tours, talks and performances for you, your family and friends to enjoy – and Libraries NI is delighted to be working with Derry City council to make this ‘A Night of Crime’ event, featuring respected crime thriller novelists and bloggers, a success.”
  Eoin McNamee, is originally from Kilkeel, County Down and saw his first book, the novella THE LAST OF DEEDS, shortlisted for the Irish Times Literature Prize. In his new novel, ORCHID BLUE, due out in November, he returns to the territory of his acclaimed Booker longlisted THE BLUE TANGO. The evening will include readings from this book as well as from the crime fiction titles McNamee has published under the name John Creed.
  Stuart Neville burst onto the crime writing scene in 2009 with his Belfast set novel THE TWELVE. The sequel to that award- winning debut, COLLUSION, has just been published. Both books confront in an unsparing manner post-ceasefire Northern Ireland.
  Gerard Brennan, of the Crime Scene NI blog, will also be in the library to chair the event and to stimulate discussion. He has edited REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, published earlier this year, an anthology of short stories inspired by tales from Irish mythology. His work is due to appear in the MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 2010.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …
  I’ve said it here before, and no doubt I’ll be saying it again, but ORCHID BLUE and COLLUSION are two excellent novels from writers who have important things to say about Northern Ireland, past and present. Should be a cracking night …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone

REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED is an audacious exercise in joining the dots between Ireland’s mythological heritage and the current explosion in contemporary Irish crime writing. Basically, Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone have commissioned a number of modern crime stories based on Irish mythology. Contributors include Brian McGilloway, Arlene Hunt, Ken Bruen, Adrian McKinty, Una McCormack, Garbhan Downey, Sam Millar and Stuart Neville. Among the myths invoked are those of Diarmuid and Grainne, the Children of Lir, Queen Maeve and the Brown Bull of Cooley, the Hound of Cu Chulainn, and the Banshee.
  What editors Stone and Brennan have attempted to do is draw parallels between the narrative tensions of an ancient and modern form. Much is made, for example, of the female characters in the myths, such as Queen Maeve and Grainne, as forerunners of the manipulative and often deadly femmes fatales of crime fiction.
  It’s also true that narrative fulcrums such as greed, sex and the lust for power are timeless, as most of the stories here confirm.
  Arlene Hunt’s ‘Sliabh Ban’ is a modern take on the Queen Maeve story, in which revenge plays a considerable part in motivating the main character, whose husband has not only run off with a younger woman, but taken her prize racehorse with him. Hunt’s story is perfectly pitched between myth and modern story, particularly in terms of the tragic ending.
  On the other hand, Adrian McKinty’s story ‘Diarmuid and Grainne’ makes few concessions to the myth that inspired it. While acknowledging the elopement element of the myth, it is to all intents and purposes a hard-nosed tale of an undercover cop on the Border between the Republic and Northern Ireland making a fatal error of judgment while investigating dissident Republicans. Gritty and brutal, it belongs in the category of contemporary story, and shies clear of indulging the mythological aspects.
  John McAllister’s ‘Bog Man’, on the other hand, reverses McKinty’s approach almost entirely: his protagonist is Tarlóir, an enforcer of the peace who goes up against the Morrigan clan in the years immediately following the arrival of St Patrick. McAllister drenches his tale with ghosts, gods and the superstitions of pre-Christian Ireland. In effect, McAllister frames the ancient tale with the modern concept of the police procedural. Where McKinty takes the myth and looks forward, McAllister takes the contemporary form and looks back. Both are equally persuasive.
  Less persuasive in terms of style is Neville Thompson’s ‘Children of Gear’, a riff on the ‘Children of Lir’ story. Thompson sets his story in modern Dublin, yet uses the ancient names for his characters in a tale of a family lost to heroin. The net result is that the story never allows the reader to accept the story as fully myth or modern crime story, but that unsettling aspect contributes to the fact that Thompson’s forceful and unadorned reworking of the myth is a haunting one.
  Some stories have only a tenuous connection to Irish mythology and legend - John Grant’s ‘The Life Business’, for example, offers a couple of glancing references to St Patrick in what is otherwise a compelling coming-of-age tale. Others, such as Ken Bruen’s ‘She Wails Through the Fair’, which takes the myth of the banshee for its inspiration, are entirely suffused with by the story’s inspiration.
  Two stories, both police procedurals, are faithful to the mythology to an almost simplistic degree, yet both are the most successful at drawing out the timelessness of the myths. Brian McGilloway’s ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ and Garry Kilworth’s ‘Hats Off to Mary’ seem to skim the surface of the source material: entirely contemporary, they both convey the apparent simplicities of the mythological narratives, while also sketching in the often crude motivations that lie beneath what we often simply skim ourselves when rereading mythology.
  REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED doesn’t always reach the standards set by its audacious concept. By its very nature, and the nature of the material from which the stories take their inspiration, the tone is uneven, with some stories trading in black humour, others in irreverent revisionism, and some striving too hard to locate what is essentially a prehistorical morality in a contemporary setting.
  That said, the collection is for the most part a vibrant reimagining of a body of literature that is in danger of being preserved in the literary equivalent of aspic. It is at worst a long overdue shot in the arm for Irish myths and legends, and deserves to be taken seriously as a courageous attempt to revitalise a tradition that is in danger of being smothered in academic dust. - Declan Burke

