Review: TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE by Olivia Kiernan

First published back in April, and issued in paperback on January 10, Olivia Kiernan’s TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE (riverrun) was one of the finest crime debuts of 2018. To wit:

Olivia Kiernan’s debut TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE introduces Det Chief Supt Frankie Sheehan, who investigates the death of Eleanor Costello, a woman discovered hanged in her home and initially believed to have killed herself before Sheehan’s sharp eye detects anomalies that result in a murder investigation. Delivered in propulsive, minimalist prose, Sheehan is precisely the kind of gruff, no-nonsense cynic you’d want investigating your own murder. TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE is an exhilarating police procedural, not least because Sheehan is a complex, layered character who, suffering from PTSD after a frenzied knife attack that left her physically and psychologically scarred, declares herself “a living token of the murder. Proustian memory. I’m a direct path of access to the thrill of the kill.” Noir in tone (“We’re all the murdering kind, given the right motivation,” Sheehan’s superior tells her), and sharply observed – “hard-looking rusted metal furniture stands like a lonely family in the corner” – TOO CLOSE TO BREATHE reads like a hard-boiled take on Tana French and immediately establishes Olivia Kiernan as a talent to watch. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.

‘Not Everyone Murders People in Their Sleep’: Liz Nugent

Liz Nugent (right) had a piece in the Irish Times this week, titled ‘Not Everyone Murders People in Their Sleep’, during which she touched on ‘the rise of Irish female crime writers’:

“I am often asked about the rise of Irish female crime writers in recent years. Maybe Tana French and Alex Barclay opened the doors for the rest of us, and as writer Jane Casey says, women are more attuned to threat. We are the ones looking over our shoulders, making sure that we have our keys in our hands, texting each other to make sure we got home safely.”

  I’d add Arlene Hunt and the doyenne of Irish crime fiction, Julie Parsons, to that list of trailblazers, and further suggest that Maeve Binchy probably had a lot to do with normalising the idea that being an Irish writer didn’t necessarily involve wanting to emulate the Joyces and Becketts of the canon.
  As to why women writers have come to the fore in recent years – we can add Sinead Crowley, Louise Phillips, Annemarie Neary and Andrea Carter to the names above – it may have something to do with the way crime fiction has moved on from the classical fantasy of the lone hero(ine) – Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Marlowe – taking on and defeating bad guys, and instead adopting a more realistic approach to the age-old human fear of the social and personal threat that crime represents.
  Whatever the reason, Liz Nugent is certainly in the vanguard, domestically and internationally, and her next novel, SKIN DEEP (Penguin Ireland), is already hotly anticipated. Quoth the blurb elves:

'Once I had cleared the bottles away and washed the blood off the floor, I needed to get out of the flat.'
 Delphine Hamilton is a fake. She has been living on the Côte d'Azur for ten years, posing as an English heiress. However, her alimony is running out, her looks are fading, and her wealthy lovers are fewer and further between.
 Down to her last euros, and desperate to get out of her apartment, Delphine decides to spend the day at the Negresco where she is caught stealing another guest's meal. He takes pity on her and invites her to a party.
 The guests are young and beautiful and Delphine feels her age, and is achingly conscious of her worn out dress. But after a few lines of cocaine and multiple cocktails, she is oblivious to everything.
 Hours later, as dawn is breaking, she wakes up on the floor of a deserted hotel penthouse. She makes her way home through the back streets.
Even before she opens the door she can hear the flies buzzing and she realizes that the corpse in her bedroom has already begun to decompose ...

  SKIN DEEP will be published in March 2018.

Public Vote: The Irish Crime Novel of the Year

The shortlists for the Irish Books of the Year were announced last week, and now it’s time for Joe and Josephine Public to have their say – the winning novel will be decided by public vote, so vote early and vote often. The crime fiction shortlist runs thusly:

Crime Fiction Award
Distress Signals – Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus)
Little Bones – Sam Blake (Bonnier Zaffre)
Lying in Wait – Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland)
The Constant Soldier – William Ryan (Mantle)
The Drowning Child – Alex Barclay (HarperCollins)
The Trespasser – Tana French (Hachette Ireland)

  To vote for your preferred candidate, clickety-click here. And while you’re about it, and if the spirit so moves you, please feel free to vote for Jane Casey’s stunning ‘Green, Amber, Red’ (from the TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS anthology) in the Short Story category.

News: the Irish Book Awards’ Crime Fiction Shortlist

White smoke billows, the bells ring out, trumpets parp, etc. – the shortlists for the Irish Book Awards have been announced, and the nominations for the Crime Fiction Award look a lot like this:

Crime Fiction Award
Distress Signals – Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus)
Little Bones – Sam Blake (Bonnier Zaffre)
Lying In Wait – Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland)
The Constant Soldier – William Ryan (Mantle)
The Drowning Child – Alex Barclay (HarperCollins)
The Trespasser – Tana French (Hachette Ireland)

  Those of you with long memories will remember that I suggested a shortlist about a month ago; of that list (of five books), there are two books on the actual shortlist – Tana French’s THE TRESPASSER and Liz Nugent’s LYING IN WAIT – but there’s no place for Alan Glynn’s PARADIME, Adrian McKinty’s RAIN DOGS or Stuart Neville’s SO SAY THE FALLEN. I did suggest that Sam Blake and Catherine Ryan Howard might well make the shortlist, although I wrote off William Ryan’s excellent THE CONSTANT SOLDIER on the basis that it’s not a crime novel. As has been the case in recent years, the IBA has made a virtue of shortlisting debut authors (two), and there are three previous winners on the list in Alex Barclay, Tana French and Liz Nugent. As I also suggested on my shortlist prediction, women writers have continued the trend of previous years by dominating yet again, with five of the six nominations. Hearty congratulations to all those nominated, and the very best of luck; meanwhile, commiserations to all of those who weren’t shortlisted: 2016 really was a very strong year for Irish crime fiction.
  Meanwhile, a special mention for Jane Casey, whose brilliantly chilling ‘Green, Amber, Red’ – from the TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS collection – was shortlisted in the Short Story of the Year category. To wit:

Short Story of the Year
Here We Are – Lucy Caldwell (Faber)
K-K-K – Lauren Foley (Ol Society – Australia)
The Visit – Orla McAlinden (Sowilo Press)
Green Amber Red – Jane Casey (New Island)
The Birds of June – John Connell (Granta Magazine)
What a River Remembers of its Course – Gerard Beirne (Numero Cinq Magazine)

  For the full list of shortlists and nominations, clickety-click here …

Reviews: ‘Queens of Irish Crime Writing’

The inimitable Myles McWeeney – long a friend of Irish crime writing – reviews three current releases under the title of ‘Queens of Irish Crime Writing’ in the Irish Independent. To wit:

Multi-award-winning writers like Tana French, Alex Barclay and relative newcomer Jo Spain are standing toe-to-toe and slugging it out for bestselling charts dominance with their well-established British counterparts like Val McDermid and Mo Hayder, and US contemporaries Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen.
  But these three high-flying Irish women writers are no flash in the pan. They are part of a highly impressive cohort of Irish female mystery writers who have beaten a path to the top in the past decade or so, including highly regarded bestselling authors like Jane Casey, Arlene Hunt, Niamh O'Connor, Ava McCarthy, Sinead Crowley and 50pc of Karen Perry - (Perry is actually two people, Karen Gillece and Peter Perry). The reason French, Barclay and Spain have been chosen here to represent their sisters in crime is that all three, coincidentally, have just had their latest novels published within days of each other this month.

  For the full review, clickety-click here …

Preview: The Irish Crime Novel of the Year

It’s that time of the year again – or will be, in about a month’s time – when the shortlists for the Irish Book of the Year arrive to a backing track of whoops of delight, wails of anguish and groans of frustration. It’s been – and please stop me if you’ve heard this before – another bumper year for Irish crime fiction, with over 40 titles providing the basis for – potentially – one of the strongest shortlists to date.
  Below, I offer a potential shortlist, albeit with some caveats: 1. John Connolly’s books never appear on the IBA Crime Novel shortlist. 2. William Ryan’s excellent THE CONSTANT SOLIDER isn’t a crime novel. 3. As always, I haven’t read all the Irish crime titles published this year. 4. Some titles – Graham Norton’s HOLDING, Neil Jordan’s THE DROWNED DETECTIVE and Emma Donoghue’s THE WONDER, for example – might be considered crime fiction titles; then again, they might not. 5. In recent years, the good folks at the IBA have made a virtue of shortlisting debut authors.
  Those caveats out of the way, my shortlist for Irish Crime Novel of the Year – based on the crudely simple basis of the best Irish crime titles I’ve read this year – would look a lot like this:

LYING IN WAIT by Liz Nugent
PARADIME by Alan Glynn
THE TRESPASSER by Tana French
SO SAY THE FALLEN by Stuart Neville
RAIN DOGS by Adrian McKinty

  No debutants on my list, then (Sam Blake, Vanessa Ronan, Annemarie Neary and Catherine Ryan Howard are contenders); Adrian McKinty is a bit of a wild card, given that his (regular) award-winning tends to take place on the other side of the world rather than closer to home; and I’m suggesting three men, whereas the last few years have seen the award dominated by women writers. So I wouldn’t be rushing off to the bookies with your hard-earned cash just yet …
  Anyway, the actual shortlist for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year will be published on October 25th. I’ll keep you posted.

Books: THE CONTEMPORARY IRISH DETECTIVE NOVEL, ed. Elizabeth Mannion

It’s nice to see that the Irish crime novel is getting some academic love: Palmgrave Macmillan has just published THE CONTEMPORARY IRISH DETECTIVE NOVEL, which is edited by Elizabeth Mannion and promises to ‘open new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies.’ To wit:

Irish detective fiction has enjoyed an international readership for over a decade, appearing on best-seller lists across the globe. But its breadth of hard-boiled and amateur detectives, historical fiction, and police procedurals has remained somewhat marginalized in academic scholarship. Exploring the work of some of its leading writers―including Peter Tremayne, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Tana French, Jane Casey, and Benjamin Black―The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel opens new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies. It considers the detective genre’s position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition. Contributors: Carol Baraniuk, Nancy Marck Cantwell, Brian Cliff, Fiona Coffey, Charlotte J. Headrick, Andrew Kincaid, Audrey McNamara, and Shirley Peterson.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Siobhan MacDonald

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?
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. An excellently woven and deeply atmospheric novel. Still resonates all these decades later.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Probably a cross between Lynda La Plante’s Jane Tennison and a rehabilitated Claire Underwood from House of Cards. Jane Tennison because she’s focused, clever, and sticks to the task in hand. She’s also pretty cool. She doesn’t flap and is decisive as those around lose their heads. Claire Underwood from House of Cards - for her comportment and delivery, not her Machiavellian machinations, fascinating though they may be.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I try to keep up with the goings-on of the redoubtable Ross O’Carroll Kelly, aka Rosser.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Occasionally when I revisit a sentence or a passage in editing and think to myself – Oooh, did I write that? That’s really not so bad.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Too many great Irish crime novels by female authors in particular to single just one out. “Here come the girls …” I say.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR. Moody tension all the way.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is fretting that your work will never reach the world at large. Then being terrified when it does. The best thing is convincing yourself that you really earned another latté and a slice of carrot cake after all that typing.

The pitch for your next book is …?
There are two sides to every story, but sometimes, just sometimes, you find that there are three.

Who are you reading right now?
Anne Enright’s THE GREEN ROAD.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Come back when you’re in a better mood.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Punchy. Pacy. Pithy.

Siobhan MacDonald’s debut TWISTED RIVER is published by Penguin (US) and Canelo (UK).

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Jarlath Gregory

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?
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. It’s a master-class in how to construct a whodunit. The twist ending has largely seeped into popular consciousness, but if you sit down to read the novel again, it’s astonishing to see how deftly Christie sets up and then demolishes the expectations of her readers.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Most of my favourite literary icons are tragic figures, great on the page, but you wouldn’t want to be them. I’ll go for Huckleberry Finn, because he knew how to enjoy himself, chewing on a stalk of grass and getting everyone else to do his chores.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I never feel guilty about my pleasures. Catholic Guilt is dead. I do feel a bit cringey when I read Ngaio Marsh though. When she hit her stride, her writing was great, but the overt snobbery, racism and homophobia which occur in so many of her books are appalling today.

