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

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?
IN A LONELY PLACE by Dorothy B. Hughes, which is my favourite crime novel of all time. I still marvel at the way she conveyed her main character’s narcissism and self-delusion while revealing the truth about him to readers, and how women end up prevailing and overcoming a stereotypical role of victimhood. I’ve read the book many times and it remains fresh and new to me with each revisiting.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
I had to think long and hard about this but I keep coming back to Valancy Stirling, the heroine of LM Montgomery’s THE BLUE CASTLE, who overcomes timidity and passivity through a fluke diagnosis and emerges as the mischievous, adventurous, idiosyncratic woman she was always meant to be (and ended up with the best man for her in the process.)

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Oliver Potzsch’s HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER series, which is unabashedly entertaining and fun, though I don’t feel terribly guilty about that.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When I finished the first short story that I was comfortable to send out for publication. Plots With Guns published it ten years ago.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
THE BLUE TANGO by Eoin McNamee, though ORCHID BLUE is also incredible.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
GRAVELAND by Alan Glynn.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: being in the zone, coming up with that sentence which sings. Worst: agonizing when I cannot write an opening paragraph after twenty tries.

The pitch for your next book is …?
I’m not sure yet!

Who are you reading right now?
I’m trying to catch up on the backlists of all the authors in TROUBLED DAUGHTERS. I’ve succeeded with some; others are way more prolific. So about to start BEDELIA by Vera Caspary.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Women with issues.

Sarah Weinman is the editor of TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES: STORIES FROM THE TRAILBLAZERS OF DOMESTIC SUSPENSE

Have Novel, Will Travel

FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES popped through the post-box the other day, said tome being a collection of essays on ‘Real Locations in Crime Fiction’ edited by Maxim Jakubowski and written by the likes of Barry Forshaw (Brighton, Edinburgh, Sweden and Venice), Sarah Weinman (New York and Washington DC), Peter Rozovsky (Iceland), John Harvey (Nottingham), Oline Cogdill (Florida), J. Kingston Pierce (San Francisco), Martin Edwards (Shropshire), David Stuart Davies (London), and Maxim himself on a selection of locations. It also - disclaimer alert - includes yours truly waffling on about Vincent Banville, Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes, and the crime stories they set in good ol’ durty Dubbalin town. To wit:

Whether it be the London of Sherlock Holmes or the Ystad of the Swedish Wallander, Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco or Donna Leon’s Venice, the settings chosen by crime fiction authors have helped those writers to bring their fictional investigators to life and to infuse their writing with a sense of danger and mystery. FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction’s greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work. Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city’s dark streets and hidden places. The book includes beautifully designed maps with all the major locations that have featured in a book or series of books - buildings, streets, bars, restaurants and locations of crimes and discoveries - allowing the reader to follow Inspector Morse’s footsteps through the college squares of Oxford or while away hours in a smoky Parisian cafe frequented by Inspector Maigret, for example. Aimed at the avid detective fan, the armchair tourist and the literary tourist alike, FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.

  You’ll appreciate that I’m biased, of course, but it’s a lovely, detailed and not entirely unfunky piece of work …

Who Follows The Followers?

An interesting tome hoves over the horizon, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and rejoicing in the title FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES. To wit:

Whether it be the London of Sherlock Holmes or the Ystad of the Swedish Wallander, Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco or Donna Leon’s Venice, the settings chosen by crime fiction authors have helped those writers to bring their fictional investigators to life and to infuse their writing with a sense of danger and mystery. FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction’s greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work. Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city’s dark streets and hidden places. The book includes beautifully designed maps with all the major locations that have featured in a book or series of books - buildings, streets, bars, restaurants and locations of crimes and discoveries - allowing the reader to follow Inspector Morse’s footsteps through the college squares of Oxford or while away hours in a smoky Parisian cafe frequented by Inspector Maigret, for example. Aimed at the avid detective fan, the armchair tourist and the literary tourist alike, FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.

  Maxim let yours truly loose on the fictional private eyes of Dublin, but don’t let that put you off. The intriguing line-up includes Barry Forshaw (Brighton, Edinburgh, Sweden and Venice), Sarah Weinman (New York and Washington DC), Peter Rozovsky (Iceland), John Harvey (Nottingham), Oline Cogdill (Florida), J. Kingston Pierce (San Francisco), Martin Edwards (Shropshire), David Stuart Davies (London), and Maxim himself on virtually every city in Christendom not already mentioned.
  The title is due in September, and already I’m dreading its arrival - the fear of not coming up to the mark has me quaking in the boots I bought specially for the occasion. For what it’s worth, though, the ‘Dublin’ entry concerns itself with the private eyes created by Vincent Banville, Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes, all of whom are terrific writers, and all of whom I quote liberally, so hopefully I can skate by on their talent.
  Incidentally, for those of you wondering where Benjamin Black comes into all of this, he doesn’t, given that his protagonist, Quirke, isn’t a private eye. Which is a shame, but there you go - that’s remits for you. Boo, etc.

