“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.” – Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian
Friday, November 30, 2007
You Don’t Have To Be Madagascarian To Work Here, But …*
* We know. It’s ‘Malagasy’. But that’s even less funny.
Chilli Con Carnival
The Jules In Our Crown
For ten years, newly retired policeman Michael McLoughlin has been haunted by the case of a young woman brutally murdered and the affection he felt for the victim’s mother, Margaret. A favour for a friend leads him to another woman who has lost a child – her daughter has been found drowned in the same lake her stepfather died in years earlier. Was it an accident, suicide or murder? Margaret thought she could escape her past but the memories of her daughter and of her killer give her no peace and she finally returns to Dublin to face her demons. A chance encounter with a young girl in a graveyard leads her to back to a man she never thought she’d see again and a mother with a grief to match her own. This is a chilling and dark novel of love, revenge and atonement from the author of MARY, MARY, THE COURTSHIP GIFT and THE HOURGLASS.Jules? If you’re reading this, we just want you to know that all the belly-dancing dwarves have been deported back to Bolivia, along with that nasty marching-powder they were snorting out of the elves’ belly-buttons. Can’t we be friends again?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Better The Neville You Know
MORE STREETWISE is an eye-opening collection of stories by inmates from Portlaoise and Midlands Prisons. These insightful stories are inspired by the writers’ own experiences of being involved in crime, while other stories reflect on life in prison and seeking the path to redemption. Their stories give a unique insight into the minds of some criminals who are now serving sentences in Ireland. The prisoners involved in the writing of this book are donating their royalties to Autism Ireland.Meanwhile, Thompson also has his latest novel to promote. A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE is a bittersweet, twisted love story, a two-hander told by an Irish man and a Thai prostitute. Back to those overworked Killynon House blurb elves:
Frank is a fat kid growing up on the streets of Dublin. Bullied at school, mollycoddled at home and ignored at work, he decides to leave it all and have a chance at life. Min was born into a happy if poor loving family. Then, tragically, both her parents died and she is forced into working the streets of Thailand to make ends meet. One fateful night, Min and Frank meet on a beach … and it’s love at first sight. But will others be happy to let them find true happiness?Erm, you’d expect not or it’d be a pretty short book. For more info, toddle on over to Neville’s interweb blog yokeybus …
The Embiggened O # 1,247: “You Like Us, Sorta. You Really, Really Like Us, Sorta!”
Best Novel – Legend
Ken Bruen, Cross
Ken Bruen, Priest
James Lee Burke, Tin Roof Blowdown
Laura Lippman, What The Dead Know
Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead
James Reasoner, Dust Devils
Best Novel – Rising Star
Sean Doolittle, The Cleanup
Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule
Larry Karp, The Ragtime Kid
Rick Mofina, A Perfect Grave
PJ Parrish, A Thousand Bones
Steven Torres, Concrete Maze
Best Novel – New Voice
Megan Abbott, Queenpin
Declan Burke, The Big O
Allan Guthrie, Hard Man
Steve Mosby, The 50/50 Killer
JD Rhoades, Safe and Sound
Duane Swierczynski, The Blonde
Best Publisher
Bitter Lemon Press
Europa Editions
Hard Case Crime
Poisoned Pen Press
Text Publishing
Best Editor
Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime
Stacia Decker, Harcourt
Alison Janssen, Bleak House
Barbara Peters, Poisoned Pen Press
Dave Thompson, Busted Flush
Special Services to the Industry
Daniel Hatadi - Crimespace
Ali Karim – Shots, The Rap Sheet
Graham Powell - Crimespot
J. Kingston Pierce – The Rap Sheet
Maddy Van Hertburger – 4MA
Sarah Weinman – Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind
Best Short Story On The Web
The Leap by Charles Ardai - Hardluck Stories
Breaking in the New Guy by Stephen Blackmoore - Demolition
Amphetamine Logic by Nathan Cain - Thuglit
The Switch by Lyman Feero -Thuglit
Seven Days of Rain by Chris F. Holm - Demolition
Shared Losses by Gerri Leen - Shred of Evidence
The Living Dead by Amra Pajalic - Spinetingler
Convivum by Kelli Stanley - Hardluck Stories
What Happens Now
Voting is open. ONE E-MAIL PER PERSON ONLY. You cannot send another vote in, even for a different category – multiple votes from the same sender will not be counted. Take the time to consider your votes carefully. E-mails must be received by December 30, 2007 - authors, if you’re putting this in your newsletter make sure you are clear about the deadline for voting. Many recommendations were not considered in the first round because they were sent late.
You may vote for one winner in each category as long as all votes are submitted in one e-mail. Simply state the category and your chosen winner for each of the eight categories. Any votes that contain more than one selection per category may be removed from consideration completely. No ties.
