Funny Ha Ha

I got pretty surprising news this week that my first Duffy novel, The Cold Cold Ground has been longlisted for The Last Laugh Award at CrimeFest. It was Colin Bateman who told me about this, who, of course has been longlisted himself. The Last Laugh Award is for the Best Humourous Crime Novel published in the British Isles in the last year. I don't know if you've read The Cold Cold Ground, but if you have you'll know that it isn't exactly a laugh riot, indeed its a pretty serious noir set against the background of the Hunger Strikes in 1981. However there are quite a few jokes in the novel and one of the things I did try to do with the book was capture Belfast's famous propensity for black humour. In Ireland's literary tradition moral seriousness has always been modulated by wit, black humour and irony - and I feel that in Ulster this has been taken to an even darker and more interesting degree by a population who frequently use humour as a coping mechanism. (Perhaps one of the reasons my books don't do particularly well in America is that their sarcasm and irony is accepted at face value?) Anyway much of The Cold Cold Ground was funny to me and I'm delighted that the judges of CrimeFest seem to have gotten the joke. 
Here's that longlist in full:


Colin Bateman  The Prisoner of Brenda
Agatha Raisin  Hiss and Hers
Simon Brett  Blotto, Twinks and the Bootleggers 
Hannah Dennison  A Vicky Hill Exclusive!
Ruth Dudley  Edwards Killing The Emperors
Hesh Kestin  The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats 
Adrian McKinty  The Cold Cold Ground 
Catriona McPherson  Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses
Eileen Robertson  Blackmail for Beginners
James Runcie  Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death
Anne Zouroudi  The Bull of Mithros

The Irish Crime Fiction Supergroup

Guess which one is Colin Bateman

A repost from December of last year and a useful reminder that Irish crime fiction is at least as good as that coming from Scandinavia or anywhere else for that matter...
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For the last year or two here on my blog I've been trying to get people interested in my books in particular and in Irish crime writing in general. It's sometimes been an uphill struggle because, compared to Nordic or English crime fiction, Irish crime writers still seem to lurk in the periphery. This is strange to me because in terms of quality and diversity Irish crime fiction is booming. I wonder if Ireland has an image problem: years of insidious and dreary cliches in what I like to call Micksploitation films have conditioned the book buying public to demand fiction that conforms to their expectations. When people think of Ireland they still think of smoky pubs, flat caps and sheep; they want their Ireland to be the Ireland of the 1950's. Working in a New York Barnes and Noble I discovered that Irish Americans are not particularly avid readers and when they do buy books it's often something ghastly thing like How The Irish Saved Civilization or The Best Irish Castles. Therefore if you want to sell books with an Irish theme in America you have to reach beyond the Irish American community but there again you are often hit by the stereotypes and imagery of what it means to be Irish. When the average American punter buys an English or Nordic mystery novel they think they're getting something that not only will entertain them but will also improve them in some way because Swedes and Englishmen seem so darn intelligent. And this I feel appeals to something deep in the American psyche - the need to better oneself.   
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Irish fiction is intellectually on a par with any other literature in the world and I'd go further and say that Irish crime writing currently leads the world in diversity and richness. That such a small island can produce such a welter of talent is truly amazing. On his blog, Crime Always Pays, Declan Burke tirelessly promotes his fellow Micks and although I am not as well read as Declan, here are few authors that I have read in the last couple of years that I think you should be aware of...who knows it might even help with some last minute Christmas shopping. 
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*Declan Burke: Dec's novel Absolute Zero Cool may be his masterpiece. Channeling Flann O'Brien Dec has an original and utterly brilliant take on the contemporary crime novel. His latest Slaughter's Hound was one of the best Irish crime novels of the year.

*Stuart Neville: Stuart's first novel The Twelve was a work of brilliance. Incredibly his follow up books have only gotten better. Don't let the beard fool you, he's just a kid really, and he's got a long promising career ahead of him. I finished Ratlines last week and can vouch for it as an amazing book

*Eoin McNamee: Perhaps the most intelligent and thoughtful of this generation's crop of Irish novelists. At home in literary fiction and crime fiction, Eoin's book Orchid Blue is one of my all time favourites. 

*Ken Bruen: Sir Ken of Bruen is The Man as far as I'm concerned. The Irish Elmore Leonard or possibly the Irish Michael Connolly, but, you know, funnier. He's done many wonderful books since but there's a soft spot in my heart for Her Last Call To Louis MacNeice, one of his early classics.
*Ronan Bennett: This generation's Graham Greene. As comfortable in film and television as he is in fiction. Havoc In The Third Year is one of the great novels of our time and it should have won the Booker Prize. 