Most satisfying writing moment?
When you go off on an unexpected tangent, and it becomes an integral part of the story.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
The Book of Evidence by John Banville.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu. It’s generally considered a late Gothic Romance rather than a crime novel, but I wrote an essay for The Green Book Vol. 4 arguing that it’s an early murder mystery. The mystery wouldn’t confuse modern readers, but a good director could have great fun with the elements of the plot which were to become tropes of the genre. There are multiple suspects and red herrings you could tease out and build on to keep the viewer guessing, and the atmosphere of gloomy horror would be gorgeous on the big screen.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is the money of course, unless you’re incredibly lucky and can make a living from your writing. Most writers can’t. The best thing is when people tell you how much they enjoy your work.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Sean Vaughan, dwarf detective, solves a series of baffling murders in Trinity College Dublin. It’s Raymond Chandler meets Agatha Christie in a contemporary Dublin setting.

Who are you reading right now?
Tana French. She’s brilliant at creating engaging narrators who draw you into the world of Dublin’s elite Murder Squad. Her novels are very grounded, but she manages to illuminate the horror in everyday life, and the devastating impact of murder on the lives of her characters ring true.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I’d say, “Piss off, God! You’re not the boss of me.” Then I’d make a more conducive deal with Satan.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Only bleedin’ massive.

Jarlath Gregory’s THE ORGANISED CRIMINAL is published by Liberties Press.

Overview: The St Patrick’s Day Rewind

A very happy St Patrick’s Day to one and all, and to celebrate the day that’s in it I thought I’d offer up some of the highlights of Irish crime writing (aka Emerald Noir) from the blog – book reviews, interviews, features, etc. – from the last five years or so. To wit:

An interview with Tana French on the publication of BROKEN HARBOUR
In short, Tana French is one of modern Ireland’s great novelists. Broken Harbour isn’t just a wonderful mystery novel, it’s also the era-defining post-Celtic Tiger novel the Irish literati have been crying out for.

An interview with Alan Glynn on the publication of WINTERLAND
“I think that the stuff you ingest as a teenager is the stuff that sticks with you for life,” says Glynn. “When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the biggest influence was movies, and especially the conspiracy thrillers. What they call the ‘paranoid style’ in America – Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, and of course, the great Chinatown … We’re all paranoid now.”

A triptych of reviews of John Connolly’s THE LOVERS, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) and Declan Hughes’ ALL THE DEAD VOICES:
“But then The Lovers, for all that it appears to be an unconventional but genre-friendly take on the classic private eye story, eventually reveals itself to be a rather complex novel, and one that is deliciously ambitious in its exploration of the meanings behind big small words such as love, family, duty and blood.”

“Whether or not Fegan and his ghosts come in time to be seen as a metaphor for Northern Ireland itself, as it internalises and represses its response to its sundering conflicts, remains to be seen. For now, The Twelve is a superb thriller, and one of the first great post-Troubles novels to emerge from Northern Ireland.”

“As with Gene Kerrigan’s recent Dark Times in the City, and Alan Glynn’s forthcoming Winterland, Hughes’s novel subtly explores the extent to which, in Ireland, the supposedly exclusive worlds of crime, business and politics can very often be fluid concepts capable of overlap and lucrative cross-pollination, a place where the fingers that once fumbled in greasy tills are now twitching on triggers.”

A review of Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE
“Students of Irish history will know that Robert McGladdery was the last man to be hanged on Irish soil, a fact that infuses Orchid Blue with a noir-ish sense of fatalism and the inevitability of retribution. That retribution and State-sanctioned revenge are no kind of justice is one of McNamee’s themes here, however, and while the story is strained through an unmistakably noir filter, McNamee couches the tale in a form that is ancient and classical, with McGladdery pursued by Fate and its Furies and Justice Curran a shadowy Thanatos overseeing all.”

A review of Jane Casey’s THE LAST GIRL
On the evidence of THE BURNING and THE LAST GIRL, Maeve Kerrigan seems to me to be an unusually realistic and pragmatic character in the world of genre fiction: competent and skilled, yet riddled with self-doubt and a lack of confidence, she seems to fully inhabit the page. This was a pacy and yet thoughtful read, psychologically acute and fascinating in terms of Maeve’s personal development, particularly in terms of her empathy with the victims of crime.

Eoin Colfer on Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS
“I was expecting standard private-investigator fare, laced with laconic humour, which would have been fine, but what I got was sheer dark poetry.”

A review of Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND
As for the style, McKinty quickly establishes and maintains a pacy narrative, but he does a sight more too. McKinty brings a quality of muscular poetry to his prose, and the opening paragraph quoted above is as good an example as any. He belongs in a select group of crime writers, those you would read for the quality of their prose alone: James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, David Peace, James Ellroy.

  For updates on the latest on all Irish crime writers, just type the author’s name into the search box at the top left of the blog …

Essay: ‘The Irresistible Rise of Irish Crime Fiction’

There’s a very nice essay on the rise – irresistible, it seems – of Irish crime fiction over at the 746 Books blog, which provides a concise appraisal of the last decade or so in Irish crime writing. Sample quote:

“What Ireland couldn’t offer pre-Celtic Tiger, pre-Stormont was anonymity. The country was too small, too parochial with a lack of big cities. With the economic growth of the boom all that changed and suddenly cities were booming and immigration was on the rise. It was possible to be a stranger in Ireland, to go unnoticed. With the crash came a growing distrust in politicians and those in power and coupled with a lack of faith in the Catholic Church, the old hierarchies were being disassembled and the lines between good and bad were being blurred even more. Society was no longer a hierarchy of authority with the priests and the politicians at the top. The gangsters were as likely to be in expensive offices as on the streets. Society had been shaken up and that makes for great subject matter for crime writers.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, Claire Coughlan contributes a very nice piece to the Irish Times’ ‘In Praise Of’ series celebrating Irish women writers, with a short but heartfelt paean to Tana French. You’ll find it here.

Interview: Sheila Bugler

The author of HUNTING SHADOWS and THE WAITING GAME, Shelia Bugler (right) is interviewed over at the Words With Jam ezine. An excerpt:

“As someone with a particular interest in flawed female characters, I’d love to have written any one of Gillian Flynn’s marvellous novels. Or anything by Megan Abbott – I am a huge fan of her work. I recently read This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash and was in awe for days afterwards. It’s a stunning novel. Tana French’s latest The Secret Place is another brilliant piece of crime fiction. If I could ever write a book that compares to any of those authors, I’d be really happy.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

News: Irish Crime Fiction at Trinity College

There’s a fascinating course on Irish crime fiction being taught in Trinity College these days, under the aegis of Professor Chris Morash and Dr Brian Cliff, titled – with breathtaking simplicity – ‘Irish Crime Fiction’. To wit:

“‘The detective novel’, wrote Walter Benjamin, ‘has become an instrument of social criticism’. This new co-taught seminar will explore perhaps the fastest-growing area of contemporary Irish literature, the Irish crime novel, considering its roots, its emphasis on crisis and change in a society, and its ability to distil and magnify a society’s obsessions. For these reasons, studies of Irish crime fiction are on the cusp of becoming a key strand in the study of contemporary Irish culture, here and abroad.”

  Authors under scrutiny include John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Tana French, Arlene Hunt, Benjamin Black, Eoin McNamee and Stuart Neville, with DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS playing its humble part as one of the establishing texts.
  For more, clickety-click here …

Feature: The Alternative Irish Crime Novel of the Year

It’s that time of the year again, as the Irish Book Awards hove into view on November 26th, when I suggest that [insert year here] has been yet another annus terrificus for Irish crime fiction, aka ‘Emerald Noir’. The shortlist for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year runs as follows:

The Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award

Can Anybody Help Me? by Sinéad Crowley
Last Kiss by Louise Phillips
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville
The Kill by Jane Casey
The Secret Place by Tana French
Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

  As always, however, there were a number of tremendous novels published that didn’t, for various reasons, feature on the shortlist. The following is another short list, of books I’ve read to date this year that are also easily good enough to win the title of best Irish crime fiction novel in 2014. As you might expect, there were also a number of very good novels that I didn’t manage to read this year; but the gist of this post is to celebrate the quality and diversity of Irish crime fiction in 2014. To wit:

The Dead Pass, Colin Bateman
The Black Eyed Blonde, Benjamin Black
The Wolf in Winter, John Connolly
Bitter Remedy, Conor Fitzgerald
Cross of Vengeance, Cora Harrison
The Sun is God, Adrian McKinty
Blue is the Night, Eoin McNamee
The Boy That Never Was, Karen Perry

  Finally, the very best of luck to all the shortlisted nominees on November 26th. Given that she has been oft-nominated and is yet to win, and her Maeve Kerrigan series grows more impressive with each succeeding book, my vote goes to Jane Casey’s THE KILL …

