Let's Set Fire To Tears: Early Word On The Cold Cold Ground

Coming in January 2012...Hey, do me a big favour, tell a friend about this book. And then tell two more friends...

It's undoubtedly McKinty's finest novel: a visceral journey to the heart of darkness that was 1980's Northern Ireland. Written with intelligence, insight and wit, McKinty exposes the cancer of corruption at all levels of society at that time. Sean Duffy is a compelling detective, the evocation of the period is breathtaking and the atmosphere authentically menacing. A brilliant piece of work which does for the North what Peace's Red Riding Quartet did for Yorkshire.

---Brian McGilloway

THE COLD, COLD GROUND is a razor sharp thriller set against the backdrop of a country in chaos, told with style, courage and dark-as-night wit.  Adrian McKinty channels Dennis Lehane, David Peace and Joseph Wambaugh to create a brilliant novel with its own unique voice.

---Stuart Neville

The hunger strikes mark the bleakest period of Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’, and it’s entirely fitting that Adrian McKinty should be the writer to plunge into that darkest of hearts. It’s a rare author who can write so beautifully about such a poisonous atmosphere, but McKinty’s prose is a master-class in vicious poise as he explores the apparent contradictions that underpin Ulster’s self-loathing. Be in no doubt that this novel is a masterpiece: 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 Cold Cold Ground is a fearless trip into Northern Ireland in the 1980’s:  riots, hunger strikes, murders -- a time when every action from the mundane to the extreme is a political statement, yet Adrian McKinty tells a very personal story of an ordinary cop trying to hunt down a serial killer.

---John McFetridge

Adrian McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground has got to on my five best of the year [list] as it is riveting, brilliant and just about the best book yet on Northern Ireland.

---Ken Bruen

Adrian McKinty is the voice of the new Northern Irish generation but he’s not afraid to examine the past. Through Sean Duffy, his latest protagonist, he applies his unique writing skills to our troubled history expertly. This writer is a legend in the making and Cold, Cold Ground is the latest proof of this.

---Gerard Brennan

Captain Burke

Most books are crap. Just as most songs are crap and most restaurants are crap.  Mediocre books are sometimes even more offensive than crap books because you can tell that the author is often intelligent and gifted but either through laziness or cynicism he has reined in his skills.
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That's why I loved reading Declan Burke's Absolute Zero Cool. It's not crap. In fact it's a brilliant, experimental, out of left field crime novel, very much in the tradition of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Now you know how much I love The Third Policeman so this is high praise indeed from me. I was lucky enough to read AZC in manuscript and I thought it was funny and outrageous and very clever. You may think I'm biased, Dec and I are mates, we did a reading together in August and afterwards he stayed with me in Carrickfergus, but you don't have to take my word for it about AZC, John Banville and John Connolly also love Dec's book and a host of other writers have blurbed or reviewed it and whose quotes you can read at Dec's famous blog: Crime Always Pays. 
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Last week Dec was shortlisted in the crime category of the Irish Book Awards. His competition is stiff, but this, I feel, is his year. He certainly deserves it.


Click here to vote for Declan Burke's ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL in the Irish Book Awards

On The Road Again

Last year Colin Bateman and Stuart Neville showed up to
heckle me. If you were there you'll remember that I retorted by
bursting into tears and running into the street.

I'm heading home to Belfast today. It's a long flight through many strange and interesting destinations (Stansted Airport anyone?) so I may be offline for a bit. I will be posting some new (and some recycled blogs) over the next week or so and certainly feel free to comment, but be aware that I probably won't be able to reply until I get back to Melbourne...I'm not ignoring you, just away from my desk - either that or, you know, clinging to a piece of wreckage in the Indian Ocean. 
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And if you're in the neighbourhood why don't you come see me and Declan Burke read from our new novels at No Alibis bookshop on Botanic Avenue, Belfast next Thursday. There will be blood. Or more likely wine, cheese and a few funny stories from Dec. From me expect broody silence and the odd monosyllabic, gutteral remark. It'll be fun. Bring the kids. That's Thursday August 18th at 6.00 pm. Remember when Oscar Wilde went on his lecture tour of the United States? It'll be like that. Except totally different. 
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I'm also going to try to visit The Games of Thrones set. (If anyone can hook me up with that I'd really appreciate it.) If I make it to the set I'll take some pics and put them up on the blog. 