The Review From The Blue House

God bless the interweb. Back in the day, and in the normal run of things, THE BIG O (being a co-published title with no marketing budget behind it when it first appeared in 2007) might have picked up a few press reviews and then crawled away into a dark corner to die. Happily, and given the ever growing network of bloggers and webnauts that exists among readers and writers, reviews still occasionally pop up. The latest comes courtesy of Rob Kitchin, a fellow scribe who blogs at The View from the Blue House, with the gist running thusly:

“THE BIG O is a comic crime caper – think of Carl Hiassen strained though a noir filter. The story is broken into a succession of short scenes each written from the perspective of one of the six principle characters. The structure works to provide a nice, quick pace and enables Burke to flesh out the characterisation, where each person is slightly larger than life with certain foibles … The only thing that grated after a while was the use of coincidence, which was clearly deliberate but edged towards excessive … THE BIG O is a very enjoyable read and a comic crime caper that is genuinely comic.” ****

  Obviously, it’s nice to know that Rob Kitchin liked - for the most part - the novel, and very generous he was too. What I liked about the review, though, is that few punches were pulled, when it would have been easier for Rob to gloss over what he didn’t like and simply emphasise what he did like (full disclosure: I’ve met Rob Kitchin once, and thought he was a nice bloke). He’s not the first to point out that the story of THE BIG O turns (gyrates) on an excessive use of coincidence; and whether that conceit was deliberately intended or not, readers are fully entitled to find it grating, irritating or simply unbelievable. They’re also fully entitled to call me on it.
  For what it’s worth, I think that that kind of robust critique is welcome and entirely healthy. It certainly beats having him gush about my book and me gush about his (Rob Kitchin has just published his second novel, THE WHITE GALLOWS), an all too common practice these days, and one that serves neither writer nor reader.
  On an altogether more rarefied level, the venerable Sarah Weinman recently blogged on a similar theme, when she mused aloud about ‘awards fatigue’. The gist of the piece was the proliferation of crime fiction awards (Anthonys, Barrys, McCavitys, Shamuses, Edgars, et al), the difficulty in differentiating one from another, and the overall worth (or otherwise) of having so many awards, all in the context of whether or not the awards are successful in raising the profile of the winning and nominated authors with an audience beyond that of crime fiction aficionados.
  Both EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O were nominated for awards, bless their cotton socks, so I’m in a position to say that, yes, it’s lovely just to be nominated. By the same token, and looking at the big picture, there appears to be a very real danger that crime writing, even with the very best of intentions, is creating a closed-loop feedback of mutual celebration. In a nutshell - and this is where Rob Kitchin comes in - when everything is good, nothing is good.
  Running parallel to the mutual celebration is the occasional statement from an author or critic from outside the crime fiction circle, which suggests that crime fiction isn’t as well written as it might be, or is too formulaic and predictable, or too simplistic in terms of form to reflect the complexity of the human condition. The reaction tends to be one of closed ranks, and dark mutterings about snobbery and prejudice, and reverse-snobbery accusations about ivory towers and self-indulgence.
  In one sense, that’s actually nice to see - it demonstrates the all-for-one and one-for-all nature of the crime fiction community. It’s failing, however, is that it’s a short-term view. All criticism is valid, and particularly when it offers opinions we’d rather not hear. We’re coming up hard now on the centenary anniversary of what I consider to be the birth of the modern crime novel - those collections of pulp short stories that would eventually crystallise into novels by Paul Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, et al - and yet the form, structure, intent and ambition of the crime novel has hardly changed in almost one hundred years. Content has changed to reflect contemporary concerns, certainly, but society, culture and civilisation have mutated in ways that would have been scarcely conceivable even to Jules Verne in his pomp.
  Is the proliferation of awards doing the crime novel any favours? Are we being honest enough with ourselves as to the enduring worth of crime fiction? Are we too stubbornly closing ourselves off to valid criticism that threatens (and apologies for the tortured metaphor) to prick the bubble of our closed-loop feedback?
  I’ll be honest with you: I want more from the crime novel. I want more than a response of ‘Oh, it’s the classical Greek structure’ when someone complains about simplicity of form. I want more than ‘Oh, it’s what the market demands’ when someone complains about shallow characterisation. I want more than ‘Oh, the crime novel is traditionally a conservative art form’ when someone complains about predictability. And I definitely want more than ‘Oh, you don’t want to make the reader so much as blink’ when someone complains that the writing wants for challenging prose or narrative conceits.
  Oh, and I’d also like a week in the Greek islands, preferably paid for by some commercially suicidal publisher who wants to publish one of my novels.
  Any takers?

