Edgar Awards

Although it will obviously cramp my gloomy, dour pessimistic persona I'm pleased to announce the fact that Gun Street Girl has been shortlisted for the 2016 Edgar Award (best paperback original). It's my first time ever getting shortlisted for an Edgar so I'm actually pretty damn thrilled. This morning I got a can of Guinness and walked over to West 84th Street where Edgar Allan Poe used to live (the house is long gone but the site can't be missed cos there's 2 massive stone ravens outside it) and had a quick, sneaky can of the black stuff in the 22F (-6C) air. I gave Edgar and the ravens some too and they seemed to appreciate it. 

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Cheers also to Gordon McAlpine my stable mate at SSB who is in my category and to my old buddies Val McDermid & Michael Robotham who got shortlisted in other categories. 

Oxford, David Cameron, Gottfried Von Bismarck, Pigs Heads and Gun Street Girl

the kind of people I steered well clear of at Oxford

If you've read the 4th Sean Duffy novel you're probably aware that fictionalised versions of two real people show up in the Oxford chapters: Gottfried Von Bismarck and a chap who is a bit like Prime Minister David Cameron. Both had left Oxford by the time Duffy visits the city, but both attended parties given by the Bullingdon Club and the Piers Gaveston Society. At one of these parties Olivia Channon, the daughter of a cabinet minister, died of a heroin overdose. And a thinly veiled version of these events is what Duffy comes to investigate. These Oxford parties have become big news this week in the UK and yesterday on the front page (above the fold) of that scurrilous rag, The New York Times. How did this all blow up now 30 years later? In revenge for not giving him a job the Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft has written a biography of Cameron in which he alleges that the young David attended drunken parties given by the Bullingdon Club and Piers Gaveston which involved heroin, cocaine, cross dressing and, ahem, pigs' heads. The New York Times attempts to spin its coverage of this story as a dissection of the British obsession with class but actually its just old fashioned gossip mongering and its the Daily Mail you should read for the real dirt. 

When I was at Oxford there were no debauched parties. As a working class kid from Belfast on a full scholarship I could not afford to get rusticated. And I went to Oxford because I was a super geek who was really into philosophy (no, really) and at Oxford you could meet in person and even have tutorials with some of the biggest guns of contemporary political theory (my particular area of interest). In my three years there I met Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Michael Sandel, Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish, John Gray, Michael Ignatief, Bernard Williams et. al. I used to have gentle tutorials with Gerry Cohen in his rooms at All Souls College (the weirdest of the Oxford colleges), semi confrontational tutorials with John Gray at Jesus and the seminars where Dworkin and Williams discussed "abortion, euthanasia and the meaning of life" were probably the intellectual high points of my life. 

It is true however that Oxford was still full at that time (1991 - 1993) of upper class twits and whenever I would encounter those racist, spoiled, privileged snobs (particularly in the Oxford Union) I would file the encounter away for future use. Even back then everyone knew that there was a good chance you could end up writing a novel yourself or appear as a character in someone else's novel. Inspector Morse was at the height of its popularity and was filming everywhere and before going up to Oxford I read Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited, Zuleika Dobson etc. so I knew what to expect. Cambridge was the place to go if you wanted to become a scientist or a traitor, Oxford was where you went if you wanted to become a politician or a writer.

It was reading Gottfried Von Bismarck's obituary in The Daily Telegraph a few years ago, however, that really got me thinking about an Oxford book. The Daily Telegraph is famous for writing the best obits in the business and Von Bismarck's obit is one of the finest achievements in the genre. The Oxford milieu bubbled away in my mind and when I finally got round to writing Sean Duffy #4 I knew that Gottfried von Bismarck and a David Cameron/George Osbourne type figure would have to appear in the book. Duffy goes to Oxford to see if there is a link to his present case (a double murder and suicide in Belfast) and of course there is, though not quite in the way he thinks... 
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Incidentally Gun Street Girl also contains a few other celebrity cameos, some of whom I talk about in the Afterword and some of whom I don't talk about for legal reasons. This week a very famous American actor is in the news because he resents the implication that he has beat up multiple wives, lovers and girlfriends. I heard one story about his behaviour on a visit to Ireland that may or may not be in the book too.*
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*(Please don't attempt to guess at this actor's name in the comments below as he's proven himself a very litigious chap and to save you and me from a defamation suit I'll have to delete the comment.)

Gun Street Girl - The First Review & How To Win A Proof

Jon Page, from Bite the Book, got himself a VERY early galley of Gun Street Girl. He read the galley and reviewed it over on his excellent site, here. I've worked on the book quite a bit since this first draft, tightening the story a little and adding a few more jokes. (In fact I'm still working on the book now.)
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The novel of course takes place in Ulster but the wider net of the narrative brings in the biggest American political scandal of the Reagan administration, a famous cause celebre from 1980's Oxford and the chaotic weeks in Belfast that followed the signing of the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985. The book begins with an echo of and on the same night that Rorshach's journal begins in Alan Moore's Watchmen, which also has one or two sneaky resonances throughout the text. Anyway, old chums, this is what Jon Page thought:
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Sometimes a recurring crime character is brought back and the story feels forced or the attempt feels lame. But then there are those rare times when, despite the series being over, the character comes back and exceeds what has been done before. And that is exactly what Adrian McKinty has done with Sean Duffy.