News: The Crime Fiction Shortlist for the Irish Book Awards

The Irish Book Awards are almost upon us again, and yesterday the various shortlists were announced. The crime fiction shortlist looks like this:

The Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award

Can Anybody Help Me? by Sinéad Crowley
Last Kiss by Louise Phillips
The Final Silence by Stuart Neville
The Kill by Jane Casey
The Secret Place by Tana French
Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

  The very best of luck to all those nominated; the winner will be announced on November 26th. If you’d like to vote for your favourite book, clickety-click here …

International Crime Fiction at Queens University

Dominique Jeannerod (right) of Queens University is the very charming French gentleman who organised last Friday’s public interview with Pierre Lamaitre at Belfast’s Crescent Arts Centre, which I managed to survive, in my role as inquisitor-in-chief, without entirely mangling the French language. Although I did, to be fair, mangle it quite a bit.
  It was a terrific turn-out on the evening, despite the fact that a number of Norn Iron’s crime writers also showed up, Stuart Neville, Gerard Brennan, Steve Kavanagh and Andrew Pepper among them. It was also lovely to be able to make my annual pilgrimage to No Alibis while I was in Belfast, and pick up some very interesting recommendations from David and Claudia.
  Anyway, Dominique gets in touch to let me know that Queens University – and specifically the International Crime Fiction brigade therein – will be hosting ‘An International Conference on the Noir Genre and its Territorialisation’ later this month. The conference runs over two days, June 13th and 14th, and offers a range of discussions on a number of international crime writers, among them Tana French, Eoin McNamee and David Peace, while Eoin McNamee and Brian McGilloway will be taking part in a ‘Readings and Questions’ session on the Friday afternoon.
  For all the details, and the full programme of events, clickety-click here …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Sinead Crowley

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?
Val McDermid’s A PLACE OF EXECUTION.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Ariadne Oliver.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I don’t believe in guilty pleasures! Any reading is better than no reading. Yes, even books with many types of colours in their titles. But give me a decent psychological thriller with well drawn characters and a killer twist and I’m in heaven.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Any time a reader tells me they didn’t guess the ending of my novel, I’m over the moon. I wanted to write a ‘whodunnit’ and I’m delighted if people tell me they were surprised at the end.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Tana French’s IN THE WOODS.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
It’s not technically a crime novel, but FROM OUT OF THE CITY by John Kelly would make a terrific high concept thriller.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The best thing is having a reader tell you they enjoyed the book. I find it amazing to think that this document which I slaved over for years is now out in the world and people are enjoying it. The worst thing was having to let the book go to the printers. I could have toyed with it for another five years and I still wouldn’t have been happy with it. They had to wrestle the proof from me in the end.

The pitch for your next book is …?
The second in the Sgt Claire Boyle series.

Who are you reading right now?
Louise Millar.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Read.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Slowly getting there.

Sinead Crowley’s CAN ANYBODY HELP ME? is published by Quercus.

Secrets And Lies

A first glimpse, courtesy of Amazon US, of the cover of Tana French’s forthcoming novel, THE SECRET PLACE (Hachette), which I’ve been looking forward to ever since I finished her last offering, the wonderful BROKEN HARBOUR, which won the LA Times’ Best Mystery / Thriller award. The set-up runs as follows:

The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says ‘I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM’.
  Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin’s Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. “The Secret Place,” a board where the girls at St. Kilda’s School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.
  But everything they discover leads them back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen’s links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda’s will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly’s father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.
  THE SECRET PLACE is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty, and a gripping addition to the Dublin Murder Squad series.

  THE SECRET PLACE will be published on August 28th …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Lisa Alber

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?
This may sound perverse, but I’d love to channel the darkness that burbles around inside Gillian Flynn. She’s wicked! Have you seen photos of her? Looks like she bakes pies for homeless people. Any of her novels will do: SHARP OBJECTS, DARK PLACES, or GONE GIRL.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Fictional characters go through too many hardships and conflicts before their happy endings. I’m too lazy for all that. There’s gotta be a sidekick out there who lives a charmed life and is only around enough to support the hero. That’s more my speed. Anyone got any ideas for me?

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
DA VINCI CODE-type thrillers are my guilty pleasures because I love all that Catholic Church conspiracy stuff. I also like pseudo-scientific symbology stuff that incorporates our greatest myths into the story lines. I just finished a thriller centred around the Amazons. Fun stuff.

