Crime fiction and contemporary Ireland

First announcement of an event I'm organising. All welcome, free entry.

Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland:

An audience with Declan Burke, Gene Kerrigan and Niamh O'Connor

Tuesday, 6th March, 5-7pm, Renehan Hall, NUI Maynooth

It is perhaps no coincidence that at time of crisis and social and economic upheaval Irish crime fiction is flourishing both domestically and internationally. More than any other genre, crime fiction is said to document and help its readers make sense of the social, political and economic landscape of its setting. Talking about their own work and that of other Irish novelists, the three authors will discuss the role of the crime novel in reflecting and understanding contemporary Ireland.

Register: nirsa@nuim.ie


Declan Burke is the author of Absolute Zero Cool (2011), Crime Always Pays (2009), The Big O (2007) and Eight Ball Boogie (2003) and editor of Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the Twenty First Century (2011). He writes the influential blog, Crime Always Pays, reviews crime novels for a number of newspapers and radio programmes, and is film reviewer for The Last Word on Today FM. Absolute Zero Cool was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2011.

Gene Kerrigan is the author of four novels, The Rage (2011), Dark Times in the City (2010), Midnight Choir (2008), and Little Criminals (2007), and seven non-fiction books including Hard Cases (1996) and This Great Little Nation (1999). He is one of Ireland's leading political commentators, working as a columnist for the Sunday Independent. He won the Irish Book Award with Dark Times in the City and has been nominated for the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award.

Niamh O'Connor is the author of two novels, Taken (2011) and If I Never See You Again (2010), and the author of the true crime books, Blood Ties (2009), Cracking Crime (2001), and The Black Widow (2000). She is a journalist and true crime editor at The Sunday World. If I Never See You Again was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2010.

To cut a long story short

One of my short stories - To Cut a Long Story Short - was published on Shotgun Honey yesterday. Check out the other stories there. Bite-sized, max 700 words, of tight, punchy noir. There's some great stuff for 3-5 minute fixes for story addicts.

Review of Black Sheep by Arlene Hunt (Hodder Headline Ireland, 2006)

David Reid, a successful furniture designer, has been found dead in a Dublin canal. He was drunk when he died, and his death has been ruled as misadventure by the local gardai and coroner. His brother though is convinced that David was the victim of foul play and hires QuicK investigations, run by PIs Sarah Kenny and John Quigley, to discover what really happened. Reid’s car is missing, and on the day of his funeral, his house is broken into by two teenage twins and his laptop and other items stolen. Sarah is a witness to the robbery and it provides an initial clue that suggests the Reid’s brother might be right. As the case progresses it’s clear that Reid had a dark secret to hide, one that could have repercussions for others if revealed, and by pursuing the killer, Sarah and John have unwittingly stirred a hornet’s nest that will potentially lead to further skulduggery.

Black Sheep is the second in the QuicK Investigations series. In many respects, there’s no great mystery to the story - an astute reader will have a fair idea as to how the story is going to unfold and who the killer is from near the start - but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the telling and unfolding of the story and the characters that make the book work. The plot is nicely constructed and hangs together well, and the procedural elements of the private investigation are credible, even if the police seem fairly incompetent (though that might be a fair assessment). The first third was a little slow, but then it picks up and the latter third rattles along with no flab. What I particularly liked was the characterisation of the suite of secondary characters - Big Jack, the Quinn Brothers, the golfing buddies, JJ, Jimmy and Billy, Sarah’s sisters and mother, etc are all well penned and come alive on the page. Somewhat oddly, it was the two leads - Sarah and John - that felt a little lifeless and distant to me; for some reason I couldn’t really get a handle on them or their relationship. Sarah seemed all unnecessary hard angles and John somewhat bland, and their back stories were a little thin. I’m wondering if that’s because I’ve come into the QuicK series at the second book. Regardless, this was a good, solid, enjoyable read set in the context of Ireland at the height of its excesses, just prior to the crash.

