“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Sarah Webb

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?
HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh. OK, it’s not your average crime novel, the spy is an eleven-year-old girl who lives in New York and spies on her neighbours, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time. There’s revenge, punishment, heartbreak and retribution. I’d highly recommend it to any reader, young or not so young.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
That’s a great question, Declan. In a lot of the books I adore, terrible things happen to the heroine - Alice, Rachel (in RACHEL’S HOLIDAY by Marian Keyes), Benny (CIRCLE OF FRIENDS by Maeve Binchy), Katniss (HUNGER GAMES), so I’ll say Posy in BALLET SHOES as I wanted to be a ballerina as a child. (Sorry, not very crime-y or kickass I know!)

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I spend a lot of time reading books for children and teenagers for work and enjoyment, so reading adult fiction is my guilty pleasure. I love good popular fiction by Marian Keyes or Katie Fforde. On the crime side, I used to be a huge Patricia Cornwell fan in the early days, and I’ve just started THE PLAYDATE by Louise Miller, a chilling psychological thriller about a child who goes missing which is excellent so far.

Most satisfying writing moment?
A good day at the desk, getting my 2,000 words done, that’s what I love. For me, that’s the real joy of a writing life.

The best Irish crime novel is …?
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT by Derek Landy. Yes, it’s fantasy-thriller-crime, yes, it has a skeleton detective, but it’s hilarious, clever and very entertaining. (If I had to pick a book for adults, it would be John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING, which unleashed the brilliant character that is Charlie Parker)

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst - the doubt and the insecurity. You are only as good as your last book. Best - the licence to create, and the amazing people you meet - other writers, readers, booksellers, publishers.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Wanted: Two girls to time-share one amazing dress, guaranteed to change your life. All enquiries - ask inside. (And no, they don’t get murdered ‘inside’, it’s popular fiction!) Julia Schuster, floundering amidst family troubles and problem drinking; Arietty Pilgrim, lonely and insecure; Pandora Schuster, the sister from hell: can they ever be friends? THE SHOESTRING CLUB, one extraordinary dress, one life-altering friendship.

Who are you reading right now?
BLACK HEART BLUE, a remarkable book by Louisa Reid, part horror story, part mystery, part coming of age novel. It will be published in May and it’s utterly brilliant. And THE PLAYDATE (see above). I tend to have a couple of books on the go at the same time.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
They are so closely linked, but I’d have to say read. Life wouldn’t be worth living without reading every day, it keeps me sane.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Full of potential.

Sarah Webb’s THE SHOESTRING CLUB is published by Pan Macmillan.

Good Guys: No Longer Finishing Last, Apparently

It would take a better man than yours truly not to be even slightly disappointed by the events which transpired at the Concert Hall in the RDS last night. For lo! It came to pass that BLOODLAND by Alan Glynn (right) scooped the Ireland AM Crime Fiction gong at the Irish Book Awards, in the process putting to the sword his fellow nominees Casey Hill, Jane Casey, William Ryan, Benjamin Black and your humble correspondent.
  Yes, it’s true that Team Liberties Press went along more in hope than expectation, but even so, it would have been nice to win. The good news is that Alan Glynn is one of life’s good guys; and while that really shouldn’t matter, it kind of does. The guy is a gentleman, in all senses of the word, and I was very pleased indeed to see him ascending the steps to pick up his award.
  Just as importantly, or more importantly at the moment, perhaps, BLOODLAND is a terrific novel, and a very worthy winner of the award. I reviewed said tome on these pages a couple of weeks ago; if you’ve yet to read it, I humbly suggest you do so as soon as your TBR list allows.
  Meanwhile, spare a thought for Jane Casey. She’s been shortlisted for the prize two years in a row now, and has left empty-handed on both occasions. Here’s hoping that next year will be her year …
  As for the evening itself, I had an absolutely smashing time. It was terrific, as always, to catch up with the likes of Alan and Jane, and Bill Ryan, and to meet Casey Hill - aka Melissa and Kevin Hill - for the first time. Arlene Hunt was there too, and Bob Johnston of the Gutter Bookshop; I met with Sarah Webb, and briefly got to congratulate Sarah Carey, whose THE REAL REBECCA won the Young Adult award; the inimitable Vanessa O’Loughlin of writing.ie was there; and the marvellous Margaret Daly, and Cormac Kinsella and Declan Heeney, valiant soldiers in the book-promotion business all. I also got to meet, very briefly, with one of my childhood heroes, Ronnie Whelan, formerly of Ireland and Liverpool FC - and when I say ‘meet’, I mean I barged up to him, grabbed his hand, and muttered something about being a huge fan when I was a kid. All very embarrassing, of course, moreso for Ronnie than myself, probably, but a real thrill all the same. They really don’t make them like Ronnie Whelan anymore.
  And then there was our own table, which was for the most part taken up by the Team Liberties, including Caroline Lambe, Alice Dawson, Daniel Bolger and publisher Sean O’Keefe. The craic, as they say, was only mighty, and great fun was had by all, and I was delighted that they all turned up mob-handed to lend their support and enjoy the night in their own right. It was a pity we couldn’t take away an award to reward their faith and commitment to ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, but then, you can’t have everything, and we did get tiramisu, and a very strong rumour that AZC will be published in India in the near future. So these things do even out in the end.
  So there you have it. The heartiest of warm congratulations to Alan Glynn on his well deserved win last night, and upward and onward for the rest of us. There is, after all, next year to look forward to.
  Meanwhile, here’s a wee taste of what Ronnie Whelan was capable of, with THAT goal against Russia at Euro ’88. Roll it there, Collette …

