“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Chris Allen

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
A STUDY IN SCARLET by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and then every other Holmes/Watson excursion). I just love the style of his writing, the way in which he captured the time - the courtesy, the camaraderie, the thoroughness and dedication. This story really set up the principle characters, their partnership and the tone of the series that he maintained so well throughout the many years that he created these stories. I’m a huge fan and would love to write the way that he did. Sadly, I can only aspire to that standard ... but, I live in hope!

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
The character I would most like to have been is Dr John Watson. Far from being Sherlock’s sidekick as was portrayed in old movies and some treatments on television, Watson was a medical man with an outstanding military service record. He had enough wit to be Sherlock’s loyal intellectual companion, along with sufficient brawn to be his protector at the appropriate time. I would have loved being involved in the solving of those now iconic cases, and all the insight they provided into the human condition.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
There’s a great local writer here, a Canadian/Australian named Tara Moss who writes great contemporary crime fiction from a decidedly female perspective. Very strong. Great stories. I really enjoy them.

Most satisfying writing moment?
After writing my first book, DEFENDER, over a period of ten years - which I began on my return from East Timor in 2000 - the most satisfying moment was completing my second book, HUNTER, in just six months on a deadline for my publisher. I guess it was just great to prove to myself that I was able to churn out the story as fast as my clumsy two-fingered-typing style could achieve. By that stage, the story was so much in my head that I had to get Alex Morgan’s latest adventure onto the page.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
In all honesty, I am yet to knowingly read an Irish crime author. That said, the one that I currently have on my TBR list is Borderlands by Brian McGilloway. I’ve always been intrigued by the contemporary history of Ireland, North & South, and so I am looking forward to discovering McGilloway’s work.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: The uncertainty of if/when all the hard work will actually pay off. Best: Those rare days when you can really feel that all the hard work and sacrifice is starting to pay off.

The pitch for your next book is …?
Alex Morgan has taken on gunrunners in DEFENDER and fugitive war criminals in HUNTER. Now in AVENGER he’s taking Intrepid’s first female agent into the centre of hell as together they bring to justice the masterminds of a global human trafficking cartel.

Who are you reading right now?
I find it really hard to read other action novels when I’m writing one. So I actually prefer to watch movies in my down time – sometimes it’ll be classic war movies like A Bridge Too Far or The Eagle Has Landed; sometimes it’ll be my favourite Bond action sequences, the new Hawaii-50, or the latest contemporary take on Holmes & Watson such as the BBC’s Sherlock or the US treatment Elementary. That said, I do enjoy returning to a story or two from Arthur Conan Doyle’s collected works or when I really needed inspiration I turn to Ian Fleming time and time again.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Write. As long as others can read my stories, then I’ll be content just getting them out of the lumber room, my mind, and onto a page.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Contemporary. Action. Realism.

Chris Allen’s HUNTER is published by Momentum.

Memories Are Made Of This

It isn’t due until August, but I’m already looking forward to the latest offering from Conor Fitzgerald, whose police procedurals are set in Rome and feature Commissioner Alec Blume. Blume is an American-born naturalised Italian policeman, which gives him an outsider’s eye and an insider’s cynicism, and Fitzgerald’s tersely lyrical style is deliciously readable.
  The forthcoming tome, THE MEMORY KEY (Bloomsbury Publishing), will be Blume’s fourth outing, and the blurb elves have been busy:

On a freezing November night Commissioner Alec Blume is called to the scene of a shooting.
  The victim is Sofia Fontana, the sole witness to a previous killing. Blume’s enquiries lead from a professor with a passion for the art of memory to a hospitalised ex-terrorist whose injuries have left her mind innocently blank; from present day Rome’s criminal underclass, to a murderous train station bombing in central Italy several decades ago.
  Against the advice of his bosses and his own better judgement, Blume is drawn ever deeper into the case, which looks set to derail his troubled relationship with Caterina ...

“Publish Or I’m Damned.”

