Declan Burke

I’ll be hosting a creative writing workshop in Dundalk this coming Thursday, September 19th, titled ‘Character is Mystery’. I’ve stolen the title (and much else, of course) from John Connolly’s words of wisdom on the business of writing, this on the basis that talent borrows but genius steals; and I’ll be using SKIN DEEP by Liz Nugent (who recently appeared in Dundalk as part of the Creative Spark series of talks) and Patricia Highsmith’s THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY as example texts. The details:

Date: Thursday 19th September
Time: 11am-1pm (coffee before session at 10:30am)
Price: FREE (but booking essential)
Location: Creative Spark, Clontygora Ct, Muirhevnamore, Dundalk, Co. Louth

  For all the details, including how to book your spot, clickety-click here …

Being a list of Irish crime fiction titles published / to be published in 2019. To wit:

2019

DARKEST TRUTH by Catherine Kirwan (January 10)
APPLE OF MY EYE by Claire Allan (January 19)
TWISTED by Steve Cavanagh (January 24)

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS by Jo Spain (February 7)
IF SHE RETURNED by S.A. Dunphy (February 7)
THE WYCH ELM by Tana French (February 19)

THE SCHOLAR by Dervla McTiernan (March 7)
THE GHOST FACTORY by Jenny McCartney (March 21)
DARK WOOD by Derek Flynn (March 26)

CRUEL ACTS by Jane Casey (April 4)
THE KILLER IN ME by Olivia Kiernan (April 4)
A BOOK OF BONES by John Connolly (April 18)

FORGET ME NOT by Claire Allan (May 16)

NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER by Kevin Barry (June 6)
LOST YOU by Haylen Beck (June 27)

THE CITY IN FLAMES by Michael Russell (July 4)
THE CHAIN by Adrian McKinty (July 9)
THE BOY WHO FELL by Jo Spain (July 11)

THE HOODED GUNMAN by John Curran (September 19)

THE BODY FALLS by Andrea Carter (October 3)
INTO THE FIRE by Arlene Hunt (October 6)

  NB: Publication dates are given according to Amazon UK, and are subject to change.

The Irish Times published a ‘Best of Crime Fiction 2018’ column last weekend. My two cents runs as follows:

Mick Herron’s London Rules (John Murray), the fifth in his blackly comic ‘Jackson Lamb’ spy series, got the year off to a cracking start as it filleted the pretensions of Britain’s contemporary intelligence forces. Dirk Kurbjuweit delivered a gripping account of domestic terror in Fear (Orion), in which a family comes to terms with living cheek-by-jowl with its stalker. Alafair Burke’s 12th novel, The Wife (Faber), surfed the #metoo zeitgeist in a psychological thriller about a woman forced to second-guess her instincts and principles.

  Set in the Australian Outback, Jane Harper’s brilliant second novel, Force of Nature (Little, Brown), proved her award-winning debut The Dry was no fluke. Olivia Kiernan’s Dublin-set police procedural debut, Too Close to Breathe (riverrun), immediately established her as the heir to Tana French’s throne. Another debut, Cormac O’Keeffe’s Black Water (Black and White), was set on Dublin’s Grand Canal and delivered the darkest noir Irish crime fiction had to offer this year.
  John Connolly’s The Woman in the Woods (Hodder & Stoughton) was the 16th in his Charlie Parker series of Maine-set private eye novels, which reliably wove supernatural chills through a classic hardboiled set-up. Meanwhile, in Memento Mori (Bloomsbury), Ruth Downie’s series investigator, the Roman medicus Ruso, sets out to disprove a supernatural element in a murder in the spa town Aquae Sulis, aka modern Bath. Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand (Picador) was a gripping psychological thriller which drilled down through the genre’s conventions to get to the biochemistry of sociopathy.

  Under the Night (Faber) by Alan Glynn was a thrilling ride through the darker pages of recent American history, and served as a prequel to, and sequel of, his debut The Dark Fields. Michael Connelly’s Dark Sacred Night (Orion) brought together Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard to investigate the cold case of a teenage girl murdered some decades ago. Eoin McNamee’s The Vogue was a lyrical, darkly poetic account of historical abuse and cold-blooded murder in small-town Northern Ireland. Liz Nugent’s third novel, Skin Deep (Penguin), blended reimagined Irish folktales and the contemporary psychological thriller to spectacular effect. Finally, Kevin McCarthy’s Wolves of Eden (W.W. Norton) was an epic account of a murder investigation conducted in the Old West as Fort Phil Kearny finds itself besieged by Chief Red Cloud. ~ Declan Burke

  This feature was first published in the Irish Times. For Declan Hughes’ ‘Best Of’, clickety-click here …

Edited by Terry Golway, BEING NEW YORK, BEING IRISH (Irish Academic Press) is subtitled ‘Reflections on Twenty-Five Years of Irish America and New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House’. The book will be launched at Hodges Figgis on Thursday, November 8th, at 6.30pm, with John Connolly as special guest speaker.
  Glucksman Ireland House has long been a staunch supporter of Irish crime writing, not least due to the good works of Dr John Waters and the inimitable Joe Long, among others. A particularly fond memory is the launch of DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS at Glucksman Ireland House in 2011, which involved John Connolly, Alex Barclay, Arlene Hunt, Declan Hughes and Colin Bateman, and which – being frank – was a surreal experience for yours truly.
  Anyway, Thursday night should be a fascinating event at Hodges Figgis – if you’re in the vicinity, do drop by …

