the psychopathology of everyday life - Adrian McKinty's blog: Patrick Leigh Fermor

I read the sad news this morning that my favourite writer Patrick Leigh Fermor has died. Fermor was a war hero, a bon vivant, a wit, a polyglot, an impeccable prose stylist and, possibly, the last of the great English travel writers. In 1933 at the age of 19 after failing to get into university Leigh Fermor decided to travel on foot from London to Constantinople. He caught the ferry to Holland and began an epic journey, the first part of which he chronicled in the wonderful book A Time of Gifts. After making it to Constantinople he fell in love with Greece and travelled there until war broke out. He joined the SOE and worked behind enemy lines in Crete. His exploits as a commando were later made into the Michael Powell film Ill Met By Moonlight.
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Patrick Leigh Fermor is the man as far as I'm concerned. He loved languages, travel, scholarship, cultural differences and most of all people. He never accepted the surface judgement on anything or anyone and preferred to investigate things for himself. A Time Of Gifts is simply the best travel book I've ever read. You can read the excellent Daily Telegraph obituary, here.

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.

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

"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)

11 comments:

seana said...: I've been told to read him by various people for years, yet still haven't done it.

Declan Burke's got a nice piece up about him too.; June 12, 2011 at 12:45 PM
Mark English said...: Trouble is, the culturally deep and variegated world which created people like him is gone. Military officers no longer know Horace, and those far-away places (like Tintin's Tibet!) are no longer quite so exotic or far away.; June 12, 2011 at 3:34 PM
seana said...: I think there will be more great travel writers. But they will approach the thing from an entirely new direction.; June 12, 2011 at 3:49 PM
adrian mckinty said...: Mark

Its true and its a real shame. You can only hope that the real enthusiasts find the classics in their twenties and once discovered they become a passion.; June 12, 2011 at 7:14 PM
adrian mckinty said...: Seana

Yes you may be right.

In fact in that spirit I found a lovely piece today in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/magazine/the-glorious-ruins-of-the-erie-canal.html

If you cut and paste this exact link you wont have to use any of your monthly visits either.; June 12, 2011 at 7:17 PM
seana said...: Thanks. For some reason, this reminded me of the mystery novels of Linda Fairstein, I guess because most of her books take you deeper into some historic place around New York.

The slide show was nice as well.; June 12, 2011 at 10:29 PM
Roymonde said...: Can't agree more. "A Time of Gifts" is beautifully written and he lived an enviable life - and had a good innings too.; June 13, 2011 at 5:55 AM
adrian mckinty said...: Roy

One of the few books I immediately read again once I was done with it. It can sustain many rereadings.; June 13, 2011 at 2:41 PM
Rob James said...: Just reading the obit now. I loved his books as a teenager. Apparently there's an unfinshed third volume of teenage travels; June 14, 2011 at 11:16 AM
Rob James said...: Also, apropos of favourite authors,
this talk between Chandler and Fleming is lovely; June 14, 2011 at 11:19 AM
adrian mckinty said...: Rob

Excellent obit from Hitch in today's Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2296835/; June 14, 2011 at 1:16 PM