The Cold Cold Ground

As of today The Cold Cold Ground is finally available in bookshops in the USA and Canada! In case you're not aware, TCCG is a mystery novel set in the Northern Ireland of 1981. As far as I know its the first book ever to look at the extraordinary situation of a Catholic policeman in 1980's Ulster and to explore the unbelievable pressures he would have been under. The book takes place largely on the street where I was I born and raised when I would have been about 13 years old. Basically I wanted to do 2 things with the novel: 1. Tell a cracking good story; 2 Capture the zeitgeist and mood of what Belfast was like during the Hunger Strikes. 

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There have been 2 reviews of TCCG so far in the American press, both in trade papers; Booklist and The Library Journal both gave The Cold Cold Ground starred reviews and you can read those if you scroll down past the blogposts about Vertigo and Downton Abbey. TCCG came out in the British Isles in January and here are some representative views of the British and Irish press: 
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"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland, The Cold Cold Ground is what he would have written." --Peter Millar, The Times 

"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 this novel, the first in a projected trilogy of police procedurals." --Doug Johnstone, The Glasgow Herald

"Written in a terse style, the novel is 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." --Declan Burke, The Irish Times

"He manages to catch the brooding atmosphere of the 1980s and to tell a ripping yarn at the same time. There will be many readers waiting for the next adventure of the dashing, funny and intrepid Sergeant Duffy." --Maurice Hays, The Irish Independent

"What makes McKinty a cut above the rest is the quality of his prose. His driven, spat-out sentences are more accessible than James Ellroy's edge-of-reason staccato, and he can be lyric. The sound of a riot is "the distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship". The names of David Peace and Ellroy are evoked too often in relation to young crime writers, but McKinty shares their method of using the past as a template for the present. The stories and textures may belong to a different period, but the power of technique and intent makes of them the here and now. There's food for thought in McKinty's writing, but he is careful not to lose the force of his narrative in introspection. The Cold Cold Ground is a crime novel, fast-paced, intricate and genre to the core." --Eoin McNamee, The Guardian.

"Tropes are tropes for good reason. The important crime-fiction ones are present and accounted for here -- a serial killer who purposely leaves clues, a cop who's on to him, procedural and forensic nitty-gritty. Yet McKinty can startle with bouts of lyrical scene-setting that could only come from the fingertips of someone who grew up in the environment. He tells us of "arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon... The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife". He educates us about shopkeepers boarding-up their windows when a riot was due, or the ritual of paramilitaries leaving a silver 'Judas coin' by the corpse of a bumped-off informant. Your reviewer was born the year The Cold Cold Ground (a Tom Waits' lyric, by the way) is set in, and such passages work better at painting a picture than any episode of Reeling In The Years." - The Irish Sunday Independent

Jon Page at Bite the Book said: "No exaggeration, this is one of the best crime novels I have ever read. McKinty’s last book, FALLING GLASS, was superb but THE COLD, COLD GROUND blew me utterly away. It is easily his best book to date." And hey it turns out that Audible.com has just picked the audio version of Cold Cold Ground as one of the best books of the year!  which is very nice of them. 

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So that's the pitch ladies and gentlemen. I know many of you reading this haven't got the book, yet; well if you like what I do on this blog I can only suggest that you'll really like what I do in TCCG. If you do get The Cold Cold Ground in print, e book or audio form I'd appreciate a review if you can spare the time.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009

Clearly not a regular customer of Daniel Antony: The Modern Barber of Northampton

