The Mark Of Cain

The Swedish wing of the Irish crime fiction cabal, TS O’Rourke, is at it again. For lo! TS follows up his novella CANDY SAYS KILL with another short ‘n’ snappy shot of noir, aka the novella SUNSET STRIP. Quoth the blurb elves:

A travelling businessman meets a beautiful young Latina from the wrong side of the tracks. She follows him back to his hotel on Sunset Boulevard and they have sex. But then everything starts to go wrong. Waking from a drug-induced sleep, he finds his life turned upside-down and all reason gone from his world. Caught in an impossible situation and running out of time, he searches frantically for a way out …

  In terms of his bleak noir vision, stripped-back prose and being something of an early adopter of Irish crime fiction (his first hard-boiled tale, GANGLANDS, was published all the way back in 1996), TS O’Rourke qualifies as the Irish equivalent of Paul Cain. If you’ve an interest in Irish crime literature, you really can’t afford not to check him out …

The CANDY Man Can

TS O’Rourke is one of the unsung heroes of the current wave of Irish crime writing. A pioneer when it was neither profitable nor popular, he was writing hard-boiled police procedurals in the mid-’90s; as was the case with Ken Bruen, his first novels, featuring DS Dan Carroll and DC Sam Grant, were set on the mean streets of London. GANGLANDS (1996), on the other hand, was set in Dublin, as the lethal Costello brothers make their bid to control the burgeoning drugs scene.
  He dropped out of sight, publishing-wise, for some years, but now O’Rourke is back with an ebook novella, CANDY SAYS KILL. Quoth the blurb elves:

When a stranger pulls into a roadside bar and motel he gets an offer he can’t refuse from a wily femme fatale intent on murder. Can she be trusted to keep her side of the bargain? Is anything ever what it seems?

  Short and very probably not in the slightest bit sweet, CANDY SAYS KILL can be found here …
  Meanwhile, O’Rourke has also e-published the Carroll and Grant novels - DEATH CALL and DAMNED NATION - as a two-for-one collection, again available as an ebook. For all the info, clickety-click here …
  As for recommendations, some whippersnapper called Declan Burke obviously approved. To wit: “As blunt and effective as the average anvil, TS O’Rourke’s prose was hardboiled, pickled and left out to dry under a post-apocalyptic sun.”
  Nice. All together now: “The Candyman can ’cos he fixes it with love and makes the world taste good …”

Saints, Scholars, Cops And Killers

Given that it’s Paddy’s Day (hic), and we’re supposed to be celebrating Irishness in all its wonderful manifestations (the lovely caílín, right, being a prime example), Crime Always Pays would like to take this opportunity to direct your attention to some Irish crime writers that we believe were woefully neglected in years gone by. To wit, and in no particular order:

Seamus Smyth: “This is not just a great crime novel, it’s one hell of a novel, full stop. QUINN should be THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for this decade, it’s that good and fresh and innovative.” – Ken Bruen

Eugene McEldowney: “The novel was a reaction to some of the awful books that had been written about Northern Ireland and which made no effort to place the political violence in any kind of context.” – Dublin Quarterly

Vincent Banville: John Blaine was the original hardboiled Irish private eye. He may yet sue Declan Hughes for being younger and thus better placed to capitalise on Ireland’s newly minted mean streets.

Philip Davison: “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene … thoroughly compelling… cracking dialogue.” – The Independent. “Each word in this bleakly humorous novel promises to explode and bring light to the shadows … Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit.” - The Times Literary Supplement

TS O’Rourke: “History is written in stone. I know that history is also written by the victor, but the truth, the whole story of these terrible times, is now emerging and I have tried to present at least a small picture of what the Civil War was like for a foot soldier, a volunteer, in Dublin City.” – Dublin Quarterly

There’s many more, of course, but right now we’re blogging from the pub and some amateur has just spilled a pint of green beer onto our laptop and fhizz signal seems to be crrssshsprcklefrtz … Arrah, bollocks. Hic. Another bucket of porter there, Jamesey, and don’t shpare the horshes …