I know I posted this last year but I love this clip, especially the opening sentence.
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I'm an Irish novelist currently living in St Kilda, Australia
"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch."
---The Guardian
A couple more books, a few birthdays, some shuffleboard then a period spent in the digestive tract of earthworms, followed by molecular breakdown, the sun boiling into space, the heat death of the universe, atomic decay, perpetual darkness, a trillion years of nothingness and then, if we're lucky, brane collapse, a new singularity and a new Big Bang.
About Me
I'm an Irish novelist currently living in St Kilda, Australia
You can read a review of my latest book, The Cold Cold Ground, in The Guardian, here. You can peruse the review from the Irish Independent, here or the review in The Times, here. The Glasgow Herald's verdict is here and The Sydney Morning Herald chips in, here. Not to be outdone The Irish Times weighs in, here and the Irish Sunday Independent adds its two cents, here. If you want to know what all the fuss is about you can be a good chap and get The Cold Cold Ground on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Audible.com or at your local bookshop.
Followers
More about me
I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights.
In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year. The sequel to that book The Dead Yard was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the 12 best novels of 2006 and won the Audie Award for best mystery or thriller.
In mid 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids. My last book Falling Glass was Audible's Best Mystery or Thriller for 2011. I've just published a new novel for Serpents Tail called The Cold Cold Ground.
In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year. The sequel to that book The Dead Yard was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the 12 best novels of 2006 and won the Audie Award for best mystery or thriller.
In mid 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids. My last book Falling Glass was Audible's Best Mystery or Thriller for 2011. I've just published a new novel for Serpents Tail called The Cold Cold Ground.
WORK IN PROGRESS:
All Hail McKinty!
"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."
---The Times
"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch."
---The Guardian
"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."
---The Irish Times
"McKinty is a big new talent."
---The Daily Telegraph
"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."
---The Sunday Independent
"McKinty is a big new talent."
---The Daily Telegraph
"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."
---The Sunday Independent
"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."
---The Glasgow Herald
"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."
---Kirkus Reviews
"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."
---Publishers Weekly
"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."
---The San Francisco Chronicle
"McKinty keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way."
---The Rocky Mountain News
"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."
---The Washington Post
"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."
---The Miami Herald
"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."
---The Philadelphia Inquirer
"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."
---The Chicago Sun-Times
"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."
---The Barcelona Review
"I really enjoyed [Dead I Well May Be’s] combination of toughness and a striking literary style. Both those things are evident in Hidden River. McKinty is going places."
---The Observer
"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."
---The Morning Star
"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."
---Booklist
"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."
---The Big Issue
"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."
---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."
---The Irish Examiner
"A virtual carnival of slaughter."
---The Wall Street Journal
"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be."
---The Irish Post
"A pacey, violent caper in which McKinty vividly portrays [Belfast's] sleazy, still-menacing underbelly."
---The Sunday Times
"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."
---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."
---The New York Times
"Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. The third in the trilogy The Bloomsday Dead should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better."
---CrimeSpree
"Until The Dead Yard's relentless, poignant ending you'll turn these pages as quickly as you can."
---The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."
---The Sacramento Bee
"Le Fleuve caché d'Adrian McKinty impressionne par la richesse et la diversité de son ton et de son écriture, passant avec aisance du lyrisme ample de la nostalgie de l'amour perdu au rythme saccadé du narrateur sous l'emprise de l'héroïne. Ce livre rare et maîtrisé est une réussite bien digne de la Série noire."
---Le Figaro
Eine eigentlich simple Story, die natürlich bereits als Grundlage für Hunderte Bücher und Filme diente, macht Adrian McKinty zu der mitreißenden Odyssee eines jungen Mannes, der in der Lage ist, sich seiner Umwelt anzupassen wie jene Kakerlaken, die er in seinem Harlemer Appartement jagt, studiert und sowohl angewidert awie anerkennend entkommen lässt. Nicht umsonst 1992 angesiedelt, ist Der sichere Tod der kongeniale Kommentar zum Wesen der Neunziger.