  Meanwhile, here’s a link to a piece on REQUIEMS I had published in the Irish Times last month.

  Lately I have been mostly reading: MY FRIEND JESUS CHRIST by Lars Husum, ORCHID BLUE by Eoin McNamee, SPIES OF THE BALKANS by Alan Furst, BAD INTENTIONS by Karin Fossum and FALLING SLOWLY by Robert Fannin.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Irish Times’ ‘Crime Beat’

The Irish Times continued its ‘Crime Beat’ round-up of recent crime fiction titles yesterday, with yours truly casting a cold-ish eye over new offerings. To wit:

There’s more to Scandinavian crime fiction than Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. THE SNOWMAN (Harvill Secker, £12.99, pb), the seventh in Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series to be translated into English, finds the laconic police inspector Hole investigating what appears to be the work of a serial killer who targets women, whose deaths are marked by the mysterious appearance of a snowman. Hole’s hard-bitten, hard-drinking and self-loathing mannerisms are the very stuff of stock characterisation, but Nesbø is fully aware of the genre’s conventions and is most enjoyably readable when subverting them. Needle-sharp dialogue and a vividly detailed depiction of Oslo and its hinterlands are bonuses, as is Hole’s rueful awareness of his limitations.
  Anne Zouroudi’s THE LADY OF SORROWS (Bloomsbury Publishing, £12.99, pb) is the fourth novel to feature Hermes Diaktoros, aka ‘the Fat Man’, a gentleman detective with apparently limitless resources. Set in Greece some decades ago, the novel finds Hermes investigating the famous ikon of Kalmos, which may or may not be a fake, depending on whether one’s religious faith can be measured in drachmae. Fans of more hardboiled fare might be disappointed by the lack of blood and gore; Diaktoros is a detective very much in the vein of Miss Marple, and tone and pace are equally gentle. Where Zouroudi scores, however, is in her lovingly detailed descriptions of Greek island landscapes.
  The Roman detective Falco returns in Lindsey Davis’s NEMESIS(Century, £18.99, hb), the twentieth in a series that turns a sardonic eye on the foibles of ancient Rome. Falco’s old foe Anacrites, a Praetorium spy, plays the foil here, as Falco investigates a series of murders connected to a gang of freed slaves. As always, Davis’s cutting wit and Chandleresque observations are as much a pleasure as the page-turning quality of the tale, as she blows the dust off historical Rome with considerable glee. Also published by Century is FALCO: THE OFFICIAL COMPANION (£19.99, hb), in which Davis fleshes out the backdrop to each of the Falco novels.
  From historical Rome to mythical Ireland: REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED (Morrigan Books, £8.99, pb), edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, is a compilation of modern crime stories derived from Irish myth and legend. Queen Mhaca (Arlene Hunt and Stuart Neville), the Banshee (Ken Bruen), the Children of Lir (Neville Thompson) and Cuchulainn (Tony Black) are among the legends mined for inspiration in a collection that is uneven in tone but never less than challenging in its ability to draw parallels between contemporary criminality and its pre-historical origins. Adrian McKinty’s ‘Diarmuid and Grainne’ and Brian McGilloway’s ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ are the pick of the bunch.
  Another unusual Irish offering comes from Robert Fannin, whose FALLING SLOWLY (Hachette Ireland, £12.99, pb) is a Kafkaesque tale set in Bristol. Devastated when he arrives home one lunchtime to discover that his girlfriend has committed suicide, Desmond Doyle is further shocked to learn that Detective Inspector Harry Kneebone is determined to prove that Doyle was responsible for her murder. As his life starts to fall apart, and Doyle ‘falls slowly’ in a downward spiral, he begins to question his own sanity - and whether he is, in fact, his girlfriend’s killer. A tautly plotted tale, this quickly belies its languid pace and philosophical musings to become a compelling, cerebral thriller.