So spake Karlsson, a hero-of-sorts of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, a novel published by Liberties Press in 2011. Ironically, given that the tale incorporates a writer’s struggle to get published, Karlsson and AZC had been rejected by a whole slew of publishers – to the point where I was roughly six weeks away from self-publishing the story – before Sean O’Keeffe of Liberties Press stepped in.
  The novel, described as a cross between Raymond Chandler and Flann O’Brien by John Banville, was subsequently shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2011, and won the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ award for comic crime novels at Crimefest in 2012.
  So it’s entirely apt, I think, that yours truly, Sean O’Keeffe and Liberties Press’ marketing manager Alice Dawson will be talking about the tricky path to publication at the Dublin Writers Festival later this month. To wit:

Publish and Be Famed
You’ve slaved away over your keyboard for months, if not years. You’ve researched and imagined, reworked and revised and now, at last, your book is finished. But what happens now? Who guides you down the path to publication? How is your book designed, edited, marketed and promoted? In association with the Dublin Book Festival, Dublin Writers Festival brings together Declan Burke, author of the Harry Rigby Mysteries and one of the most innovative voices in Irish crime fiction, with key personnel from his publishers, Liberties Press, to look at the process of publishing a novel from first idea to the printed page. For anyone interested in unpacking the mysteries of publishing, this event is a must.

Venue: Smock Alley Theatre
Date: Friday May 24th
Time: 1:05 pm
Tickets: €10 / €8

  For all the details, clickety-click here.
  The full programme for the Dublin Writers Festival can be found here.

The Best Things In Life Are Free Books: THE BIG O

It occurred to me during the course of the last book giveaway, Mark Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS (the winners of which will be notified in the next couple of days), that the ‘free book’ offer was pretty much limited to this blog. I could mention it here, on Twitter and Facebook, certainly, but the word was still going out to a relatively limited number of people.
  Of course, the point of the exercise was twofold. One, put a copy of a very good book in readers’ hands. Two, make as many people as possible aware that the book is available.
  With that in mind, I’m going to try a little social media experiment for the next giveaway, which is for three signed hardback copies of my own humble tome, THE BIG O. If you’d like to play along, please do. First the blurb elves:

Karen can’t go on pulling stick-ups forever, but Rossi is getting out of prison any day now and she needs the money to keep Anna out of his hands. This new guy she’s met, Ray, just might be able to help her out, but he wants out of the kidnap game now the Slavs are bunkering in. And then there’s Frank, the discredited plastic surgeon who wants his ex-wife snatched - the ex-wife being Madge, who just happens to be Karen’s best friend. But can Karen and Ray trust each other enough to carry off one last caper? Or will love, as always, ruin everything?

  To be in with a chance of winning a signed hardback copy of THE BIG O, just link to this giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, Google + or your blog, or anywhere else you like on the Web (feel free to click on the buttons below this post). If you use ‘Declan Burke’ on Facebook or the Twitter handle @declanburke I’ll know you’ve entered, but you can also email me at dbrodb[at]gmail.com to confirm. Et bon chance, mes amis …

Here Comes The Hurt

It isn’t due until November, but here’s an early glimpse of Brian McGilloway’s next title to whet your appetite. HURT (Constable & Robinson) is the sequel to Brian’s LITTLE GIRL LOST, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

Late December. A sixteen-year- old girl is found dead on a train line. Detective Sergeant Lucy Black from the Public Protection Unit is called to identify the body. The murdered girl, Karen Hughes, having a father in prison and an alcoholic mother had no choice but to live in residential care and DS Black soon discovers the only clue to the girl’s movements are her mobile phone and social media - where her ‘friends’ may not be all they seem.
  Meanwhile, Black is still haunted by Mary Quigg’s death in a house fire over a year ago. Her pain is then intensified when she finds Mary’s grave vandalised - Black is deeply upset and spurred on in her pledge to find the man she knows is responsible for the fire. But Lucy has to tread carefully: with a new DI to contend with, and her fractious mother, the Assistant Chief Constable, looking over her shoulder, she can’t afford to make a mistake...
  The stunning sequel to the number one bestseller LITTLE GIRL LOST, HURT is a tense crime thriller about the abuse of power, and how the young and vulnerable can fall prey to those they should be able to trust.