Alan Moore's new comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century 2009 is the third and final part of the third outing of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In the comic book shop where I bought it, it was in a display right next to the DC Comics' Watchmen prequels which came out last week: Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Minutemen & The Comedian. If Moore had seen that display it might have given him a stroke: his brand new creation donuted by DC's "hack work." Actually I've had mixed feelings about these prequels. Initially I was opposed, thinking them a creatively bankrupt way for DC to squeeze more money out of comic book nerds and Watchmen completists. But then as I saw the impressive cast of artists and writers involved I began to wonder if DC weren't just doing what Moore was doing by appropriating such iconic characters as Raffles, Malcolm Tucker, Jack Carter etc. (without compensating the copyright holders) for his comic; so I decided to give the Watchmen prequels the benefit of the doubt. But last week I finally read the first issues of the first four Watchmen prequels and I have to say that even in this disinterested neutral state of grace I found them pretty underwhelming. The artwork was better than the story, but really if this is the best that the mainstream comics industry can come up with in 2012 then probably the doomsayers are right and comic books are in for a very tough few years ahead. The Watchmen prequels are timid, clumsy and hamfistedly literal in their interpretations of these characters. They lack a cinematic vision and, so far, bring nothing new to the table in terms of mythology. My favourite was probably J Michael Straczynski's Nite Owl, but even that was just so darn...obvious. 
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Back to Century 2009: ok so whats it all about then? Well Century 2009 follows up on what we learned in Century 1969 where Jack Carter, looking a lot like Michael Caine, tracked down the cultists who killed Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and brought East End gangland vengeance to an Aleister Crowley figure who was just about to jump into Mick Jagger's body at a free Stones festival in Hyde Park. The League of Gentlemen were also on the trail of the Crowley cultists because they feared the cult had a plan to bring forth a demonic child who would in turn somehow cause the apocalypse. In Century 2009 the demonic child has been born and he sounds an awful lot like Harry Potter something which I thought was pretty funny. Meanwhile Malcolm Tucker (from The Thick Of It), the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, is trying to defuse an out of control war in the country of Q'mar which got started under President Bartlett (from the West Wing). 
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The main delight in Century 2009 is spotting these borrowings because actually the story isn't that brilliant or exciting until the very end when the most powerful faery in the United Kingdom shows up to save the world from the Harry Potter Moonchild run amok. (Alan Moore and I am in complete agreement as to who this powerful faery might be.) As an intellectual game I think I enjoyed getting the insider refs more than I dug the actual narrative (an Andy Millman here, a James Bond there, a lovely Queequeg's chain of Coffee Shops) which, alas, is probably the weakest installment of League III. 
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So is it worth buying? Aye, I reckon so. In these times of tightened belts I'd suggest that you skip the Watchmen prequels entirely until they come out in graphic novel form to your local library (I believe DC when they say that viewed all together the prequels will form an impressive multi-arcing story) but if you're into British pop culture or Alan Moore or League I and II, then League III is worth getting, just don't expect transcendence. 

2312

Saturn as seen from Titan

I really enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel 2312, a speculative, intelligent and intriguing examination of what the solar system might look like 300 years from now. 
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I should say straight off the bat that there are a few problems with the book which didn't bother me but which may annoy some readers. First, to be honest, its barely a novel at all, the plot such as it is is wafer thin and pretty obvious. The characters are not terribly interesting and the detective story at 2312's heart is merely an excuse to travel to lots of fascinating moons and hollowed out asteroids in a grand tour of the solar system. I actually think 2312 might have worked even better as a non fiction book: it already contains chapters which are just info dumps in the style of John Dos Passos and ditching the "plot" might have freed KSR to really let loose with his speculations. Despite the terrific reviews in the USA I also think that perhaps KSR's sincere hippytech style might not play that well in the UK where we like our sci-fi a bit more cynical, sarky and ironic...
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But, like I say, none of this bothered me that much and I don't want to sound too negative here. What makes 2312 so great is the smart and very reachable vision of the future that KSR presents. It's not a utopia by any means but if mankind doesnt destroy itself first, the image of a solar system populated by brave, innovative and clever people is a very attractive one. In KSR's 2312 Mars has been terraformed, Mercury and Titan are inhabited, there's a base on Europa and Io and the Chinese have the biggest prize of all, having somehow grabbed Venus and are halfway through terraforming that. Every conceivable kind of habitat exists inside hollowed out asteroids and only Earth gets a thumbs down from KSR because we couldnt get our shit together over the whole global warming thing. 
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If you like futurism, the art of the great Andy Goldsworthy and TED talks you'll probably like 2312. No one knows what the future is going to be like but if you're as clever as KSR you can probably guess a lot better than most of us. 

England's Dreaming...Punk Britannia

The people who brought us the great Synth Britannia documentary now bring us Punk Britannia. A bunch of interviews with aging rockers in too tight jeans? Check. Grainy footage of outraged 1970's politicians. Check. Grainy footage of overdressed 70s punks walking on the Kings Road. Check. Somehow although we've seen this before many many times, it all works. 