UPDATE: Following on from the Bord Gais Book of the Year awards on November 28th, the voting is now open for the overall Irish Book of the Year. I’m not say that you should vote for John Connolly or Julie Parsons, necessarily, but I am reliably informed that, should the spirit move you to do so, your reward will be in heaven. To vote, clickety-click here …

Hearty congrats to Julie Parsons, who last night won the Irish Independent Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards for THE THERAPY HOUSE; and commiserations to all the joint runners-up, i.e., Jane Casey, Haylen Beck, Cat Hogan, Karen Perry and Sinead Crowley.
  Elsewhere, John Connolly scooped the Ryan Tubridy Listeners’ Choice Award for HE, his marvellous novel about the life and times of Stan Laurel.
  For all the details of the winners in all categories, clickety-click here …

I’m delighted to announce that as of today, yours truly is a Mentor in the Irish Writers Centre mentoring programme. Quoth the blurb elves:

 My speciality is crime fiction. As an award-winning author and editor in the genre, I can provide invaluable insights into every sub-genre of crime and mystery fiction.
 Baffled by your own plot? Unable to give your characters the desired depth? Struggling to master the intricacies of dialogue? Keen to give your prose a final polish? Whether your manuscript requires an intensive edit or one last brush-up before you send it off to an agent or publisher, I can help.
 For more information, or an informal chat, contact Declan Burke at the Irish Writers Centre.

Relevant Information:
I am an award-winning author and editor.
 I regularly tutor creative writing courses at the Irish Writers’ Centre. These courses include modules on structure, plot, character, narrative voice, setting and dialogue.
 As a proof-reader I worked for the legal publishers Thomson Round Hall.
 Since 2007, I have hosted the blog ‘Crime Always Pays’, which is dedicated to Irish crime fiction.
 I write a monthly crime fiction column for the Irish Times.
 I have hosted numerous public events and interview panels, helping to organise and co-ordinate literary festivals, including the inaugural Irish crime writing festival at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU.

Publishing History as Author:
Eightball Boogie (Sitric) (2003)
The Big O (Hag’s Head Press) (2007)
Absolute Zero Cool (Liberties Press) (2011)
Slaughter’s Hound (Liberties Press) (2012)
Crime Always Pays (Severn House) (2014)
The Lost and the Blind (Severn House (2015)

Publishing History as Editor:
Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century (Liberties Press) (2011)
Books to Die For (co-edited with John Connolly) (Hodder & Stoughton) (2012)
Trouble Is Our Business (New Island Books) (2016)

Nominations and Awards
Absolute Zero Cool won the Goldsboro Award in 2012. Eightball Boogie, Slaughter’s Hound and Absolute Zero Cool were all shortlisted for the crime fiction prize at the Irish Book Awards. The Big O, Slaughter’s Hound and Crime Always Pays were all shortlisted for the Goldsboro Award for Comic Crime Fiction.
Books to Die For won the Anthony and Macavity Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime. It was further nominated for the Edgar Award and HRF Keating Award for Best Critical / Biographical Crime Fiction.