- Jochen König, krimi-couch.de
"McKinty - that guy is a friggin genius."
---Ken Bruen
"McKinty is a cross between Mickey Spillane and Damon Runyan, the toughest, the best."
---Frank McCourt
"McKinty is an exciting new talent."
---Ed McBain
"Daddy's book is really boring."
---Sophie McKinty (aged 2 1/2)
"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."
---Kirkus Reviews
"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."
---Publishers Weekly
"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."
---The San Francisco Chronicle
"McKinty keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way."
---The Rocky Mountain News
"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."
---The Washington Post
"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."
---The Miami Herald
"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."
---The Philadelphia Inquirer
"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."
---The Chicago Sun-Times
"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."
---The Barcelona Review
"I really enjoyed [Dead I Well May Be’s] combination of toughness and a striking literary style. Both those things are evident in Hidden River. McKinty is going places."
---The Observer
"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."
---The Morning Star
"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."
---Booklist
"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."
---The Big Issue
"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."
---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."
---The Irish Examiner
"A virtual carnival of slaughter."
---The Wall Street Journal
"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be."
---The Irish Post
"A pacey, violent caper in which McKinty vividly portrays [Belfast's] sleazy, still-menacing underbelly."
---The Sunday Times
"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."
---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."
---The New York Times
"Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. The third in the trilogy The Bloomsday Dead should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better."
---CrimeSpree
"Until The Dead Yard's relentless, poignant ending you'll turn these pages as quickly as you can."
---The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."
---The Sacramento Bee
"Le Fleuve caché d'Adrian McKinty impressionne par la richesse et la diversité de son ton et de son écriture, passant avec aisance du lyrisme ample de la nostalgie de l'amour perdu au rythme saccadé du narrateur sous l'emprise de l'héroïne. Ce livre rare et maîtrisé est une réussite bien digne de la Série noire."
---Le Figaro
Eine eigentlich simple Story, die natürlich bereits als Grundlage für Hunderte Bücher und Filme diente, macht Adrian McKinty zu der mitreißenden Odyssee eines jungen Mannes, der in der Lage ist, sich seiner Umwelt anzupassen wie jene Kakerlaken, die er in seinem Harlemer Appartement jagt, studiert und sowohl angewidert awie anerkennend entkommen lässt. Nicht umsonst 1992 angesiedelt, ist Der sichere Tod der kongeniale Kommentar zum Wesen der Neunziger.
- Jochen König, krimi-couch.de
"McKinty - that guy is a friggin genius."
---Ken Bruen
"McKinty is a cross between Mickey Spillane and Damon Runyan, the toughest, the best."
---Frank McCourt
"McKinty is an exciting new talent."
---Ed McBain
"Daddy's book is really boring."
---Sophie McKinty (aged 2 1/2)
Who's been dropping by
What's Next For Me?
A couple more books, a few birthdays, some shuffleboard then a period spent in the digestive tract of earthworms, followed by molecular breakdown, the sun boiling into space, the heat death of the universe, atomic decay, perpetual darkness, a trillion years of nothingness and then, if we're lucky, brane collapse, a new singularity and a new Big Bang.
Me & the Mrs in our survivalist bunker
Adios and thank you for stopping by....
Humiliation, unhappiness, discord are the ancient foods of heroes---Jorge Luis Borges
The measure of a writer isn't success, but how hard he tried to do what he knew he couldn't do---William Faulkner
I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen---J G Ballard
I read the dictionary once . . . It turns out that the zebra did it --- Steven Wright
Times are bad. Children disobey their parents and everyone is writing a book---Cicero
Made in Ireland
40 comments:
The dystopian architects who design these concrete hell holes should be made to live in their own work. Your built environment is everything to how you feel about your life and the world.
As a kind of 'Celeb get me out of here' social experiment you could put the architects, council town planners and the special few who hold all the wealth in Scotland. Put them in a high rise dump. Feed them a diet of fried food, cigarettes & alcohol, maybe throw in a few jellys then see how violent they end up.
