Gerard Donovan, author of JULIUS WINSOME and SUNLESS, examines the changing face of Ireland in YOUNG IRELANDERS, a stunning and elegiac collection of interrelated stories. In this marvellous volume coming in July 2008, Donovan returns to his home country of Ireland with a passion. The stories in YOUNG IRELANDERS shine a fresh light on the New Ireland and how the Irish are coping with its rewards and pressures: immigration, mid-life crisis, adultery and divorce, a lost sense of place and history, and of course, what to do with all that prosperity.Erm, not at all well, as it happens, and it’ll be interesting to see how many of Donovan’s stories deal with the explosion in crime that has accompanied the Celtic Tiger. Given that the original Young Irelanders were prone to kicking out the jams once in a while, there’s a strong possibility that Donovan will be preaching some kind of radical social consciousness revolution. There’s also a strong possibility that he won’t. Only time, that notoriously prevaricating doity rat, will tell …
“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.” – Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian
Saturday, March 22, 2008
On Celtic Tigers And Wingéd Elephants
Friday, March 21, 2008
Funky Friday’s Freaky-Deak
Hazel, Bigwig And Fiver Expect …
Laugh? We Almost Emigrated. Again.
Q. It is a bit of a cliché but it is often said that prizes usually go to bleak books. Do you think that people misunderstand comedy / humour when it comes to things like awards?So, the absence of humour. Is it because crime is still seen as a very serious issue in Ireland? Is it that the psychic weight of Joyce, Beckett, et al means that business of writing is too serious to be taken lightly here? Or is it just that we don’t have a sense of humour? And will Garbhan Downey and Twenty Major sue because we didn’t mention them in tandem with Colin Bateman, in order to make a spurious point? There’s a free copy of Benny Blanco’s CHRISTINE FALLS (yep, we’re still trying to give it away) to the most penetrating insight. Or you could just tell us a joke. The comment box is open, people ...
A: “I don’t really know what goes on with awards, but perhaps some people feel a conflict between importance and humour. Maybe they feel that a book isn’t making serious points if it makes them smile. I’ve never found that humour in writing detracts from the bleakness or tragedy that might also be there. I think of writers I love like Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace and see their works combining humour and sadness and more. I’ve just read Joshua Ferris’s THEN WE CAME TO THE END and think it’s another excellent example.”
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The FLIGHT Stuff
“Jimmy watched the white van on the television and saw people stream away from the surrounding buildings. The mortars had been found and the Queen was safe, and yet something was not quite right.” Jimmy has spent a lifetime fighting the Republicans who wanted to take over his country, and the politicians who ran it to suit themselves. But old enemies have formed new alliances based on greed, and now, when his deadly skills are needed most, Jimmy is powerless. The only outsiders Jimmy can rely on are an unorthodox policeman, Ian Patterson, and his mortal enemy, IRA killer Mick Quinn. But Ian has divided loyalties and Mick is obsessed with taking his revenge on the SAS. To save the life of the Queen, the three men have to counterattack even as the mortars begin to fly. But first, for the sake of his children, Jimmy must throw away his gun. McAllister’s LINE OF FLIGHT is more than just another thriller; it explores the aftermath of a peace process that has left fear, doubt and loathing to breed under the shiny new skin of reinvestment, forming a volatile cocktail that needs but the barest spark to ignite. McAllister’s skill at capturing the language and nuances of the main factions is impressive, but the warning it provides for those waging a war on terror is terrifying for us all.They’re coming thick and fast out of Norn Iron now, people: in the last month alone we’ve had David Park’s THE TRUTH COMMISSIONER, Garbhan Downey’s CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS, Sam Millar’s BLOODSTORM and (The Artist Formerly Known As) Colin Bateman’s ORPHEUS RISING, with Seamus Smyth’s THE MOLE’S CAGE to be published in France later this year. For more on the topic, jaunt on over to Gerard Brennan’s distressingly cool Crime Scene Northern Ireland …
A Fat Lady Clears Her Throat
“No Way, Guv – I’ve Been Framed.”
Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to deal with the events of IN THE WOODS. She is out of the Murder Squad and has started a relationship with fellow detective Sam O’Neill but is too badly shaken to commit to Sam or to her career. Then Sam is allocated a new case, that of a young woman stabbed to death just outside Dublin. He calls Cassie to the murder scene and she finds the victim is strangely familiar. In fact, she is Cassie’s double. Not only that, but her ID says she is Lexie Madison, the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues, Cassie’s old undercover boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: to send Cassie undercover in the dead girls place. She could pick up information the police would never hear and tempt the killer to finish the job. So Cassie moves into Whitethorn House, poses as a post-grad student, and prepares to enter Lexie’s world …Ah yes, the old riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma gambit, with a doppelganger tossed in to boot. Strap yourself in for another one of those ambiguous endings, folks …
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Jury Remains Out: THE BUTCHER BOY
“When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.” Thus begins Patrick McCabe’s shattering novel THE BUTCHER BOY, a powerful and unrelenting journey into the heart of darkness. The bleak, eerie voice belongs to Francie Brady, the “pig boy,” the only child of an alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain ... his actions perfectly monstrous. Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favour of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage – and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan. Dark, haunting, often screamingly funny, THE BUTCHER BOY chronicles the pig boy’s ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvellous control of rhythm and language ... and no novel since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind. – Powell’s Books
Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE DYING BREED by Declan Hughes
Hughes returns to this theme in his third novel, THE DYING BREED (aka THE PRICE OF BLOOD for its U.S. release, through William Morrow). Commissioned by a dying priest, Fr Vincent Tyrell, to find a former jockey who has gone missing, Loy has only a name to go on. But Fr Tyrell’s name is in itself evocative: the priest is the brother of the hugely successful racehorse trainer and breeder FX Tyrell. Soon Loy finds himself immersed in the murky underworld of Irish horse racing, with dead bodies piling up as he inches closer to the dark heart of a family that appears to have much in common with the Medicis and the Borgias.
Hughes, a former playwright, is a veteran at establishing mood, pace and tone at an early stage, and the Christmas period during which the events swiftly unfold is as much a player in this story as any of its flesh-and-blood characters. He’s also very good at weaving together a number of diverse sub-plots, and here touches on a number of hot-topic issues of recent Irish history: corruption in Irish horseracing; neglect and abuse in Church-run industrial schools; the declining influence of the Church when juxtaposed with the inexorable rise of Mammon; the infiltration of all levels of Irish society by illegally amassed wealth. The style, which is of the tough, hardboiled variety, owes as much to Raymond Chandler as it does Ross Macdonald, with Hughes showcasing a deft hand at leavening the grim tone with flashes of mordant wit: “Neither had been a jockey; the plasterer sounded amused at the suggestion, the solicitor mysteriously outraged, as if I’d accused him of being a sex criminal, or a DJ.”
The plotting, dense and complex, draws the reader further and further into a web so tangled that it becomes claustrophobic, and while the ambition is laudable, there is a sense that Hughes may well have bitten off more than he can comfortably chew. By the denouement, events have turned so complicated that Loy finds himself unable to be in at the death, and so must hear how the climactic finale occurred second-hand, courtesy of his excitable sidekick, Tommy. In saying that, there is also a palpable sense that Hughes has enough confidence in his ability to bend the rules of the first-person narration out of shape, and ironically comment on the limitations imposed by the genre, and in this he is in the vanguard of a number of Irish writers who are testing the limits of the conventional crime novel, among them Tana French, Ken Bruen, Benjamin Black, Brian McGilloway, Gene Kerrigan and John Connolly.
In the end, all crime novels should be judged on how well they convey their insights into the environment that caused them to come into being, and on that reckoning Declan Hughes has confirmed the promise he has shown with his first two novels. THE DYING BREED is a complex, labyrinthine, gritty, coarse (and, yes, bloody) novel that exudes a brash confidence and an ambition that lies beyond its grasp – a description, it should be said, that could easily be applied to the nation that spawned the novel. It may not be the Great Irish Crime Novel some of us were hoping for, but as a snapshot of modern Ireland, it is a clearly focused picture of our faults and failings, and perhaps even our virtues too. – Declan Burke
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Millar’s Crossing
“Millar is rapidly building a reputation for pacy thrillers in the crime noir genre. This latest offering, BLOODSTORM, will not disappoint his expanding fan base. Set in his hometown of Belfast, this is a violent tale of murder and revenge told in brutal prose that makes no concessions to the faint-hearted. Millar has a gift for sharp dialogue and a lively imagination to match. He keeps the action rolling from the get-go with a rapid expanding plot that quickly head-butts the reader into submission. Those looking for a comfortable read should be warned. Karl Kane is no gentlemanly Hercules Poirot. Even Sam Spade would be shocked at some of the company Karl Kane keeps and the situations he finds himself in.” – Irish IndependentLovely, lovely, lovely. For the skinny behind Sam’s motivation to write BLOODSTORM, which arrived via Colombia in an American penitentiary, jump over here. And Gerard Brennan’s super-cool CSNI is currently hosting an interview with Sam, wherein our hero threatens lethal force against anyone who dares to touch his signed copies of Cormac McCarthy novels. Can’t say we blame him, to be honest ...
“Karl Kane takes no prisoners – literally as well as figuratively – in this dark, page-turner of a book. Millar’s ability to tap into the dark recesses of the human mind is brilliantly constructed, page after nerve shattering page. BLOODSTORM is a triumph from a master storyteller. With BLOODSTORM and Karl Kane, Millar has given us his best work since ON THE BRINKS and THE REDEMPTION FACTORY. Highly recommended.” – Irish News
“Gripping and arrestingly violent, BLOODSTORM is a well-written thriller with its share of disturbing insights into the dark side of the human psyche.” – Irish Mail on Sunday
“Millar whips up a storm in this brilliant, fast-paced thriller. Gritty and gripping, BLOODSTORM, is a real page-turner – and indeed a chapter-turner. Anti-hero Karl Kane, is the most original private investigator to grace a book in years. The promise of more to come from this chilling and dark series should keep Millar’s growing army of fans content - at least for the time being…” – Andersonstown News
“BLOODSTORM is a powerful, relentless page-turner of a book, leaving you gasping for more…” – BBC Radio Ulster
Monday, March 17, 2008
“It’s The Pictures That Got Small.”
“I could not be more excited to announce the U.S. publication of three crime novels by one of today’s greatest crime writers, Ken Bruen. Originally intended to be revealed at the upcoming NoirCon in Philadelphia, my personal favourite of Ken’s stand-alones, LONDON BOULEVARD, will now be released later this summer. With a new introduction by Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed), this new edition of L.B. will feature special bonus material, including “best of Ken Bruen” lists by some of today’s top crime talent, and much more. Following later this year will be THE HACKMAN BLUES (with an introduction by Ray Banks), and DISPATCHING BAUDELAIRE (intro by poet/crime writer Pat Mullan). The amazingly talented Jeff Wong -- who designed the Crippen & Landru Ross Macdonald anthology, THE ARCHER FILES -- pays homage to the original SUNSET BOULEVARD film poster with his darkly comic portrayal of “hero” Mitchell breaking the arm of a car-window washer over his leg ... a scene from the beginning of the book. Look closely and you’ll see Mitchell looks remarkably like Bruen himself and the poor vagrant bears an eerie resemblance to fellow crime writer Jason Starr (and Ken’s co-author of three Hard Case Crime novels). There’s even talk of a film version of LONDON BOULEVARD in the works, so keep your ears open for more news later in 2008!”Hmmmm, a movie version of a po-mo novel about the po-mo movie about movies. This could get interesting … Incidentally, over at Jason Starr’s interweb emporium, he mentions that there’s a script written and optioned for the first Bruen-Starr collaboration. Hollywood or BUST? Our money’s on BUST ...
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. But It Will Very Probably Be Blogged
Seth Harwood. JACK WAKES UP. You know it makes sense, people …
The Monday Review
Mi Casa, Su Casa: KT McCaffrey
The Butcher(ed) Boy
Why, you might ask, would a writer choose to take crime fiction as his or her subject? At what point does an author say, yep, that’s what I’m going to write about? Moi? I think I was about nine years of age when I got the bug. This would have been about the time I got to know an old-style cop named John Duffin from my home town of Clara, in County Offaly. Think ‘Heartbeat’ rather than ‘The Bill’, a time when local Gardai, like the parish priest, the bank manager and the school headmaster, were held in high esteem. A friend of the family, Garda Duffin liked nothing better than to chat about his involvement with local ne’er-do-wells.
One of the darker stories he told concerned a local murder that had taken place in 1941. This would have been a decades or so before I was born. It kicked off in a somewhat comical manner.
Bernard Kirwan, who lived with his younger brother Larry on a small farm in Rahan, five miles from Clara, took a notion to do a spot of armed robbery. With minimum preparation, he took a hacksaw to the double barrels of his shotgun, donned a mask, and held up the local postman. Through a contact in the post office sorting room he’d learned that the postal delivery included registered mail containing cash. Bernard could have shot the postman to facilitate his escape but decided instead to blast the bicycle’s tyres with both barrels, an action he hoped would achieve the same objective. He was caught of course (the postman recognised his voice) and was given seven years ‘hard’ in Portlaoise Jail.
His time inside proved uneventful except for the fact that he learned the skills of butchery while there, a factor that would play a major part in subsequent events. Conditional release was granted four years later. He returned to the farm, intending to take charge, but his younger brother Larry had other ideas. Hostilities broke out and a struggle for supremacy ensued.
Larry refused to give Bernard food or a wage for his work on the farm. Bernard, with no means to sustain himself, began to steal food and money. Fist fights, and even a knife attack, marked the brothers increasing bitterness. When it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, Larry went missing. His girlfriend became worried when he didn’t show for a date. Friends who had expected to see him became concerned when he failed to show. When Bernard was questioned about his brother’s unexplained disappearance, he claimed Larry had gone to visit an aunt in Kildare. Inquiries took a little longer back then but within a few days it was established that Larry had never gone to his aunt.
