Origins: Garbhan Downey

Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Garbhan Downey (right), author of THE AMERICAN ENVOY. To wit:

“I never base my characters on actual people – apart from one, which I’ll get to in a minute. But I do accept that now and again my heroes and villains unwittingly adopt attributes of punters I’ve met in real life.
  “Five years ago, for example, a retired IRA man asked me to sign a copy of OFF BROADWAY – a book of short-stories set in the North’s post-ceasefire underworld. I looked at him deadpan and wrote, “To X, an inspiration”. I then handed the book back to him, saying nothing. In fairness, he had the grace to burst out laughing – and told me he was away to ring his lawyer.
  “It would be silly to deny that life inspires art. The Barkley family – a gang of dirty businessmen who appear in all six of my novels – share many traits with the rash of carpet-baggers who infest modern Ireland. “Sparkly”, “King-Size” and “Darkly” Barkley have each been responsible for shed-loads of scams, which are thinly disguised accounts of real-life cons I was never to expose as a newspaper editor.
  “Sparkly runs a host of quasi-legal shop-fronts for the Boys; King Size is a race-fixing jockey with sidelines in property development and blackmail; while Darkly is a consultant or, if you’d prefer, “the type of guy who stands in front of the brothel and offers to sell you your photo back”. And though I never met a triumvirate quite so crooked in my day job, I’m sure there are a few out there who will occasionally wince with recognition – and perhaps even a little pride – as they’re reading the books.
  “Unlike in the real world, however, I have taken great care to spoon out proper retribution to my Barkleys: suspending one from a window-ledge; affixing another to a bunny-boiling wife; and infecting a third with a vicious STD. None of them, you’ll be pleased to learn, live happily ever after – indeed, two don’t live at all any more ...
  “The Hurleys – who are central to both RUNNING MATES and THE WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES - are a mostly-decent republican clan, representing those in Northern society who struggle valiantly to put the old ways behind them but occasionally fall back into bad habits. Or, as they’re more often referred to nowadays – “the government”.
  “The Hurleys, as you’d expect, are known as “The Hurlers” as a tribute to our national sport and a formerly-preferred method of chastisement. But it is important too that characters develop with the changing times. Hence, Harry the Hurler, the family patriarch, becomes entangled with a glamorous senior police chief; his brother Gerry gets himself a “late-learners degree” and becomes an MLA in Stormont; Jimmy Fidget, the youngest, has a guilt-induced breakdown before setting up his own security company; while Donna, the white sheep, shacks up with the Taoiseach. And again, I would insist that the Hurleys are certainly not based on real people, despite several claims to the contrary (and two unproven lawsuits).
  “Lou Johnston, aka Letemout Lou, the leading lady in several of my books, is a bossy and beautiful lawyer-turned judge, who - despite her cranky shell - is kindness itself. I would stress for the record, however, that although I myself am married to a beautiful lawyer who is kindness itself, any and all resemblances are purely coincidental. (Note to editor – I took great care to drop “bossy” from that second clause...)
  “The identities of my players are very important to me – I have to have a firm grip in my head as to who they are, when I’m writing them. So it helps if the names are obvious and pertinent: Tommy Bowtie is a solicitor; Shakes Coyle is a dried-out drunk; Getemup Gormley is the failed bank-robber; Time-Gents is a barman; Hate the World is a hitman; Nora Tora Tora has a bad temper; Ruth Ball, the man-eater, becomes “Buster”; Chiselling Phil is a barrister-turned-negotiator; Stammering Stan is a not-very-confident newsreader; the priest who “cures” homosexuals is Fr “Bend-em-Back” Behan; and the Taoiseach’s intelligence expert is John the Bugger.
  “Derry people, I believe, are particularly talented at summing up people in a single word or pithy phrase. They work hard at it. I once asked in a pub why a particular man was known as “Jimmy Choo-Choo”, to be told that he had taken part in a training course at the railway station 20 years previously. It always makes sense. A prominent Glasgow republican, now living in Derry is, naturally, known by locals as “Taff”.
  “My late brother was an artist at it. He was never bested for the mot juste – so much so that I once even dedicated a story to Rónán “Give Everyone a Middle Name” Downey. I remember sitting with him as we listened to a very stoned friend attempt to sing “Just a Gigolo”. Rónán immediately dubbed him John “I Ain’t Got No Body” Smith*. The name stuck.
  “On only one occasion did I directly transpose a real person into a novel. He was heavily fictionalised, though for obvious reasons I am happy that he will never out himself as my muse.
  “I have to confess it was Mark Durkan, the Foyle MP, who put the idea into my head. We were swapping yarns in Radio Foyle one morning, when Durks started chatting about a constituent who, when asked to leave his office, went down on all fours and ran around the desk, barking like a dog.
  “I couldn’t resist it. In my first novel THE PRIVATE DIARY OF A SUSPENDED MLA, I just had to give him a cameo role. A man whose mission in life is to torment rising political stars. A man who breaks the wing-mirrors off your car, if you don’t come quick with the bail money. A headcase among headcases. The nemesis of all would be young Kennedys. The curse of all Camerons.
  “Step forward Mister J. “Bite Me” O’Boyle. You know who you are.” - Garbhan Downey

  * Identity changed to protect the victim.

  Garbhan Downey’s THE AMERICAN ENVOY is published by Guildhall Press.

On Beating Swords Into Gardening Tools

Garbhan Downey has been kind enough to offer an insight into the genesis of his latest screwball crime fiction, WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES, in which he offers ‘a novel solution to the Northern Ireland’s parades issue’.
  For those of you unfamiliar with the ‘parades issue’, it’s a phenomenon in Norn Iron in which the Loyalist Orangemen have loads of marches to celebrate the fact that they have loads of marches, whereas the Disloyalist Fenians can only muster one, on Paddy’s Day.
  Now read on …

  Two of the most dangerous moments of my life involved marching – and they both happened on the same day.
  As a newspaper reporter in Derry in August, 1995, I decided, with a cameraman, to try and get some pictures of loyalists celebrating outside the Memorial Hall, after a particularly controversial morning parade. We were scouting the revellers from about 30 yards away, when one of them spotted us. And before you could blink, an angry battalion were hurtling towards us, tearing off their sashes as they ran.
  Had it not been for a very brave RUC man, who appeared out of nowhere and stood between ourselves and the mob, the photographer and I have would have been place-kicked off the Derry walls a full 40 feet into the Bogside below. No question about it.
  Later that day, I was monitoring the afternoon parade from Butcher Street, when a notorious Antrim band broke away from the route and decided to stage an impromptu performance for 500 young people wearing Celtic tops, hemmed behind police lines. It’s hard to believe how quickly it all kicked off; but for the first time in my life I truly got the significance of the phrase “rabbit in the headlights”. On that occasion, I was hit with a bottle as I fled – but still escaped a lot lighter than most of the city-centre, which was burnt to a cinder.
  The FTQ parades, if I’m to be honest, never had quite the same edge. Possibly because they never applied to march down Ballymena High Street, so the opportunity for direct confrontation wasn’t there. But they always carried an air of menace nonetheless, right down to the band everybody hoped wouldn’t turn up, with their shaved heads, 1970s’ sunglasses and black berets.
  Not surprisingly, in idle moments, I used to wonder if there ever could be an alternative to parades. Perhaps a more productive and less volatile alternative. From what I could see, the rest of the world didn’t spend their summers marching and counter-demonstrating - so there were obviously other pursuits out there for grown men that didn’t end in nationwide arson.
  Then one evening, I was dead-heading a cloud of wild ‘bucky’ roses in my father’s garden, when an idea began to, ah, take root. Instead of spending £5 million to police this annual square-off, why doesn’t somebody take the money and sponsor a giant gardening competition? Loads of category winners, with the overall champs getting, say a big bundle of cash and the chance to design a new rose-garden for the White House.
  Complete, off-the-wall fantasy, I know. Who would ever spend their days growing flowers when there’s a chance to stage a paramilitary passing-out parade over their neighbour’s lawn? The incentive, i.e. bribe, would have to be enormous.
  Step forward a cunning Taoiseach, who suggests that if the winners of the festival produce a blue rose – the Holy Grail of the gardening world – they could be eligible for a £50 million-a-year patent. Now, we’re talking. The only condition is that anyone caught marching, counter-marching or looking sideways at another honest citizen for the months of April to September will be automatically disqualified from taking part.
  Yes, yes, I thought. What a wonderful idea. I just have to tell the world. Sadly, however, as I was speeding my way to the Parades Commission, I was waylaid by a publisher, who offered me a very small bagful of money to deliver the plan as a comedy novel instead.
  “Let’s face it,” he said, “they’d only muck it all up anyway.” Only he did not quite say muck.
  So in true Northern Ireland fashion, I took my mess of pottage and left the wider community to sort out its own business.
  As you’d expect, the characters in my new book WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES, experience their own difficulties beating swords into gardening-tools. And, as in most schemes involving the British and American governments, things never quite work out the way we were promised over praties and Jameson in the White House on St Patrick’s Day.
  All-out victory on the parade ground is swapped for all-out victory on the rose-plots. People lie, cheat and otherwise behave like the politicians they are, in the race to produce the world’s first blue rose - and capture the multi-million pound payday. Type reverts to type.
  Happily, however, in my books at least, there is always a moral compass that allows me to deal with the worst offenders in the most satisfying of manners. Sinners are punished, honest men rewarded, and skin-headed drum-bangers consigned to levels of crapulence Dante couldn’t have dreamt of.
  If only a man could get a job like that in the real world ...