Lazy Sunday Service

Some of the books I ordered turned up at the local bookshop on Friday. I collected them yesterday. Really looking forward to tucking into them: The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty; Killed at the Whim of a Hat by Colin Coterill; White Heat by Melanie McGrath; Death on the Marais by Adrian Magson; Or the Bull Kills You by Jason Webster; and Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller. I'm going to start with Adrian McKinty.

I'm not one for following blog challenges, but I'm going to have a go at this one - reading 365 short stories in a year (and in my case mostly flash fiction). The associated blog is Shortstory365. It'll probably go in fits and starts, rather than one a day. I'm already behind, but only started a couple of days ago. I'm going to keep a record of them in Sunday Service slot (* denotes the standouts for me).

Short stories read this week:
Two and a half miles by W.D. County (Spinetingler)*
Fashionably late by R. Thomas Brown (The Laughter Shack)
What Could Happen by Matthew C. Funk (Flash Fiction Offensive)
Lambs of God by Patti Abbott (Spinetingler)*
Scrapbook by Joe Myers (Shotgun Honey)
T-Bone's Girl by Edward Vaughn (Shotgun Honey)*
Teddy in the Tree by Wayne A. Conaway (Thrillers, Killers and Chillers)

My posts this week:
Review of Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer
Facebook and Irish Crime Fiction
ALA Choice Award
Review of In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes
She has to go

She has to go

‘This can’t go on, Tom,’ Mary hissed. ‘She has to go.’

‘What do you mean, go?’ He looked up from his cereal.

‘You know what I mean! When we got married, I didn’t sign up for caring for your mother.’

‘But ...’

‘There’s no but. I’ve raised our kids and worked for the last fifteen years. I’m not spending my retirement running around after your mother, washing, cleaning and listening to her complain about me.’

‘But where’s she meant to go?’

‘I don’t care! To your brother’s; into a home. All I know is that if she stays, I’m leaving.’


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes (1947, reprinted Feminist Press, 2003)

Post-Second World War and pilot Dix Steele has drifted to Los Angeles where he is notionally writing a novel, living off a monthly allowance posted to him by a wealthy uncle, and staying in the apartment of an old university friend who is away in Rio for a year. Clever, charming, confident and missing the meritocracy of the armed services, Steele resents not being independently wealthy and tries to attach himself to rich folk in order to sponge from them. He also possesses an almost uncontrollable rage against women and for the past six months he has vented his anger by strangling and raping one woman each month. Prowling the fog-bound beach area he loses a potential prey and decides instead to look up an old war buddy, Brub Nicolai. It turns out that Brub has married and settled down, and more ominously, has joined the police and is working as a detective on the murders. Rather than backing away, Steele seeks to use Brub to keep him informed on progress on the case. In the meantime, he has started a whirlwind romance with the smart and sassy actress Laurel Gray, a femme fatale that whilst at first smitten becomes increasingly concerned at Steele’s jealously and possessiveness. As the murder investigation gathers pace and closes in, Steele remains confident that he has outwitted them all.

Dorothy B Hughes writes literary hardboiled noir taking on and matching Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Thompson at their game. In a Lonely Place is atmospheric, taut, tense and dark. Although written in the third person, the story is told exclusively from the point of view of Dix Steele, a misogynist with a murderous psychosis, and Hughes does well at capturing his corrupted rationalities. This is not however at the expense of the other characters, who are still well realised and rounded. The pacing is nicely done, with the gradual unfolding of Steele’s back story and the investigation of the murders, yet there is no flab, the story being tightly told. There's also no violence, with Hughes able to create drama and tension without directly portraying any of the crimes or their aftermath. For my tastes, the story is a little too melodramatic in places and I whilst I enjoyed it and recognised all its merits, I was never fully captivated and swept along by the story. Nevertheless, a very solid piece of hardboiled noir and I hope to read more of her books in due course.

ALA CHOICE award

Got an email last night from MIT Press to say that my co-authored book with Martin Dodge, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, has been awarded 'CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2011' by the American Library Association. Very pleased with that. That's two years in a row - last year the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, for which I was editor in chief, won an award. It won't happen for 2012 as I've no academic book due out this year!