The wandering daughter job has been a staple of the private eye genre since Dashiell Hammett coined the phrase in 1929, but John Connolly’s A Game of Ghosts (Hodder & Stoughton, €17.99) offers a neat twist on the convention of the private eye quest when private investigator Charlie Parker is commissioned to track down fellow gumshoe Jaycob Eklund, who has likely wandered into harm’s way due to a long-standing fascination with the paranormal. As its title suggests, the 17th novel in Connolly’s Charlie Parker series is more directly engaged with the supernatural than some of his more recent offerings: before he went missing, we discover, Eklund was investigating the Brethren, an ancient family that preys on the unwary from beyond the grave; meanwhile, Parker’s daughter Sam, a fascinating character who is long overdue her own novel, grows increasingly aware of the role she is fated to play in her father’s epic battle with evil. What follows is an absorbing tale of sin, punishment, atonement and redemption, the language as precisely measured and slowly beaten out as a eulogy delivered to the rhythm of a muffled drum, as Connolly lures us yet again into those shadows where he has created, as all great storytellers do, a world that is uniquely his own.
  JS Monroe’s Find Me (Head of Zeus, €18.45) opens with Jarleth Costello seeing his ex-girlfriend Rosa at a Tube station, even though Rosa – officially, at least – took her own life five years previously. Jarleth frequently experiences bereavement hallucinations, but this time Rosa’s appearance coincides with Jarleth being watched and followed. Is he succumbing to paranoia? And if Rosa were still alive, as Jarleth has always believed, why would the former Cambridge student have faked her death? JS Monroe has previously published five spy novels as Jon Stock, but Find Me is a conspiracy thriller in which amateur sleuth Jarleth is plunged into a world of spooks and covert black-ops as he pursues the truth of Rosa’s disappearance. The tale proceeds via the parallel narratives of Jarleth’s investigation and diary entries, as Jarleth stumbles across a journal Rosa left behind, an encrypted document which can only be decrypted one entry at a time. It’s a conceit designed to maintain narrative suspense, but it’s one which grows increasingly implausible, as is the motive the reader is given for Rosa’s reappearance in Jarleth’s life. John le Carré and Len Deighton are referenced throughout, but Find Me, though an entertaining page-turner, falls well short of such standards.
  Sabine Durrant’s fifth novel, Lie With Me (Mulholland Books, €17.99), is a comi-tragedy centring on Paul Morris, once a best-selling author now reduced to mooching off friends and family. Wangling his way into a Greek holiday on the Ionian island of Pyros with some old Cambridge acquaintances, Paul’s vanity comes back to haunt him when he finds himself at the centre of an investigation into the murder of a young female tourist some ten years previously. Paul Morris might easily be a Patricia Highsmith creation, even if Sabine Durrant very deliberately renders her anti-hero a rather charmless Tom Ripley, a libidinous sociopath who lacks any redeeming features other than the callous honesty of his internal monologues, such as when Paul observes that ‘The selfish response to events was so much more straightforward than the morally correct.’ The Greek setting is beautifully detailed, the large cast of characters neatly sketched in, and the plot is fiendishly deceptive as it gradually undermines the readers’ expectations. A slow-burning tale, Lie With Me is a blackly humorous and surprisingly affecting psychological thriller.
  Set in Naples, Laurent Gaudé’s Hell’s Gate (Gallic, €12.75) opens in 2004 with Filippo Scalfaro De Nittis scheming to avenge the death of his father, Matteo, by stabbing gangster Toto Cullaccio. Filippo seems prone to grandiose pronouncements (‘I’ve come back from the dead. I have memories of hell and fears of the world ending.’) until the story flashes back to 1980, when we discover that Filippo, then six years old, was shot dead when caught in the cross-fire of a gangsters’ shoot-out as his father Matteo brought him to school. Hell’s Gate is the revenge thriller reimagined as an existential meditation, and one that owes a considerable debt to Dante and Homer, as the bereaved Matteo descends among the shades of the Underworld and harrows hell in a self-sacrificing bid to restore his son to life. Despite giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘criminal underworld’, Hell’s Gate is by no means a conventional crime novel, with Gaudé focusing his energies on creating a claustrophobically intense contemporary myth that brilliantly evokes the madness of grief.
  Jo Nesbo’s The Thirst (Harvill Secker, €14.99) is the 11th novel to feature Oslo police detective Harry Hole, although Harry is no longer a detective, instead lecturing at Oslo’s police academy. When lawyer Elise Hermansen is murdered by a man she has just met on Tinder, however, the details are particularly gruesome – the man employed a set of spring-loaded steel teeth to bite out his victim’s throat – and soon Harry is commissioned to set up an independent investigative unit to hunt down what appears to be a deranged vampirist with a raging thirst for human blood. Despite being a collection of fictional detective tropes – the genius loner maverick who has resents authority and struggles with addiction – Harry Hole is enjoyably sardonic company as he unravels the mystery of ‘the vampire killer’, albeit that his efforts are hugely helped by the fact that the killer is an old foe who simply can’t help leaving clues to help Harry’s investigation along. Leaving very few serial killer clichés unturned (‘At last we meet again, Harry’), The Thirst is a polished pot-boiler that will likely delight Jo Nesbo fans but leave anyone encountering Harry Hole (‘the most mythologised murder detective in the Oslo Police’) for the first time wondering what all the fuss is about. ~ Declan Burke

  This column was first published in the Irish Times.

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?
Misery by Stephen King.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
No time for pleasures – guilty or otherwise. Most of my reading is crime and thrillers, detective based. But I do like the occasional short story.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Two really – getting my agent, Ger Nichol was, for me, the first validation of my writing. Then, of course, signing a four-book deal with Bookouture.

If you could recommend one Irish crime novel, what would it be?
Every Dead Thing by John Connolly. For an Irish-based novel, Disappeared by Anthony J. Quinn.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Freedom’s Child by Jax Miller. It’s not set in Ireland, but Jax lives in Enfield, just down the road! For an Irish-based novel, Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips.

Worst thing about being a writer?
For me it’s finding the discipline to edit my own work.

Best thing about being a writer?
I get to make things up. I can use my imagination and be creative.

The pitch for your book is …
When a woman’s body is found in Ragmullin cathedral, and hours later a man’s body is found hanging from a tree, DI Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. The trail leads her to a former children’s home with a dark connection to her own family history. As she begins to link the current victims to unsolved murders decades old, two teenage boys go missing. She must close in on the killer before they strike again, but in doing so is she putting her own children in terrifying danger? Lottie is about to come face to face with a twisted soul who has a very warped idea of justice.

Who is on your shoulder as you write?
My husband, Aidan, who died almost eight years ago after a short illness, aged just 49. He has been with me in spirit every tap of the keyboard. Missed but cherished.

Who are you reading right now?
Robert Dugoni. My writing has been compared to his and I must admit I hadn’t read any of his work. So I’m catching up now. I didn’t realise he was a US bestseller!

God appears and says you can only write or read. Which would it be?
Write, of course. (However, I might need to be able to read a little in order to edit what I’ve written).

