News: A New Departure for William Ryan

William Ryan (right) has published a series of very good novels set in Stalin’s Russia featuring Captain Korolev, the endlessly conflicted police detective operating in an almost Kafkaesque milieu, the most recent of which was THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT (2013). His forthcoming novel – as yet unnamed – is also an historical crime novel, although one with a rather different setting. Quoth William:

“Firstly, many apologies for not having given more regular updates on the project I’ve been working on – a novel set in 1945 Germany – although, the truth is, it’s been a bit of a struggle. The good news, however, is that it’s now largely written and from here on it will be mostly tweaking. It will be published next year by Macmillan in the UK and, as for other countries – I’ll update you when I hear.
  “What is it about? Well, a few years ago I came across some photographs which were collected together by an SS officer called Karl Hoecker in late 1944/early 1945. Hoecker was an adjutant to the Commandant of Auschwitz and the photographs, taken between June 1944 and January 1945, feature some of the worst of the Nazi War criminals, including Mengele, Baer and Hoess, in relaxed social situations. Many of the photographs were taken at the Sola Hut in a village about 20 kilometers away from Auschwitz where, it seems, the SS officers went for weekends or short leaves. The hut overlooks a lake in the Sola mountains in what is now Poland but was then, albeit temporarily, Germany. It’s a beautiful location and the people in the photographs often seem to be having a good time – which is quite shocking given that hundreds of thousands of people were being murdered nearby during this period. And the people in the photographs are the murderers.”

  For the rest of this piece, and a sample read of the first two chapters, clickety-click here …

Review: THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT by William Ryan

I had a crime fiction review column published in the Irish Times last weekend, which included the latest offerings from Jeffrey Deaver, Fred Vargas, Sara Gran and Denise Mina. It also included THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT by William Ryan, with the gist running thusly:

Set in Moscow in the 1930s, The Twelfth Department (Mantle, €15.99) is the third outing in William Ryan’s increasingly impressive Captain Korolev series. Police investigator Korolev is co-opted by the NKVD when an eminent scientist with strong political connections to the Party (and possibly Stalin himself) is shot dead, but his task – complicated by the disappearance of his young son, Yuri – becomes something of a wander through a metaphorical hall of mirrors where notions such as truth and justice mean whatever the Party wants them to mean. There’s an Orwellian influence to the manipulation of language and meaning in The Twelfth Department, while Korolev’s quest to uncover the ‘facts’ of his investigation amounts to his resembling a pawn being kicked around the board by warring superiors. The geographical setting and political backdrop are compelling enough, but Korolev is a fascinating character in his own right, an army veteran of ‘the German War’ who acknowledges the poisonous nature of the regime he serves even as he clings to the hope that its propaganda might someday chime with reality. – Declan Burke

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Craic In The USSR

I had an interview with William Ryan published in the Irish Examiner last weekend, to mark the publication of his third Alexei Korolev novel, THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT (Mantle). It opened up like this:

Of all the writers in the new wave of Irish crime fiction, William Ryan has a strong claim on offering the most interesting setting. THE TWELFTH DEPARTMENT is the third novel in a series featuring Captain Alexei Korolev, a police detective operating in Moscow during the 1930s, a period dominated by Stalin and overshadowed by the Great Terror.
  “Crime fiction is all about truth and justice and morality, and these are all things that were manipulated in the Soviet Union,” says Ryan. “They didn’t necessarily mean what you thought they meant. Back then they had the concept of ‘bourgeoisie morality’ – you know, what we now consider to be a valid morality would have been frowned upon in Stalin’s Russia. Right and wrong were all subordinate to the political will. So when you have a detective who is basically looking for truth and justice, these are things that don’t really exist in the way we understand them.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …