More GREEN STREETS Reviews: Yay! (And Nay. From Fay)

Another day, another review for GREEN STREETS. Well, two to be precise. Over in the Sunday Independent, Alison Walsh offers two thumbs up. To wit:

“In DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY, editor Declan Burke puts a shape on the story of Irish crime writing in an admirably thorough compendium of essays, interviews and short fiction. It’s everything you want to know about (Irish) crime fiction, its roots and varied influences, but it also offers a vivid insight into the dark heart of modern Ireland.” - Alison Walsh

  We thank you kindly, ma’am. For the rest, clickety-click here …
  As for the ‘Nay’, that came courtesy of Liam Fay over in the Culture section of the Irish edition of the Sunday Times (no link, as the ST is behind a paywall). If you were here yesterday, you’d have seen a piece I wrote defending the book against the slings and arrows of the review, but really, life’s too short for that class of a malarkey, and I’m getting too old. If the man didn’t like the book, then the man didn’t like the book. End of story.

UPDATE:

  I didn’t want to upload the review until such time as I had a link, but Alex Meehan of the Sunday Business Post weighed in with yet another fine review of GREEN STREETS yesterday, with the gist running thusly:

“DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS is notable for its compelling and accessible history of crime fiction in Ireland. This is an obligatory title for serious fans of Irish crime fiction - and there’s also enough here to hold the interest of the casual reader.” - Alex Meehan

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  Not a bad weekend, then, with big-ups from the Irish Times, Sunday Independent and the Sunday Business Post. As for Liam Fay, well, maybe we’ll tickle his fancy a bit more next time out …

It Was The Darkest Of Times, It Was The Even Darker Of Times …

Don’t know how I missed it, but last week the Sunday Independent ran the first chapter of Gene Kerrigan’s latest opus, the rather terrific DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, which opens up thusly:

On that part of the street, at this hour of the evening, only the pub was still open for business. Near the middle of a row of shops, between the flower shop and the hairdressers, it offered the street a welcoming glow on a chilly winter’s night. There were two entrance doors, one to the bar and one to the lounge. The windows were small, high on the wall and barred. The pub front was recently painted off-white. The blue neon decoration high on the wall was a bog standard outline of a parrot. The pub was called the Blue Parrot. It was owned and managed by a man named Novak.
  This was a neighbourhood place and most of the younger set travelled into the city centre or favoured local pubs that featured entertainment. Novak didn’t believe in pub quizzes, pub bands, comedy nights or DJs. He just sold drink and provided a venue for companionship.
  On the other side of the street, it was all terraced houses with well-tended front gardens. They were of a standard municipal design that was duplicated throughout the Glencara estate and across similar council-built estates throughout Dublin -- Finglas, Cabra West, Drimnagh, Crumlin, Ballyfermot. Small and narrow, most of the houses now bristled with extensions. Many had colourful cladding or fanciful embellishments -- columns flanking the front door or tiled canopies overhanging the windows.
  From the far end of the street a motorbike made its way towards the pub. Traffic was light here, far from the main routes through the estate, but the motorbike was taking its time, easing gently over the speed bumps installed to discourage joyriders.
The passenger was first to dismount at the pub. He took something from a saddlebag. At the entrance to the lounge he paused and gestured to the driver to hurry up.

  © Gene Kerrigan, 2009

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Kerrigan, Bateman, McGilloway, McKinty

Four reviews of forthcoming novels for your delectation, folks, all courtesy of today’s Sunday Indo, the novels in question being DARK TIMES IN THE CITY by Gene Kerrigan, MYSTERY MAN by (the Artist Formerly Known as Colin) Bateman, BLEED A RIVER DEEP by Brian McGilloway, and FIFTY GRAND by Adrian McKinty. To wit:

In one sense, it’s a shame that Gene Kerrigan hails from this parish, because you’re going to think I’m biased when I say that, with DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, Kerrigan has written one of the finest crime novels ever set in Ireland.
  Initially the story of Danny Callaghan, a Dublin ex-con who instinctively interferes in a gangland hit and suffers the consequences, DARK TIMES is a novel that gets under the skin of post-boom Ireland. The various settings are for the most part those urban wastelands by-passed by the boom, where people live cheek-by-jowl with the criminal fraternity, and where the notion of law and order is a sick joke. And yet, as with Kerrigan’s previous novels, LITTLE CRIMINALS and A MIDNIGHT CHOIR, the issues are not black-and-white, and the lines drawn are not between good and bad, or law and disorder. Kerrigan is more interested in exploring the concept of power, its use and abuse, and how those at the bottom of the pecking order, regardless of which side of the thin blue line they stand, are powerless – physically, financially and morally – when confronted with the juggernaut of power corrupted absolutely …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