Frankie
People like Le Corbusier don't understand that humans are biophilic and need grass, water, fauna and vistas, not concrete everywhere.
I didn't mean to stereotype the Scots with the fried food thing- i'm sure they eat or have at least thought about eating salad.
Frankie
I've been in Glasgow on a Saturday night and the salads were few and far between I can tell you.
Glasgow Salad = Chips (c) Viz
Is there a St. George's Day?
Adrian if you hate Le Corbusier for being biophobic, you probably love Frank Lloyd Wright. Too bad Fallingwater is falling apart.
Rob
Ahhh Viz where would I be without your Top Tips...
Peter
I would love to see Falling Water some day, that is if it doesnt fall into the water first.
And its not just the material, its what you do with it, if I remember rightly the Parthenon was built with concrete, or possibly some other but equally impressive Roman structure.
I'm presuming you mean the Pantheon rather than the Parthenon, so I will proceed on that basis. One day, purely by accident, I approached it from the rear via a back street, where the marble facing had cracked to reveal the brick beneath. To see such that such a grand structure was built from such humble materials was an inspiring experience.
If you did mean the Parthenon, let me know, and I'll tell you my Parthenon story.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
The top tips twitter feed is my current joint favourite along with Steve Martin
Peter
The round one in Rome with the hole in the roof, not the one majestically rising above the smog.
I'd gladly hear your Parthenon story. Although I'd be surprised if that involved brick. Didnt Pericles boast that he had found a city made of brick and left one made of marble...or maybe that was Augustus talking about that other city. I really should look these things up.
I have a Pantheon story, but the one in Paris where Rousseau is buried, not the other one with the hole.
But you first...
Rob
And the cartoons are way better than the New Yorker.
The round one in Rome with the hole in the roof, not the one majestically rising above the smog.
Yeah, I guess after 2,000 years any building is apt to develop a leaky roof.
No, you first.
My Parthenon story indeed involves no brick just brass, as in the admirable self-assurance with which a diminutive female guard at the old Acropolis Museum handled a pair of obnoxious visitors. Speaking of Rousseau, did you notice the front of his crypt?
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
I did not. I shall explain why.
So I'm walking around the Pantheon in Paris with my 1 and a half year old daughter. I'm pointing out the tombs of the great and the good and she's oohing and aahing and asking questions in a kiddie way. A female security guard comes over and says I have to get out because we're being too loud. Ok, I tell her no more questions, my daughter knows how to be quiet. Too late, she says, you have to get out now. Furious argument ensues in angry French.
Adrian: Have you actually read Rousseau?
Security Guard: Yes.
Adrian: I dont think you have. He said encourage the children to run around, let them ask questions, let them be free!
Security Guard: You still have to go.
...
I wonder who Parisians hate more Americans or children? I suppose American children.
The salope had obviously not read Emile. Of course, didn't Rousseau abandon all his own children?
I think Parisians must hate Americans more than children because I have seen them behave with great tenderness toward their own children. Or maybe the problem is not Parisians at large, but rather Parisian fonctionnaires.
Peter
He did.
They must us study JJR to death but the only thing I really liked was The Confessions.
My feeling is that Parisian officialdom just hates the citizenry. It's not anti-Americanism or anti-children.
I liked the Meades clip, but I was a bit confused. Some of the housing project eyesores looked like things I'd be happy to live in, and bore little relation to American projects. And at least one of the buildings he evaluated as a good building loomed above the landscape and had little to recommend it.
I don't like to think of the Scots as thugs, and yet I suppose they are.
Seana
I only really uploaded the cllp for the joke right at the start.
Some of those estates round Glasgow and Edinburgh though are very grim. Almost as grim as those round Belfast.
Peter
The Confessions brings to mind a little brain teezer:
What do Jesse Jackson and Jean Jacques Rousseau have in common in the culinary line?
...
Give up?
They both rather disgustingly pissed in the soup they were making for other people.
Okay. I'm avoiding soup from now on.
I think there is humane architecture and less humane architecture,but mainly people feel about the structures they live in about what the rest of the world tells them they should feel about it.
