“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sheila Lowe

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?
It’s a tossup between THE CONCRETE BLONDE (Connelly) and DEMOLITION ANGEL (Crais). Who could have come up with a better opening line than in THE CONCRETE BLONDE: The house in Silverlake was dark, its windows as empty as a dead man’s eyes. Gives me shivers every time I read it. And the story holds up all the way through, too.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I suppose it’s cheating a bit, but the one that comes to mind is Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s girl chum. I’d love to have gone to Hogwarts. As I was born in England, I’m strongly attracted to the scenery and Hermione is just the kind of little knowitall smartass that I’m afraid I was. Expecto Patronum!

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Can’t say I feel a bit guilty, as when I take some time out to read, I believe I’ve earned it: John Sandford, Michael Connelly, Tess Gerritsen, Deborah Crombie, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Crais, Jonathan Kellerman, and so on, and so on ...

Most satisfying writing moment?
Ripping open the carton of finished books and seeing the reality—a major publisher believed my books are good enough to publish!!! Nothing like that feeling. Or does that count as a writing moment? How about having written a scene and just knowing it works.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
Sadly, I haven’t the foggiest—would you recommend one for me to begin my education?

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ditto above, I’m ashamed to say.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: having to handle promo and sales numbers. Best: seeing my characters come to life on the printed page and readers emailing that they just had to stay up all night to finish the book(s).

The pitch for your next book is …?
LAST WRITES, coming out July 6th: What does an old stuffed bunny have to do with a fundamentalist religious cult and a forensic handwriting expert? … Erin Powers is a member of a religious sect, living in an isolated compound called the Ark. Now her husband and young child have disappeared, leaving behind a cryptic note with a terrifying message. In desperation, Erin seeks help from her estranged sister, Kelly Brennan, who in turn enlists the aid of forensic handwriting expert Claudia Rose. Claudia seizes on an unexpected opportunity to use her special skills and becomes one of the few outsiders ever to be invited inside the cult compound. With time fast running out, Claudia must uncover the truth about Kelly’s missing niece before the prophecy of a secret ancient parchment can be fulfilled and a child’s life is written off for good …

Who are you reading right now?
Just finished Michael Palmer’s SECOND OPINION and am about to dive into John Sandford’s latest ‘Prey’ novel (he is my top favourite author). Sandford’s characters are all so real, the dialogue so true to life, I always look forward to spending time with them.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Too tough a choice, I guess I’d have to kill myself … Or would I really? It’s a mystery …

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’m going to cheat and pick three words that I like best from reader mail: Evocative, suspenseful, intelligent.

Sheila Lowe’s LAST WRITES is published by Signet Books.

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: It's Alive

Nice buzz. Jon gets in touch to say that CRIME ALWAYS PAYS has finally gone live on Kindle, which was very decent of him. The good news is that it’s available at a knock-down, recession-busting $1.25, which means that I only have to offer one-and-a-quarter bangs per buck before I’m ahead of the curve on value for money. Modest though I may be on occasion, I think I can cover that …
  At this point I’d like to take the opportunity to not-so-gently remind you of what this blog’s good friend Dana King had to say about CRIME ALWAYS PAYS over at the New Mystery Reader recently. To wit:

“Few books in recent memory have been as much fun to read as Declan Burke’s THE BIG O. The sequel, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, is a worthy successor … The end result is a little like what might be expected if Elmore Leonard wrote from an outline by Carl Hiaasen … [It’s] about the flow, the feel, the dialog, the interactions among characters, not knowing who’s working with—or against—who, the feeling that anything might happen at any moment. It’s as close to watching an action movie as a reading experience can be.”

  And fellow scribe Rafe McGregor was kind enough to pen this blush-making verdict:

“I’ve just finished the MS of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, Declan Burke’s sequel to the much-praised THE BIG O. Reading the new novel was as uplifting as it was soul-destroying ... Uplifting because CRIME ALWAYS PAYS is excellent, even better than THE BIG O. It has a great plot, cool characters, and there isn’t a single word wasted. This is really fine writing, masterful to the point where if I’d received the MS anonymously, I’d have assumed it came from one of the big bestsellers like Connelly, Crais, Rankin, or Child.”