Following The Detectives

In 1995 I went to Russia for the first time. It was a bit chaotic and slightly dangerous but I really enjoyed myself. Before I'd gone I'd made a map of St Petersburg and I spent a couple of days visiting all the locations in Crime and Punishment. I also went out to the site of Pushkin's duel in the woods and I visited Dostoyevsky's grave. When I moved to New York the first thing I did was visit all the haunts of the beats and when I was at Oxford I decided that my local was going to be The Eagle and Child because that was the local of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien (and I made a little map of all the places those two guys had lived in in North Oxford). I can't help it, I'm a book geek and I like maps which is why Following The Detectives is definitely my kind of volume. Twenty literary detectives and their tales are unpacked cartographically by several well known crime writers and critics. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide, it's edited by Maxim Jakubowski and thus reflects what Maxim likes and is into...the good (Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco, James Lee Burke's New Orleans, Raymond Chandler's LA), the bad (Peter James's Brighton) and the ugly (Peter James again, sorry).
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I particularly enjoyed Peter Rozovsky's brilliant look at Icelandic crime fiction (one of the things I liked about Jar City was the map at the start) and Dec Burke's intelligent take on Dec Hughes's Dublin. In fact all the contributions are excellent and Maxim has done a fine job editing this book. Following The Detectives is definitely crying out for a volume 2 (an iPhone Ap would be fantastic!) and hopefully next time Maxim will broaden his range a little and not leave as much of the heavy lifting to the commendable Barry Forshaw. (Yeah that's right, that was a hint). You can get Following The Detectives at the old rogue's Murder One bookshop in London or at Torrans's No Alibis in Belfast or at Otto's Mysterious Bookshop in NYC or, of course, on Amazon.

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.  

David Thompson

I read the sad news on Dec Burke's blog that David Thompson of the great Murder By The Book store in Houston has died. Thompson was a tireless advocate of new authors and crime and mystery writing in general. I never did a reading at Murder By The Book but I visited the store when I was in Houston and was impressed by everything about it.
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The big chains only carry the big authors, so we small fry, especially mystery authors, owe these plucky independent book stores a big debt of thanks for keeping our names in the public eye. Actually no, that's the passive voice. Let me rephrase that: I would like to thank every bookshop and bookstore owner that has ever hosted a reading for me or invited me to be part of a panel. I really appreciate it and I am in your debt.
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Mr Thompson, my best wishes to your friends, colleagues and family. You will be missed.

Book of the Year

I read a lot of quality fiction this year from the likes of Garbhan Downey, Ken Bruen, Colum McCann, Hilary Mantel, AS Byatt, John McFetridge, Cormac McCarthy, Orhan Pamuk, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Colin Bateman, Zadie Smith, Alan Glynn, Dec Burke, Gita Hariharan, Stu Neville et. al. but for me the novel I enjoyed most was Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. At a party in July I had a bit of a friendly row about Inherent Vice with the crime reviewer of The Times; he felt that the book was disjointed and overly silly and not a proper crime novel but those were three of the reasons that I liked it. It is silly and its more of a riff on detective fiction than an attempt to fully engage the genre. Mainly though I liked the book because of its Big Lebowski vibe and the fact that its very funny. Chronologically it lies between The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland and it sort of inhabits the same paranoid, druggy, conspiratorial, trippy, ascerbic universe. Here's a paragraph explaining why there are no blacks in Gordita Beach: "When a black family had actually tried to move into town [after the War] the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan had burned their place to the ground and then as if some ancient curse had come into effect refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach by the laws of karmic adjustment were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and f**k, depressing their parents though not property values particularly."
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I've already posted about Inherent Vice twice, here and here so that's probably enough for now.