The three best words to describe your own writing …
Dark. Mysterious. Gripping. (I took those words from a review). Though my editor calls it ‘creepy’.

THE MISSING ONES by Patricia Gibney is published by Bookouture.

I’m hugely looking forward to my annual pilgrimage to No Alibis in Belfast, where we’ll be conducting the Northern Ireland launch of TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS (New Island) on Friday evening. If you’re in or around Belfast that evening, we’d love to see you there. The details:

Fri 25th November 6.30pm,
No Alibis, 83, Botanic Avenue, Belfast

An evening of chat about Crime Fiction on the Emerald Isle with Declan Burke, John Connolly, Louise Phillips and Others

Thrilling, disturbing, shocking and moving, Trouble Is Our Business: New Stories by Irish Crime Writers is a compulsive anthology of original stories by Ireland’s best-known crime writers.

Patrick McGinley, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Colin Bateman, Eoin McNamee, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, Julie Parsons, John Connolly, Alan Glynn, Adrian McKinty, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Gene Kerrigan, Eoin Colfer, Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Jane Casey, Niamh O’Connor, William Ryan Murphy, Louise Phillips, Sinéad Crowley, Liz Nugent.

Irish crime writers have long been established on the international stage as bestsellers and award winners. Now, for the first time ever, the best of contemporary Irish crime novelists are brought together in one volume.
Edited by Declan Burke, the anthology embraces the crime genre’s traditional themes of murder, revenge, intrigue, justice and redemption. These stories engage with the full range of crime fiction incarnations: from police procedurals to psychological thrillers, domestic noir to historical crime – but there’s also room for the supernatural, the futuristic, the macabre. As Emerald Noir blossoms into an international phenomenon, there has never been a more exciting time to be a fan of Irish crime fiction.

Reviews:

‘This collection can be confidently recommended to anyone who reads any type of crime fiction. They will find something to tease and tantalise their inner detective.’ – The Irish Times

‘Trouble Is Our Business is one of the essential literary fiction compendiums in Irish publishing this year.’ – Sunday Independent

‘A crime anthology certain to keep you on the edge of your seat’ – The Sunday Times

It’s been a busy couple of weeks since TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS (New Island) was launched, and the reaction – happily – has been pretty favourable to date.
  First off, hearty congratulations to Jane Casey, whose story ‘Green, Amber, Red’ has been longlisted for the Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Sponsored by Writing.ie, the shortlist will be announced on October 25th, and if Jane’s chilling story isn’t on it then there’s something very rotten in the state of Denmark.
  Staying with Writing.ie, Hubert O’Hearn writes a very nice appreciation of the anthology, with the gist running thusly:

“Trouble is our Business is a uniformly excellent selection of twenty-four crime stories written by two dozen Irish writers. Not all of them are murder mysteries per se, although some are; not all are identifiably Irish in speech or setting, although again some are. Each one though polishes a different facet of the whole crime writing genre and just as with the wine sampler mentioned above, by the time you are finished reading this anthology you will certainly have discovered at the very least several writers you’ll list for future enjoyment.”

  Over at the Sunday Independent, Hilary White is also very positive about the book, describing it as “One of the essential literary fiction compendiums in Irish publishing this year.” I haven’t found a link to the review to date, but I’ll hoist it here when I do.
  Meanwhile, to coincide with the publication of TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS, there’s been a few pieces published about Irish crime fiction in general. RTE’s new Culture website hosts an imaginatively titled piece called ‘Crime Spraoi’, the Irish Times hosts another on why ‘Irish crime writers are a law unto themselves’, and The Journal.ie interviews John Connolly, Louise Phillips and yours truly on why Irish crime writing is having ‘a killer moment right now’.
  Finally, if you’re in the mood to sample a couple of the stories from TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS, the Irish Times carries Gene Kerrigan’s ‘Cold Cards’, while the RTE Culture website carries Sinead Crowley’s ‘Maximum Protection’. We do hope you enjoy …

I’m very much looking forward to the launch of TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS (see details above) – if you’re in Dublin on Wednesday 21st, please do drop by the Gutter Bookshop, we’d love to see you there. Here’s the all-important blurbio:

Selected and edited by award-winning crime writer Declan Burke, TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS showcases the absolute best in Irish crime writing today. From originators like Patrick McGinley and Ruth Dudley Edwards to global crime megastars like John Connolly and Eoin Colfer, there can be no doubt as to the serious quality of Irish crime writing in the twenty-first century. An absolute must-have for crime lovers! Featuring stories by: Patrick McGinley, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Colin Bateman, Eoin McNamee, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, Julie Parsons, John Connolly, Alan Glynn, Adrian McKinty, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Gene Kerrigan, Eoin Colfer, Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Jane Casey, Niamh O Connor, William Ryan, Louise Phillips, Sinead Crowley, and Liz Nugent.

Glucksman Ireland House at NYU hosts the launch of two books tomorrow evening, September 13th, as Elizabeth Mannion launches THE CONTEMPORARY IRISH DETECTIVE NOVEL and Stuart Neville launches SO SAY THE FALLEN. To wit:

Irish detective fiction has enjoyed an international readership for over a decade, appearing on best-seller lists across the globe. But its breadth of hard-boiled and amateur detectives, historical fiction, and police procedurals has remained somewhat marginalized in academic scholarship.
  Exploring the work of some of its leading writers, The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel, edited by Elizabeth Mannion, opens new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies. It considers the detective genre’s position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition.
  Writers John Connolly, Declan Hughes, and Stuart Neville will participate and will be signing books, as will Professors Elizabeth Mannion, Fiona Coffey, and Brian Cliff.