Send your e-mail to sandra.ruttan@spinetinglermag.com with AWARD NOMINATIONS in the subject line. It is not necessary to explain the reason for your vote.
Hot-Stepping Morris Dancing
“Like many others, I was impressed by Peter Temple’s THE BROKEN SHORE. The voice is both brutal and lyrical and he writes with a terse precision that at times almost incapacitated me with envy. I also liked the poodles and the distinctly Australian swearin’. But ideally a great Christmas book would be a great read that also happens to be set at Christmas. Brian McGilloway’s BORDERLANDS fulfils both criteria splendidly. There’s an extra dimension of seasonal pleasure that comes from realising that however bad your own yuletide mishaps – fairy-lights not working, turkey a bit burnt on one side – they don’t come close to the unstoppable hell on wheels that is Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin’s Christmas. It doesn’t surprise me that McGilloway is a fan of James Lee Burke (whose PEGASUS DESCENDING provided another highlight of my crime-reading year). McGilloway’s Devlin, like Burke’s Robicheaux, is given a convincing home life, which far from detracting from the twists and excitement of the murder case, adds a thematic counterpoint, as well as a psychological and moral point. In McGilloway’s concern for the domestic we understand what drives Devlin to pit himself against the forces of chaos beyond his front door.”Beautifully put, Mr Morris sir. Now dance some more. We said DANCE! Please?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The Embiggened O # 1,307: Hope, Like Alice, Springs Eternal
“The style of THE BIG O is slightly tongue-in-cheek, very rapid-fire, slightly wisecracking, slightly brittle and surprisingly vulnerable in some places. There’s a lot of crossing and double crossing of everybody going on; there’s a lot of charging around as you’d expect from a caper style novel … the book clips along at a tremendous pace … the dialogue … is snappy, stylistic and sometimes laugh-out loud-funny, sometimes snicker inducing; and sometimes a bit tear-jerking … it’s one of my favourite styles of escapist reading – the slightly lunatic caper, albeit this time with a twist in the guts at the end.”Thank you kindly, ma’am. In return, consider our fatwa on Marmite officially cancelled …
More O’Irish Than The O’Irish Themselves
[Lehane’s] talent is not, he insists, originality of plot, going so far as to say his plots “could be found on an episode of CSI or LAW & ORDER. He’s merely happy to take credit for doing what he does very well, which is to write meaty, morally ambiguous, thought-provoking crime novels centred in the seamiest parts of Boston. No, his explanation for his success is simpler: pure luck. “I am just the luckiest guy on the planet,” he says. (If you suspect he used a more colourful word than ‘guy’, you’re right.) “Because I’m Irish, I keep looking at the sky, waiting for it to fall.”So, the Big Question: is Crime Always Pays entitled to claim Dennis Lehane as an Irish crime writer now that he’s damned to Hollywood fame? Stick your answers where the sun don’t sign, people.**
* Yeah, we know. Ben frickin Affleck. Who’d a thunk it?
** Erm, that’ll be the comment box, obviously.
Don’t McCall Us, We’ll McCall You
Regina Monteith must ensure two things before she surrenders to cancer in her eightieth year – that the fortune she has quietly amassed is passed on as she wishes, and that she takes the secret which could threaten this to her grave. Across Ireland, her estranged niece, Cordelia Harcourt, stumbles on evidence that Regina’s policeman son, William, fathered a daughter during a clandestine affair and was involved in the controversial killing which overshadows her own life. A conspiracy of blackmail, corruption and family intrigue is about to be exposed as Cordelia sets about ... Finding Lauren.Oooh, spooky. Meanwhile, the Derry-based publishing house is in the process of expanding and is on the look-out for ‘exciting, innovative works of fiction’, to wit:
Derry publishing house Guildhall Press is expanding its horizons and has plans to compete with the giants of the book industry. And a first step is to attract new creative writing talent and challenge them to produce exciting, innovative works of fiction. To this end, Guildhall Press is inviting writers across the spectrum of literary fiction to submit their work for consideration. We are looking for confident, fresh, spiky writing from authors who have something to say and want to be heard (and read). Please go to [their interweb page yokeybus] first to ensure correct presentation of material.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Not All Spades Are Blond Satans, Sadly
Q: What makes your P.I. Harry Rigby different from other fictional private eyes?
A: I could be literal and say he’s the only one from Sligo, Ireland … This is actually a difficult question for me to answer, because of the way Harry originated, which was as an exercise in style. I never had any intention of writing a full novel – I started out writing a chapter in which a PI meets a potential client for the first time, just to have fun with it. Harry’s a PI who is aware of all the tropes, he’s a fan of the hardboiled movies and books – so while he’s a PI, he’s also aware of fiction’s PI heritage, Marlowe, Archer, et al. It says something that my favourite PI movie isn’t THE BIG SLEEP, it’s Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE. Which is a roundabout way of saying Harry Rigby is different because he’s so knowingly similar to all his fictional predecessors. Except for the fact that he’s from Sligo …
Q: What are your thoughts on the psycho sidekick in PI novels?