Most satisfying writing moment?
The “a-ha.” You know when you’re writing along, maybe it’s not going well, but you’re slapping down the words anyhow (knowing you’ll have a helluva rewrite later), and then somehow, you lose sense of yourself and time and the world around you, and then later you come to and an hour has passed and you can’t remember what you wrote exactly, but you know it’s something grand? Yeah, that. That’s what I love. It’s rare, but the potential is always there. Also, the a-ha moment when you’re writing along and all of a sudden a fantastic idea comes to you out of nowhere -- a plot twist or character revelation -- and you feel so euphoric, the best high ever, that you jump out of your chair and do a little jig that causes your cat to tear out of the room? Yeah, that too.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
I’m still in Irish-crime-novel discovery mode! Some of the obvious recommendations for people like me who aren’t as well-read as they could be are Tana French and Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) – and you too. Immediate curiosity has me leaning toward checking out Arlene Hunt, Adrian McKinty, Declan Hughes, and Bartholomew Gill (although he’s Irish-American) next.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Benjamin Black’s first mystery, CHRISTINE FALLS, would make a fabulous movie. I picture something stylized, gritty, atmospheric, and filmed in a limited palette (neo-noir Mulholland Drive comes to mind). The way the central mystery about dead Christine slowly circles in on the starring detective’s family baggage is great. Plus, it’s got Catholic Church stuff in it. Like I said above, I can’t get enough of that.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Right now, the worst thing about being a novelist is my need for a day J-O-B. It’s a creative energy sucker, that’s for sure. I struggle to find energy to get the fiction writing in--before work, after work, on weekends. I’m the kind of person who needs long swaths of down time to stay centred and to rejuvenate. The best things are the ‘a-ha’ moments I described above.

The pitch for your next book is ...?
My debut novel, KILMOON, just came out. It’s set in County Clare, the first in a series.

“Family secrets, betrayal, and vengeance from beyond the grave … Merrit Chase is about to meet her long-lost father. Californian Merrit Chase travels to Ireland to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a manipulative game that began thirty years previously. When she discovers that the matchmaker’s treacherous past is at the heart of the chaos, she must decide how far she will go to save him from himself—and to get what she wants, a family.”

I’m working on the second novel in the series, for the moment called Grey Man. Things get personal, oh so personal, when a teenage boy dies and disaster hits Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern’s family as a result.

Who are you reading right now?
I’m trying out an author I’ve never read before: James Barney, THE JOSHUA STONE. Another in the realm of guilty pleasures because it features secret government experiments and voodoo science.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
I could give up writing if I had to (it’s freaking hard work!), but never reading. Reading goes along with those long swaths of down time I require.

The three best words to describe your own writing are ...?
Atmospheric, multi-layered, and intricate.

KILMOON is Lisa Alber’s debut novel.

SLAUGHTER’S HOUND: Now 99p, Apparently

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for pointing you in the direction of the Kindle-friendly edition of SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, which is currently retailing at 99p, or roughly one-third of what I last paid for a creamy coffee. What the price of coffee has to do with it I’m not entirely sure, but everyone seems to equate the price of books with that of coffee these days, and I’d hate to be the one marching to a different drum (because, perhaps, of an over-indulgence in coffee).
  Anyway, you’ll find the 99p Kindle-friendly SLAUGHTER’S HOUND here, where you’ll also find some big-ups that read a lot like this:

“Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.” – Lee Child

“Slaughter's Hound has everything you want from noir but what makes it special is the writing: taut, honed and vivid . . . a sheer pleasure.” – Tana French

“Declan Burke sets the scene for the most perfect noir novel ... The only way Harry Rigby could be more like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe would be if he rode around in a 1930s Chrysler and called all the women dames ... In the very American realm of hard-boiled crime fiction ... few of his peers over the Atlantic can hold a candle to him.” – Sunday Times

“Many writers of crime fiction are drawn to the streetwise narrator with the wisecracking voice Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett have a lot to answer for but only a handful can make it credible and funny. Irish writer Burke is one who has succeeded spectacularly well ... From the arresting opening image to the unexpected twist at the end, this is a hardboiled delight.” – The Guardian

  As always, if you feel moved to share this news by clicking on one of the tiny buttons below, I will be very grateful indeed …