I Bring Grave News

I had a crime fiction column published in the Irish Times last weekend, featuring new titles from Alan Glynn, Aly Monroe, Anne Holt and Carl Hiaasen. The review of Alan Glynn’s GRAVELAND (Faber and Faber) runs like this:

Alan Glynn’s fourth novel, Graveland, opens with the apparently random murder of a Central Park jogger. When a second man is shot dead in the street, and an attempted murder is botched in a similar attack, a pattern emerges: the targets are Wall Street high-flyers, representatives of the self-styled ‘Masters of the Universe’ who have ruined lives and destroyed the US economy.
  Thus the scene is set for a frantic manhunt for vigilante killers – or would be, if Graveland was a conventional thriller. The third of a loose trilogy that began with Winterland (2009) and continued with Bloodland (2011), the novel incorporates the search for the vigilantes and the investigation of their motives, and certainly proceeds at a rattling pace. Glynn, however, crafts a complex tale in which a host of disparate characters – among them a pair of radicalised brothers, a bereft father, a crusading journalist and a Wall Street kingpin – are skilfully interwoven, creating a story that is both a contemporary take on the timeless clash between the powerless and the powerful few and a commentary on the perception, interpretation and manipulation of the narratives that shape our lives.
  On the one hand an invigorating slice of conspiracy noir, Graveland is simultaneously a heartbreaking account of the human cost of corporate greed.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

“They have roughed the language around as Shakespeare did …”

I came across a very nice website yesterday, via Twitter, which features Raymond Chandler on the subject of writing. This jumped out at me:

“The best writing in English today is done by Americans, but not in any purist tradition. They have roughed the language around as Shakespeare did and done it the violence of melodrama and the press box. They have knocked over tombs and sneered at the dead. Which is as it should be. There are too many dead men and there is too much talk about them.”

  For more in a similar vein, clickety-click here …

SLAUGHTER'S HOUND: “Everything You Want From Noir.”

I was clearing out some old files over the weekend, and I came across this - the blurb Tana French was kind enough to write for SLAUGHTER’S HOUND, and which I never got to use in full. Seems kind of a waste just to throw it out, so here it is:

“SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has everything you want from noir – a plot that switchbacks fast and furiously enough to give you whiplash, a desperately damaged investigator trying to hold on as the last threads tethering him to his humanity are ripped away, a cast of slippery and ruthless characters playing a high-stakes game, a dark and ambiguous moral heart – but what makes it something special is the writing: taut, honed and vivid, packed with phrases that I read over and over because reading them was a sheer pleasure.” – Tana French, author of BROKEN HARBOUR

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Chris Pearson

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
SHUTTER ISLAND by Dennis Lehane. I couldn’t stop reading it – my life ground to a halt – and the ending completely got me. A superb premise, brilliantly executed.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Bond. No, wait … Bryan Mills – Liam Neeson’s character in Taken. I love his skill set and determination. His unaccountability is enviable in a world with so many rules. He’s one cool Northern Irishman.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I’m a natural hedonist, so the pleasure is guilt-free. The geek in me tends towards articles and books on the cosmos and our place in it all – Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Simon Singh are very accessible. I’m also fascinated by anything that explores the role of emerging technologies in the future evolution of humans. Sometimes it seems like science fiction, but it’s all too real. Be afraid.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Typing “The End” in size 72 whenever I finish a manuscript. Someone should invent a bigger font.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
IN THE WOODS by Tana French is high on my “to read” list. I can already feel the hairs on my neck prickling.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
I need to read a few more Irish crime novels to answer this question. I will certainly be scrutinizing the next ones for their filmic future!

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
The worst thing is that writing is an obsession. If I am deprived of writing for too long, I begin to slip into Crazy – a place where you’re more likely to find some of my unsavoury fictional characters. The best thing is that you can be anyone, go anywhere and do anything, anytime, and no one can stop you. That’s Freedom.

The pitch for your next book is …?
A conspiracy/race-against-time thriller that will change your perspective on modern society and get your blood pumping. I wish I could tell you more, but it’s under wraps!

Who are you reading right now?
S.J. Watson – BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP. A novel so accomplished it belies Watson’s status as a debut author. I’m hooked.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
Firstly, I would question the premise on which mutual exclusivity was based. I would point out that it doesn’t have to be like this. Man can’t choose between eating and breathing. If that failed, I would propose a compromise: to do only one at a time. When writing, I would dictate. When reading, I wouldn’t have ideas flying around inside my head. If that failed, I would turn to bribery and offer the souls of my literary victims. If that failed, I would choose writing, and tell the world the story of my extraordinary negotiation with God. I’m sure it would be a bestseller.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Pacy. Compelling. Thrilling.