  All of which, as you can probably imagine, is very gratifying indeed. By the way, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS comes with ‘simultaneous device usage – unlimited’, which may or may not mean that it’s also available in other formats … Anyone have any ideas? I’m a total newbie here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Ellen McCarthy

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?
John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING is so horribly great. Some people find it too graphic but I think it is crafted beautifully while looking at the extremes of human depravity. I’m glad it’s fiction!
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Miss Marple. I want to live in a picture perfect cottage in St Mary Meade and meddle in everyone’s life.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
P.D. James. Her quiet insular settings are captivating whether it’s an isolated monastery or a remote Cornish island retreat. Her characterisation and prose are comforting, timeless and old worldly.
Most satisfying writing moment?
My most satisfying writing moment to date was when I won the short story competition ‘Do The Write Thing,’ with Poolbeg Press in conjunction with RTE’s ‘Seoige’. It wasn’t the Edgar but it was the moment my writing came out of the back room and on to the bookshelves.
The best Irish crime novel is…?
LOST SOULS by Michael Collins. It is part police procedural with a deep psychological feel. It is beautifully written, taking an unforgiving look at the decline of a small town and its inhabitants when poverty strikes.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
BLACK SHEEP by Arlene Hunt. I think the director could really focus on the Quinn brothers and the legacy of family and bad decisions.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing about being a writer is the fear and insecurity. Every time I send something out I’m shaking with nerves. The best thing about being a writer is getting positive reviews from readers.
The pitch for your next book is …?
A husband dies suddenly, but who was he? His work colleagues claim they never met him and nobody seems to know his real name. Now some stranger is prompting his wife towards a past he obviously didn’t want her to know. Was this person responsible for his death and where will it all lead her?
Who are you reading right now?
I’m reading Robert Crais’ L.A. REQUIEM. I fell for the title. The book is proving to be just as good.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
That’s an impossible question. It’s like saying I’ll give you legs but you can either stand or walk.
The best three words to describe your own writing are …?
Vivid, tense, absorbing.

Ellen McCarthy’s novel GUILT RIDDEN is published by Poolbeg Crimson

Your Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting ...

Herewith be an interview with Arlene Hunt (right; pic stolen from CSNI without so much as a by-your-leave) conducted by yours truly on the occasion of the publication of her latest tome, UNDERTOW. Now read on …