The Revolution Will Be Televised, With Endorsements

Kudos yet again to the Irish Times for its Book of the Day review slot, although today’s offering was a terrible review of Adrian McKinty’s FIFTY GRAND. By which I mean, the reviewer didn’t like the novel, but the review itself was terrible. It kicks off like this:

SERIOUS CRIME fiction these days is a fickle gamble, especially for newer writers. Genre boundaries have become blurred. Crime thriller enthusiasts are perhaps among the hardest readers to impress because of their love for both the list of illustrious luminaries and equally because of the powerful abilities of this same elite to bring their main characters to life. It’s called character stamina …

  Leaving aside ‘character stamina’ (?), what’s all this about ‘crime thriller enthusiasts’? Do those who love chick lit not have a list of illustrious luminaries? What about sci-fi lovers – don’t they have their own geniuses? Do not those who prefer literary fiction, or poetry, love their luminaries for their ability to bring their characters to life?
  The review goes downhill from there, losing wheels at a rate of knots. This bit stands out, though:

Some of Hollywood’s hottest names pop up in the storyline, including Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Matthew Broderick. Seeing their names made me increasingly uncomfortable as to how they might feel about being associated with the image of the resort’s labour conditions, bent sheriff and sleazy drug dealers.

  Happily, the reviewer was in no way uncomfortable with trashing a brilliant writer’s novel on the basis that he, the reviewer, preferred the works of Jeffrey Deaver and David Baldacci.
  Seriously, some days you’d wonder why you bother your hole.
  And then, just when you think the day can’t get any worse, the ever-fragrant Sarah Weinman pops up with the worst cover (see above) in the history of publishing.
  It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better, people …

Only In It For The Money

The Spinetingler Awards are with us again, people, and all very democratic it is too – if you can click a mouse, you can vote. The good news is that neither yours truly nor THE BIG O have been nominated, although the bad news is that Crime Always Pays has been, in the ‘Special Services to the Industry’ category.
  A couple of things about that. (1) Much as I appreciate the nod, and at the risk of sounding ungracious, I’m not doing the little I do for the industry, and I suspect that very few bloggers and / or webnauts are either. If I win, I’ll have to hand the gong back. (2) Of which happening there being very little chance, given that (a) there’s no actual gong and (b) the other nominees include Ruth and Jon Jordan, J. Kingston Pierce, Barbara Franchi, and the man with the biggest brain in the universe, Peter Rozovsky (pictured, top right). (3) In my not-so-humble opinion, and off the top of my head, I can think of Sarah Weinman, Karen Meek, Maxine Clarke and the Spinetingler crew themselves as more deserving nominees than your humble host (Glenn Harper, Karen Chisholm and Ali Karim are nominated in the ‘Review’ category), mainly because, as far as I can make out, they all do it as a labour of love, whereas I’m only in it for the money. (4) Go Rozovsky!
  Of the other categories, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the ‘Rising Star’, which pits Allan Guthrie against his old nemesis Ray Banks. Anyone else willing to pay to see those two beasts going at it in a cage-fight? And ‘New Voice’ should be interesting too, given that John McFetridge, Declan Hughes and Brian McGilloway are all jostling for position as you read. Fine writers and good blokes to a man, although, on the basis that I’ve spent 10 days sharing bathroom space with the man, and didn’t want to kill him afterwards, McFetridge gets my nod.
  To vote, clickety-click here …

100,000 Not Out

Given that Crime Always Pays came into being to celebrate (mostly) Irish fiction as a platform to promote our humble offering THE BIG O, it’s appropriate that the stats passed the 100,000 mark for page impressions while I was away in the States on a Toronto-Baltimore road-trip designed to mark the publication of said tome in the U.S. Now, 100,000 page impressions in 18 months isn’t exactly the kind of stat to set the interweb aflame, but by the same token – as Twenty Major once pointed out – a blog dedicated to Irish crime fiction is a niche-niche-niche sell, particularly when you’re not actually selling anything.
  Anyhoos, I’m quietly pleased at having reached that mark, not least because many of CAP’s regular visitors have become good mates. I’d been warned by some Bouchercon veterans that the first experience can be overwhelming, given the scale of the operation and the numbers of people there, but when John McFetridge and I finally pulled into Baltimore, the experience was more akin to a reunion.
  Peter Rozovsky I’d met before, during his sojourn to Ireland, and it would have been nice to hook up with him again even if he hadn’t sweated blood organising the Philly leg of John and Dec’s Most Excellent Adventure. Peter? Now that you’re au fait with ‘shite’ and ‘gobshite’, I really must introduce you to ‘shitehawking’ the next time.
  I’d met Donna Moore before too, at Bristol Fest, and it was smashing to meet up with her again, partly because I’d read her terrific GO TO HELENA HANDBASKET in the interim, but mainly because I want her to play Diane Lane when they come to make the movie of my life. There’s nothing like a hug from a flame-haired beauty to make you feel like you belong in Baltimore. Apart from the daily hugs (“Oi, I haven’t had my hug today!”), the best part of seeing the poker maven again was the news that her follow-up novel is currently with her agent, and that she’s mailing me a copy as soon as I sign up for Bristol Fest 2009. Yon Donna Moore, she drives a hard bargain …
  It was nice to meet Jen Jordan, too, my first experience of whom was having my shoulder nuzzled by some random hottie in the convention’s main thoroughfare. But lo! It wasn’t a random hottie, it was Jen Jordan. Nice …
  Sarah Weinman was something of a disappointment, given that I was expecting her to be a matronly ball-breaker of indeterminate age. Dang my britches if she’s not cute as a junebug, and prone to enveloping a man in a hug even before he’s been properly introduced. Nice …
  Back to Bouchercon, which I’ve actually been reluctant to write about this week, on the basis that the experience was something of a bubble I’ve been afraid to puncture. Friendly people willing and eager to talk books all day and all night – sounds like hell, I know, but you get used to anything after a while. Readers, reviewers, bloggers, writers, editors, publicists, publishers and – crucially – booksellers, all mingling freely. Anyone who hasn’t yet grasped how the chaos of minute particles colliding at random at the quantum level can translate into a solid object or force at the macro level should get along to the next Bouchercon in Indianapolis.
  I suppose it helped that I had a foot in a few camps. I was there as a reader, of course, but also as a writer and a blogger / reviewer; and technically speaking, given that THE BIG O was originally a co-publication with Hag’s Head Press, I also had a foot in the publishing / publicity / distribution / selling side of things. So there were a lot of people I was hoping to see.
  Jeff Pierce was one, and it was nice to hang out with him on a couple of occasions. Glenn Harper was another, although we didn’t actually get to sit down and talk books – next time, Glenn, hopefully. I also got to meet Angie Johnson-Schmidt, who was kind enough to help me try to find tobacco in late-night Baltimore, as was Dana King, albeit in vain. It was cool to meet Brian Lindemuth and Sandra Ruttan too – Sandra’s another blogger with a foot in more than one camp. And then there was the effervescent and damn near omniscient Ali Karim, and Clair Lamb, and Janet Rudolph … The inimitable Joe Long came down from New York, to greet me with the words, “So where’s the other prick, Hughes?” And it was terrific to hook up with Jon Jordan and be able to say thanks in person for all the support he’s given me ever since way back when, aka the publication of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. Jon? You’re a gent, squire.
  Greg Gillespie of Philly’s Port Richmond Books came down to Baltimore on the Saturday, and nice it was to make his acquaintance again, given that he’d brought the troops out in force to Wednesday night’s Noir at the Bar at Fergie’s. Greg was supposed to sleep on the floor of our hotel room that night, but with an 8.30am panel on Sunday morning looming, I cracked around 2am and went to bed, and haven’t seen him since. Can anyone confirm that Greg is okay?
  Incidentally, McFetridge was great company on the road-trip, apart from his insistence in talking up the Toronto Blue Leafs, which plays some weird hybrid of hockey, football and baseball. Well, that and the fact that the Y he booked us into in New York had the noisiest bunk-beds ever made, and that one of the three communal showers was festooned with crime scene-style tape. Other than that, though, he was no more boring than you’d imagine a Canadian writer to be. We may even road-trip again, one day.
  As for the rest, well, this post is already too long – suffice to say that Bouchercon 2008 was a tremendous experience. Ruth Jordan and Judy Bobalik deserve all the credit going, and more.
  It did occur to me at one point that the attendees as a group were heavily skewed towards an older demographic, although that’s easily enough explained when you consider the cost of travelling to a four-day convention that’s a sheer indulgence. And you could also say that crime fiction is a conservative genre, concerned for the most part with upholding the status quo, and that older generations are more likely to be of a conservative bent.
  But here’s the thing – I’ve never had anyone say to me, “Yeah, I got into crime fiction in my fifties.” I was a teenager when the crime bug bit, and I thought I was pretty radical back then, as most teenagers tend to do. Maybe it’s because it’s the most popular kind of writing, and therefore the most accessible, and because the world of gats, molls and grift has a certain surface cool that appeals to the impressionable mind. But once it gets you hooked, it doesn’t let go. It’s odd, especially when you consider that you don’t listen to the same kind of music twenty, thirty or forty years on from your teens, or watch the same kind of movies, or like the same artists, etc. But when I read Ray Chandler today, I enjoy him even more than I did twenty years ago.
  The Big Question: any theories as to why crime fiction takes such a compelling grip as to last you an entire lifetime? Over to you, people ...