Chris Pearson’s debut novel is PROOF OF DEATH.

The Naked And The Stiffed

I do like the set-up to Rob Kitchen’s STIFFED (Snubnose Press), which sounds like the kind of crackerjack black comedy Eoin Colfer is bringing to the masses. To wit:

Tadhg Maguire wakes to find himself spooning a dead man. The stiff is Tony Marino, lieutenant to mobster Aldo Pirelli. It doesn’t matter how the local enforcer ended up between Tadhg’s sheets, Pirelli is liable to leap to the wrong conclusion and demand rough justice.
  The right thing to do would be to call the cops.
  The sensible thing to do would be to disappear. Forever.
  The only other option is to get rid of the body and pretend it was never there. No body, no crime.
  What he needs is a couple of friends to help dispose of the heavy corpse. Little do Tadhg’s friends know what kind of reward they’ll receive for their selfless act – threatened, chased, shot at, and kidnapped with demands to return a million dollars they don’t possess.
  By mid-afternoon Tadhg is the most wanted man in America. Not bad for someone who’d never previously had so much as parking ticket.
  If he survives the day he’s resigned to serving time, but not before he saves his friends from the same fate.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE by Declan Burke

‘Down in the Old Quarter, you flip a double-headed coin, two out of three it comes down on its edge.
  ‘Last time, it doesn’t come down at all ...’

When the wife of a politician keeping the Government in power is murdered, freelance journalist Harry Rigby is one of the first on the scene. But Harry's out of his depth: the woman’s murder is linked to an ex-paramilitary gang’s attempt to seize control of the burgeoning cocaine market in the Irish northwest. Harry’s ongoing feud with his ex-partner Denise over their young son’s future doesn’t help matters, and then there’s Harry’s ex-con brother Gonzo, back on the streets and mean as a jilted shark …

Praise for EIGHTBALL BOOGIE:

“Harry Rigby, the ultimate anti-hero, fights his own demons (including a death wish except for protecting his son) and some of the corrupt and powerful in and around his home town when murder comes a knockin’ at Christmas ... nothing short of brilliant writing is the highlight of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE ... absolutely brilliant writing.” - Charlie Stella

“There’s a lot to like in Declan Burke’s debut, including some cracking plot twists. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants an entertaining way to spend a few hours.” - Val McDermid

“I have seen the future of Irish crime fiction and it’s called Declan Burke. Here is talent writ large - mesmerizing, literate, smart and gripping. If there is such an animal as the literary crime novel, then this is it. But as a compelling crime novel, it is so far ahead of anything being produced, that at last my hopes for crime fiction are renewed. I can’t wait to read his next novel.” - Ken Bruen

“Burke writes in a staccato prose that ideally suits his purpose, and his narrative booms along as attention grippingly as a Harley Davidson with the silencer missing. Downbeat but exhilarating.” - The Irish Times

“Harry Rigby resembles the gin-soaked love child of Rosalind Russell and William Powell ... a wild ride worth taking.” – Booklist

“One of the sharpest, wittiest books I’ve read for ages.” - The Sunday Independent

“Eight Ball Boogie proves to be that rare commodity, a first novel that reads as if it were penned by a writer in mid-career ... (it) marks the arrival of a new master of suspense on the literary scene.” - Hank Wagner, Mystery Scene

“The comedy keeps the story rolling along between the sudden eruptions of violence … Burke’s novel is not just a pulp revival, it’s genuine neo-noir.” – International Noir

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE on Kindle UK (£3.99)

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE on Kindle US ($4.99)

The Best Things In Life Are Free Books: CROCODILE TEARS by Mark O’Sullivan

I’ve gone on record saying that I’ll be very pleasantly surprised if there’s a better Irish crime fiction debut this year than Mark O’Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS, and I’m delighted to offer readers the opportunity to snaffle a free copy of said tome. First the blurb elves:

DI Leo Woods’ life is a mess. Work keeps him sane. More or less. On an ice-cold winter morning in an affluent Dublin suburb, he stares down at the bloodied corpse of a property developer. Dermot Brennan’s features, distorted in terror, are a reflection of Leo’s own disfigured face. Life does that kind of thing to Leo. Makes faces at him.
  With the help of ambitious but impetuous Detective Sergeant Helen Troy, Leo uncovers a frosted web of lies, where nobody is quite who they seem. But who ever is? A host of suspects emerge: Brennan’s beautiful but aloof wife, Anna; their estranged son; two former business associates bearing grudges and secrets; a young man convinced Brennan has ruined his life; an ex-pat American gardener; and an arrogant sculptor who may or may not have been having an affair with the dead man’s wife.
  As ice and snow grip Dublin, Woods and Troy find themselves battling forces as malevolent as the weather: jealousy, greed and betrayal. Can they identify the murderer before things get even uglier?

  To be in with a chance of winning a copy of CROCODILE TEARS, just email me at dbrodb[at]gmail.com, putting ‘Crocodile Tears’ in the subject line and including your name and postal address in the body of the email. The giveaway is open until noon on Friday, May 18th. Et bon chance, mes amis …

The French Detection Connection

Here’s an intriguing proposition for those of you with academic ambitions. ‘Clues: A Journal of Detection’ is taking submissions for an issue themed ‘Tana French and Irish Crime Fiction’, with the gist running thusly:

Tana French and Irish Crime Fiction
(theme issue of ‘Clues: A Journal of Detection’)
Guest editor: Rachel Schaffer (Montana State University Billings)
Submission Deadline: August 1, 2013

The number of Irish crime writers and books currently in print is a clear indication that the popularity of Emerald Noir, aka Celtic crime and Hibernian homicide, has never been greater. Ireland—with its economic boom and bust, child abuse scandals, and growing problems with drugs, gangs, and murder—offers a wealth of material to authors looking for rich veins of mystery and crime themes to mine. One of the most popular of these Irish writers is Tana French. Her popularity and critical acclaim have grown with each book, but, to date, there have been few serious academic studies of her work in print. Therefore, Clues seeks previously unpublished papers about Tana French in particular, as well as about Irish crime fiction and writers in general.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:
  Essays on Tana French or other Irish crime writers, individual or comparative
  Trends in Irish crime fiction
  Comparisons of Irish crime fiction to that of other nations or cultures
  Connections between social, cultural, or economic issues in Ireland and crime
  Connections between Irish history—past, present, or future—and crime
  Connections among Irish identity, stereotypes, or mythology and crime

Submission details
Submissions should include a 50-word abstract and 4–5 keywords, and be between 15 to 20 double-spaced, typed pages (approximately 3,300 to 6,000 words) in Times or Times Roman font with minimal formatting. Manuscripts should follow the MLA Style Manual, including parenthetical citations in text and an alphabetized Works Cited list. Please confirm that manuscripts have been submitted solely to Clues.

Submit essays to Janice Allan, Clues executive editor, at j.m.allan@ salford.ac.uk; inquiries may be directed to Elizabeth Foxwell, Clues managing editor, at clues@elizabethfoxwell.com.

  For more details, click on the ‘Clues: A Journal of Detection’ website.

A Peculier State Of Affairs

It’s turning into a week of awards and short- and longlists here at Crime Always Pays. Today it’s the turn of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which issued a 13-strong longlist yesterday. It’s a very strong field, but I reckon the two Irish writers, Gene Kerrigan and Stuart Neville, have a pretty decent shot at making the shortlist, and maybe even winning the award outright (Gene Kerrigan’s THE RAGE, of course, has already won the CWA Gold Dagger). To wit:

The Guilty One – Lisa Ballantyne (Piatkus)
Finders Keepers – Belinda Bauer (Transworld)
Rush Of Blood – Mark Billingham (Little Brown)
Dead Scared – S J Bolton (Corgi, Transworld)
The Affair – Lee Child (Transworld)
A Foreign Country – Charles Cumming (Harpercollins)
Safe House - Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber)
Not Dead Yet - Peter James (Macmillan)
Siege – Simon Kernick (Bantam Press)
Prague Fatale – Philip Kerr (Quercus)
The Rage – Gene Kerrigan (Vintage)
Birthdays for the Dead – Stuart MacBride (Harper)
The Dark Winter – David Mark (Quercus)
The Lewis Man – Peter May (Quercus)
Gods And Beasts – Denise Mina (Orion)
Stolen Souls – Stuart Neville (Vintage)
Sacrilege – S. J. Parris (Harper)
A Dark Redemption – Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber)