Tuesday, September 13, 7:00 p.m.
at Glucksman Ireland House NYU

  For more, clickety-click here …

I’m delighted to see that the award-winning BOOKS TO DIE FOR (Atria / Emily Bestler Books), edited by John Connolly and yours truly, will be published in trade paperback later this year, at what I think is a very reasonable price of $17 (I’m biased, obviously). If you haven’t come across BOOKS TO DIE FOR before, the concept runs a lot like this:

The world’s most beloved mystery writers celebrate their favourite mystery novels in this gorgeously wrought collection, featuring essays by Michael Connelly, Kathy Reichs, Ian Rankin, and more. In the most ambitious anthology of its kind, the world’s leading mystery writers come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that reveal as much about the authors and their own work as they do about the books that they love, over a hundred authors from twenty countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Agatha Christie to Lee Child, from Edgar Allan Poe to P. D. James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Lord Peter Wimsey, Books to Die For brings together the best of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and for those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover. This is the one essential book for every reader who has ever finished a mystery novel and thought … I want more!

BOOKS TO DIE FOR will be published in trade paperback on October 25th. For all the details, clickety-click here …

I’m very pleased to announce that TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS will be published by New Island Books on September 30th, with yours truly wearing his editor’s hat. It’s a collection of brand new short stories from Irish crime writers, and the blurb runs a lot like this:

Selected and edited by award-winning crime writer Declan Burke, TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS showcases the absolute best in Irish crime writing today. From originators like Patrick McGinley and Ruth Dudley Edwards to global crime megastars like John Connolly and Eoin Colfer, there can be no doubt as to the serious quality of Irish crime writing in the twenty-first century. An absolute must-have for crime lovers! Featuring stories by: Patrick McGinley, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Colin Bateman, Eoin McNamee, Ken Bruen, Paul Charles, Julie Parsons, John Connolly, Alan Glynn, Adrian McKinty, Arlene Hunt, Alex Barclay, Gene Kerrigan, Eoin Colfer, Declan Hughes, Cora Harrison, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Jane Casey, Niamh O Connor, William Ryan, Louise Phillips, Sinead Crowley, and Liz Nugent.

  TROUBLE IS OUR BUSINESS will be published on September 30th.

It’s nice to see that the Irish crime novel is getting some academic love: Palmgrave Macmillan has just published THE CONTEMPORARY IRISH DETECTIVE NOVEL, which is edited by Elizabeth Mannion and promises to ‘open new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies.’ To wit:

Irish detective fiction has enjoyed an international readership for over a decade, appearing on best-seller lists across the globe. But its breadth of hard-boiled and amateur detectives, historical fiction, and police procedurals has remained somewhat marginalized in academic scholarship. Exploring the work of some of its leading writers―including Peter Tremayne, John Connolly, Declan Hughes, Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville, Tana French, Jane Casey, and Benjamin Black―The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel opens new ground in Irish literary criticism and genre studies. It considers the detective genre’s position in Irish Studies and the standing of Irish authors within the detective novel tradition. Contributors: Carol Baraniuk, Nancy Marck Cantwell, Brian Cliff, Fiona Coffey, Charlotte J. Headrick, Andrew Kincaid, Audrey McNamara, and Shirley Peterson.

  For all the details, clickety-click here …

“And so this is Christmas,” as John Lennon once so astutely observed, “and what have you done?” Well, as always, I mostly read. Herewith be the list of my favourite / most enjoyable / most memorable crime novels from 2015:

