Belfast Noir - What The Trades Say...

Library Journal Nov1
REVIEW:

*starred* Belfast Noir. Akashic. Nov. 2014. 256p. ed. by Adrian McKinty & Stuart Neville. 
ISBN 9781617752919. pap. $15.95; 
ebk. ISBN 9781617753237. F

Edited by two award-winning crime fiction writers from Northern Ireland, this anthology is long overdue, since Belfast is the most noir-imbued city in Western Europe after decades of poverty, bigotry, demagoguery, sectarianism, and murder. The natural backdrop of mist, rain, and dark cloud cover also helps—as does black humor, which is a strong motif here. All the stories are compelling and well executed. Ruth Dudley’s “Taking It Serious” comes seriously close to truly portraying fanaticism within the city’s complicated tribal landscape. Eoin McNamee employs the juxtaposition of video cams and narrative to extenuate the sense of anomie in the striking story “Corpse Flowers.” Alex Barclay’s “The Reveller” is a deep psychological bear trap of a story. Gerard Brennan’s “ Ligature” makes for compelling and uncomfortable reading. VERDICT Great writing for fans of noir and short stories, with some tales close to perfection. It made this reviewer nostalgic and hopeful for his beautiful, brash, beastly Belfast.—
Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, CUNY

KIRKUS REVIEW

Fourteen stories that explore the darker sides of the human psyche, each from a different neighborhood of Belfast.

“The Undertaking,” by Brian McGilloway, is a tale of a switched coffin and a deadly cargo. The narrator of Lucy Caldwell’s “Poison” recalls her schoolgirl obsession with a teacher. In Lee Childs’ “Wet with Rain,” a house rumored to kill its occupants more than lives up to its reputation. “Taking It Serious,” by Ruth Dudley Edwards, follows a boy who won’t compromise along his path to free Ireland. The narrator of Gerard Brennan’s “Ligature” is a prison inmate who’s curious about why someone on the men’s side killed himself. Another prisoner is the subject of a reporter’s piece about crime and retribution in Glenn Patterson’s “Belfast Punk Rep.” In “The Reservoir,” by Ian McDonald, a supposedly dead man comes to his daughter’s wedding and confronts his enemies; a criminal barrister in Steve Cavanagh’s “The Grey” serves his client well but at a terrible cost. The teenage private eye in “Rosie Grant’s Finger,” by Claire McGowan, takes on a case of kidnapping; a more mature investigator gets a 4 a.m. phone call that he knows will mean trouble in Sam Millar’s “Out of Time.” A sting operation to break up a dog-fighting ring has an unexpected outcome in Arlene Hunt’s “Pure Game,” and an alternate identity changes hands in Alex Barclay’s “The Reveller.”

The choices made by editors McKinty (In the Morning I’ll Be Gone, 2014, etc.) and Neville (The Final Silence, 2014, etc.) celebrate lowlifes, convicts, hookers, private eyes, cops and reporters, and, above all, the gray city at the heart of each story.

Belfast Noir Is Here, So It Is

I received my copies of Belfast Noir this week from our publisher Akashic Books and I have to say that the volume looks absolutely gorgeous. That deep focus shot on the cover is fantastic and its the usual excellent print job from Akashic. I think the stories inside are all first rate but of course I'm biased because Stuart Neville and I edited the book, but fortunately we also got the first review of the collection by Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders this week too. Peter is famous in the international crime writing community for knowing his crime fiction onions. This is what he said about Belfast Noir: 
...
...Belfast Noir, out in November from Akashic Books, looks like one of the strongest, possibly the best entry in Akashic's "City Noir" series, and I don't say that just because the book's two editors plus one of its contributors will be part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 in November.

Quite apart from the quality of the stories the pieces are well-chosen and the volume intelligently planned. Its four sections recognize not just Belfast's violent recent past, but the realities of its quotidian present. Most of the stories depict no violence directly, but violence, and the possibility or memory thereof, loom always. That's a lot more effective than whipping out a kneecapping or rolling down the balaclavas whenever the action lags.

I especially like Brian McGilloway's "The Undertaking," which opens the collection with hair-raising humor and suspense.  Akashic's Dublin Noir also opens with a comic story (by Eoin Colfer), and that story was the highlight of the volume for me. I don't know if it's an Irish thing, but  comedy is a wonderful against-type way to open a collection of crime stories. Oh, and I'll also want to read more from Lucy Caldwell...
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Belfast Noir is the first volume of its kind collecting crime fiction from the north of Ireland in the post Troubles era. It shows you how far we've come since The Good Friday Agreement that this book was even possible. Just to remind you we were delighted to get stories from Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Arlene Hunt, Steve Cavanagh, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar and Gerard Brennan. A pretty impressive list I think you'll agree. 

Norn Iron Noir

If you're gonna be in Belfast on June 10 why you don't you tootle on down to No Alibis bookshop where the crime collection Requiems for the Departed is being launched. The cream of the Irish crime writing crop will be there and there will be wine and cheese and probably crackers...I'd guess Ritz reduced fat crackers, although I wouldnt be surprised if they served a generic Marks and Spencer water biscuit style cracker which, don't get me wrong, I like, but sometimes they can be a little dry - completely fine if the cheese is Brie but if it's a good stiff Edam or something then - watch out - the sensation isn't going to be that pleasant especially if you've got a tannic white wine working with it..., er, what was I, uh...oh yes Requiems. I've got a story in the book and although I wont be at the launch I will be there in spirit, or, possibly, asleep. This is the official NA notice:

No Alibis Bookstore is pleased to invite you to the launch of Irish crime fiction anthology, REQUIEMS FOR THE DEPARTED, edited by Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, on Thursday 10th June at 6:30PM.

Along with co-editor Gerard Brennan (of Crime Scene NI fame), we're expecting appearances from the following contributors: Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Arlene Hunt, T.A. Moore, Tony Bailie, John McAllister and Garbhan Downey, so this is sure to be an evening to remember.

If you want to hear something hilarious get Brian and Garbhan talking about ciars, er, I mean cars.

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."
...
I've already posted about Inherent Vice twice, here and here so that's probably enough for now.

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?