On The Ineluctable Modality Of Shamus Nominations

Via Sarah Weinman comes news of the Shamus nominees, with my evil-twin alter-ego Declan Hughes (right) up for Best Novel with THE COLOUR OF BLOOD. Nice one, evil-twin alter-ego. The full list of Best Novel nominees runneth thusly:

BEST NOVEL
Thomas Cavanagh, HEAD GAMES (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Reed Farrel Coleman, SOUL PATCH (Bleak House Books)
Declan Hughes, THE COLOR OF BLOOD (William Morrow)
Michael Koryta, A WELCOME GRAVE (Thomas Dunne/SMP)
William Lashner, A KILLER'S KISS (William Morrow)

Tough competition, for sure, and we’ll be keeping a weather-eye on yon multi-award-winning Reed Farrel Coleman in particular. The nicest part of the announcement for yours truly was that I got to hear about it last Thursday, when my evil-twin alter-ego let slip the news over a few scoops in Fitzgerald’s of Sandycove. Now Fitzgerald’s, as you may or may not know, is something of a shrine to James Joyce, being but a fried kidney’s throw from the Martello Tower of ULYSSES fame. It was, I have to say, a nice juxtaposition – Ed Loy as a latter-day Leo Bloom, perambulating the mean streets of Dublin and digging out the foibles and idiosyncrasies of his generation. What’s that? You didn’t know that ULYSSES was a murder mystery? Ah, the ineluctable modality of it all …

Always Judge A Book By Its Cover # 418: THE LEMUR by Benjamin Black

If you’ve got a jones for cover artwork, you could do a lot worse than drop on over to The Readerville Journal, where Karen Templer is currently drooling over the latest Benny Blanco opus, THE LEMUR. To wit:

“I believe the name Keith Hayes is new to Most Coveted Covers, but he joins the list with bravado. I speak, of course, of his cover for THE LEMUR, by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville). Yes it is another example of great use of a stock photo. And yes it does remind me, in a way, of NEVER DRANK THE KOOL-AID. But this is so beautifully bold and simple: just a square-jawed man in a white shirt against a black ground; a pure white puff of smoke; a little bit of light on his black hair …”

There’s more detail – much more than you might have thought possible, in fact – in the same vein right about here. Meanwhile, Mr & Mrs Kirkus have had a good squint at what lies between the covers of THE LEMUR, their verdict running thusly:

“If the book’s big secret doesn’t quite live up to its press notices, Black’s prose is so mesmerizing—crisp, precise, alive with telling details—that you’ll enjoy every step in the trail that leads there.”

Sarah Weinman likes it too …

It’s A Shortlist, So It Must Be Tana French

It’s been good week for shortlists, nominations and generalised prize-winning flummery amongst the Irish crime fiction fraternity, people. First up is Derek Landy, whose SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT scooped the prestigious Red House Children’s Book Prize at the Hay Festival over the weekend, with The Guardian wibbling thusly:

“The Dublin writer Derek Landy owes much to his zombie detective, Skulduggery Pleasant. First Landy’s creation helped him to leave behind the cauliflower fields of his family farm, and now it has won him the coveted Red House children’s book prize, announced yesterday evening at the Hay festival by some of the children who voted for the book.”