A: I guess if it’s done well then it’s valid, and if it’s not, it’s a cliché. I take every character on its own merits. My instinct is that it could work well as a one-off, if the protagonist has a pyscho sidekick foisted on him, but that it wouldn’t make any sense, if you want your stories to have any kind of realism, for a PI – someone who earns their living through stealth and subterfuge – to associate with a psychotic person for too long. They’d attract too much notice. It’d be like hunting tiger with a hippo in tow.
Q: What would a soundtrack to your novels sound like?
A: Pretty bleak, probably, although it’d depend on the circumstances – if your protagonist found him or herself in a karaoke bar, say, then the clientele is highly unlikely to be belting out Leonard Cohen songs (although I like the idea, now that I think of it). In general, there’s quite a bit of fatalism in my stories, so the soundtrack would ideally be composed of artists such as The Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen, Antony and the Johnsons, Radiohead, Townes Van Zandt, Jacques Brel … melancholy stuff, glimmerings of hope in the darkness, that kind of thing. Mind you, I have Abba in my car stereo at the moment …
Q: Has your writing changed much since the first novel?
A: I’m probably more aware at this stage of how bad a line is when I write it, but as for my ability to improve that line … I don’t know. No, probably. In saying that, I’m interested in writing in different kinds of styles, so it’s hard to judge. EIGHTBALL BOOGIE (the first Harry Rigby novel) was a homage to Chandler, and was written in that kind of style. THE BIG O was styled as a homage to two American writers I read for pure, unadulterated pleasure – Elmore Leonard and Barry Gifford. And, once I finish the sequel to THE BIG O, I have a story bubbling away on the back-burner that’s heavily influenced by some of my favourite writers from the ’40s and ’50s – David Goodis, Gil Brewer. That probably sounds as if I’m spending all my time ripping off other writers, but that’s only partially true – it’s early days in my writing yet, and I’m happy enough to learn whatever craft I can from studying the writers I like. I don’t have the time to go copying out their novels, the way Hemingway did, so this is the next best thing. That’s my excuse, anyway.
Q: Do you do a lot of research?
A: It depends on the story, really. I wrote a book set on the south coast of Crete that involved a hell of a lot of research – I probably spent longer reading up on the various subjects that went into the story than I did writing it. For the most part, though, my stories aren’t all that high concept. They’re fairly stripped-back, character-based tales about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, so they don’t need a lot of research. In saying that, I’m generally very particular about detail – I can be quite disappointed if I come across a glaringly wrong detail when I’m reading, it can ruin a story for me. So I try to get it as realistic as possible within the parameters of the story.
Q: What’s next for you and Harry?
A: I’ve written a follow-up to EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, in which Harry witnesses a suicide and is then asked by the dead man’s mother to investigate the reasons why a seemingly happy, well-adjusted person would kill himself. At the moment, though, Harry has retreated to the snug of The Cellars bar and is enjoying some quiet drinking time, because the emphasis is on THE BIG O and its sequel, both of which have been signed up by Harcourt in the US – THE BIG O will be published in the US in Fall ’08.
Q: Do you have any favourite Sons of Spade yourself?
A: I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to any of the names on this fine site, and I appreciate that it sounds a bit old-fashioned, but for me there’s only one son of Spade, and that’s Marlowe – everyone else is competing to be nephews, grand-nieces, etc. I say that in full awareness of Chandler’s flaws in terms of plotting, and all the other flaws attributed to him. But I think what Chandler achieved with Marlowe goes beyond his ability in terms of style. Yes, he was reacting to Hammett, but I think Chandler shaped the paradigm of the private eye to the extent that everyone since has been writing according to his rules – obeying them, bending them, breaking them, parodying them. When you look at the non-crime fiction writers who dabbled as a once-off because they believed the form was worth exploring – Norman Mailer, say, or Hank Bukowski, Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Lethem – the model they reshape is Chandler’s.
Q: In the last century we’ve seen new waves of PI-writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, Macdonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation and in what way?
A: I’m going to sound biased here because he’s Irish, and because I know the guy personally, but I think Ken Bruen [right] will exert a massive influence on the next generation of PI writers. His Jack Taylor series is genuinely breaking new ground, given that it’s a post-modern appraisal of the notion of the PI and the PI novel – Bruen has gone beyond the conventional three-act investigation of a crime, gone beyond the protagonist as a righter of wrongs, a man or woman who uncovers dirty deeds and precipitates a satisfactory resolution. In Taylor’s world, everyone is equally culpable, and Bruen has inverted the focus of his PI’s gaze so that it’s himself he’s investigating, his morality, the part that he plays in creating the kind of world where good, bad and indifferent all jostle for pre-eminence. What Bruen is doing for crime fiction right now is akin to what Camus and Sartre, in their different ways, did for philosophy sixty or seventy years ago – although a more appropriate, Irish, reference would be that of Samuel Beckett.