The crime fiction year opened with a bang, appropriately enough, with Adrian McKinty’s Gun Street Girl (Serpent’s Tail), the fourth in a series featuring Sean Duffy. A Catholic detective with the RUC, Duffy investigates a double-killing as the news of the impending Anglo-Irish Agreement sends Northern Ireland into a turmoil of strikes, riots and violence. Set in the 1970s, Celeste Ng’s impressive debut Everything I Never Told You (Black Friars) investigates the tragic life and death of Ohio teen Lydia Lee, creating a heartbreaking portrait of a teenage girl struggling to cope with unbearable and conflicting pressures.
  Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) was an equally impressive first outing, and one of the year’s publishing sensations (touted as this year’s Gone Girl), as alcoholic Rachel turns amateur sleuth when a woman goes missing. Steve Cavanagh’s The Defence (Orion) was another debut, a rollicking tale of New York lawyer Eddie Flynn going into court with a bomb strapped to his back to defend a Russian mobster. Attica Locke’s third offering, Pleasantville (Serpent’s Tail), is another to feature a lawyer, as Jay Porter tries to extricate the personal from the political as reluctantly defends an alleged killer during a mayoral election in Houston, Texas, against the backdrop of a campaign of very dirty tricks.
  A Song of Shadows (Hodder & Stoughton) was John Connolly’s 13th novel to feature private eye Charlie Parker, and arguably his best, as Parker – no stranger to evil – finds himself immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust and evolving into something of a Christ-like figure. The Shut Eye (Bantam Press) was Belinda Bauer’s sixth novel, and another tinged with the supernatural, in which hard-nosed DCI John Marvel finds his scepticism tested to the limit in a thoughtful meditation on faith, hope and belief. Over in Colorado, FBI agent Ren Bryce returned in Killing Ways (Harper Collins), Alex Barclay’s seventh novel. Bryce tracks a serial killer in an unusually poignant thriller featuring moments of poetic horror.
  Richard Beard’s superb Acts of the Assassins (Harvill Secker) was a time-bending tale employing modern weaponry and infrastructure in which Roman investigator Gallio searches for the rabble-rousers who stole the corpse of the local mystic Jesus from his tomb in the wake of the prophet’s crucifixion. Camille (MacLehose) concluded Pierre Lemaitre’s impressive trilogy about the diminutive Parisian police detective, Camille Verhoeven, with Camille racing to track down a killer while constantly second-guessing his own motives and capabilities.
  In June, the ever reliable Karin Fossum delivered The Drowned Boy (Harvill Secker), in which her series detective, the brooding Norwegian Inspector Sejer, investigates the tragic death of a toddler with Down’s syndrome. Dennis Lehane concluded his excellent Joe Coughlin trilogy with World Gone By (Little, Brown), which was set in Florida and Cuba, and charted the turbulent transition of America’s criminal fraternity from the riotous gangster era to the more organised crime of the Mafia.
  Elmer Mendoza’s Silver Bullets (MacLehose) was a Mexican ‘narco’ novel featuring Detective Edgar ‘Lefty’ Mendieta, a bracingly bleak but blackly comic tale of murder investigation set in a country where “nothing is true, nothing is false.” Set in Belfast, Those We Left Behind (Harvill Secker), Stuart Neville’s sixth novel, featured DCI Serena Flanagan and explored the physical and psychological damage wrought by the actions of two apparently sociopathic – but heartbreakingly vulnerable – young boys. Simon Mawer’s Tightrope (Little, Brown) was a superior spy novel set in the post-WWII years, an absorbing tale about Marian Sutro, a former war hero whose notions of patriotism and honour are ripped apart as the Cold War chills to deep freeze.
  Even the Dead (Penguin) was Benjamin Black’s seventh offering in the increasingly impressive series featuring the pathologist Quirke. Here the depiction of a genteel 1950s Dublin belie a brutally noir moral relativism, as Quirke sinks into a quicksand of politics and religion. Sinead Crowley’s sophomore offering, Are You Watching Me? (Quercus), was an assured take on the ‘domestic noir’ genre, as Garda Detective Claire Boyle tracks the stalker who is making life hell for media ingénue Liz Cafferky. Jon Steele concluded with another trilogy with the fantastic (and fantastical) The Way of Sorrows (Blue Rider Press), as Harper, an angel in human form, complete with Chandleresque quips, goes to war against the forces of Evil for humanity’s soul.
  Jane Casey’s After the Fire (Ebury Press) featured her series heroine, London-based DC Maeve Kerrigan. “Casey writes with a deft wit and immense skill,” wrote Declan Hughes in these pages. “The Maeve Kerrigan books keep getting better and better.” Mark Henshaw’s The Snow Kimono (Tinder Press) centred on retired Parisian police inspector Auguste Jovert in an unusual crime novel, with Jovert playing the part of reluctant confessor to an elaborately detailed declaration of guilt. Julia Heaberlin’s third novel, Black-Eyed Susans (Penguin), was a brilliantly constructed tale of parallel narratives as teenager Tessie and adult Tess recount their horrific story of being abducted and left for dead by a seasoned serial killer in an engrossing exploration of the morality of the death penalty.
  Lynda La Plante returned to the iconic heroine of Prime Suspect for Tennison (Simon & Schuster), offering a tale of how Tennison came of age as a policewoman in the early 1970s when she is seconded to an investigation into the murder of a 17-year-old girl found naked and strangled on Hackney Marshes. In a good year for Irish crime fiction, Jo Spain’s With Our Blessing (Quercus) was a remarkably assured debut that introduced Inspector Tom Reynolds in an old-fashioned murder mystery (albeit one freighted with the pain of recent Irish history) set in a convent.

  This article was first published in the Irish Times.

  So there it is, folks. It’s been another great year, and thank you kindly to everyone who dropped by ye olde blogge. A happy and peaceful Christmas to you all, and I’ll see you all back here come the New Year …