Brave

The kilt of course is completely ahistorical

The interesting looking new Pixar film, Brave, is about ancient Scotland and features Billy Connolly as King Fergus. As everyone knows Scotland is one of Ireland's greatest gifts to the world and the era of the movie seems to be around the time of the once powerful but now largely forgotten Irish-Scottish kingdom of Dalriada. The real life King Fergus of Dalriada is considered to be the first king of Scotland. He spoke Irish (as did all Scottish Kings until the unfortunate death of King Macbeth (don't believe the Shakespeare version)) and legend has it that King Fergus died in the town where I was born and which is named after him: Carrickfergus. Here's what Wikipedia says about the real King Fergus, who may also have been a contemporary of King Arthur: 


Fergus Mór mac Eirc (Scottish Gaelic: Fergus Mòr Mac Earca; English: Fergus the Great) was a legendary king of Dál Riata. He was the son of Erc. While his historicity may be debatable, his posthumous importance as the founder of Scotland in the national myth of Medieval and Renaissance Scotland is not in doubt. Rulers of Scotland from Cináed mac Ailpín until the present time claim descent from Fergus Mór. The historical record, such as it is, consists of an entry in the Annals of Tigernach, for the year 501, which states: Feargus Mor mac Earca cum gente Dal Riada partem Britaniae tenuit, et ibi mortuus est. (Fergus Mór mac Eirc, with the people of Dál Riata, held part of Britain, and he died there.) However, the forms of Fergus, Erc and Dál Riata are later ones, written down long after the 6th century. Fergus is also found in the king lists of Dál Riata, and later of Scotland, of which the Senchus Fer n-Alban and the Duan Albanach can be taken as examples. The Senchus states that Fergus Mór was also known as Mac Nisse Mór. These sources probably date from the 10th and 11th centuries respectively, between 30 and 40 generations after Fergus may have lived. While it was suggested some believe Fergus claimed lineage to Arthur, the historian John Morris has suggested, instead, that Fergus was allowed to settle in Scotland as a federate of Arthur, as a bulwark against the Picts.  


Here's what wikipedia says about Carrickfergus: 


Carrickfergus (from Irish: Carraig Fhearghais, meaning "rock of Fergus"), known locally and colloquially as "Carrick", is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is located on the north shore of Belfast Lough, 11 miles (18 km) from Belfast. The town had a population of 27,201 at the2001 Census and takes its name from Fergus Mór mac Eirc, the 6th century king of Dál Riata. It is County Antrim's oldest town and one of the oldest settlements in Northern Ireland as a whole.

Books of the Year

We're half way through the year and so far its been a really great reading year for me. (Unlike last year which was a bit sparse.) I've read 32 books, which is quite a bit above my normal average and most of them have been really rather good. Here's the 11 books that got As in my little notebook in chronological order: 

January: Arguably - Christopher Hitchens 

February: Platform - Michel Houllebecq; Slaughter's Hound - Declan Burke

March: The Complete Essays of George Orwell; The Art of Fielding - Chad 

Harbach; The Red Queen - Matt Ridley

April: Vanished Kingdoms - Norman Davies; The Nameless Dead - Brian McGilloway

May: Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel; Manhunt - Peter Bergen

June: 2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson

Australia: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Ok so not all Aussie women look like this, but on Chapel
Street, Melbourne a good percentage of them do, hence the
infamous "Chapel Street Creep"

We've been in Australia for 4 years this month. I was going to write a long post about the Aussie experience but I can't be arsed. Here are some quick and dirty observations instead. 25 random things about Oz both bad and good. Unlike Brits (but very much like Americans) Australians arent that brilliant at taking criticism, but please don't be offended my Aussie pals, it's all done in love:

1. The default position of the average Australian is friendly and nice. (This is not true of my homeland where the default position of the average Ulsterman is dour and suspicious.)
2. Australian meat pies are dodgy but good.
3. Books in Australia are more expensive than in any other country in the world (except NZ where only Peter Jackson and the Prime Minister can afford to buy books).
4. The weather in Melbourne is perfect. The winters are cold but not too cold. The summers are hot but not too hot. There is no humidity.
5. Australians go on about Gallipoli an awful lot. Its lucky they werent at the Somme like my grandfather. Seriously, mate, the Somme makes Gallipoli look like a triumphant success.
6. Australia, somewhat surprisingly, is an incredibly rich country. The money comes from the vast natural resources that Australians have been selling to a booming China. The Aboriginals whose land the natural resources are on, of course, are still in dire poverty. I don't really get why this is so.
7. Aussie Rules is a pretty silly sport. Its adorable that Melburnians get so excited about this parochial stop-and-start inferior form of Gaelic football.
8. Australians don't like pretension. Pretentious Australians are forced to emigrate to England or New York. I'm looking at you Peter Carey, Clive James, Robert Hughes, Germaine Greer...
9. Shane Warne is the Australian most Australian men would aspire to be like. This is a bit of a mixed bag. I dig the sporting talent and the George Best style skills with the ladies but I'm not convinced by the botox, the dyed hair, the whitened teeth...
10. St Kilda is the greatest neighbourhood on planet Earth.
11. Unlike America or England Australia does not generally worship the rich and the upper classes. Again, a very good thing.
12. The Victoria Police are hassling bastards.
13. Australian pop music is the worst in the world.
14. Australian home grown TV is very nearly the worst in the world.
15. Australians are funny. Australian professional comedians are not funny.
16. Australian newspapers are aggressive, competitive and pretty good.
17. Australian beer has improved dramatically in the last 4 years.
18. The best sport in Australia is rugby league: specifically the State Of Origin series.
19. You cannot get a decent cup of black coffee anywhere in this whole country.
20. Tasmania is awesome.
21. The words "hoon" "larrikin" and "bogan" all apply to me.
22. The 19 hour flight to London is a goddamn nightmare. (I've done it six times now.)
22. Not everyone who went to Geelong Grammar School is a wanker but its a pretty high percentage.
23. There is virtually no ideological difference between the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Liberal Party. This makes Aussie politics pretty damn dull.
24. It costs 18 dollars to go to the cinema in Melbourne!
25. The Local Taphouse on Carlisle Street, Balaclava, is my third favourite pub in the world.

One Football Team For Ireland

The Republic of Ireland's sorry performance in the European Championships has encouraged me to re-edit and repost this blog from a couple of years back...
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Northern Ireland has not played in a World Cup or European Championship since Mexico in 1986 when they were eliminated in the first round and I doubt they will ever qualify again. In the 1980's the Iron Curtain was still intact, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union only fielded one team each and Northern Ireland could usually secure a second or third seed in the group competition. The standard of play and the number of countries has increased in Eastern Europe since and typically Northern Ireland now gets a third or fourth seed with virtually no hope of making it to the World Cup finals against superior opposition. Northern Irish fans have coasted on memories of the 1982 World Cup when we came within a whisker of making it to the semis, but those glory days were more than a generation past and the current squad has more in common with a team like Iceland or Latvia or - God save us - Wales, perennial also rans. The situation in the Republic of Ireland is almost exactly the opposite. Since their nadir in the 1980's the Republic has been to three World Cups: 1990, 1994 and 2002 and this week they began their European campaign.
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It wasn’t Northern Ireland’s fault that football - unlike rugby - became split in Ireland. Dublin was the centre for Gaelic Games on the island and Belfast was traditionally the centre for football. The Irish Football Association was (and still is) based in Belfast but after partition in 1923, a rival federation, the FAI, was established in Dublin. It was nationalists in Dublin who divided football on the island of Ireland, not unionists in the North. Confusion reigned for the next thirty years with dozens of players getting called up by both Ireland federations until, in the 1950's, Con Martin, Davy Walsh, Tommy Ahern and Reg Ryan had the odd distinction of playing for the IFA and FAI teams in World Cup qualifiers. FIFA put a stop to this by ordering a renaming of the Irish teams and a strict division of players: footballers born in Eire would play for the Republic of Ireland, those born in the north, Northern Ireland.
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Northern Ireland still managed to punch above its weight, qualifying for the 1958 World Cup and then producing such stars as George Best, Pat Jennings, Sammy McIroy and Danny Blanchflower, before the heroics of the Espana ‘82 campaign. Northern Ireland fans are a small but dedicated bunch and I have been to many memorable home games at Windsor Park. The defeats of England and Germany come to mind and truly anything can happen there in that tiny, intimidating ground in the heart of west Belfast. But now that the team has been eliminated for the sixth World Cup in a row it is time to face facts, an all Ireland team is our best hope of ever getting to the Cup again and over the long term an all Ireland team might do quite well, especially if it began to draw players from all of Ireland’s football codes.
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The all Ireland rugby team is currently ranked seventh in the world and an all Ireland football team would surely rise in the FIFA rankings. There are of course many problems with this scheme. Firstly, the IFA would be furious at the loss of money and prestige if home games moved to the Aviva stadium in Dublin. Secondly, football is not rugby, rugby in Ireland is a middle class game that no one, deep down, really gets too serious about whereas football is important and comes with a heavy sectarian baggage that rugby does not possess. I concede these points, but one way to win over hearts and minds in Belfast would be to play half the home games there. Loyalist and Republican paraphernalia and flags could be banned completely as they are for Belfast Giants games and then you might even see some Catholic supporters or families with children, rarities both in Windsor Park. Sectarianism is not the universal acid it once was in Belfast and it shouldn’t be forgot that Glasgow is a city divided between Rangers and Celtic supporters who come together to boo England at Hampden Park.
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Another difficulty is that many Northern Ireland players would fight to qualify for an all Ireland team; perhaps none of the current team would be good enough. But competition is ultimately a good thing, you want footballers playing their hearts out to get selected for the national team, not just assuming they’ve made it because they’re on a big club in the EPL. The Irish rugby team grants no favors to players because they are from Ulster or any of the other provinces and that has made the team stronger. Of course the diehard sectarian nutcase ‘supporters’ will never buy into this plan, but the whole point of the peace process in Northern Ireland is to build cross community bridges and displace sectarianism whenever possible. Money, patience and trust, but especially money from FIFA, UEFA and the British and Irish governments could grease a lot of wheels and make it happen. It’s already too late to get the ball rolling for Brazil 2014, but perhaps it could happen before the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
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I know some people will say, hold on a minute, it's not just about winning it's about playing the game, old chap. Yeah, pal, that may apply to some sports but not to football.