Q: Ed Lynskey, writer of the Frank Johnson novels, came up with this question: “Would you have the patience and grit to work as a PI?”
A: Definitely not. The reality of PI work is bone-numbing drudgery spent checking facts and figures, and endless hours wasted in surveillance, more often than not with no positive result. The wastage of time would drive me insane in a week. I’m also quite a private person. The notion of prying into other people’s lives – knowing that your prying will very probably have a devastating effect on their lives – offends my sense of mutual respect. In other words, if I don’t pry into your life, and you don’t pry into mine, all will be well. Of course, that’s the diametric opposite of the dynamic that propels the PI narrative …
Q: Is it absolutely essential your writing is published, and why?
A: No, and for two reasons: One, there’s far too much rubbish on the shelves already. Two, I need to write every bit as much as I like to write, and I’ll keep on writing long after it’s decided that I’m no longer worth publishing.
Pretty Fly For A White Guy
“I loved the impossible tasks set for the hero and the appalling badness of the villain. AIRMAN is high adventure to the hilt of its various swords.” Colfer says that he has always had an interest in history (his father is a historian) and when he was a child the family spent every summer on Hook Head. “Our caravan was situated between a medieval castle and the oldest working lighthouse in Europe. I loved climbing the nearby castle and imagining the grand romantic adventures that could have taken place. Standing on top of the parapet of Slade Castle, it was very easy to pretend that you were part of some perilous undertaking, and I remember thinking that if the king’s guards were closing in on me, the only way to escape would be to fly.”Blummin’ king’s guards, eh? A ruddy pest they are, and no mistake …
Monday, November 26, 2007
Jeepers, Creepers, ’Tis The Cover Of The Reapers
“I always experience a vague sense of unease at this point, a nagging suspicion that the book may not be very good and my editor is, at this very moment, struggling to find a diplomatic way to tell me, one that won’t send me off the deep end and have me looking longingly at high cliffs, jars of pills, or razor blades and bathtubs. I don’t want to deliver a bad book, and I don’t think that I have, but, then again, I’m a very poor judge of my own work. I keep waiting to be caught out, to be branded a fraud. Like a lot of writers, I think, I’m always alert to the knock on the door from someone who has been sent to inform me that a terrible mistake has been made by my publishers and, as I have always suspected, the people who hated my work were right. At that point, my furniture will be seized, my house repossessed, and proceedings set in train to get back all of the money that has been paid to me in error. I tried to explain some of these fears to my editor when last she was in Dublin. They’re pretty constant, although they’re not crippling. Nevertheless, they may contribute to the fact that my pleasure at completing and dispatching a novel never lasts very long. Relief is a feeling that dissipates quickly.”Hmmmm. We have a little prayer we say every night, it runs like this:
‘Dear Lord, please take away all John Connolly’s talent, discipline, charm and good looks, and give them to us. Amen.’Think we’re muppets, just because it hasn’t happened yet? Ha! It only has to work once, people …
If The Hollywood Hills Won’t Come To Mohammed …
“We’ve now launched a standalone website for the movie version of MOHAMMED MAGUIRE if you would all care to take a look. The script is written, the director is signed up – that’s me, obviously, I have a certain pull in these matters – and all that’s now required is some cigar chomping bigwig to come in and finance the damn thing. Go here …”If the tasteful poster below is anything to go by, this one should be pulling in an Oscar roughly about six months after they get the Middle East sorted out …
The Monday Review
Sunday, November 25, 2007
“Mr Pot? Your Kettle Is Waiting.”
“On mature reflection, I consider the Marlowe books forced and even a touch sentimental, for all their elegance and wit and wonderful sheen … Chandler perhaps laboured too long and too hard at effecting the transmutation of life’s raw material into deathless prose.”Take that, damned Pot! Feel the wrath of the Mighty Kettle! For lo! here’s Benny holding forth on the writing process in last week’s Irish edition of the Sunday Times, to wit:
For one thing, these days Banville is revelling in the freedom afforded by his guise as a crime novelist. “On the brink of old age, I’m suddenly having fun,” he says. “I didn’t realise writing novels as so easy until I became Benjamin Black – you just sit there and make it up as you go along. I mean, John Banville will work on a sentence for half a day; Benjamin just goes, ‘Bugger it, that’ll do.’”No labouring too long and too hard for ol’ Benny Blanco, eh? Because that deathless prose malarkey is only for serious writers. Except Ray Chandler, obviously.