THE LOVERS: A Many-Splendoured Thing, Apparently

Further to the genre / literary gulf farrago of earlier in the week, here’s the intros to two recent Sunday Times reviews of crime novels. The first is by John P. O’Sullivan, reviewing John Connolly’s THE LOVERS (no link):

Crime thrillers are a guilty pleasure – like a visit to McDonald’s when nobody is looking. These days, we can make gluttons of ourselves as many Irish writers, freed from depicting sexual guilt and rural angst, are taking advantage of the growing market for this genre. Even worthies such as the novelist John Banville (using the pseudonym Benjamin Black) and the playwright Declan Hughes have taken occasional leave of their literary toils to jump on the paddy-wagon.
  The most successful of this new breed of Irish writer is John Connolly …

The second is by John Dugdale, reviewing Thomas Pynchon’s INHERENT VICE:

Set in 1970, Thomas Pynchon’s first venture into crime fiction is a serio-comic homage that wryly mimics the tropes of Raymond Chandler’s novels. Like Philip Marlowe, its hero Doc Sportello is a Californian private eye, pursuing a quest that sees him getting beaten up, becoming a murder suspect himself, clashing regularly with an LAPD cop, escaping captors bent on killing him, and seduced by alluring women he interviews.
  Doc, however, prefers marijuana to bourbon and calls his one-man outfit LSD (location, surveillance, detection) Investigations …

  What I find interesting is that Dugdale doesn’t feel any pressure to excuse, explain or otherwise contextualise Pynchon’s decision to write a crime novel; while O’Sullivan, writing exclusively for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times’ Culture magazine, goes out of his way to make excuses to his Irish audience (“a guilty pleasure”) on behalf of one of the finest crime writers currently plying his trade, who just so happens to be Irish.
  Is it an Irish thing? An inferiority complex buried in the genetic code? A pathological fear of being considered not quite serious? Of being laughed at?
  “Arrah now, shir, yir honir, isn’t grand we do be to be doin’ the spellins at all, atall?”
  O’Sullivan’s verdict on THE LOVERS, incidentally, is that, “Connolly has served up good, solid fare with the occasional piquant surprise. You may not be getting haute cuisine when you read him, but you’re getting gourmet burger rather than McDonald’s.”
  Were he to damn the book with praise fainter, he’d have had to use invisible ink. Meanwhile, here’s some other recent reviews:

You may at times think you are reading a literary novel but then Connolly will remind you he’s just as adept at the violent strategies of the thriller. Either way you will be left shaken by the experience. – Barry Forshaw, Sunday Express

John Connolly, author of THE REAPERS and THE UNQUIET, more successfully mixes the supernatural into the crime novel in THE LOVERS … Connolly is building a solid following here in the States, and his stylish thrillers deserve even wider attention. – Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

The supernatural element in Connolly’s Parker books has always annoyed some fans, who feel it nudges what are essentially crime novels too far into Stephen King territory. It’s present here as an unobtrusive background hum – the perfect complement to Parker’s measured narration. – John O’Connell, The Guardian

“It’s not all crooks and spooks; Connolly is far too skilled a writer to create mere schlock-horror. He’s at his best getting inside his characters’ heads … Connolly’s latest novel is unashamedly gothic, but ultimately manages to be believable and moving too.” Rebecca Armstrong, The Independent

  Finally, and while it’s a bit wearying to get bogged down in this kind of pedantic bullshit … Apropos John Sullivan’s intro to THE LOVERS review, John Banville has published three Benjamin Black novels since his last Banville novel, while Declan Hughes has published four crime novels since last he penned a play. Also – and I do appreciate that this is hardly worth mentioning – both Banville and Hughes were actually quite interested in the crime narrative back in their more worthy days, regardless of whether they were writing literary novels or plays such as NIGHTSPAWN, TWENTY GRAND, THE UNTOUCHABLE, THE WOMAN IN WHITE and THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE.
  The defence rests, m’lud …

Normal Service Has Been Resumed, Unfortunately

And so we’re back from Italy, exhausted but happy and vowing to never, ever, ever, ever fly Ryanair again. Plus ca change, eh?
  Anyhoo, back to business: here’s one I prepared earlier, being an interview I conducted with John Connolly (right, with Sasha – Sasha’s the one with the gorgeous brown eyes, fact-fiends) for the Evening Herald last week, and which appeared while I was away. To wit:

Something spooky this way comes. John Connolly made a name for himself as a writer who could skillfully blend crime fiction and the supernatural, and yet his most recent novels have seen the ghosts and demons exorcised to the point where his last offering, THE REAPERS, had no supernatural elements at all. However with THE LOVERS — Connolly’s tenth novel in as many years and described as “a visionary brand of neo-noir” — the demons are back with a vengeance.
  “Each book I write tends to be a reaction to the one that preceded it,” says Connolly. “As THE REAPERS had no supernatural elements, it seemed natural that The Lovers would spring the other way. But it’s also the case that the [Charlie] Parker novels are developing into a kind of saga, with a larger story running behind the individual novels. In the past, I’ve left it up to the reader to decide if the supernatural manifestations experienced by Parker are real or a product of his own psyche. In THE LOVERS, I decided it was time to come down on one side or the other. I know it will alienate some of the more conservative British and American critics who seem to have a big problem with writers who mix genres. Silly sods.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Public Wants What The Public Gets: A Booker Prize Jam

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but here’s a couple of snippets from items that have popped up in my inbox over the last day or so. First up, John Connolly (right) from the latest post to his rather excellent blog, the remit of which is to keep his readers abreast on the trials and tribulations of whatever novel he happens to be working on:

“I’m also trying to get a handle on what kind of book THE LOVERS is. In a recent interview, I said that each book I write seems to be a reaction to the one that preceded it, and I suppose that’s true of THE LOVERS. Where THE REAPERS was fast and linear, with a very straightforward narrative, THE LOVERS is more complex, more allusive. A lot of it concerns events that have happened in the past, and a large part of the second half is taken up with one character revealing, over the course of a single evening, the truth behind the death of Parker’s father. I want to see if I can retain the reader’s interest by juggling the desire to find out ‘what happens next’ with gradual revelations about what has gone before.”

  I’ve met John Connolly on a few occasions, and heard him speak publicly about books a couple of times. He is, as most of you know, a very fine stylist, a superb storyteller, and a best-seller to boot. And when John Connolly speaks about writing, the conversation tends to quickly narrow down to one thing: WHAT. THE. READER. WANTS.
  I don’t know if the following pair of snippets should be placed in direct contrast to Connolly’s approach, but both of them are just two examples of what seems to be a growing backlash against the Booker Prize. First, from Wednesday, author James Delingpole in The Telegraph:

“I reckon that, too often, what our literary prize panels confuse with proper writing is in fact just overwriting, and that the problem is exacerbated by a salon of smug, sanctimonious, mostly Left-leaning literary-tastemakers (and gullible book groups) who feel a novel isn’t “valid” unless it’s a) a bit hard to read, b) weighed down with purple prose or poetry, c) socially worthy (madness, disability, child abuse, etc.) and d) best of all, imbued with lashings of fashionable, Zadie-Smith-style, melting-pot ethnic exoticism.”

  Then, today, critic Boyd Tonkin in The Independent:

“Behind the storm-in-a-wineglass feuds that surround the Man Booker Prize, a true and even tragic sub-plot may be starting to unfold. To be mass-market blunt rather than literary-novel elliptical: is the British audience for ambitious fiction dying off, losing faith, or just drifting away? […] In the five weeks after the long-list announcement on 29 July, the 13 titles of the “Booker dozen” sold fewer than 14,000 UK copies; on average, barely 1,000 each. This is, frankly, pathetic.”

  Back at the end of July, the Bookseller published a list of the sales of the newly nominated novels:

1. The Enchantress of Florence 15,433
2. Child 44 8,278
3. Sea of Poppies 5,034
4. Netherland 4,023
5. The Clothes on Their Backs 3,592
6. The White Tiger 1,852
7. The Secret Scripture 1,568
8. A Case of Exploding Mangoes 1,000
9. The Northern Clemency 916
10. A Fraction of the Whole 392
11. The Lost Dog 363

  A week later, they were back with this update:

Whilst Salman Rushdie’s THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE (Cape) remains the overall sales leader with an increase in book sales of 56.5% since last week, Linda Grant’s THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS (Virago) has seen the biggest proportional increase. From selling just 13 copies during the week ending 26th July, the book has gone on to sell 144 copies the following week.
  Another notable increase was for Tom Rob Smith’s CHILD 44 (Simon & Schuster), one of the most controversial choices on the longlist. Sales increased by 250% for the thriller that had already shifted over 8,000 copies prior to the longlist announcement.

  CHILD 44, of course, didn’t made the Booker shortlist announced this week. Neither did THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE or Joseph O’Neill’s NETHERLAND, previously the bookies’ favourites with Ladbrokes and William Hill respectively. Sebastian Barry is now the 2/1 favourite with THE SECRET SCRIPTURE.
  I can’t find any weekly sales figures for later than the week ending August 16, but in that week THE SECRET SCRIPTURE had sold less than THE LOST DOG, which had sold 127 copies that week.
  Erm, folks? Y’think the reading public is trying to tell you something?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE REAPERS by John Connolly

All series authors struggle to keep the franchise fresh, with varying results. Some age their characters in real time, some slow the aging process. Some stop it. Books are written out of sequence, telling of events that took place before already released novels. The past year has seen two top-list authors shift focus to their series’ regular sidekick. Last year brought Robert Crais’ award-winning THE WATCHMAN, a Joe Pike story with Elvis Cole in support. This summer unveils John Connolly’s THE REAPERS, featuring Charlie Parker’s friends and abettors Louis and Angel as protagonists; it should be no less successful.
  The story begins by looking back to Louis’ father, burned alive by racists in a redneck town. Nightmares bring the Burning Man to Louis with unnerving frequency, even now that he has retired from THE REAPERS, an elite team of professional killers. A former colleague turned nemesis has returned for vengeance on those he feels wronged him, and Louis and his partner Angel must take action to save themselves and those close to them, no matter how extreme the action may be.
  Louis and Angel will seem more sympathetic to those who have read other Connolly books, where their efforts to do good with their lethal skills show their desire to turn away from Louis’ previous career. Parker’s eyes and troubled sensitivities see how similar their demons are to his and leavens his judgment. Here the darkness inside their personal motivations is more fully explored—especially Louis’—with less benign results.
Connolly keeps THE REAPERS from becoming a nihilistic festival of destruction by counterbalancing them against another bit player from previous episodes, Willie Brew. Sixty, a Vietnam veteran, Willie runs a small auto shop with his friend Arno that operates partly as a front for Louis’ money. Willie has no involvement in Louis’ other interests, their relationship is as deep as Willie’s acknowledgement that Louis bailed him out when he was in danger of losing the shop in a divorce. Willie knows Louis is bad news, just not how bad. He respects Louis for helping him and asking little in return, but knows nothing is free.
  Willie does what he thinks is right, even when he doesn’t want to. He becomes involved in Louis’ plight because he feels an obligation to someone who has been good to him, despite the conflicts what he might have to do to fulfil his self-imposed obligation. Louis kills because it’s what he does; his developing conscience must accommodate killing a relatively innocent man because of a potential future threat, or as collateral damage, because he is too close to an immediate threat, an egg in Louis’s omelette of survival. Willie’s conscience has no such peace. He must choose between possibly killing men who mean him no harm, or abandoning a man who would kill for him. He is swept with increasing rapidity into the maelstrom of Louis’ danger in an effort to return a favour. No good deed goes unpunished in Connolly’s world.
  The second half of THE REAPERS is an extended gunfight on multiple fronts. The ending unfolds through the eyes of several participants, none of whom knows all of what is going on, giving the reader glimpses into the minds and hearts of all. Some bad guys have been swept up almost as innocently as Willie; some of the good guys are there only to kick ass. Connolly’s palette consists of shades of gray that exist only in the mind; some darker, some lighter, with no bright line of separation.
  He pulls it off with elegiac and poetic prose worthy of James Lee Burke. THE REAPERS never disintegrates into operatic carnage. The pace of the writing remains introspective throughout, denying the conventional wisdom of shorter, choppier, sentences to convey action and imply tension. Connolly has all the tension he needs in the dark world his language creates. Humour is plentiful; the usual banter between Louis and Angel lightens the mood when needed while showing the bond between them, two early-middle-aged gay men nagging each other like an old married couple, but with the coarse humour men reserve for their friends. Not the easiest thing to pull off, it’s highly effective when handled by someone with Connolly’s talent.
  Beneath the carnage, THE REAPERS is about commitment and obligation. Angel knows Louis’ plan is based on incomplete information. He goes along because he goes where Louis goes, unconditionally, no matter how much he bitches about it, and he knows their original team is there for the money; only he will look out for Louis. Willie Brew will risk his life for a man he barely knows and fears more than he respects because Louis has been good to him, and he knows Louis would do the same for him, even if their motivations would be completely different. Parker arrives late and makes up for lost time by diving in without any plan at all, because Louis and Angel have been there for him without asking why, or how their contribution fits.
  These qualities are juxtaposed against the selfishness of their antagonists, and contrasted to the good-soldier innocence of some of their opponents, to create a book that is much greater than the sum of its parts, and its parts create a substantial sum. THE REAPERS allows Connolly to look at his characters from outside of their own perspectives and see them as other see them. The supernatural elements that work so well in his other books (especially THE BLACK ANGEL) aren’t needed here; frank examination of good and bad, how they overlap, and how each can be used in the service of the other fills the spaces between the lines. THE REAPERS can be read as one hell of a thriller, but those who read it for that purpose alone are cheating themselves. – Dana King

This review was first published at the New Mystery Reader

JC: Big Questions, Small Answers

There was a nifty little interview with John Connolly in the Atlanta Sunday Paper, in which JC (right) waxed philosophical on the profundity inherent in crime fiction. To wit:

“Crime fiction is a really conservative genre; there’s no miscegenation in crime fiction. And that’s really odd to me. If you read a lot of crime fiction, issues of redemption and salvation arrive again and again. And there’s a kind of possibility of a kind of spiritual interpretation as well: If we live in a godless universe, would you live a moral life?”

It’s a yes or no answer, folks, on the back of a used twenty to the usual address …

Messrs Connolly And Hughes Would Like To Announce …

Perennial messers John Connolly and Declan Hughes launch THE REAPERS and THE DYING BREED, respectively, at Dubray Books on Grafton Street in Dublin next Thursday, May 8th, and have been kind enough to extend an invitation to toddle along to anyone who happens to be in the general vicinity (possible consequences pictured, right). For no further information whatsoever, or at least not yet, you could always check out Dec Hughes’ interweb yokeybus, The Parting Glass; and for even less information, if that were possible, try John Connolly’s blog – albeit with the kicker that there’s a smashing piece on Ross Macdonald’s THE CHILL, which is the first book in JC’s on-line book club. The Grand Vizier has deigned to allow the elves and HR Pufnstuf the evening off to attend, although the flying monkeys are still grounded after the recent ‘unpleasantness’ with the belly-dancing dwarves in the Duke pub. Anyhoo, Critical Mick, sir? If you bring the picinick basket, I’ll bring the blanket and the Yogi Bear quips …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE REAPERS by John Connolly

Black people could be seen in town, but they were always moving: carrying, delivering, lifting, hauling. Only white people were allowed to stand still. Black people did what they had to do, then left. After nightfall, there were only white folk on the streets [ … ] Justice might be blind, but the law wasn’t. Justice was aspirational, but the law was actual. The law was real. It had uniforms, and weapons. It smelt of sweat and tobacco. It drove a big car with a star on the door. White people had justice. Black folks had the law.
  John Connolly, THE REAPERS, pg 70

Is it too late to call John Connolly an angry young man? Beneath the quietly mannered prose, THE REAPERS seethes. It seethes in a way Jim Thompson did when he was at his best, with a coolly ironic detachment. Louis, whose story THE REAPERS is, could easily have graced one of Thompson’s tales of charming psychopathic killers. Neither would he be out of place in a Highsmith novel, perhaps as Ripley’s perfect foil.
  But Louis, like Parker, is uniquely a John Connolly character. It’s possible to be fascinated and even obsessed with Thompson and Highsmith’s characters, but it is impossible to love them. Louis may not crave your love, but he deserves it.
  The reapers of the title are ‘the elite among killers’, of which Louis is one, and the plot revolves around a reckoning in blood facilitated by dying businessman who has good reason to see Louis dead. Parker hardly shows. Instead we get large chunks of Louis’ back-story, including his recruitment as a reaper and the experience that made him a sublime killer; an insight into the dynamics of Louis and Angel’s relationship, which is as much Lou ‘n’ Bud as it is Didi and Gogo; and an extended introduction to one of Angel and Louis’ associates, the blue-collar mechanic Willie Brew, who seems to have sauntered in from an Elmore Leonard novel.
  As a result the minimalist plot is very much character-driven. Connolly’s eye for the unusual, his ear for an unworn phrase and the apparently casual accumulation of subtle detail when fleshing out a character takes care of the rest.
  It’s a terrific page-turner, a charismatic exercise in the grand old art of storytelling. John Gardner, who was notoriously sniffy about genre fiction in general, and crime and mystery fiction in particular, once said that the novel should be a vivid, continuous dream. There’s more than a hint of a nightmare lurking behind THE REAPERS, and perhaps it’s that nightmare which fuels the deadpan rage between every line, but THE REAPERS is certainly the kind of compelling tale John Gardner had in mind. – Declan Burke

What Would JC Do?

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: Like all good things, people, ye olde Johne Connollye competitione had to come to an end, and the best we can say about the experience is that we’re not much older and just a smidge wiser, providing you consider that learning there exists out there somewhere ‘a fabulously ugly china figurine of the Guggenheim Bilbao dog riding a motorbike’ amounts to additional wisdom (cheers, Keiron). We also learned that Lisa B may or may not have John Connolly chained up in her basement or attic, and it’s entirely likely the case of Glenfiddich-flogging Josh Schrank was the fink who tipped off the cops about it (boo, etc.). Anyhoo, on with the winners: a trumpet parp please, maestro, for (a) Diane Lawlis, not only for making Jack Daniel’s Pecan Pie, but for shipping internationally; (b) Norby, for the outrageous flattery, and allowing the Grand Vizier understand for one glorious, fleeting moment how it must feel to be John Connolly; and (c) Fiona at the noenic(at)gmail.com address for displaying local knowledge with the M50 ‘stuck-in-limbo’ gag. To everyone else who entered, we thank you for taking the time and making the effort. Next week: Crime Always Pays runs a competition to spend one night with John Connolly, in Lisa B’s basement / dungeon, with JC facial hair optional. Meanwhile, if the winners would like to contact the Grand Vizier at dbrodb(at)gmail.com with a snail mail address, a copy of THE REAPERS will be winging its way to you post-haste …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

As one or two of you may be aware, a young whipper- snapper by the name of John Connolly has a new novel on the way, with THE REAPERS due on a shelf near you on May 15. Thanks to the friendly-as-a-hungry-Buddhist folk at Hodder Headline Ireland, however, Crime Always Pays has three ARCs of THE REAPERS to give away this very week, and it would have been four copies only that the Grand Vizier personally waylaid the delivery guy and half-inched a signed copy by said tyro, the Connolly dude, with an ambush that utilised a diversionary tactic involving two unicorns, a 1:52 scale model of Noah’s Ark and a wooded clearing surrounded entirely by liquorice trees. Anyhoo, quoth the blurb elves:

They are the Reapers, the elite among killers. Men so terrifying that their names are mentioned only in whispers. The assassin Louis is one of them. But now Louis, and his partner, Angel, are themselves targets. And there is no shortage of suspects. A wealthy recluse sends them north to a town that no longer exists on a map. A town ruled by a man with very personal reasons for wanting Louis’ blood spilt. There they find themselves trapped, isolated, and at the mercy of a killer feared above all others: the assassin of assassins, Bliss. Thanks to former detective Charlie Parker, help is on its way. But can Angel and Louis stay alive long enough for it to reach them?

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of THE REAPERS, just answer the following question:

Is John Connolly:
(a) the sexiest Irish writer alive;
(b) the sexiest Irish writer alive or dead;
(c) the sexiest Irish writer alive, dead, undead or trapped in some kind of supernatural limbo between this world and the next?

Answers in the comment box below, please, with an email contact, as the Grand Vizier claims he is way too busy right now to respond to all the emails individually, the lazy bugger. The closing date, by the way, is noon on Tuesday, April 8th. Et bon chance, mes amis …

Hair Ye, Hair Ye …

That blummin’ John Connolly, eh? Never happy. Moan this, grouse that, whinge the other. He’s at it again over at his interweb blog thingy, now that his editors have come back with their verdicts on THE REAPERS, which isn’t even due until May 15. To wit:

“Waiting to hear what they think of a manuscript does nothing to contribute to a stress-free lifestyle on my part. As I’ve said before, I have a nagging fear that I’m a bit of a fraud, and that the latest novel will be the one that at last exposes my fraudulence and ineptitude to my editors. That fear is compounded when a book deviates in any way from what has gone before, as THE REAPERS does. It’s not quite an ‘entertainment’, to borrow Graham Greene’s description of his less tortured novels, but it is lighter than, say, THE UNQUIET. As soon as it went out to the editors, and my agent, I think I began tensing for the blow to come.
  As it happens, though, no blows have landed. Both of my editors – and my beloved agent – seem very happy with the manuscript, and have sent it straight into production. That doesn’t mean the book is already rolling off the presses, but it has gone to copy editors, and when the copy-edited manuscripts are returned to me they will have my editors’ comments included. There will be problems to be addressed, questions to be answered, but I won’t have to tear the book apart, and tear my hair out in the process.”

Hurrah! Because if there’s one thing perfect in this tragically imperfect world we inhabit, it’s John Connolly’s coiff. Oi, editor-types – leave THE REAPERS alone, okay? Because the last thing the world needs is John Connolly yammering on about hair-loss. Peace, out.

Jeepers, Creepers, ’Tis The Cover Of The Reapers

John Connolly is at it again, being modest and effacing and generally annoying the hell out of all those self-aggrandising writers who have barely a tenth of his talent and none of his self-restraint (say, for example, CAP Grand Vizier Declan Burke). The occasion? He’s just sent THE REAPERS off to his editors (it’s due on May 15th) and is concerned that the future multi-million-seller isn’t quite up to scratch. Quoth John over at his bloggathummy:

“I always experience a vague sense of unease at this point, a nagging suspicion that the book may not be very good and my editor is, at this very moment, struggling to find a diplomatic way to tell me, one that won’t send me off the deep end and have me looking longingly at high cliffs, jars of pills, or razor blades and bathtubs. I don’t want to deliver a bad book, and I don’t think that I have, but, then again, I’m a very poor judge of my own work. I keep waiting to be caught out, to be branded a fraud. Like a lot of writers, I think, I’m always alert to the knock on the door from someone who has been sent to inform me that a terrible mistake has been made by my publishers and, as I have always suspected, the people who hated my work were right. At that point, my furniture will be seized, my house repossessed, and proceedings set in train to get back all of the money that has been paid to me in error. I tried to explain some of these fears to my editor when last she was in Dublin. They’re pretty constant, although they’re not crippling. Nevertheless, they may contribute to the fact that my pleasure at completing and dispatching a novel never lasts very long. Relief is a feeling that dissipates quickly.”

Hmmmm. We have a little prayer we say every night, it runs like this:

‘Dear Lord, please take away all John Connolly’s talent, discipline, charm and good looks, and give them to us. Amen.’

Think we’re muppets, just because it hasn’t happened yet? Ha! It only has to work once, people …

The Unquiet One

Does any crime / mystery writer give better interview than John Connolly (right)? “I wish I had a way for you to see John Connolly talk and answer questions in person,” says Cameron Hughes over at Cinematic Happenings. “He is an extremely charismatic and charming man, full of energy and stories. He talks like he writes …” Yet again Connolly waxes lyrical on a wide range of topics, including Good vs Evil …

“I think there’s a very human evil, which is fundamentally selfish, and which leads to greater harm without, I think, the individual responsible realizing that that is going to be the case. It’s an absence of empathy, which is the single best definition of human evil that I’ve encountered, the unwillingness or inability (which are two separate things) to recognize that others feel pain the way that you do, and that therefore you have a responsibility not to cause pain of any kind, just as you would expect the same treatment from others. Is there a greater, deeper evil at the heart of the universe, from which our own generally inferior version is drawn, like water from a well? I don’t know. The books suggest that there may be. If one believes in God, then does one accept the existence of the opposite of God? I don’t feel any urge or responsibility to provide answers to those questions. It’s enough to raise them, and to consider them in the context of the books.”

… his reasons for setting his stories in America rather than Ireland …

“At the time that I began writing, there weren’t many Irish crime writers. It wasn’t really our genre, for all sorts of reasons. Equally, I was trying to escape my own literary heritage, which I felt was quite suffocating, and came with certain expectations about style and subject matter. It wasn’t a commercial decision to set a book in the US, but an emotional one, I think. Rather than import elements of American mystery fiction, which I loved, I thought it would be more interesting to apply a European sensibility to its conventions. I’m never going to write or think quite like an American. It’s impossible, but I hope that’s what makes my books a little different.”

… Genre vs Literature …

“As for genre and literature, the distinction is muddy. Genre is a relatively recent concept, and most literary fiction incorporates some genre elements too - a romance, for example, or a crime. The difference is that in genre fiction that element is the primary one, whereas in literary fiction it’s frequently a secondary, if crucial, one. I’m not a genre snob, and I’m interested in blending elements of disparate, if related, genres together to create new forms. In fact, the worst snobs I’ve encountered have been in the mystery area. There’s a conservative element that wants to see the genre frozen in aspic somewhere between the birth of the Marlowe novels and the death of Agatha Christie. Those people hate the use of the supernatural in particular, and I suppose they raise my hackles because, as a good liberal, I dislike people telling me that something isn’t permissible, at least in writing. It’s nonsense.”

… and much, much more, including very personal insights into both The Book of Lost Things and The Unquiet. The Unquiet? That’s putting it mildly …

As He Sows, So Shall He Reap

John Connolly always gives his readers full value for money, and not only when they buy his books. His blog offers a rare and fascinating insight into the process of writing, particularly during the creative phase, when Connolly himself isn’t entirely sure of how an unpolished story will turn out. Brave stuff, especially from a best-seller who has nothing to gain from allowing readers a peek behind the curtains. At the moment he’s talking about next year’s The Reapers, to wit:

“Still, at least The Reapers now has a beginning, a middle, and an end that, to be honest, was a little surprising to me. Then again, that’s one of the pleasures of not planning the novels down to the last detail: in the process of writing them themes begin to emerge, so that what might have begun life as an aside in the first chapter becomes, by the end, the basis for the book’s defining moment. Maybe I’m a little more optimistic about the novel than I was earlier in the year. As this draft has proceeded the book, I think, has become more interesting. What began life as a light novel has assumed darker overtones. It will be an odd read, I suspect. I remember a British critic once commenting on Angel and Louis to the effect that she believed I found them funnier than they actually were. In fact, I’ve always been ambivalent about them, and that ambivalence finds its fullest expression in The Reapers. It becomes clear that they, along with Parker, the Fulcis, and Jackie Garner, are damaged individuals, and anyone who enters their sphere of influence believing otherwise is deluded. And so, as the book develops, their banter becomes a kind of denial of reality, a means of distancing themselves from the damage that they inflict upon others.”

The Reapers, due next May and still officially untitled, can be pre-ordered here …

Ssssshhh … It’s All So Unquiet

There’s probably no bad time to be John Connolly (left), but right now the reviews for The Unquiet are coming in like choppers at Da Nang. Says JC Patterson over at the Clarion Ledger: “Enter the dual world of Connolly, where the tangible and the metaphysical often collide, emitting sparks of blood, phantom whispers and the secrets that entomb the living.” Hurrah! As for The Patriot News: “His Parker novels are far from typical whodunits but are multilayered offerings that peel away the soul of the world-weary Parker and most anyone who comes in contact with him,” says Mary O. Bradley. Delia Barnard of the Sunday Life weighs in with, “A lush story with rich characterisation … with frequent touches of wry humour as the good, the bad and the grey characters are cleverly picked over for the readers’ rich enjoyment.” Nice. Then there’s The Telegraph: “Connolly’s books often contain passages of horrific violence, but The Unquiet is less violent and more subtly disturbing. As usual, there is an element of the supernatural, taking the reader into a place where the real, contemporary world is touched by something from our worst nightmares, and he does it in lyrical, almost poetic language which grips and chills.” Woo-hoo! Had enough? Didn’t think so … Here’s an interview with Big Bad John over at the deliciously monikered Culture and Carnage, in which our hero waxes rhapsodical about the delights of his work in progress, The Reapers, and, erm, getting old: “It’s strange to think that The Reapers will be my tenth book. It really doesn’t seem that long ago since I was writing Every Dead Thing. Then again, I only have to compare my jacket photos then and now, and count the grey hairs, to realise that, actually, it was quite a while ago …” Jeez, John - we'll trade you a few non-grey hairs for a few million of your sales, eh?