Kids can vote now? Crumbs – next thing you know they’ll be passing laws to stop us sending them up chimneys. Anyhoo, onward to shortlists and nominations, and the ever-radiant Sarah Weinman reports on The Barry Awards. John Connolly’s THE UNQUIET is up for a gong in the Best Novel category, while Tana French’s IN THE WOODS gets a nod for Best First Novel, the latter news causing us to wonder if it’s even legal to have a shortlist that doesn’t feature the Edgar-winning Tana these days. For the full list of nominees, jump over here … The ever-fragrant Bill Crider, meanwhile, features the Anthony Award shortlists, where – quelle surprise – Tana French’s IN THE WOODS has been nominated for Best First Novel, and the Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaboration SLIDE has been nominated for Best Paperback Original. Again, for the full list of nominees, slide on over here …

The Doppelganger’s All Here

The ever-fragrant Sarah Weinman reports that The Bookseller hosts an in-depth profile on Tana French as she revs up for the publication of THE LIKENESS, her much anticipated sequel to IN THE WOODS, a flavour of which runneth thusly:

French is self-deprecating when it comes to her skills as a writer. “I don’t know what I’m doing when I start a book,” she says. “It starts off looking like this horrific explosion in a dictionary. I have a premise and a narrator. I can’t have a plot summary, because I don’t know the characters well enough at that point to know what they would or wouldn’t do.”
  French believes her acting was great training: “It is a very natural progression, from creating a character and a world for an audience to creating one for a reader—it made sense to me.”
  […]
  Writing crime was a natural choice. “I love the shape of mystery,” she explains. “It’s so tight, and yet there’s so much you can do with it. You can play with the parameters, turn things inside out, and I really enjoy that.”

Crime fiction – it’s literary Twister, innit? For another in-depth profile on Tana, this one courtesy of the ever-radiant Claire Coughlan, hop-skip-and-jump over here. Or, y’know, don’t. We’ll still love you anyway …

French Kissing In The USA*

So there we were at 6.30am trying to make a funny out of the Edgars and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and the fact that Tana French’s (right) second name is, well, you follow our drift, when we realised that trying to make funnies before the first bucket of coffee goes down the hatch may well cause our collective spinal cords to leap up and strangle what’s left of our pitiful collective brains. So, instead, we’ll just give it to you straight – Sarah Weinman reports that Tana French’s debut novel IN THE WOODS has won the Edgar for Best First Novel By An American Author. Hoo-rah! Of course, the downside to Tana’s win means that we’ll have to disinclude her from the roster of Irish crime fiction writers, but that’s a small price to pay. Run wild, Tana, run free! Meanwhile, the winner of the Best Novel award was John Hart’s DOWN RIVER, and Megan Abbott scooped the Best Paperback Original with QUEENPIN. Bernd Kochanowski? We still love you, but you’re sacked. For all the Edgar details, jump on over here …

* How long have we been waiting use that header? Way too long, that’s how long ...

The Future Is Bright, The Future Is THE BLUE ORANGE

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: It’s been a week of minor landmarks, people, what with Crime Always Pays being nominated for Best Specialist Blog at the Irish Blog Awards just as the witless witterings of the elves propelled the blog past the humble figure of 40,000 page impressions since it kicked off in April, 2007. The Grand Vizier also acquired a new editor at Harcourt, the very well spoken of Thomas Bouman, and finished the latest draft of the sequel to THE BIG O, which is currently labouring under the unlikely working title of THE BLUE ORANGE.
  It’s a time of taking stock at CAP Towers, then, and not least because the Grand Vizier and Mrs Vizier (right) are due to be delivered Baby Vizier in roughly three weeks time. Which means that we’re all feeling unduly optimistic about life in general here at Crime Always Pays. We’re feeling mostly pleased about the current draft of THE BLUE ORANGE, which is an unusual state of affairs at Chez Vizier. We’re disappointed Stacia Decker has left Harcourt, naturally, but we’re very much looking forward to working with Thomas Bouman. We’re also looking forward to proving wrong Sarah Weinman’s gloomy prognosis for the writers Stacia signed to Harcourt, on the basis that the novels we’ve read of Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks and John McFetridge are top class examples of modern crime fiction (we’ve yet to read James Sallis, but according to a Ken Bruen-shaped birdie, “With Jim Sallis, CYPRUS GROVE is a masterpiece and his Lou Griffin series is awesome, not to even mention his biography of Chester Himes.”). We’re also pretty sure, given her unstinting support for crime and mystery fiction, that no one will be happier to see Sarah Weinman proved wrong than Sarah herself.
  So where to now? With the Grand Vizier in unusually honest mode, he has pronounced himself entirely unsure. To date THE BIG O has been a grand adventure, going from its humble beginnings as a co-published novel with the tiny but perfectly formed Irish publisher Hag’s Head Press, under the guiding hand of Marsha Swan, to Harcourt making real the Grand Vizier’s life-long dream, that of having a book published in the U.S., the spiritual home of hardboiled crime. Which is wonderful in itself, but as Lou Reed once croaked, a baby is the beginning of a great adventure. Will writing even matter as much when Baby Vizier arrives? Will it matter at all? Is it possible that the Grand Vizier will come to resent his compulsion to write on the basis that it will eat into the time he can spend with Baby Vizier? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …
  One thing we do know is that the Grand Vizier will not be spending as much time at CAP Towers as of yore. So the elves would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to all crime writers, their agents and publicists to take advantage of all that potential blank space by forwarding suggestions for guest blogging posts to the Minister for Propaganda Elf, c/o dbrodb(at)gmail.com, putting ‘I can do better than that rubbish’ in the subject line (Crime Always Pays offers precisely three molecules of publicity oxygen, but hey, we can’t all be The Rap Sheet).
  Finally, we’d like to offer a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has played their part in bringing us to this point, and we sincerely hope you stay on board to ride the train all the way to the end of the line. Oh, and apologies for all the sentimental guff – normal service will be resumed forthwith. The future, after all, is blue-ish orange …

All Hands On Decker

The rather foxy Stacia Decker (right) was the editor of CAP’s Grand Vizier, Declan Burke, for the five minutes or so between when she signed his humble offering THE BIG O for Harcourt and the merger between Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin. Sadly, Stacia became a casualty of said merger, as Sarah Weinman reports. To wit:

On Friday, Publishers Weekly reported that four editors at the now-combined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt had been laid off, a move anticipated for quite some time after Riverdeep, Houghton Mifflin’s parent company, bought out Harcourt late last year and the two similar but distinct trade devisions were merged together. Later that day Publishers Marketplace cited who they were: Webb Younce, Jane Rosenman and Anton Mueller on the Houghton side, and Stacia Decker on the Harcourt side.
  The Houghton layoffs are bad news on the literary fiction and non-fiction front - authors who count any of the three editors as theirs include Mary Sharratt, Laleh Khadivi, Jonathan Miles, Elinor Lipman, Nicole Mones, Jenefer Shute, Timothy Egan, Mark Slouka, Anchee Min, Jonathan Chait, Taylor Antrim, Steven Sherrill and Colum McCann – but Decker’s dismissal is a huge blow for the mystery genre.
  Not only was Decker tasked with editing most of the books Otto Penzler acquired for his eponymous imprint, an author stable that includes John Harvey, Thomas Perry, Andrew Klavan, Joe Gores and Joyce Carol Oates, but she acquired many excellent and interesting writers treading on the side of noir, such as Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, John McFetridge, James Sallis and Declan Burke, as well as Inger Wolfe. No wonder Spinetingler Magazine recently voted her as “Best Editor” in their inaugural awards given out a few weeks ago.
  What Decker’s leaving means for those authors, as well as Penzler’s imprint, remains to be seen, but I’m not feeling a lot of optimism at this point for an imprint that took care to publishing quality crime fiction exclusively in hardcover and trade paperback. I do feel optimism, however, for Decker, who not only has good editorial taste but some very shrewd instincts that will serve her well at her next editorial job. She’ll also, I hope, continue writing, as her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Nerve, South Dakota Review, Small Spiral Notebook, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and Faultline, among other publications. But once again, this news shows the dark side of publisher consolidation, a side that probably won’t lighten up anytime soon.

All of which is quite doomy and gloomy, but we believe cream always rises to the top and that Stacia will be beating off potential suitors before you can say ‘all hands on Decker’. You go, girl ...

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE by John McFetridge

Easy now. This is the good stuff. Too much and you’ll be reeling around the room, blissed on the possibility of how good John McFetridge might get. Set in Toronto, EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE features an ensemble cast from both sides of the law, most of them spokes radiating out from Sharon, a single mother operating a low-level dope-growing operation. Gangs of Italians, South Asians and Angels, all grafting for a heavier slice of Toronto’s new prosperity; a Native American cop and his recently widowed partner investigating an apparent suicide while sitting on the powder keg of an internal affairs probe about to blow the Toronto force apart; Ray, a new face on the scene with an offer Sharon can’t refuse; Richard, the old flame now a power broker in the world of Canadian crime. A heady brew, but McFetridge marshals all the elements in a fluid tale that weaves in and out of various narratives in a manner akin to Elmore Leonard with a brevity of delivery that is almost an abbreviated form of style: “Canada, so generous to take them in. Thran’s father and his two uncles looking like scared refugees in front of the nice white people, got right to business doing exactly what they’d done back home. Pretty soon they had a nice little distribution network up and running. Didn’t even have to kill that many people.” But it’s the backdrop that makes the story. Toronto, much like the novel itself, is rapaciously ambitious, swaggeringly assured, brash beneath its cultured veneer, ripe with opportunity and tottering on the brink of anarchy. Sharon, her city and her country are in a state of flux that mirrors the ever-changing and ever-challenging nature of criminality itself, which the crime novel by necessity mirrors in its turn. For those with eyes to see, EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE is a shining moment of clarity in our confused grasping after some purpose in the chaos. – Declan Burke

Disclaimer:
It would be entirely remiss of us not to mention that EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE is being published in the US later this year by Harcourt, as is Declan Burke’s THE BIG O. The ugly spectre of bias thus raising its head, we direct you to Sarah Weinman for a second opinion. The simple fact of the matter is, as with Allan Guthrie and Ray Banks, who are also published by Harcourt, John McFetridge is a brilliant writer.

On A Clare Day You Can See Forever

Here at Crime Always Pays, we’re particularly fond of Cora Harrison (right). Maybe it’s because her new novel, My Lady Judge, is set in the Burren in the beautiful County Clare, and we have fond memories of a childhood holiday spent in the Burren, when we leapt from one haystack onto another and only got semi-impaled on a buried pitchfork. Ah, those were the days. Or maybe it’s just because the rather lovely Ms Harrison is rather lovely, and lovely people are becoming a rarity these days. More importantly, Sarah Weinman seems to like Cora Harrison too, if her review in the Baltimore Sun is anything to go by:

“This enchanting historical mystery was first released in the United Kingdom last spring to rave reviews, which will only be echoed here. Harrison, a veteran novelist for children, steps into the adult realm with a confident voice, a strong heroine in the form of the eponymous Mara and an unusual-for-mystery realm in the form of an enclosed medieval kingdom off the coast of Ireland. The bloodthirsty justice administered by the barbaric English doesn’t apply as Mara educates her young charges in more civil applications of the law. That is, until her trusted assistant Colman disappears and is later found dead on the top of a mountain, and the kingdom’s seeming indifference reveals the victim’s duplicitous nature and the community’s web of secrets. Mara – who at 36 is both a grandmother and the object of romantic intentions – sifts through truth and lies with a combination of feminine intuition and well-reasoned deduction. The old-fashioned appeal of Harrison’s prose opens up a new world while harkening back to the way writers like Ellis Peters fashioned their historical mysteries.”

Very nice indeed, especially as it comes hard on the heels of the rather lovely Ms Harrison being nominated a ‘notable’ September release by the American Booksellers Association. Feel free to jump aboard, people – there’s a rather lovely bandwagon leaving these here parts …

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Cornucopia Of Interweb Stuff-‘N’-Such Humbly Offered For Your Delectation

A good friend of all things crime fictional, Ali Karim delivers his verdict on Ken Bruen (left) over at Shotsmag … incidentally, a little bird tells us that Sir Kenneth of the Tribes appears on LA’s answer to Leno and Letterman, Craig Ferguson, on July 6, only the third ever crime writer to do so. Fully deserved, reckon we … He may not have achieved Letterman status just yet, but Critical Mick was kind enough to interview inky-fingered urchin Declan Burke. Not only that, but he’s already nominating The Big O as one of his ‘Best of 2007’ reads – and it’s still only June! Oh, the glamour … The Denver Post gave John Connolly’s The Unquiet a major hup-ya last month by publishing the first chapter in its entirety – a marketeer’s wet dream, no less. Staying with Connolly, the Mystery Bookstore is hosting a transcript of their Connolly podcast interview … Manhunt 2 has just been awarded the dubious distinction of being the first video game to be banned in Ireland, censor John Kelleher and his trusty deputy Ger Connolly deciding it’s ‘gratuitously violent’. Erm, it’s a shoot-’em-up, chaps, what were you expecting? … The shortlist for the Theakston’s Old Perculier Crime Novel of the Year has arrived, and we heard it first from Sarah Weinman’s very fine blogging experience Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah for Benjamin Black, whose Christine Falls is up for a Macavity, aka Best Mystery Novel, whether he likes it or not … Meanwhile, Tana French’s (below) In The Woods has been getting so many raves that she’s had to start her own interweb hosting thingagummy. It is, as our sainted aunt Mathilda used to say, a good complaint to have … Finally, some Angry Alien action to round off the week, in which the bunnies do a foul-mouthed three-minute version of Pulp Fiction. Reminds us of the time Woundwort went for the dog’s throat, bless his megalomaniac hide. And that’s it for another week, folks – have a very fine weekend and y’all come back hear now, y’hear?