Foul play was suspected.
Neighbours, aware of the brothers’ hatred for each other, noticed smoke coming from Kirwan’s boiler house twice in as many days. This they considered odd due to the fact that no cooked meal had been fed to the pigs. When it became known that Bernard had learned butchery skills, the Garda decided to investigate. He fobbed them off, saying he’d been burning rubbish, but he now found himself subjected to round-the-clock surveillance. One of those assigned to cover his movements was my friend Garda John Duffin.
Knowing he was being watched, Bernard undertook long bicycle trips to the neighbouring towns of Kilbeggan, Moate, Tullamore and Mullingar. John Duffin, who carried quite a bit of weight, was forced to get on his bike and follow the suspect to each location and back again. At journey’s end, Bernard would wave cheekily to the fully uniformed and totally exhausted Duffin. Prefiguring The General many years later, Bernard liked nothing better than to cock a snoot at the law.
Eventually, men working on a bog, less than a mile from the Kirwan farm, dug up a human torso. With what forensics existed at the time they were able to establish that it was the remains of Larry Kirwan. Bernard stood trial, accused of using his butchery skills to kill his brother, hack off the limbs, burn them, and then bury the torso.
He was found guilty and hanged in 1943.
I wasn’t the only person that John Duffin told this macabre tale to; he also related it to playwright Brendan Behan, who used it as the basis of his 1954 play THE QUARE FELLOW. I’ve never seen the play but then, I have no need to see it. As a young impressionable lad, I’d heard it first hand – related in far more graphic detail than outlined above – something that insured I would retain a fascination for the darker aspects of the human psychic for the rest of my life. I suppose I should consider myself lucky to have channelled this interest into my writing rather than anything, shall we say, more malevolent. – KT McCaffrey
KT McCaffrey’s THE CAT TRAP is published by Robert Hale.
Saints, Scholars, Cops And Killers
Seamus Smyth: “This is not just a great crime novel, it’s one hell of a novel, full stop. QUINN should be THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE for this decade, it’s that good and fresh and innovative.” – Ken BruenThere’s many more, of course, but right now we’re blogging from the pub and some amateur has just spilled a pint of green beer onto our laptop and fhizz signal seems to be crrssshsprcklefrtz … Arrah, bollocks. Hic. Another bucket of porter there, Jamesey, and don’t shpare the horshes …
Eugene McEldowney: “The novel was a reaction to some of the awful books that had been written about Northern Ireland and which made no effort to place the political violence in any kind of context.” – Dublin Quarterly
Vincent Banville: John Blaine was the original hardboiled Irish private eye. He may yet sue Declan Hughes for being younger and thus better placed to capitalise on Ireland’s newly minted mean streets.
Philip Davison: “Part le Carré, part Graham Greene … thoroughly compelling… cracking dialogue.” – The Independent. “Each word in this bleakly humorous novel promises to explode and bring light to the shadows … Davison never fails to surprise, compel and intrigue with dry philosophy and grim wit.” - The Times Literary Supplement
TS O’Rourke: “History is written in stone. I know that history is also written by the victor, but the truth, the whole story of these terrible times, is now emerging and I have tried to present at least a small picture of what the Civil War was like for a foot soldier, a volunteer, in Dublin City.” – Dublin Quarterly
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Devil Has All The Best Toons
The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books
Even the best private eye needs more than a name to find a missing person, but that’s all that Father Vincent Tyrrell, the brother of prominent racehorse trainer FX Tyrrell, will offer Loy when he comes to him for help. A dwindling bank account convinces Loy to delve into the deadly underworld of horse racing, but fortune soon smiles on him: while working another case, he discovers a phone number linked to FX on a badly beaten body left at an illegal dump. Loy’s been around long enough to know that there’s more to the Tyrrell family than meets the eye -- and then a third body appears. At Christmastime, on the eve of one of Ireland’s most anticipated racing events, the intrepid investigator bets his life on a long shot: finding answers in a shady network of trading and dealing, gambling and breeding.To be in with a chance of winning a free copy of THE DYING BREED, just answer the following question:
Is Ed Loy:Answers to dbrodb(at)gmail.com, putting ‘One Declan is a coincidence but two is rather unfortunate’ in the subject line, and including your address in the body text, before noon on Tuesday, March 18. Et bon chance, mes amis …
(a) distressingly obsessed with blood;
(b) not in the slightest bit obsessed with blood, but it with he;
(c) Lew Archer with a perpetual hangover?