  The heartiest of congrats to all nominees. The shortlist will be announced on July 1st, by the way; for all the details, clickety-click here …
  Meanwhile, and on the subject of awards and the winning of, a big shout-out to Adrian McKinty, who has won the 2013 Spinetingler Award for Best Novel with THE COLD COLD GROUND. Quoth Adrian:

“I’m really very touched. I put a lot of my heart and soul into that book. It was both harrowing and strangely fun journeying back to the 1981 of my imagination and reliving those childhood days in Victoria Estate in Carrickfergus. I don’t find writing particularly easy and I’m not one of those 1000 words before breakfast types but occasionally during the writing process of this book I did feel that I was firing on all cylinders the way a top notch writer presumably feels all the time ...”

  For more on Adrian and THE COLD COLD GROUND, clickety-click here …

The Hound Of The Laughtervilles

I’m very pleased indeed to announce that SLAUGHTER’S HOUND has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Last Laugh award at Crimefest. As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL won the Last Laugh gong at Crimefest in 2012 – I was genuinely stunned on the night in question, and very nearly left speechless, and it remains one of the proudest moments of my writing career to date.
  That’s only one of the reasons why I don’t have a hope in hell of winning the Last Laugh this year; the other is the superb quality of the other nominees. To wit:

- Colin Bateman for The Prisoner of Brenda (Headline)
- Simon Brett for The Corpse on the Court (Severn House)
- Declan Burke for Slaughter’s Hound (Liberties Press)
- Ruth Dudley Edwards for Killing The Emperors (Allison & Busby)
- Christopher Fowler for Bryant & May and the Invisible Code (Doubleday, Transworld)
- Hesh Kestin for The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats (Mulholland Books, Hodder & Stoughton)

  Congratulations to all nominees, in all of the Crimefest awards categories. All the details can be found here …
  Finally, I note in passing that three of the six Last Laugh nominees are Irish. What that might or might not say about the Irish attitude to crime and / or crime fiction is anyone’s guess. But I’d love to hear your theories …

The Best Things In Life Are Free … Books

UPDATE: A quick thank you to everyone who took part in the Tana French / BROKEN HARBOUR competition – the response was fantastic. The winner is Linda Callaghan of Glasnevin in Dublin, Ireland. Stay tuned for another competition later this week, when I’ll be giving away copies of Mark O’Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS.

As you may or may not know, Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOUR won the Best Mystery / Thriller Award at the LA Times awards last weekend. A splendid achievement, I think you’ll agree, and fully deserved – BROKEN HARBOUR is a wonderful book.
  To (modestly) celebrate Tana’s win, I’m giving away a copy of BROKEN HARBOUR to one lucky reader. First, the blurb elves:

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.
  Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .

  To be in with a chance of winning, just email me at dbrodb[at]gmail.com, putting ‘Broken Harbour’ in the subject line and your name and postal address in the body of the email. The closing date is noon on Friday, May 3rd, and I’ll draw the winner’s name out of a bobbly hat on Friday afternoon. Et bon chance, mes amis …

UPDATE: Just a quick reminder, folks – some of the entrants to the competition have neglected to include their name and postal address in the body of the email. If you’re taking part, please remember to include your name and address as part of your entry. Thanks kindly.

The Agatha Awards: BOOKS TO DIE FOR

I’m delighted to announce that BOOKS TO DIE FOR, edited by John Connolly, Clair Lamb and yours truly, has won the Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction at the annual Malice Domestic convention.
  The Agatha Awards, for those of you unfamiliar with them, ‘honour the “traditional mystery.” That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others.’
  It’s a considerable honour, and I’m particularly thrilled for John and Clair, but also for all the writers who contributed to BOOKS TO DIE FOR – it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that this award belongs to every one of them as much as it does the book’s editors.
  For all the Agatha Awards shortlists and winners, clickety-click here.
  It’s been a real roller-coaster week for BOOKS TO DIE FOR. We were hugely honoured to be shortlisted for Thursday night’s Edgar Awards, and naturally we were disappointed not to win. That disappointment was offset on Friday by the news that BTDF has been shortlisted for the HRF Keating Award at Crimefest, where the book will find itself, again, in some very fine company. To wit:

