A Fairytale of New York

I walked out of my hotel in Manhattan on Friday morning to find myself in an Alan Glynn novel. A damp, muggy morning, with the upper reaches of the Chase Manhattan building (right) around the corner swaddled in cloud, and tempting it was to believe that the building was a totem for capitalism, its vaulting ambition being claimed by spectral apparitions descending on Manhattan. The impression of being in an Alan Glynn novel was only confirmed when you strolled along the street and turned right into Wall Street, which was cordoned off and patrolled by the NYPD, this due to the ‘Take Wall Street’ protests. I ate a breakfast of champions of a short stack of pancakes and a strawberry shake and watched a flash mob of protestors chant, sing and drum their way towards the cordons, hedged about and trailed by New York’s finest, the protestors filming the cops filming them, and all as suitably claustrophobic, ironic and paranoid a fairytale about the clash between capitalism and democracy as you could wish for. Or maybe I was just hallucinating after spending a night at the bar in the company of unnamed Irish writers, during which - I can only surmise - I was strapped to said bar against my will and force-fed White Russians.
  Said writers and myself were in New York, of course, to mark the US publication of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and a very fine time was had at the Mysterious Bookstore on Friday evening, where we were hosted in very hospitable fashion. An absolutely wonderful bookstore; if you find yourself in New York, make your way to Warren Street and inhale. The line-up of Irish writers was (l-r): John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Colin Bateman, Professor Ian Campbell Ross and Stuart Neville.

  A fine body of men, certainly, although even a cursory glance will tell you that the actually fine bodies belonged to the ladies, who brought a badly needed soupcon of glamour to the occasion.
  We’ll draw a discreet veil over the post-Mysterious Bookstore shenanigans, and fail miserably in our duty to identify the writer who managed to get trapped in the doors of a subway train, to be rescued with no little derring-do by Captain Bateman, and move on to Saturday, when Ireland House at NYU hosted said writers in a series of panels and events dedicated to exploring the current boom in Irish crime writing. John Waters of Ireland House was in wonderful form, cheerleading GREEN STREETS in particular and the Irish crime novel in particular in charismatic fashion, ably assisted by Irish crime fiction’s leading agent provocateur, one Joe Long, a man among men, and the hidden engine behind the Ireland House symposium. It was slightly surreal for yours truly to listen to various academics not only take GREEN STREETS seriously, but to spin their own theories off its central premise, and marvellous it was too to be introduced to the semi-legendary Professor Joe Lee, and be able to make a presentation to him on behalf of Liberties Press and the assembled writers.
  All in all, a terrific day, and one in which some very interesting ideas were bandied about. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that day’s events just yet.
  As for the rest, well, what happens in Noo Yoik stays in Noo Yoik. Suffice to say that wine flowed, the veritas surfaced, and I now know - even though I don’t want to - what a ‘barse’ is. Cheers, Stuart. I may never sleep peacefully again.
  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to everyone at the Mysterious Bookstore, and at Ireland House, NYU, and especially to the inimitable Clair Lamb, who was brilliant above and beyond the call of duty.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE DARK FIELDS by Alan Glynn

Given Wall Street’s current woes, I couldn’t have picked a better time to read THE DARK FIELDS. With the help of the ‘smart drug’ MDT-48, Eddie Spinola goes from being a dysfunctional bottom-feeder to master of the financial universe in just a few months, playing a crucial role in brokering the biggest corporate merger in US history.
  Of course, there are side-effects to taking MDT-48, an as-yet unproven experimental drug. Eddie suffers from blackouts, during the course of one he may or may not have assaulted a woman badly enough to put her in a coma. And coming off MDT-48 doesn’t just result in a bad case of cold turkey – it’s lethal.
  Told in a deceptively casual conversational style, Alan Glynn’s debut is assured, inventive and polished. Its occasional sci-fi touches are reminiscent of Philip K. Dick or William Gibson, although the depth of cynicism to Glynn’s dystopian vision doesn’t reveal itself fully until the last page. The novel was first published in 2001, but given the events of the last eight years, it can now be read as black farce, chilling prophecy, or a combination of both.
  Glynn’s subtle touch extends beyond a deft way with plot and characterisation, however. THE DARK FIELDS swaggers like a crime novel, and it has its fair share of criminals, violent deaths, illicit dealings and rampant paranoia, but the criminality is subservient to the narrative. MDT-48 is not a proscribed substance, for example, so Eddie is not breaking any law by taking it, nor by prospering as a result. And, given his black-outs, and the first-person narration, the reader is never entirely sure as to whether Eddie is responsible for the violent assault that charges the narrative.
  Eddie does engage in overtly criminal acts as the story moves towards its climax, but taking these explicit crimes out of the story would by no means render it pointless. Further, there’s a palpable sense of ambition at play here, an application of crime fiction’s tropes to a philosophical end, crystallised when Eddie cuts to the nub of the story: “If human behaviour was all about synapses and serotonin, then where did free will come into the picture? Where did personal responsibility end and brain chemistry begin?”
  A beautifully written thriller that is a compelling and at times profound exploration of the human condition, it’s no surprise that THE DARK FIELDS is prefaced with a quote from THE GREAT GATSBY. The novel represents my kind of holy grail, that quality of storytelling that erases the artificially contrived and / or supposed differences between genre and literary writing. Erudite, thoughtful and entertaining, it is a novel to be treasured. – Declan Burke