Ridley Rated

(an updated version of an earlier post...(updated to include my rating of Prometheus))
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I like Ridley Scott. He's got a great work ethic for a 75 year old and he's a blunt Geordie (very entertaining interview with Scott here.) Although I dont consider myself a Scott fanboy somehow I have managed to see all of his films. British critics especially consider him to be an auteur but he clearly isn't a genius all the time as there have been some real stinkers along the way. A visual poet certainly but story often lets him down. Anyway these are my ratings in the standard A-F format:

1977 The Duellists A
1979 Alien A
1982 Blade Runner A
1985 Legend F
1987 Someone to Watch Over Me D
1989 Black Rain C
1991 Thelma & Louise C
1992 1492: Conquest of Paradise D
1996 White Squall D
1997 G.I. Jane C
2000 Gladiator B
2001 Hannibal D
2002 Black Hawk Down A
2003 Matchstick Men C
2005 Kingdom of Heaven E
2006 A Good Year F
2007 American Gangster D
2008 Body of Lies E
2010 Robin Hood F
2012 Prometheus D

Prometheus

Prometheus is a disappointing film. Just how disappointing? Well, I'd say its up there with The Matrix Reloaded but not quite the catastrophe that was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Most of the problems come from the confused and unfocused script which is a tired mishmash of such diverse elements as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stargate, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien Versus Predator. Ridley Scott has very much lost his storytelling compass in the last decade and he's acquired the knack in recent years of turning a good, original idea into a dreary Hollywood tick-the-boxes one. (The sad tale of Nottingham is the prima facie case of this). Scott at 75 has forgotten that story builds on character and without good characters a script is largely worthless. In Prometheus there is no space for characters to exist and although the rather bland cast do their best they have nothing to work with but dialogue so wooden it would have been embarrassing for the woodentops to utter it. I don't know what the initial script of Prometheus looked like but it was Ridley Scott's idea to bring in one of the writers of Lost who completely rewrote the original concept into the Lost-style rather pretentious mess which the film has become.  
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Prometheus is a hair's breadth away from being a one star disaster but it is saved by some striking visuals, a nice turn by Michael Fassbender and a great scene of self surgery in the final act. Still we expected a lot more from Ridley Scott whose two previous science fiction films Alien and Blade Runner are both masterpieces. Sir Ridley doesn't need the money and it probably would have been better for his reputation if he had passed on Fox's whole Prometheus concept when it was first raised three years ago. Perhaps someone can now stage an intervention and talk him out of his crazy idea to - essentially - remake Blade Runner. 