Declan Burke & John Connolly for BOOKS TO DIE FOR (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012)
John Curran for AGATHA CHRISTIE’S SECRET NOTEBOOKS (HarperCollins, 2009)
Barry Forshaw (editor) for BRITISH CRIME WRITING: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (Greenwood World Publishing, 2008)
Christopher Fowler for INVISIBLE INK (Strange Attractor, 2012)
Maxim Jakubowski (editor) for FOLLOWING THE DETECTIVES (New Holland Publishers, 2010)
P.D. James for TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION (The Bodleian Library, 2009)

  Incidentally, I’ll be hosting a panel at Crimefest on BOOKS TO DIE FOR, featuring contributors Peter James, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Brian McGilloway. If you’re going to be in Bristol that weekend, we’d love to see you there.

Poe Is We, Part II: The Edgar Awards

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that when I mentioned earlier in the week Jane Casey has been longlisted for a CWA ‘Dagger in the Library’ award, I neglected to mention she was also in the running for an Edgar award later this evening.
  Of course, that – in the grand tradition of the crime novel – was a classic case of dissimulation from an unreliable narrator, and not (koff) the schoolboy error it might appear on first glance.
  But I digress. For lo! Jane Casey is shortlisted for an Edgar Award this evening in the Mary Higgins Clark category with THE RECKONING. And that’s not all – Alan Glynn is also shortlisted, this time in the Best Paperback Original category, for BLOODLAND. And – a muted trumpet parp there, maestro – BOOKS TO DIE FOR, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke (and the wonderful Clair Lamb) is up for consideration in the Best Critical / Biographical category.
  So there it is. It’s very satisfying indeed, I have to say, to be nominated for such a prestigious award, and in such august company too. The very best of luck this evening to everyone on the various shortlists, which can be found here.

UPDATE: News just in comes via Jane Casey, who tells me that Hank Phillippi Ryan won the Mary Higgins Clark gong, which was awarded last night. Hearty congrats to Hank …

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Woe is we, for lo! The Irish writers came away empty-handed from the Edgar Awards last night – unless we’re prepared to claim Dennis Lehane, who won Best Novel with LIVE BY NIGHT, and James O’Brien, who won the Best Critical / Biography category with THE SCIENTIFIC SHERLOCK HOLMES. Anyway, the heartiest of congratulations to all of the winners at the Edgars – the full list can be found here – and commiserations to everyone else. There is, as they say, always next year …

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” Mark O’Sullivan

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
DARK PASSAGE or THE BURGLAR, both by David Goodis. On the surface, his style was typically noir – hard-bitten, compact prose; taut, streetwise dialogue. But that’s just his kicking-off point. The writing is lifted with a quirky take on life, on logic and occasional surrealist touches. A character, for example, can be obsessed with the colour orange – clothes, furnishing, car – to such an odd extent that the novel begins to feel like some kind of surreal hand-tinted noir. Another character has a three-page conversation with a bloodied corpse. And, for me, the last chapter of THE BURGLAR can’t be beaten. An extended metaphor that sums up of all that has gone before, that’s in no way pretentiously literary, and is cinematic in its visual and visceral power.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Bernie Gunther in Philip Kerr’s superb Berlin noir novels.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Football bloggers, particularly those devoted to the team I support, Fulham FC – like
HammyEnd.com. We never win anything but we’re philosophical about the true value of failure and the illusory nature of success (especially Chelsea’s success).

Most satisfying writing moment?
Ruth Rendell has said that ‘the writer’s job is to stay confused for as long as possible’. It’s nerve-wracking but staying confused is the only effective antidote to predictability and lazy writing. The moment when that cloud of confusion begins to lift is more than satisfying – it’s a kind of ecstasy (without the thirst and the hyperactivity).

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sufficiently up to speed on the new Irish crime-writing wave to answer this one – or the next. I very much look forward to playing catch up though.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
As above.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst thing – If I was a plumber, I can’t imagine anyone arriving at my door and asking me to come take a look at a job they’ve just completed and how they might improve it – for free. Best thing – For some reason, a line from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Going Home’ occurs to me here: ‘He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit …’

The pitch for your next book is …?
A missing Goth girl, a hacker, a Libyan rebel fighter, a gangland casualty, a West Belfast Armenian, a woman betrayed, a mother seeking revenge – and the accidental nature of life and death. Confused? DI Leo Woods is too – but he’s working on it.

Who are you reading right now?
As always I’ve got too many books on the go. Right now I’m re-reading Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series, which I love. I’m also nearing the end of Edward St. Aubyn’s AT LAST – the final Patrick Melrose novel. The only real freedom is the freedom from delusion, he concludes. Too right. In between times, I’m dodging in and out of John Gray’s STRAW DOGS – forget existentialism, this is real noir philosophy, stark but compelling and best taken in small doses.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
If I can write, I can read, but not vice-versa. Your move, God.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’ve read worse.

Mark O’Sullivan’s CROCODILE TEARS is published by Transworld.

The Queen Of Kings

I had a review of Alex Barclay’s YA novel CURSE OF KINGS (HarperCollins Children’s Books) published in the Sunday Business Post a couple of weekends ago. It ran a lot like this:

“Envar was a land of twelve territories and its northeasterly was Decresian.”
  Alex Barclay’s career as an author of adult crime thrillers began with Darkhouse (2005), a novel set partly in Ireland and partly in New York. In recent years she has set her novels, which feature the FBI agent Ren Bryce, entirely in Colorado; but from the very first line of her latest offering, the young adult title Curse of Kings, we find ourselves even further from home, albeit in a place and time very far removed from the mean streets of the mystery novel.
  That’s not to say Curse of Kings wants for mystery, as the main storyline centres on young Oland Born’s quest to discover his true identity. We first meet Oland working as a servant for the vicious usurper Villius Ren, a sadist who murdered his friend and the former king, Micah, some 14 years before the story proper begins. In a pacy opening, Barclay establishes Oland’s plight as he is physically and verbally abused by Villius Ren and his cabal of dark knights, in the process dropping significant hints that Oland was not born into such a lowly status. Soon Oland finds himself in mortal danger, and he flees the kingdom of Decresian in search of the truth about his destiny. On his travels he meets Delphi, an unusual young woman who is herself in search of answers about who she is; together they find the wherewithal to face down the cruelties of Villius Ren and overcome the many trials they are forced to endure.
  There well may be a PhD out there for some enterprising student interested in discovering why so many Irish crime writers have published young adult fiction: Alex Barclay follows in the footsteps of John Connolly, Cora Harrison, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman and Eoin McNamee in writing for a younger audience. Perhaps the appeal lies in leaving aside for a while the crime genre’s demands for gritty realism. Here we find ourselves in the quasi-Mediaeval world of Envar, a misty, mythical place of castles and black princes, swords and shields, noble blood-lines and uncompromised morality. The back-page blurb references Tolkien but the book reads much more like an adventure-fuelled variation on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, or the minor stories of the Arthurian legends.
  That said, the novel has very contemporary resonances. Oland Born is essentially a bullied child who refuses to accept his fate, and Barclay eschews the easy option of allowing him access to magic, spells or fantastical devices that might ease his passage to freedom. Instead Oland and Delphi are forced to rely on their wit, courage and determination to succeed, which renders them all the more vulnerable and accessible to the reader, and enhances our engagement with their struggle.
  Or struggles, rather. Events unfold at a very rapid pace, and the story is jammed to the margins with incident, reversals of fortune, surprise reveals and confrontations. Indeed, there are times when the adult reader might be a little overwhelmed by the relentless buffeting Oland and Delphi experience, although the target audience of younger readers will very probably remained gripped throughout.
  The first of a planned trilogy, Curse of Kings is a handsome achievement, not least in terms of its creation of a new world that comes fully terra-formed with a unique history, religion, geography and civilisation. There is darkness here, and monsters both animal and human, but Barclay never loses sight of the fact that our folktales and fairytales were constructed to facilitate our instinctive desire to believe that no matter how bleak our lives appear to be, a better world is ours for the taking. – Declan Burke

  This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post