Garbhan Downey’s WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES is the Hughes & Hughes Irish Book of the Month for August. Nice one, squire.

A Good Year For The ROSES

“I guess the reason we’re not talking / There’s so little left to say / We haven’t said …” So warbled Elvis Costello in A Good Year for the Roses, a sentiment that wouldn’t cut much mustard with Garbhan Downey right now. For lo! The author of WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES is rabbiting all over the interweb. Here he is on Culture Northern Ireland:

From the outside 2009 looks like a vintage year for political satirists: expenses scandals rumbling on in Westminster, our own MLAs claims coming under ever greater press and public scrutiny, economic meltdown after years of hubris. ‘But I’d say it’s the opposite - there has never been a harder time to be a satirist’, says Garbhan Downey, a writer who has spent the best part of a decade ripping it out of the political classes on both sides of the border. ‘All these revelations just prove that the real world is so much stranger than anything a novelist could come up with.’

 Truth is stranger than fiction shocker! A pity the truth wouldn’t be half as funny as Garbhan Downey once in a while, but sure you can’t have everything. Anyway, where would you put it, etc. Meanwhile, here’s Garbhan over at the Irish Echo:

“There’s a few things I don’t like about America: nukes, twelve years of the Bush family, illegal renditions. Plus the fact that, for some reason, I can never quite fathom, my home television is now stuck for eight hours a day on the Disney Channel.
  “My novel WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES - though a comedy - picks up on some of these complaints.
  “But it also looks at the age-old kinship and friendship between our two countries, as personified by the taoiseach and the new U.S. president, when they meet up in the White House on the opening page.
  “In the book, the “bromance” between Ireland and the U.S. culminates in the Yanks sponsoring a massive flower-growing competition outside Derry, this to take some of the sting out of the Marching Season.”

  Ah, Norn Iron – the only place where you can still have a March in summer. Finally, here’s Downey over at Crime Scene Norn Iron:

“I thought I’d give McKinty a go because Gerard Brennan clearly rated him – and Ger, along with Peter [Rozovsky] and Dec [Modesty Forbids], is one of the few reviewers I still respect. If they have an angle, I don’t see it. And I say that as someone who has spent his life in journalism looking out for angles.”