*Garbhan Downey: The bard of Derry. Garv hilariously unpacks the foibles and fantasies of the denizens of Ireland's most eccentric city. My favourite? War of the Blue Noses. 
*Kevin McCarthy: Only got to one Kevin McCarthy book so far but that was the fantastic novel Peeler. Definitely one of those books that you'll read compulsively in one long sitting. 

*Colin Bateman: Cursed by a childhood in Ireland's most boring town, Bangor, Bateman rose above the tedium of tea shops and ice cream parlours to become a best selling comic novelist. His done nothing but brilliant work since but I still love Divorcing Jack from a few years back. 

*David Park: A thoughtful, intelligent, subtle novelist in the Graham Green/Brian Moore mould. More of a literary guy than a crime guy really. His masterpiece, The Truth Commissioner, is the book to read if you want to understand what happened to Northern Ireland from 1968 - 1998. 

*Tana French: I was in a bookshop in Tokyo looking for something to read on the train and in among the Japanese novels was a shelf full of Ms French. I bought, I read, I loved. Now I've read them all and they're all great. 

*Ruth Dudley Edwards: A true prose master. Her crime novels are fantastic but for me her book about the Omagh bombing takes us to another level. A must read for anyone who is interested in contemporary Ireland. 

*Brian McGilloway: You all know Brian don't you? One of the brightest lights in all of Irish literature. Intelligent and tough with a poet's heart, he's a best seller in the UK and Ireland and he's increasingly huge in America. If you don't have a BMCG book go get one, now!

*John Connolly: How do you crack America? Well, if Alex Barclay and Stuart Neville are the Kinks and the Stones JC is the Beatles. You crack America by writing taut, original, stylish crime fiction with a supernatural bent.  

*Gene Kerrigan: I just finished Kerrigan's The Rage and I thought it was amazing. I'll definitely be reading more in the future.  

*Dec Hughes: The Wrong Kind of Blood is the first in the great Ed Loy mystery series. Hughes is street wise, smart, witty and just a little bit cocky. 

*Gerard Brennan: One of the new generation of N Irish novelists and playwrights. This year I read Brennan's hilarious, tight, brilliant novella The Point. I was lucky enough to get The Wee Rockets in manuscript and I knew it was going to be a hit. It was. 

*Alan Glynn: Winterland is one of my favourite books of the last five years. I haven't read Glynn's latest but I surely will. 
*Cormac Millar: Only read one CM book, The Grounds, but fortunately it was a fantastic read. Definitely adding more to my TBR pile. 
*Arlene Hunt: Also only read one Arlene Hunt novel but luckily that was also pretty damn fine. It was called The Chosen and it was one of my books of the year.
*Alex Barclay: I really enjoyed Barclay's Darkhouse, one of my favourite books of 2010.
*John McFetridge: John is from Montreal but his ancestors are from Larne (God help them!) His novel Tumblin Dice was recently picked by Amazon.ca as one of the best Canadian crime novels of the year. (THE best if you ask me).
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Like I say, this list is not exhaustive. I'm not as well read as many people in this field, but if I've piqued your curiosity at all investigate the authors above and please check out Crime Always Pays and Detectives Beyond Borders for a more comprehensive look at Irish crime fiction.

A No Alibis Autopsy

I'm between flights at an airport in Malaysia so this is just a quick post to thank everyone who turned out for Dec Burke and myself reading at No Alibis last week. It was a pretty fun event. Dec and I didn't actually read but just riffed for about an hour, on, you know, stuff. 
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A big thank you to novelists Stuart Neville, David Park, Andrew Pepper and Gerard Brennan who came by to show support and to Colin Bateman and Brian McGilloway who had very good reasons to skip this time...As someone in the audience yelled out at one point "Is there anyone here who isn't a crime novelist?!"
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I'd like to thank everyone who came out for a beer afterwards and all the good people who actually bought a book from Dave Torrans! Like I say it was a nice event: goaded by Mr Burke I was probably a little too indiscreet and if you were there you'll know what I was talking about and if not there's no way I'm going to repeat it here...
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See you all at the next one!