The crime novel is a fiction that is a truth for our times, and it’s certainly true that Arlene Hunt’s novels are nothing if not timely. Her last offering, MISSING PRESUMED DEAD, generated controversy for its subject matter when it appeared shortly after Maddy McCann went missing. That was a coincidence, of course, but it’s a poignant example of the symbiotic relationship between crime fiction and the world it describes.
  “I wrote of a child disappearing in 1980,” Arlene says, “and reappearing almost thirty years later – gun in hand. But because I used a toddler, and she happened to be female and blonde, some people automatically thought, ‘Oh, Maddy McCann’. In fact, I had written the first chapter – which dealt with a toddler disappearing on a beach – many months before that poor child ever visited Portugal. I think people like to look for controversy where none exists.”
  Her latest offering, UNDERTOW, published by Hachette Ireland, also digs into the seamy underbelly of modern Ireland.
  “The book opens with some low-lives smuggling vulnerable women into Ireland,” she says, “one of whom is coldly dispatched when she is deemed too sick to be of any use. We also meet Stacy, a heavily pregnant teenager who hires Sarah and John, my intrepid detectives, to find her boyfriend Orie, little realizing that he is connected with people-smuggling and has very good reasons to have dropped below the radar …”
  UNDERTOW is the fourth novel to feature ‘QuicK Investigations’, a Dublin-based private investigation bureau run by Sarah Kenny and John Quigley, a pleasingly normal pair of detectives who bicker, fall out and flirt – even if all the flirting comes from John’s side. I’m showing my age, but the first thing that springs to mind is the old Bruce Willis / Cybill Shepherd TV show, Moonlighting …
  “You’re not the only one!” Arlene laughs. “It’s not intentional, I promise. I think with John being something of a charming smart-arse and Sarah his relative straight-man, it’s unavoidable that people draw comparisons. Plus, there is the unmistakable whiff of attraction in the air. John has more hair than David (Bruce Willis) though. And Sarah would never wear shoulder pads.”
  Born in Wicklow, and currently living in Dublin, Arlene is nonetheless far more influenced by American writers than their Irish or even European counterparts.
  “I’m an American crime junkie and have been for years and years. Robert Crais, James Lee Burke, Denis Lehane, James Ellroy and my personal favourite, Joseph Wambaugh, are just some of the gentlemen I like to spend an afternoon with. Wambaugh writes the sort of book that stays with you for a long time after. THE GLITTER DOME and THE CHOIRBOYS moved me to tears and yet also had me howling with laughter.”
  So why is it that Irish crime writers tend to look to the States for inspiration?
  “Perhaps because they ‘do’ crime so well, and we can really relate to the great characters they somehow manage to create. I think we ‘get’ American drama better than we get other countries. Some of my earliest memories are watching The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O and Kojak with my foster-mother, Kitty. We couldn’t wait for Hill Street Blues to start every week. ‘Book ‘em Danno!’ ‘Who loves ya baby?’ ‘Let’s be careful out there’ … we just never tired of it. These days The Wire and The Shield have tickled my fancy tremendously. I adore Vic Mackey, even though he’s as crooked as a country mile. He is such a terrific character, crooked yet loyal, fierce, soft, vicious, hard, tormented and conflicted.”
  Arlene Hunt is something of a contradiction herself. Young, attractive and impeccably dressed, you’d probably peg her for a chick-lit scribe rather than a ‘crime junkie’ if she told you she’s a writer. So how come she’s poking around in the gory entrails of Irish crime and violence?
  “Ha, I’m blushing now … I’m not really sure what to say about that! I don’t know, people can be anything on the surface, be it attractive, sunny and charming or gruff and shy, but it makes little or no difference to the internal rumblings of that person. It’s funny, but I can be quite cheerfully plotting a murder scene while doing the most mundane things, like shopping in Superquinn, trimming the dog’s wretched nails or when I’m out running. Actually, I think of murder a lot when I run. So if you see me pootling along somewhere with serene smile in place, I’m probably mentally hacking someone to little pieces or super-gluing a character’s nostrils closed ...”
  In American crime writing, the setting of a particular city is very important to the story. How big a ‘character’ is Dublin in Arlene Hunt’s novels?
  “A pretty big one. Dublin is my home. It’s where I’m at my most comfortable, so it was important for John and Sarah – especially for Sarah – to be city-dwellers too. I grew up in Wicklow, I lived in Spain, but Dublin is where I feel happiest. It adopted me as easily as I allowed myself to be adopted. I was born in Clontarf, where Sarah lives for much of the books, and my husband and I frequent Wexford Street a lot where ‘QuicK Investigations’ keep their office. I like that my real and fictional worlds conflate and criss-cross.”
  Finally, there’s a lot of sexual tension between Sarah and John. Will they or won’t they?
  “Hah, you’ll have to wait and see …!”

Arlene Hunt’s UNDERTOW is published by Hachette Ireland.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE REAPERS by John Connolly

All series authors struggle to keep the franchise fresh, with varying results. Some age their characters in real time, some slow the aging process. Some stop it. Books are written out of sequence, telling of events that took place before already released novels. The past year has seen two top-list authors shift focus to their series’ regular sidekick. Last year brought Robert Crais’ award-winning THE WATCHMAN, a Joe Pike story with Elvis Cole in support. This summer unveils John Connolly’s THE REAPERS, featuring Charlie Parker’s friends and abettors Louis and Angel as protagonists; it should be no less successful.
  The story begins by looking back to Louis’ father, burned alive by racists in a redneck town. Nightmares bring the Burning Man to Louis with unnerving frequency, even now that he has retired from THE REAPERS, an elite team of professional killers. A former colleague turned nemesis has returned for vengeance on those he feels wronged him, and Louis and his partner Angel must take action to save themselves and those close to them, no matter how extreme the action may be.
  Louis and Angel will seem more sympathetic to those who have read other Connolly books, where their efforts to do good with their lethal skills show their desire to turn away from Louis’ previous career. Parker’s eyes and troubled sensitivities see how similar their demons are to his and leavens his judgment. Here the darkness inside their personal motivations is more fully explored—especially Louis’—with less benign results.
Connolly keeps THE REAPERS from becoming a nihilistic festival of destruction by counterbalancing them against another bit player from previous episodes, Willie Brew. Sixty, a Vietnam veteran, Willie runs a small auto shop with his friend Arno that operates partly as a front for Louis’ money. Willie has no involvement in Louis’ other interests, their relationship is as deep as Willie’s acknowledgement that Louis bailed him out when he was in danger of losing the shop in a divorce. Willie knows Louis is bad news, just not how bad. He respects Louis for helping him and asking little in return, but knows nothing is free.
  Willie does what he thinks is right, even when he doesn’t want to. He becomes involved in Louis’ plight because he feels an obligation to someone who has been good to him, despite the conflicts what he might have to do to fulfil his self-imposed obligation. Louis kills because it’s what he does; his developing conscience must accommodate killing a relatively innocent man because of a potential future threat, or as collateral damage, because he is too close to an immediate threat, an egg in Louis’s omelette of survival. Willie’s conscience has no such peace. He must choose between possibly killing men who mean him no harm, or abandoning a man who would kill for him. He is swept with increasing rapidity into the maelstrom of Louis’ danger in an effort to return a favour. No good deed goes unpunished in Connolly’s world.
  The second half of THE REAPERS is an extended gunfight on multiple fronts. The ending unfolds through the eyes of several participants, none of whom knows all of what is going on, giving the reader glimpses into the minds and hearts of all. Some bad guys have been swept up almost as innocently as Willie; some of the good guys are there only to kick ass. Connolly’s palette consists of shades of gray that exist only in the mind; some darker, some lighter, with no bright line of separation.
  He pulls it off with elegiac and poetic prose worthy of James Lee Burke. THE REAPERS never disintegrates into operatic carnage. The pace of the writing remains introspective throughout, denying the conventional wisdom of shorter, choppier, sentences to convey action and imply tension. Connolly has all the tension he needs in the dark world his language creates. Humour is plentiful; the usual banter between Louis and Angel lightens the mood when needed while showing the bond between them, two early-middle-aged gay men nagging each other like an old married couple, but with the coarse humour men reserve for their friends. Not the easiest thing to pull off, it’s highly effective when handled by someone with Connolly’s talent.
  Beneath the carnage, THE REAPERS is about commitment and obligation. Angel knows Louis’ plan is based on incomplete information. He goes along because he goes where Louis goes, unconditionally, no matter how much he bitches about it, and he knows their original team is there for the money; only he will look out for Louis. Willie Brew will risk his life for a man he barely knows and fears more than he respects because Louis has been good to him, and he knows Louis would do the same for him, even if their motivations would be completely different. Parker arrives late and makes up for lost time by diving in without any plan at all, because Louis and Angel have been there for him without asking why, or how their contribution fits.
  These qualities are juxtaposed against the selfishness of their antagonists, and contrasted to the good-soldier innocence of some of their opponents, to create a book that is much greater than the sum of its parts, and its parts create a substantial sum. THE REAPERS allows Connolly to look at his characters from outside of their own perspectives and see them as other see them. The supernatural elements that work so well in his other books (especially THE BLACK ANGEL) aren’t needed here; frank examination of good and bad, how they overlap, and how each can be used in the service of the other fills the spaces between the lines. THE REAPERS can be read as one hell of a thriller, but those who read it for that purpose alone are cheating themselves. – Dana King

This review was first published at the New Mystery Reader

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 2,097: Michael Haskins

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?
James Lee Burke’s IN THE ELECTRIC MIST WITH CONFEDERATE DEAD.
What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Jerry Healy.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Oh boy, there’s more than one! I don’t know if it would be beginning the first page, or ending the last page. Maybe being happy with what I’ve written when I shut down the computer at the end of the day.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
I’ve read some good Irish crime novels, but the one that impressed me, and this ain’t suckin’ up, folks, is THE BIG O. Knocked the socks off me!
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Ken Bruen’s THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst, being stuck at the end of a good paragraph with a blank mind; best, rereading a chapter I’ve finished and realizing it does everything I wanted it to.
The pitch for your next book is …?
CHASIN’ THE WIND is just coming out, so, for that I’d say corruption at the highest levels of government vs justice in the hands of some eclectic Key West characters.
FREE RANGE INSTITUTION, which I am finishing up now, is about drugs and corruption in Key West City government, the DEA, and how it brings murder and mayhem to the tropics.
Who are you reading right now?
I read a few books at a time, it kind of frees my over-active mind. I just finished Jimmy Breslin’s new non-fiction book, THE GOOD RAT. I am rereading Bob Morris’ JAMAICA ME DEAD, another Florida writer, and Christa Faust’s MONEY SHOT.
God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
The gates of Hell, which would mean I had lived a life of sin, but maybe one worth reading about.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Key West eccentric.

Michael Haskins’ CHASIN’ THE WIND will be published on March 19.