I’ve always been very fond of the Hodges Figgis bookstore on Dublin’s Dawson Street, which is currently hosting its own book festival (it runs from September 10th to 19th). The event that caught my eye, and which I’m hoping to get to, is the crime fiction night on Thursday 17th, when John Connolly will host a conversation between some of the most impressive talents of the new wave of Irish crime fiction, said talents being Karen Perry, Jane Casey, Alex Barclay, Liz Nugent and Sinead Crowley.
  It won’t have escaped your notice that, with the exception of the Paul Perry half of the ‘Karen Perry’ writing partnership, all those writers are women. Whether by accident or design, the Hodges Figgis event is certainly a timely one in that it celebrates the fact that female writers are very much to the fore in Irish crime writing these days. There have always been terrific women writers in terms of Irish crime fiction, among them Julie Parsons, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Ingrid Black, Cora Harrison, Erin Hart, Tana French, Niamh O’Connor and Arlene Hunt, but in the last couple of years women have come to dominate the scene, not least in terms of winning the crime fiction prize at the Irish Book Awards (Louise Phillips and Liz Nugent have won the last two awards); and this year alone we’ve seen debuts from Andrea Carter, Jax Miller, Sheena Lambert, Anna Sweeney and Kelly Creighton.
  I don’t have any theory as to why this might be the case (“Wot!?” I hear you gasp – “No theory?”), but if there is any underlying reason(s) for the trend, there’s no better man than John Connolly to winkle it/them out. The event takes place at Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin 2, on Thursday 17th September, at 6.30pm. The event is free, and no booking is required.

It being the end of June, and thus halfway through the year, I thought I’d post a list of the best new books I’ve read so far in 2015. In order of my reading them, they are:

Acts of the Assassins, Richard Beard.
On the basis of its opening 20 pages or so, the second offering Richard Beard’s ‘Messiahs Trilogy’ – the first, Lazarus is Dead, was published in 2011 – is an audacious take on the crime / mystery novel. Beard is clearly a student (or perhaps scholar might be more appropriate) of the crime fiction genre, given that the story begins as a straightforward police procedural investigation but also broadens out to incorporate other sub-genres such as the spy novel (“Jesus has skills, fieldcraft …” muses Gallio on his foe). The serial killer novel also looms large when it is discovered that the disciples, having exiled themselves to various parts of the empire, are being bumped off one by one, murdered by some shadowy killer in a variety of gory deaths, such as beheadings, flayings, stonings and so forth.

For the rest of the review, clickety-click here …

The Shut Eye, Belinda Bauer.
A ‘shut eye’ is a magician so good at persuading the audience the illusion is real that he comes to believe in the trick himself. In Belinda Bauer’s superb sixth novel, The Shut Eye (Bantam Press, €22.50), the phrase refers both to Richard Latham, a celebrity psychic helping the police with their enquiries into the disappearance of young Edie Evans, and to DCI John Marvel, the detective inspector leading the investigation. Marvel is resolutely old-fashioned about police work (“John Marvel didn’t believe in coincidence any more than he believed in global warming …”) and refuses to countenance any supernatural aid, but his hardnosed materialism is shaken to the core when he meets Anna Buck, whose young son Daniel has also gone missing, and whose grief-wracked visions appear to offer clues to the whereabouts of Edie Evans. The Shut Eye is an unusual but absorbing police procedural that also functions as a thoughtful meditation on faith, hope and belief. John Marvel may well be a no-nonsense copper, but in a genre that has been dominated in recent times by the CSI school of facts and evidence, Marvel’s journey towards the truth is refreshingly unconventional.

A Song of Shadows, John Connolly.
The 13th novel in the Charlie Parker series, John Connolly’s A Song of Shadows (Hodder & Stoughton, €22.50) opens in Maine’s remote coastal town of Boreas. Recuperating from grievous wounds sustained in his previous outing, A Wolf in Winter (2014) – Parker was declared clinically dead before being resuscitated – the private investigator is drawn into a bizarre case when an obsessive Nazi-hunter is discovered dead on a nearby beach. No stranger to evil, and still coming to terms with his experience of another realm about which “he still had questions, but no doubts,” Parker finds himself immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust, and determined that this particular evil will not thrive on his watch. Connolly has been engaged for some years now in gradually refining the supernatural and horror tropes that gave the Parker novels their distinctive identity, and A Song of Shadows, blending the language of myth and New Testament into a hardboiled tale, marks a significant shift in Parker’s metamorphosis into an explicitly Christ-like figure (“This one bleeds from the palms,” observes one of his foes). That notion has been explored before, most notably by Ross Macdonald and James Lee Burke, and while A Song of Shadows more than earns the right to be judged in such company, Connolly further appears to be breaking new ground, not least in terms of Parker’s haunting relationships with his daughters, one dead and one living. It’s a fabulous piece of work, in both senses of the word, from one of contemporary fiction’s great storytellers.

Mrs Engels, Gavin McCrea.
Gavin McCrea has crafted a beautifully detailed historical fiction in Mrs Engels, and the political backdrop is indeed a compelling one as he describes the revolutionary frustrations of Engels and Marx, the fall-out to the Franco-Prussian war and the consequent rise and fall of the Paris Commune, and the rise of militant Irish nationalism in Britain. Lizzie’s drawing room hosts agitators, revolutionaries and activists of all hues, but there’s none so fascinating as Lizzie herself, toasted at one point by Engels as a ‘Proletarian, Irish rebel and model Communist.’ In truth, Lizzie is far more difficult to label that her lover realises. From the very beginning Lizzie tells us that she’s a pragmatic woman whose loyalty is only her own survival: “Establish yourself in a decent situation,” is her advice to all young women, “and put away what you can, that, please God, one day you may need no man’s help.”