My Week With Marilyn

My Week With Marilyn is a fluffy piece of entertainment aimed at men of a certain age who can fantasise that they too could have been the young Colin Clark, who blagged his way onto the set of the Laurence Olivier/Marilyn Monroe film The Prince and the Showgirl. As Clark tells it in his book (which might play a bit fast and loose with the truth) Arthur Miller (Marilyn's third husband) left the production after a row with Monroe and he, Clark, spent a week as Marilyn's assistant and supposed romantic plaything.

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The movie is deliberately lightweight fare in the mode of The King's Speech or any of those awful Richard Curtis/Hugh Grant films, but somehow this flick is more engaging. Ken Branagh does his party turn as the aging Olivier (and does it very well of course), Julia Ormond is Vivien Leigh, Eddie Redmayne is the young Colin Clark and a transcendent Michelle Williams captures some of the essence and magic of Monroe. The opening act is very breezy and the film only bogs a little near the end when everyone becomes very wise and begins spouting improbable screenwriter's dialogue. "I cast Marilyn to recapture my own youth through her," "Olivier is a great actor who wants to be a movie star and you are a movie star who wants to be a great actress," etc.

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There are nice performances from a pixie-like Emma Watson as a wardrobe assistant and a regal Judy Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike but the real pleasure in My Week is Michelle Williams's incredible performance as a vulnerable, funny, sad, radiant Marilyn Monroe. I reckon My Week With Marilyn is the real reason Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got divorced. Katie saw this on DVD a few weeks ago and thought my God, I was the star of Dawson's Creek not Michelle Williams, what the hell has happened to my career! And of course this was not even Michelle Williams's best performance of last year which came in the minimalist western that no one saw, the underrated, Meek's Cutoff. 

Catching Cold In The USA

The US cover without review quotes

Its been a while since I've had a crime novel published in America. Three years in fact. My last novel to come out Stateside was Fifty Grand which was brought out by Holt in 2009. This was not a pleasant experience. Two months before Fifty Grand was due to be released my editor left the company (editors dont just edit the book, they're the ones that get you reviews, PR and the oxygen of publicity) and three weeks before the pub date her replacement editor left. The book had no one looking after it and there was no book launch, no PR, no advertising and I had to beg Holt to send out review copies. (In the end I sent out review copies out of my own pocket.) The book died an ignominious death of neglect which was a shame because Fifty Grand went on to get good reviews and was shortlisted for the Theakston Best British Crime Novel Award. What was even more galling for me was the PR blitz Holt set in motion for John Banville, who had decided that he was going to write crime novels under the name Benjamin Black. Black's novels were everything I was opposed to in crime fiction: cliched, mannered, dull, cozy, old fashioned and pandering to an Americanised nostalgic vision of Ireland; but Holt pushed Banville out there like he was the second coming of Dashiell frickin Hammett. After that I decided I was never going to allow any of my books to be published by a major corporate US house again and I said as much in print. It was a bold statement but there weren't really any takers for my books in America so it was all a bit moot anyway. 
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Early this year, however, I was approached by an editor called Dan Mayer who was starting a new imprint in the autumn of 2012 called Seventh Street Books. (Seventh Street, of course, is where Edgar Allan Poe lived). Dan said that he wanted to publish new, outsider voices who had something urgent to say and who rejected the moribund cliches of much contemporary crime fiction. He told me that he had read The Cold Cold Ground and wanted to publish me. I had heard this line from editors before: we want outsiders, we want new voices, we want original ideas and then you look at their list and its Marcia Clark from the OJ Simpson trial and a celebrity chef who has had an idea for a mystery novel. But Dan seemed different. For a start he got on my good side by praising the work of Declan Burke and then when he asked me questions about The Cold Cold Ground his observations were smart, knowledgeable and pertinent. Publishing is full of bullshit artists but Dan evidently wasn't one of those. (I was once in a meeting with an editor who told me that he had "been to Ireland twice to golf at St Andrews and Troon.") Dan appeared to be that rare bird who cared about the literary heritage of crime fiction and was in a position of power to create a list that embraced his vision. 
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So anyway this is a long preamble to pretty exciting news for me. The Cold Cold Ground is being published in the US this November by a brand new imprint: Seventh Street Books. I've made one or two minor changes to the American version and the novel will come with a new cover as a paperback original at a very reasonable fifteen dollar price (10 bucks on Amazon). You can look at the Amazon listing here (and you can "like it" if you want too). I hope the book does well. The critics have been very very kind in the UK, Ireland and Australia so it might be pushing my luck to hope for a similar ride in the US but we shall see...