In the last Sean Duffy book, In The Morning I’ll Be Gone, it appeared the series had finished with a bang. Adrian McKinty had flagged his intention to halt the Duffy books at three and had given us a more than satisfactory conclusion. Better to finish wanting more than for a fantastic character to get stale. However an idea came to McKinty for a book four, but he still resisted until he literally dreamt how he could end that book, and that was what he needed to begin writing book four in the Sean Duffy series. He wrote about that experience, here. And yes, the ending really is one of the best things McKinty has done.

Not only has McKinty done justice to the previous books with Gun Street Girl but I think he has actually exceeded himself. The Sean Duffy trilogy was already something special and Gun Street Girl not only reaffirms that but makes it even better. The year is 1985 and The Troubles are still in full, nasty swing in Belfast with the flames about to be fanned by the so-called Irish-Anglo Agreement. Sean Duffy is now an Inspector in charge of CID at Carrick RUC. When a local bookie and his wife are killed in what looks like a professional hit Duffy only takes a passing interest in the case letting his detective sergeant take the lead and blood two new detectives. However when the case takes a nasty turn Duffy dives in up to his neck of course ruffling any (and all) feathers that get in his way. Conspiracies loom and the bodies start piling up as Duffy quickly uncovers a sinister plot well above his pay grade. But to crack this case he’s going to need someone to talk and the first thing they teach you in Northern Ireland is to never talk, especially to the RUC, even when you’re supposed to be on the same side.

[money quote coming up:]

Full of McKinty’s trademark wickedly black humour and with the usual taut plotting this just may be the best book in an exceptional series so far. Sean Duffy has come a long way from The Cold Cold Ground and everything he's been through is starting to leave scars. I was reluctantly happy to see the series finish after three books but after book 4 I think there is even a little more life in this awesome series to come. At least I hope so!
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Still reading all the way down here? Good for you. Serpents Tail are having a competition whereby they are giving away some early galleys of Gun Street Girl. If you click this link you'll be taken to the competition page. Alas this compo is open only to British and Irish readers (because of postage costs).
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You can, of course, read the first five chapters of Gun Street Girl, for free, here...

The First Five Chapters of Sean Duffy #4: Gun Street Girl

Click the link below to read the first five chapters of Sean Duffy #4. Remember this is a work in progress so a lot of this may change and/or get deleted. If you're wondering about page 1, yes it is an intentional echo of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row and the beginning of the Alan Moore comic Watchmen (the book begins exactly the same night that Rorschach's journal begins). I initially wanted to begin the book with a chapter of static which I've never seen done before in a mystery novel, but I thought better of that... Feel free to read online or print out and read at your leisure. Do keep going until chapter 5 because I think that one is pretty funny...Comments/suggestions are much appreciated...(preferably here rather than the actual chapters because its easier for me to reply). Slainte.
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http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com.au/p/1-ascanner-darkly-sssssssssssssssssssss.html

More Sean Duffy?

It's been over a year since I wrote a Sean Duffy novel and in the intervening time I've mostly been goofing off. I've tried to write a couple of things here and there but they've gone nowhere. A while ago I had an idea for a 4th Sean Duffy novel but initially I was reluctant to write it as I really dug the way the third book ended. Come on McKinty if you write another book in this series there's no way you'll ever get an ending that pleases you as much again - you'll bloody ruin it, you fool! I thought. And if you look at my bibliography you'll see that I'm not a big fan of series anyway. Trilogies I dig, standalones I dig, but 3+ books? Not my thing. I was completely torn: I had a cool idea for a book but I loved the way book 3 concluded Sean Duffy's adventures. So I took the safest way out and did nothing. 
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Months went by and then one night I dreamed the ending of book 4. When I woke up I wrote it out and printed it and put it in a drawer. I left the pages in the drawer for a week, reread it, realised that final scene needed an epilogue, wrote the epilogue and put that away for a week. And then I read the complete ending of book 4 (final chapter plus epilogue) and I liked it. I really liked it. It was - in my mind - as good as the ending of book #3. I still didn't have the book yet but I had an ending and an idea for what happened in the middle. And I had a title Gun Street Girl (another Tom Waits song). I pitched the book to my publishers and they suggested that I start writing it and for want of something better to do I did.
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I'm not going to say anything about the plot here because I'm still working on the book and things could change. (ST have produced a cool preliminary cover which incorporates one of the ideas from that final chapter dream) but its not done yet. However I am happy with the book so far and it definitely doesn't ruin the mythology of the trilogy. It does however ruin the nice alliterative "Troubles Trilogy" which is how they pitched the series in the US and I can't think of any words relating to Ulster or Northern Ireland that begin with Q for quartet. (My buddy John McFetridge is publishing a great series of detective novels set in 1970's Montreal and when he's got 4 of those it'll be easy: The Quebec Quartet.) Maybe I should just do what Douglas Adams did when he published Mostly Harmless - the tagline of that book was "The fifth book in his increasingly inaccurately named Hitch-hiker Trilogy."