On The Essential Relevance Of Crime Fiction

Mack Lundy (right) was kind enough to drop by and blow smoke up my fundament re: a recent piece I wrote for Crime Always Pays. Quoth Mack:

“I believe that crime / mystery fiction can be a vehicle for presenting morality, ethics, good, evil, innocence, sacrifice, moreso than Literature with a capital L. I would like to know why you think crime / mystery fiction ‘is inarguably the most relevant and important fiction out there.’ Perhaps you could touch on it in a future post on Crime Always Pays. Your readers would be interested and it would stimulate interesting discussion.”

  Mack, bless his cotton socks, wildly overestimates (a) the number of CAP readers; (b) their ability to stimulate discussion, interesting or otherwise; and (c) the miniscule amount of reaction anything I might have to say might generate.
  Happily, his email coincided with a piece I wrote for the Sunday Independent last weekend, which touched on the importance and / or relevance of crime fiction, and why I believe that if journalism is the first draft of history, crime fiction is its second.
  Even though I don’t touch on this in the piece, I should probably add that crime fiction is the most important kind of fiction out there simply because it speaks to the greatest number of readers. If anyone doubts that, do the math.
  Anyhoos, on with the show …

How Crime Novels Reveal Truths About Our Dark Age

ARGUABLY the most seductive, and perhaps even compelling, aspect of contemporary crime fiction is its relevance. As with the best journalism, the best crime writing speaks to us of where we are now and how we are coping with the indignities that assault our notions of civilisation. Rape, for example, has been with us in fiction since THE ILIAD, although Homer tended to celebrate his triumphalist male protagonists and gloss over how a woman might feel about being subjected to such gross violation.
  It’s in the realms of modern crime fiction that you will find rape’s most authentic documentation …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Those About To Write The Shop-And-Fuck Novel, We Salute You

Yours truly had a piece in the Sunday Independent yesterday about the current explosion in Irish crime fiction, the idea being to promote next weekend’s Books 2008 Irish crime writing series. Here’s one reason:

Perversely, the influence of chick lit can’t be discounted as a factor in the emergence of crime fiction. The shop-and-fuck novels might be criticised for skating along the surface of the Celtic Tiger, and charting the new Irish obsession with vacant consumerism, but their best-selling status gave a huge boost to genre fiction in a country that has traditionally been more concerned with literary issues. Where chick lit celebrated the gaudy delights of the Celtic Tiger, crime fiction proposes to penetrate to its dark heart, which is likely to get a lot darker now that the recession has kicked in and that big fat pie starts to shrink.

  In the interests of openness, transparency and plagiarism accusations, I should say that I ripped that off from a quote John Connolly gave me for another article I’ve written on the same subject for the Evening Herald, which will appear later this week. Turning a buck writing about Irish crime fiction – who’d a thunk it, eh?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Soldier

There was a comprehensive piece on HIDDEN SOLDIER’S Padraig O’Keefe in last weekend’s Sunday Indo, in which the delectable Ciara Dwyer gave the former Foreign Legionnaire and erstwhile ‘security consultant’ in Iraq the third degree. Here followeth an excerpt:

After six months he got his first posting overseas, in Cambodia. “In the beginning, there was a huge buzz when you were training on a firing range but it’s a different thing when you go to some of the places. The people are suffering and they don’t need you to act the ass-hole. With the rifle you’re carrying, you have the means to end life, so you don’t take it lightly.” In Cambodia, Padraig worked with the engineering section - defusing and removing landmines. After that he was sent to Bosnia, twice. He came across horrific scenes in Sarajevo - helpless orphans and people reduced to living like animals. As it says in the book, “Sarajevo seemed to suck the life out of you. It seemed to be a magnet for the very worst in human behaviour.”

Which seems as good a place as any to quote Winston Churchill, out of context, on the ongoing tragedy that is the Balkans: “The Balkans produce more history than they can consume locally …”