  In THE WINGS OF THE SPHINX (Mantle, £14.99, pb), Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano negotiates the labyrinthine social strata of Sicily as he pursues the killer of a young woman who can only be identified by a butterfly tattoo, the ‘sphinx’ of the title. Montalbano’s 11th outing has some of the qualities of a soap opera, as the tribulations of the inspector’s love life are as integral to the narrative as his professional duties, during which he uncovers human trafficking into Sicily conducted by a rather surprising cabal. Deftly plotted but sedately paced, the story suffers from a lack of urgency, particularly as the most terrifying danger the inspector encounters is the threat of his favourite restaurant having to go without fresh fish for the duration.
  John Grisham’s latest offering, THEODORE BOONE (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99, hb), is yet another legal thriller from the bestselling master of the courtroom drama, but the twist here is that the eponymous hero is a 13-year-old ‘lawyer’. The precocious offspring of two lawyer parents, Theodore ‘represents’ his peers in legal issues - for example, talking his best friend April through the legalities of her parents’ divorce. When he is approached by a fellow teenager with an insight into a murder case currently being tried, however, Theodore quickly finds himself out of his depth. Reminiscent at times of To Kill a Mockingbird in the way it offers a child’s-eye view of the legal niceties of the adult world, the novel has a direct, unaffected tone that gives Theodore’s plight an unexpectedly poignant twist. By the same token, the plot’s lack of conflict - Theodore is universally admired by young and old, for example - makes for a frustratingly simplistic narrative.
  Far more complex and challenging is Maureen Gibbon’s THIEF (Atlantic Books, £12.99, hb), in which Suzanne, a teacher who was raped as a 16-year-old, strikes up a relationship with Alpha Breville, a convict serving prison time for rape. Gibbon, who was herself raped as a teenager, offers no simple solutions to the scenario she devises for Suzanne: THIEF does not deliver the polemic, panacea or ersatz catharsis of the conventional crime novel. It is, however, a fascinating insight into one woman’s journey to come to terms with an horrific crime many years after the event. Despite its quietly elegiac tone, and Gibbon’s frequent philosophical digressions, THIEF is a riveting page-turner that is as uplifting as it is harrowing. - Declan Burke

  This article first appeared in The Irish Times

Myth This One At Your Peril

Yours truly had a piece in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago about REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, a collection of contemporary crime stories based on Irish myths and mythology. The launch of said tome, which is co-edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, takes place this coming Thursday, June 10th, at No Alibis in Belfast, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch of Irish crime fiction anthology, REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, on Thursday 10th June at 6:30PM.
  Along with co-editor Gerard Brennan (of Crime Scene NI fame), we’re expecting appearances from the following contributors: Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, T.A. Moore, Tony Bailie, John McAllister and Garbhan Downey, so this is sure to be an evening to remember.
  Book your spot now by emailing David (david@noalibis.com), or calling the shop on 9031 9607.

  Lately I have been mostly reading: THE LAST CHILD by John Hart, THE HOLY THIEF by William Ryan, ISLAND UNDER THE SEA by Isabel Allende, THE LADY OF SORROWS by Anne Zouroudi, THE PLEASURE SEEKERS by Tishani Doshi, NEMESIS by Lindsey Davis, and THEODORE BOONE by John Grisham.

Hit And Myth

Just how timeless, exactly, are the themes of noir? That’s a question implicitly explored by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, co-editors of REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED: IRISH CRIME, IRISH MYTHS, a collection of short crime stories which draws on Irish mythology for inspiration, and features Ken Bruen, Arlene Hunt, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, Garbhan Downey and Sam Millar, among others. The book gets an outing in the Arts pages of today’s Irish Times, with the intro kicking off thusly:

Star-crossed lovers on the lam. It could be Red and Mumsie in Geoffrey Homes’ BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH; Doc and Carol in Jim Thompson’s THE GETAWAY , maybe Bowie and Keechie in Edward Anderson’s THIEVES LIKE US, or any number of classic noir tales.
  But Diarmuid and Grainne?
  REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED: IRISH CRIME, IRISH MYTHS is a compilation of contemporary short crime stories based on Irish myths and legends.
  “There are many parallels between contemporary crime tales and Irish mythology,” says Gerard Brennan, who is co-editor of the collection, along with Mike Stone.
  “Consider one of the most powerful icons of crime fiction: the femme fatale. Seductive, irresistible and deadly . . . this description hangs well on the great queen and Irish war deity, Morrigan, who amongst her many adventures steals from the mighty Cúchulainn, offers him her love, and when spurned, engineers his death.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Books With Backbone

The Irish crew mightn’t have done so well in the Edgars this year - odd, really, given that there’s usually an Irish presence, and that 2009 was such a fecund year for Irish crime writing - but they’ve been doing okay in other award ceremonies. Stuart Neville, as you might have heard, won the best Mystery / Thriller section in the recent LA Book of the Year awards for THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST (aka THE TWELVE), and he also nabbed the Best Novel: New Voice gong in the Spinetingler Awards. Meanwhile, and staying with the Spinetinglers, Adrian McKinty got the nod for Best Novel: Rising Star Category for FIFTY GRAND, which is belated recognition for what was one of the best novels of last year, in my rarely humble opinion.
  Incidentally, both McKinty and Neville contribute to the forthcoming compilation of crime short stories based on Irish myths, REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, which promises to be one of the most intriguing collections of the year.
  Anyway, what makes the Spinetingler a pretty special award, I think, is that it’s voted for by the reading public, and a public that’s steeped in the genre to what is very probably an unprecedented degree. All of that takes serious co-ordination, of course, which translates into a lot of blood, sweat and (possibly) tears, all from a team - Sandra Ruttan, Jack Getze, Brian Lindemuth, the Nerd of Noir, and Keith Rawson - that work year-round to promote crime fiction of all stripes. Quoth the Spinetingler team on this year’s award:

This year’s turnout was greater then last years with a total of 4812 votes cast. That’s a huge increase from last year and we’ve seen growth every year. I think I speak for all of us here at Spinetingler when I say we’re glad to see more people participate in them and we have room for a lot more. We hope you enjoyed the awards as much as we did pulling them together. Hopefully at least one of the nominees made you curious enough to check it out because for us that’s the greatest reward. You all did this. And you did something good.

  No, Spinetingler folks, you did all this. And you did something good. Give yourselves a big fat slap on the back.