  As I’ve told anyone who’ll listen, my angle is I’m in it for the money, the free books and the complimentary reacharounds. Anyway, and while we’re on the subject of Adrian McKinty and/or gobby Norn Ironers, here’s McKinty in the Times introducing his Top 10 Female Sleuths:

“As much as any hairy, beer drinking male can be I believe that I am in touch with my feminine side. I ride a girl’s bicycle, I went to a women’s college at Oxford and I have seen several episodes of Sex and the City (though I am not willing to admit the exact number for fear of damaging my hard-boiled crime writing credentials). As a kid in Northern Ireland I had two older sisters who kept me out of trouble and now I have two young daughters whose agenda is precisely the opposite. I grew up in an era of impressive female role models (Charlie’s Angels, The Bionic Woman, Mrs Thatcher) so I have never had a problem enjoying female protagonists in fiction, especially in detective fiction which became my go-to genre. Now that I have written a XX chromosomed detective in my book FIFTY GRAND, I thought I would share my own idiosyncratic list of 10 favourite female gumshoes …”

  Erm, no Foxy Brown in there, squire?
  Finally, and as this will probably be the only CAP post to reference Elvis Costello and Margaret Thatcher, here’s Costello’s touching paean to the Iron Lady, Tramp the Dirt Down. Roll it there, Collette …

Norn Iron In The Soul

It’s all happening north of the border this week, folks. Yesterday was a big day for Stuart Neville (right), with his debut novel THE TWELVE officially hitting the shelves, although you wouldn’t know it from his interweb malarkeybus, where he’s virtually yawning with ennui … And this despite the fact that Publishers Weekly named THE TWELVE one of its top Fall debuts. Personally, I fell out with PW after I got a dodgy review there, although I never quite made it to the level of wishing cancer on the reviewer, or posting his / her phone numbers and email addresses. Which suggests that I don’t care about my books enough, or at least as much as Alice Hoffman and Alain De Botton do. Maybe I should take up another hobby … Anyway, back to Stuart – he’s currently hosting a competition giving away free copies of THE TWELVE, so get your small but perfectly formed ass over here post-haste …
  Elsewhere in Norn Iron, the tall but perfectly formed ass – oops, sorry – tall but perfectly formed Garbhan Downey launches his latest novel tomorrow, Saturday, at 1pm in Easons in Derry. (You’ll note in passing that I write ‘Derry’ as opposed to ‘Londonderry’, which immediately marks me down as a rampant Taig and / or Croppy who refuses to lie down, or just someone who’s too bloody lazy to write ‘Londonderry’ when you can get away with ‘Derry’). WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES is published by the Guildhall Press, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

WAR OF THE BLUE ROSES is a rollicking black comedy set in the world of gardening and international politics. A US sponsored gardening competition in the little country village of Mountrose ends up throwing three governments into turmoil when it sparks a worldwide race to grow the world’s first blue rose. The Irish premier is forced to team up with semi-reformed gangsters to stop British and American politicians shanghaiing the Mountrose Prize and walking off with a billion-dollar patent. Bugging, burglary, sabotage, murder and sexual deceit – it’s all part of the rose-growing business. And the bad guys are even worse …

  Nice. Finally, a little bird tells us that Adrian McKinty is appearing at Belfast’s No Alibis next Wednesday at 6pm to celebrate the launch of the rather terrific FIFTY GRAND, of which CAP is currently giving away two signed copies. I’d love to make it up there for the festivities, but I’m not sure it’ll happen … which is a shame, because I’d imagine it’ll be a very nice turn-out indeed. Plus, the chap is flying in all the way from Oz just to do a reading. Plus, it’s his round since the last time he was home. Plus, his sister owns a pub. You can see where I’m going with this … Oh, and did I mention that FIFTY GRAND is a dynamite novel? I did? Well, I’m telling you again …