What Lilyput Did Next: The Peachy Pumpkin Dumplin’ Interlude

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: Princess Lilyput made her debut at the renowned beauty spot Glendalough yesterday, with the Grand Vizier among her entourage on pack-mule duties, there to be serenaded (see above) with the latest ditty to be penned by CAP Towers’ resident Composer Elf, ‘Peachy Pumpkin Dumplin’’. Sung to the tune of ‘She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain’, the lyrics runneth thusly:

Peachy Pumpkin Dumplin’
“You’re a peachy pumpkin dumplin’ / Yes you are /
You’re a peachy pumpkin dumplin’ / Yes you are /
You’re a peachy pumpkin dumplin’ / A peachy pumpkin dumplin’ /
You’re a peachy pumpkin’ dumplin’ / Boopy-doop!”
(© Composer Elf, 2008)

The Princess is partial to ye olde ‘boopy-doops’, see …

The Monday Review

It’s Monday, they’re reviews, to wit: “A pleasure of the guiltiest kind, like No Country For Old Men as directed by Mel Brooks,” reckons Booklist (via Hard Case Crime) of the third Ken Bruen and Jason Starr collaboration, THE MAX. Meanwhile, Enigma likes PRIEST: “PRIEST, just nominated for a 2008 Edgar award, is a wonderful book, with, I think, some differences from the others in the Jack Taylor series … It’s a page-turner; not because of the murder, but what the events show us about Jack. His story remains compelling, however brooding and depressing the emotional landscape.” Stephanie Padilla at New Mystery Reader has taken a gander at CROSS: “As is usual with Bruen’s darkly noir outings featuring Galway’s Jack Taylor, the reader is treated to more of an expose on Ireland’s latest grievances, along with the murmurings of a man who daily walks along both the edges of his disappearing country and the ruins of his past …” And the Irish Emigrant is of the same opinion: “Not being a fan of the crime genre in fiction I was prepared to read Ken Bruen’s novel as a task, but willingly admit that by the time I had reached the halfway mark I had begun to identify with the troubled Jack Taylor and read with increasing interest. The mixture of anger, self-loathing and remorse conspires to present a man capable of redemption.” Staying with the Irish Emigrant for the verdict on Aifric Campbell’s debut: “Sibling rivalry and a yearning for an unobtainable maternal affection runs like a malignant current through THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER. The narrative is wrapped in the language of psychoanalysis and semantics, shot through with sometimes quite startling descriptions of the sexual act but descriptions which nonetheless are accompanied by a palpable detachment.” Onward to Brian McGilloway’s GALLOWS LANE: “As with BORDERLANDS, the first in the series, the style is understated in a way that paradoxically emphasizes the horror and emotion of the crimes and their aftermath … Among the very accomplished group of new Irish crime writers, McGilloway ranks very high in his ability to evoke a particular milieu, to populate it with interesting and believable characters, and to structure his stories around meaningful (if sometimes horrifying) metaphors,” says Glenn Harper at International Noir. Mark Taylor at the Newham Recorder broadly agrees: “The twists rack up the tension nicely and, unlike many of his contemporaries, McGilloway manages to keep you interested and guessing until the very last page. What also sets it apart is the way he manages to instil even some of the most minor characters with a humanity and interest not always apparent in the crime thriller genre.” What of Benny Blanco? “THE SILVER SWAN is an intense, well-written novel, worthy of Booker Prize-winner, Banville. Quirke is the classic anti-hero, with just enough contradictions to make him likeable. This is the perfect sequel to CHRISTINE FALLS and hopefully not the last of the series,” says Sandy Mitchell at Suite 101. Tom Corcoran, via the Five Star website, likes Michael Haskins’ debut: “In this seaworthy tale, Haskins proves that intrigue is the craft of thugs; patriotism, no matter the country, can warp to order; and the good don’t always prevail. But sometimes they do. CHASIN’ THE WIND is a deep-draft thriller. Take a reef in your main and hang on for the gale.” They’re starting to filter through now for John Connolly’s THE REAPERS: “As with all of JC’s books, it is very well researched and plotted. This was, in his own words, a bit of a ‘fun’ book to reward long-time fans of the Charlie Parker series … It was very good,” reckons John Hubbard at Judge, Jury and John. More JC from Larry Fire at The Fire Wire: “Connolly’s triumphant prose and unerring rendering of his tortured characters mesmerize and chill. He creates a world where everyone is corrupt, murderers go unpunished, but betrayals are always avenged. Yet another masterpiece from a proven talent, THE REAPERS will terrify and transfix.” John McFetridge’s debut, DIRTY SWEET, impressed Mr and Mrs Kirkus (no link): “It’s refreshingly hard to tell the good from the no-good in this helping of cops and robbers, Canadian style … Bristling action, a vivid sense of place and nary a plot twist telegraphed. Exceptional work from McFetridge.” A quicky for Siobhan Dowd’s THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY from Read to Recommend: “Part mystery, part family story, Irish writer Siobhan Dowd has crafted a smart, fun and thought provoking tale you'll be thinking about days after you are finished.” Lovely … Someone at Reed Business Information likes Adrian McKinty’s THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD: “McKinty writes masterful action scenes, and he whips up a frenzy as the bullets begin to fly. Devotees of Irish literature will also appreciate the many allusions to Joyce’s ULYSSES.” Alis at Hawkins Bizarre was impressed by WHAT WAS LOST: “Catherine O’Flynn is a wonderful delineator of character – in a few well-chosen sentences people are laid bare before the reader, their souls dissected, their past lives served up in a few well-chosen details … Read it if you want characters so real you feel you have to go and ask them how they felt about being written about in this book.” Finally, a couple for Derek Landy: “The plot is complex at times, with alliances being forged on multiple fronts. Lots of magic, fights, conspiracies will keep you reading through the night. Derek has written a brilliant book that in my opinion surpasses Harry Potter by miles,” says Babushak at A Bookseller and Two Cats. Over at The Dan Blog, Dan likes PLAYING WITH FIRE: “I would rate it 9/10 because it wasn’t as exciting as the last book but is still a good book. And may the Lord be with you.” And may the Lord be with you too, Dan …