For the rest of the review, clickety-click here …

Disappeared, Anthony J. Quinn.
First published in the US, and shortlisted there for a Strand Literary Award, Quinn’s debut propels the Tyrone author into the first rank of Irish crime writing. An eye for vividly contrasting imagery means that Disappeared is superbly evocative of its bleak setting, such as when Daly leaves behind the rural shore of Lough Neagh to drive into Portadown. “The shapes of trees shining in the frost were like the nerves and arteries of a dissected corpse,” writes Quinn; little more than a paragraph later Daly is contemplating Dalriada Terrace: “The street felt like a dingy holiday resort inhabited by the inmates of a concentration camp.”

For the rest of the review, clickety-click here …

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, David Shafer.
For all its conventional narrative scenarios of innocent civilians at the mercy of dark forces and its bleak dystopian vision of the near future, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is by no means a standard techno-thriller. For one, Shafer has sufficient confidence in his readers to craft a slow-burning tale that is, for all its gleaming hardware and plans for a ‘New Alexandria’ of a globally centralised library-for-unimaginable-profit, very much a character-driven tale. Leila, Leo and Mark are richly detailed and empathic creations, their quirks and idiosyncrasies integral to the way in which they gradually uncover SineCo’s foul machinations. Moreover, the writing is a joy, Shafer employing both sly wit and a sharp eye for the telling image. “The grandeur fled,” Leo observes as he emerges from a reverie of a better world, “like shining back into shook foil.” Leila decides that Myanmar ‘sounded like a name cats would give their country.’ Indeed, the entire novel – all 422 pages of densely packed text – is littered with deliciously wry snippets and quotable lines, which gives the overall impression of a Neal Stephenson novel redrafted by Carl Hiaasen in blackly humorous form.

A very happy St Patrick’s Day to one and all, and to celebrate the day that’s in it I thought I’d offer up some of the highlights of Irish crime writing (aka Emerald Noir) from the blog – book reviews, interviews, features, etc. – from the last five years or so. To wit:

An interview with Tana French on the publication of BROKEN HARBOUR
In short, Tana French is one of modern Ireland’s great novelists. Broken Harbour isn’t just a wonderful mystery novel, it’s also the era-defining post-Celtic Tiger novel the Irish literati have been crying out for.

An interview with Alan Glynn on the publication of WINTERLAND
“I think that the stuff you ingest as a teenager is the stuff that sticks with you for life,” says Glynn. “When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the biggest influence was movies, and especially the conspiracy thrillers. What they call the ‘paranoid style’ in America – Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Three Days of the Condor, and of course, the great Chinatown … We’re all paranoid now.”

A triptych of reviews of John Connolly’s THE LOVERS, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE (aka THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST) and Declan Hughes’ ALL THE DEAD VOICES:
“But then The Lovers, for all that it appears to be an unconventional but genre-friendly take on the classic private eye story, eventually reveals itself to be a rather complex novel, and one that is deliciously ambitious in its exploration of the meanings behind big small words such as love, family, duty and blood.”

“Whether or not Fegan and his ghosts come in time to be seen as a metaphor for Northern Ireland itself, as it internalises and represses its response to its sundering conflicts, remains to be seen. For now, The Twelve is a superb thriller, and one of the first great post-Troubles novels to emerge from Northern Ireland.”

“As with Gene Kerrigan’s recent Dark Times in the City, and Alan Glynn’s forthcoming Winterland, Hughes’s novel subtly explores the extent to which, in Ireland, the supposedly exclusive worlds of crime, business and politics can very often be fluid concepts capable of overlap and lucrative cross-pollination, a place where the fingers that once fumbled in greasy tills are now twitching on triggers.”

A review of Eoin McNamee’s ORCHID BLUE
“Students of Irish history will know that Robert McGladdery was the last man to be hanged on Irish soil, a fact that infuses Orchid Blue with a noir-ish sense of fatalism and the inevitability of retribution. That retribution and State-sanctioned revenge are no kind of justice is one of McNamee’s themes here, however, and while the story is strained through an unmistakably noir filter, McNamee couches the tale in a form that is ancient and classical, with McGladdery pursued by Fate and its Furies and Justice Curran a shadowy Thanatos overseeing all.”

A review of Jane Casey’s THE LAST GIRL
On the evidence of THE BURNING and THE LAST GIRL, Maeve Kerrigan seems to me to be an unusually realistic and pragmatic character in the world of genre fiction: competent and skilled, yet riddled with self-doubt and a lack of confidence, she seems to fully inhabit the page. This was a pacy and yet thoughtful read, psychologically acute and fascinating in terms of Maeve’s personal development, particularly in terms of her empathy with the victims of crime.

Eoin Colfer on Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS
“I was expecting standard private-investigator fare, laced with laconic humour, which would have been fine, but what I got was sheer dark poetry.”

A review of Adrian McKinty’s THE COLD COLD GROUND
As for the style, McKinty quickly establishes and maintains a pacy narrative, but he does a sight more too. McKinty brings a quality of muscular poetry to his prose, and the opening paragraph quoted above is as good an example as any. He belongs in a select group of crime writers, those you would read for the quality of their prose alone: James Lee Burke, John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, David Peace, James Ellroy.

  For updates on the latest on all Irish crime writers, just type the author’s name into the search box at the top left of the blog …