Seana
I was literally born and grew up in (until the age of 13) what in American terms would be called a housing project and we called a redbrick council estate, and the truth is I was extremely happy there. We had a front and back garden, we knew everybody on the street, kids were always running in and out of each others houses. I thought it was great. There were, I'm sure, social problems but as kid you dont really notice them.
I can't believe you were thrown out of the Pantheon for talking. How snooty can you get? It's women's clothes shops in Paris I have issues with. Some of those haughty shop assistants almost destroyed my confidence as a woman I can tell you. At least I take regular showers.
Frankie
I was thrown out but that lady got an earful: Emile, The Nouvelle Heloise, The Social Contract. She had nothing. Nothing.
Later the same afternoon we were kicked off the Luxembourg Gardens for playing on the grass. It was interesting to read in Sartre's autobiography a few years later that the Luxembourg Gardens were a hell hole for him as a child.
These places are here to be enjoyed. Although I find it funny when I walk around Tate Modern and hear parents and children talking, the kids obviously schooled in art appreciation , "Mummy is that a Rembrandt" from a six year old. Its like a theme park for the middle class.
Maybe Sartre really said: "Hell is other French people."
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
With all the crime, I'm surprised the Scots have a reputation for lack of intensity.
What with all the 99% rhetoric lately, the 7% against the rest part of his talk really stood out for me this time around.
I don't know what St. Andrews Day is.
Has anyone spent a winter in a Chicago highrise project where the elevators never work and the stairwells and corridors are exposed to the elements?
Does Canada have housing projects?
Do Scotland and Northern Ireland have similar histories, architecture, and housing projects?
In Scotland and Northern Ireland, are most projects located on the outskirts of cities? Do people in the projects have reliable means of transportation? How far do they have to travel to get to supermarkets and libraries?
Anon
A lot of questions there.
Belfast and Glasgow have similar post war histories. The new estates were/are on the outskirts of cities with very patchy public transport. Many people who were cleared out of Belfast and Glasgow slums in the 60s complained/complain about the isolation in the new estates.
Seana
Assault yes but I'll bet Scotland's murder rate is lower than almost every state in the union, certainly lower than every state south of the Mason Dixon.
Any clue as to why ancient Scotland was so gangster in the first place?
Peter
What kind of housing is available for low income First Nations Canadians?
Adrian
What kinds of neighborhoods do Aboriginal Australians live in?
Anon
I guess you are trying to make a point but you are being way too oblique for me. The Socratic method only works when the focus is narrower and sharper so why dont you just say what you want to say?
No, I just really wanted to hear from you and Peter about what public housing is like in your countries, and what people thought about public housing in the States. I didn't know that Scotland had a high crime rate or a violent history, and I wondered why other parts of the British Isles didn't seem to have the same big gap between the rich and the poor. I never meant to be pretentious, and I'm sorry I annoyed you.
Anon
Dont be silly! You didnt annoy me. I just dont know the answers to the questions!
Adrian
I sure hope I didn't annoy you, because I love this blog even though much of it goes over my head. (I'm not smart enough to use the Socratic method.) I tend to ask too many questions when I'm on coffee break and can't think fast enough. My only exposure to public housing was in southwest Chicago in the nineties. Mostly I was worried about how isolated the communities were, how the neighborhoods lacked centers like libraries where people could gather and have good times, the lack of any transportation, and the fact that whole neighborhoods had no food sources except a few fast-food joints. The Scotland video made me worry that other countries besides the States have the same "food desert" problem.
Nevermind grim housing estates and jellied up Scots. This day the world was blessed with my presence, I know, its enough to cheer anyone up!
Frankie
What's "jellied up" mean? (Sorry - I'm American.)
Erm.. Scottish sweets. Sometimes they put them on their cornflakes. Its funny an American girl asked me tonight where was there a drugstore open and I almost pointed her to a drug dealers house ha ha! She obviously meant a Pharmacy, she almost got more than a pack of anti acids.of course in America u can get some proper good painkillers.
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