Mi Casa, Su Casa: KT McCaffrey

The continuing stooooooory of how the Grand Vizier puts his feet up and lets other people talk some sense for a change. This week: KT McCaffrey (right) on casting fiction.

Casting Characters in Fiction

As a writer, the question I get asked most frequently is without a doubt, ‘Do I base my characters on real people, i.e. acquaintances, or do I conjure them up from my imagination?’ My answers are never as clear-cut as I’d like them to be. I could say that for the most part my characters, as the disclaimer at the beginning of my books claims, are fictitious and that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Well yes, that’s the necessary legalistic position, but of course as an observer of the human condition I am influenced by the people I interact with on a daily basis, so it follows that these same people inform the characters that inhabit the pages of my books. In essence my characters are created from an amalgamation of the crowd I hang with, taking various personality traits and physical shapes from each and blending them so that they form a believable whole.
  Only in one instance did I base a character almost entirely on a living person. In my second novel, KILLING TIME, the fictitious character Jacqueline Miller has been involved in a serious car accident that has changed her life irrevocably. Half her face had been badly damaged in the accident, and evidence of cosmetic surgery remained visible beneath the carefully applied make-up; her left eye looks strangely out of line with the right one. In a court case resulting from the accident, Jacqueline is awarded enough money to allow her give up her teacher’s job and to purchase two houses in Leeson Park.
  Here’s the reality: back in 1969, as a student in the NCAD I got to know a Cork-born woman named Lean Scully. She’d been a teacher before a horrific road accident almost brought her life to an abrupt end. The accident had seriously disfigured her and she needed a series of extensive skin grafts to her face. Arising out of the accident and subsequent court case, she received enough compensation to buy two magnificent houses, numbers 49 and 50 in Leeson Park. She opened a public relations practice in No. 49. Sounds familiar? Even though I was just an art student back then she sometimes hired me to design brochures and corporate publications for her clients. The money I earned ended up in the tills of The Pembroke, Toners and The International Bar. Happy days!
  Lean Scully, this woman I was later to morph into the Jacqueline Miller character, kept lodgers in the second house – among them a young American student from Milwaukee named Peter Straub (right), who would become famous many years later for novels like GHOST STORY, THE FLOATING DRAGON, and THE TALISMAN (written with his friend Stephen King). Straub was attending university at the time, struggling to write poetry and studying for a Ph.D. I knew him on a nodding basis and attended a few poetry readings he gave in various pubs popular with us students (The great traditional musician Donal Lunny who, incidentally was a fellow traveller of mine in the NCAD, took up residence at one stage in the same rooms that Peter Straub once inhabited.)
  Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s I continued to do occasional design work for Lean and was always delighted when she invited me to attend the lavish, boozy parties she threw in No. 49. In 1999, when I decided to write my first book, REVENGE, Lean offered to read the manuscript before I offered it to a publisher. Unlike me, she was one of those people who knew every rule and regulation in regard to the proper usage of the English language. She was aghast at what I’d given her. ‘It seems to me,’ she said in her deep throaty voice, ‘you have a bucket full of commas, semicolons, apostrophes, and all you do is throw them at the page.’ In my defence, the manuscript represent my very first attempt at writing, though there are some people today who claim I’ve still got that bucket. Once Lean had managed to teach me to turn my text into what she called ‘acceptable English’, she enjoyed reading my books. I remember being concerned about giving her KILLING TIME to read, wondering what she’d make of Jacqueline Miller character. To my surprise, she didn’t make the connection. There is of course the possibility that she didn’t want to make the connection on account of the unsavoury actions I had the fictitious character enact in my story.
  Lean loved reading and listening to classical music but her great love, her passion, was for the theatre. She had become a permanent fixture at the Edinburgh Festival, where her support and opinions were taken seriously and greatly appreciated. In contrast, certain well-known theatrical heads in Dublin viewed her as something of a nuisance and dismissed her with rude indifference. When Lean died in 2004, she had the last laugh, taking revenge on those in Dublin theatre land who had subjected her to such shabby treatment. In her will, she directed her executors to sell the two houses in Leeson Park, and after a bequest to a friend and the Carmelite Fathers, the proceeds from the property was to go to the Edinburgh Festival. I understand it amounted to the guts of €5 million. Don’t you just love it?
  During her lifetime, Lean mixed with the movers and shakers, the glamour set, the golden circle, but I was one of only a dozen people in attendance at her burial in Dean’s Grange cemetery. How sad is that? Since her death all my characters have remained fictitious and any resemblance to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Yeah, right ...