Happy Birthday-Ish, Holden Caulfield

I had a piece in the Irish Times during the week, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the publication of JD Salinger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE, which featured contributions from authors Sarah Webb, Ed O’Loughlin, Eoin McNamee and Belinda McKeon. It opened up a lot like this:

“If you really want to know about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap …” - J.D. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’

Routinely hailed as ‘the great American novel’, J.D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ offers a story that is on the face of it modest in ambition and scale. First published on July 16th, 1951, it follows the disaffected Holden Caulfield on his perambulations around New York city late in December, 1949, in the wake of his expulsion from an upmarket prep school. Intended by Salinger for an adult readership, Holden’s intensely first-person tale of his experiences amid the snobs and ‘phoneys’ of his social set has fired the imagination of generations of adolescents ever since.
  “God, I loved that book,” says Sarah Webb, herself an author of young adult novels, and who first read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ at the age of 15. “I read it in one all-night sitting, gobbling up every page. The next night I turned back to Chapter 1 and started all over again. I remember slowing down towards the end, distraught to be coming to the end. I wanted the reading experience to last forever.”
  Holden Morrisey Caulfield first appeared in the short story ‘I’m Crazy’, which was published in Colliers in 1945 (a previous version had been accepted in 1941 by The New Yorker, but not published, as it was thought too bleak in tone). A reworked version of ‘I’m Crazy’ would eventually provide the material for the first chapter of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, establishing Caulfield’s expulsion from Pencey Prep, and also the unfussy, stream-of-consciousness first-person narrative that seems to bypass the critical faculties to speak directly to the teenage heart.
  The novel sells roughly 250,000 copies per year, with total sales topping 65 million …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Sunday Review

One of these kids has to be wrong, and for once I’m hoping it’s Myles McWeeney. Reviewing the new Declan Hughes novel, ALL THE DEAD VOICES, in the Irish Independent, McWeeney says: “This is the fourth Ed Loy mystery and Declan Hughes continues to up the Irish noir ante with this assured and gory examination of the relationship between IRA splinter groups and crime in Dublin.”
  Nice. But then Claire Kilroy, in the Irish Times, has this: “Hughes’s four previous Loy novels were characterised by a strain of high Gothic which centred around the Big House, the notion of fate, and of corrupted bloodlines … Loy is a winning combination of caustic cynicism and romantic idealism, an adept at Beckettian failing better … Hughes gives the reader an ending which confounds the expectations of the genre, and which is all the more satisfying for it.”
  So – is ALL THE DEAD VOICES the fourth or fifth Ed Loy novel? Does Claire Kilroy know something we don’t know? And if so, how come Squire Hughes is holding out on us? Was it something we said? Something we didn’t say? Questions, questions …
  Anyhoos, upward and onward to the new Derek Landy, THE FACELESS ONES, being the third in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, which Sarah Webb in the Irish Independent likes a lot. To wit: “It’s non-stop action from the first page on … Landy’s dialogue crackles with authenticity and wit … If you want to keep your youngster reading, look no further. It’s Landy to the rescue again.”
  Nice. Over at RTE, Tara Loughrey-Grant is loving Twenty Major’s second novel, ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER: “As shockingly entertaining as his debut novel was, ABSINTHE is a better read. The plot is tighter, more mature with added suspense keeping the reader glued until the very last page. Twenty brings Barcelona to live, in full 3D colour, enabling the reader to become part of his hedonistic, dysfunctional team.”
  Lovely. Meanwhile, Henry Sutton at the Daily Mirror is bigging up Gene Kerrigan’s rather marvellous DARK TIMES IN THE CITY thusly: “The dark side of Dublin is the star in this brilliantly written slice of Irish noir, featuring a good man who gets himself on the wrong side of a very bad lot.”
  Gorgeous. Last word this week goes to the inimitable Glenn Harper over at International Noir, who’s been perusing the latest from The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman: “Bateman’s last novel, ORPHEUS RISING, was magic realism rather than crime fiction, and in the new one, he has come back to crime with a comic vengeance … Good news, since MYSTERY MAN is the funniest crime novel since Bateman’s own DIVORCING JACK and CYCLE OF VIOLENCE.”
  Lovely jubbly.

Around The Web In 80 Seconds*

You lose some, you win some. Hot on the heels of Publishers Weekly dissing THE BIG O on the basis that it’s not as good as Elmore Leonard (oh, the infamy!) comes this dinky little treat courtesy of Amazon’s Listmania, titled “The Crime Writing Kings Of All Time (and a great new guy!)”. Yep, it’s lil’ ol’ EIGHT BALL BOOGIE nestling in there with Chandler, Hammett and Thompson, et al. Joelle Claire Barrios, you are officially our newest VBF …
  Staying on the subject of Elmore Leonard, Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD gets a nifty big-up from John Dugdale in tomorrow’s Sunday Times, under the heading “Eight new thrillers for holiday readers”. To wit:

“It’s the unlikely pairing of Elmore Leonard and James Joyce that seems to shape Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD (Serpent’s Tail £10.99), a pacey, violent caper that, like ULYSSES, runs from breakfast time to midnight on a single June day. Belfast gangster queen Bridget Callaghan wants Michael Forsythe dead for killing her fiancé, but when her daughter is abducted, Callaghan decides he’s the only man who can find her. As Forsythe hurtles around the city, McKinty vividly portrays its sleazy, still-menacing underbelly.”

  Hmmm, nice. Upward and onward to the Booker Prize nominations, and while the howls of anguish that greeted CHILD 44’s nomination have abated a tad, Philip Stone at The Bookseller has an interesting piece about the sales figures for the various nominees. Salman Rushdie’s THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE leads the way, having sold 15,433 copies before the nominations were announced, but four of the eleven nominees have sold 1,000 copies or less, with Michelle de Kretser’s THE LOST DOG selling a less-than-whopping 363 books. Now, anyone who has read James Patterson can vouch for the fact that big sales don’t always (koff) equate with quality, so those figures have nothing to say about whether or not the books are entitled to be considered as possible Booker winners. Still, it’d make you wonder about how in tune, or otherwise, the judging panel is with the reading public.
  Meanwhile, Boyd Tonkin at The Independent laments the novels that didn’t make the Booker long-list, among them David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER:

“I will miss several other notable absentees from the later Booker heats. David Park’s wise and moving novel of the search for reconciliation in post-Troubles Belfast, THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, should have caught the judges’ eye.”

  Finally, some groovy news for Eoin Colfer’s legion of fans, courtesy of Sarah Webb’s review of ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE TIME PARADOX in today’s Irish Independent:

“Colfer has certainly been busy. Next year his crime caper, HALF MOON INVESTIGATIONS, will be on television, courtesy of the BBC, pitched as Grange Hill for the Noughties. The film rights to the Artemis books have been sold to Miramax and Tribeca (Robert De Niro’s production company) and the film is in development.”

  And the hell of it all is, it couldn’t happen a nicer guy. Happy days.

* Providing you don’t actually click any of the links, of course