Down These Green Streets

On his blog today Dec Burke announces the publication of Down These Green Streets, the definitive look at the history of Irish crime writing. For whatever reason crime fiction in Ireland today has become the dominant genre for this generation's writing talent. So called literary fiction is going through a stage of moribund middle class angst, the best Irish plays are being written by Englishmen, and contemporary Irish poetry probably peaked in the 70's with the circle around Seamus Heaney at Queens University Belfast. Almost all the exciting developments in Irish prose and certainly the most interesting Irish novels of the last twenty years have been in the crime fiction genre. Why is this the case? Read the book and you'll find out. There are essays by Dec Burke, Colin Bateman, John Banville, John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Stu Neville, Adrian McKinty, Tana French, et. al. The preface is written by one Michael Connolly and there's an afterword by Fintan O'Toole.  

Falling Glass - The First Review

From the great David Park in today's Irish Times:

CRIME: Falling Glass, By Adrian McKinty Serpent’s Tail, 309pp. £11.99

ALTHOUGH IT IS the Scandinavian star that currently shines brightest in the crime-fiction firmament, Ireland continues to publish an increasingly varied and successful body of work. The North alone has contributed a growing list of titles by writers such as Adrian McKinty, Eoin McNamee, Colin Bateman, Paul Charles, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Sam Miller and Ian Sansom. In David Torrans’s wonderful No Alibis Belfast has its own specialist bookstore that offers customers not only access to a wide selection of crime literature but also the chance to hear writers with international reputations read from their work.


What has prompted this flourishing remains something of a mystery in itself, but perhaps one of the inherent attractions of the genre is that in an unresolved world it offers the reader and society as a whole a sense of resolution, a final answer to all the unanswered questions. In some of the Northern writing there is also occasionally the sense that, either consciously or unconsciously, the crime story restores a new moral order to the nihilistic chaos of the past.


McKinty was born in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, and has lived and worked in the US, but currently resides in Australia. His latest novel, Falling Glass , follows on from his successful Dead trilogy and his most recent novel, Fifty Grand , which won the wonderfully titled 2010 Spinetingler Award in the rising-star category.


It tells the story of Killian, who was born into the Irish Traveller community, and who has carved a lucrative career on both sides of the Atlantic as an enforcer, a debt collector, someone who can be relied on to get the necessary results with the least possible mess. While no stranger to violence, and not averse to using it with deadly efficiency when necessary, Killian has developed a preference for resolving outstanding issues by the application of his intelligence and his lyrical gift with words. In a world steeped in machismo Killian “had gained a rep for diplomacy”, someone who “could convince people to pay their bills and keep their beaks shut without the necessity of having to shoot them in the kneecaps”.


However, Killian feels weary at the age of 40 and knows that in his own culture, with its reduced life expectancy, he is approaching a kind of old age. He tries to change his way of life and enters university to study architecture, but even premier-league enforcers are not immune to the effects of the recession, and when his purchase of two luxury Laganside apartments leaves him significantly out of pocket he is forced to offer his services for hire once more.


This leads to his taking on the job of finding the former wife and two children of Richard Coulter, a rich Irish businessman and owner of a budget airline, who are hiding somewhere in Northern Ireland. The half-million fee offered to Killian suggests there are darker reasons why Coulter wants them back, and his search uncovers not just a frightened and desperate woman but also a disturbing web of political and sexual corruption that encompasses all the North’s key players. Killian’s search is made all the more dangerous because Rachel Coulter and her daughters are also being pursued by a Russian hitman whose ruthlessness and skills make him a formidable opponent.


McKinty is a streetwise, energetic gunslinger of a writer, firing off volleys of sassy dialogue and explosive action that always delivers what it has promised the reader. The story is skilfully constructed, and the pace is always full throttle forwards. There is one violent scene in Mexico involving a chainsaw that is definitely not for the squeamish, but it would be unfair to think of the author as someone exclusively reliant on external action.

There is, for example, an interesting psychological exploration of Killian’s re-embracing of his half-forgotten roots and the cultural values of the Traveller community. Even the dark figure of Markov, the Russian hitman, gets layered and lightened with some psychological subtleties that are the product of his relationship with his partner, Marina, and experiences of the war in Chechnya that continue to haunt him.

McKinty zaps the story across countries and continents and, either through detailed research or personal experience, renders the locations convincingly. But the bulk of the story’s setting springs from his intimately observed landscape of the North. In the strongest and most impressive part of the novel McKinty blends the landscape of an island in Upper Lough Erne, insightful characterisation and narrative in a particularly creative way.