KT McCaffrey’s THE CAT TRAP is published by Robert Hale

The Sunday Roast

A Minister for Propaganda Elf writes: “A few tasty little interweb Sunday dumplings for your delectation, people. First up is CAP’s good friend Bernd Kochanowski (right), who is currently hosting the latest incarnation of the Crime Carnival over at Krimis Internationale and doing nothing whatsoever to undermine the stereotype of German efficiency and thoroughness. Quoth Bernd:

“Therefore it isn’t easy to present something new. Most of the keepers of blogs work hard to present regularly new topics and new posts. As a result readers are at a certain risk to forget last week’s post, not to mention last month’s post, although these posts had thrilled them so much. Therefore my question to you: Which older post would you like to see in a blog museum?”

  “We’re taking the Fifth. Meanwhile, over at Detectives Beyond Borders, Peter Rozovsky may or may not announce the first outing for Noir at the Bar, a revolutionary new concept that juxtaposes crime fiction readings with music. The bar in question is the Tritone in Philly, and the first writer up to the mike is – trumpet parp there, maestro – Duane Swierczynski. It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, but we like it, etc.
  “Finally, the one-man lunatic asylum that is Critical Mick has a review of Tana French’s IN THE WOODS, but as always there’s a twist. Firstly, it appears that Critical Mick’s copy of IN THE WOODS was snaffled by a literary-minded burglar, and secondly, the Mickster has provided an mp3 version of the review for all of you funky, teched-up interweb heads out there. Mick also has a request of us, which runneth thusly:

“If you are looking for content for CAP, feel free to mention the Writing Show’s current First Chapter of a Novel Contest. You were good enough to mention it last year: you can call this Bleeding Fingers II. The contest is open for submissions now, and there’s still about three weeks to meet the early deadline. Full details are on The Writing Show’s website. I will be most grateful.”

  “Mickster? We’re not worthy. Although we do represent decent value for money, particularly now that the euro is so strong against sterling and the dollar. Love one another, people. Out.”

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

The good people at Serpent’s Tail have been kind enough to offer us three copies of Aifric Campbell’s critically acclaimed debut THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER to give away, so the least we can do is quote their blurb elves. To wit:

Jay Hamilton lives a comfortable life in fashionable west London, listening to the minor and major dysfunctions of the over-privileged clients who frequent his psychoanalysis practice. But the darker recesses of his own psyche would not stand up to close examination: his brother Richard, a genius professor of mathematical linguistics, was apparently killed by rent boys in Los Angeles and Jay was the first on the scene. Author, Dana Flynn is determined to scratch beneath the surface while researching a biography she intends to write about Richard, and finds that Jay’s professional life is as precarious as his personal relationships - he uses his clients’ case studies as material for his fiction writing. Such is Jay’s hunger for recognition as a creative force that he exploits the vulnerables he counsels, and a decision not to intervene when a troubled patient steals a baby causes his past to unravel.

Lovely. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER, just answer the following question.

During her teenage years, did Aifric Campbell have a prize-winning ...
(a) science project;
(b) greyhound;
(c) afro?

Answers via the comment box, along with an email address (please use (at) rather than @), before noon on Tuesday, May 6. Et bon chance, mes amis …