Despite the genre’s frequent reliance on [violent] resolution, McKinty’s teasing ending deliberately withholds that very thing from his reader, and you sense that Killian may have more stories unfolding ahead of him, and still more travelling across the world’s seas, before he’s finally allowed to disappear into retirement

...Holy Crap! If only all my reviews could be like this! Thank you David Park! Mr Park of course is a New York Times editorial writer and the author of "The Truth Commissioner" one of the greatest and most important novels about the Troubles.

The Lady In The Lake

I have just finished The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. It's been a long time since I read this book, high school in fact, and I remembered nothing of the story. (Somewhere deep down I knew that Marlowe drove a Chrysler and that info may have come from here (although I didn't catch the particular make I'm guessing it was a Chrysler Imperial.)) I liked The Lady in the Lake very much, in fact, it might be my favourite Marlowe story after The Big Sleep. I also liked some of the more meta-fiction aspects to the novel which I definitely missed the first time. When you read hundreds of noir novels sometimes you get a bit jaded. Raymond Chandler obviously felt the same. Take this particular example from chapter 31:

"I never liked this scene," I said. "Detective confronts murderer. Murderer produces gun, points same at detective. Murderer tells detective the whole sad story with the idea of shooting him at the end of it...Only murderer never does. Something always happens to prevent it. The gods don't like this scene either. They always manage to spoil it."   

The only thing I thought was absent from the novel was a development of the Arthurian promise of the title. Maybe its in there but if so I missed it. "The Big Sleep" gets better the more you think about it, but once we see that there is an actual lady in an actual lake, "The Lady in the Lake" comes across as a bit hasty, even if it was based on a story of the same name.  
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Incidentally I'm still waiting for the Colin Bateman novels "The Big Sheep," "The Long Good Fry-Up," and that cross-over into classic 70's TV sitcom territory "The Brady in the Lake."

This Is The Second Sexiest Irish Crime Writer?

(another post from two years ago)
According to a rigorously scientific poll on Declan Burke's Crime Always Pays last week, I, apparently, am the second sexiest Irish crime writer after the fragrant John Connolly. From this August 2003 picture you can see why I got so many votes: the stylish Krusty the Clown hair, the glazed Deliverance-like sociopath expression, the pirate shirt. . .What's even more comforting about Mr. Burke's poll is that it means that I am the sexiest Northern Irish Crime Writer, a thing conference organisers should bear in mind when they're looking for their next guest speaker at the Tahitian Crime Fest. What's also great about the award is the fact that Colin Bateman for one must be furious, I mean would he trade the awards, bestsellers, film and TV success for the title of Sexiest Northern Irish Crime Writer? Of course he would! Next year the competition is going to be even tougher with trendily bearded Stuart Neville and boyish kung fu master Gerard Brennan entering the lists.
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The lady with me in the pic? Professor Leah Garrett, mother of my children, god help them.

The Neville Has All The Best Tunes

Ok, so I stole the pun in the title from Declan Burke, but if you can't lift from The Master who can you lift from? I just finished Stuart Neville's The Twelve yesterday and I was blown away by it. It's a dark, exciting, lyrical, uncompromising thriller set in Northern Ireland. James Ellroy has described Neville as a brilliant new voice in Irish fiction and after reading The Twelve I whole heartedly agree. There's a great non spoiler review on Ger Brennan's Crime Scene Northern Ireland here. And if you haven't yet jumped on board the runaway train that is the Celtic New Wave in Irish crime writing, Neville's The Twelve is an excellent place to start. And then after Neville make sure you check out: Declan Burke, Brian McGilloway, Ken Bruen, Eoin MacNamee, Declan Hughes, Colin Bateman, Garbhan Downey, Ger Brennan, David Park, Sam Millar et al. I mean really folks, wouldn't it be nice to be ahead of the trend for once?

Down These Green Streets

Archmage and Grand Vizier of Crime Always Pays Declan Burke has taken another step along his path towards world domination by releasing further details of the book Down These Green Streets - the first, only, and surely to be definitive essay collection on the history of Irish crime fiction. Declan (don't call him Dekkers) had the idea a few moons ago, he pitched it to those boffins and egg heads at the Irish Arts Council and they unsurprisingly gave him the go ahead. The snowball has rolled to such an extent that serious names have got on board (ok I know this is a mixed metaphor just relax) including Booker Prize winner John Banville, best selling (and prize winning) novelist and screenwriter Colin Bateman and the brilliant and inscrutable Eoin MacNamee to name but a few. Mr. Burke has even dropped hints of trans-Atlantic contributors of the very big gun variety which he will reveal in the fullness of time. Down These Green Streets also comes equipped with a title pun so good I think it displaces my own personal favourite We'll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews.