Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival Returns

After some blockbuster standalone events with international crime-writing stars like Harlan Coben and Karin Slaughter, Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival is back in its weekend format from 6th-8th October in Dun Laoghaire’s stunning dlr LexIcon Library and Cultural Centre, only 30 minutes from Dublin airport and just south of Dublin city.

Former State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, kicks off the festival on Friday 6th.  Once a name synonymous with breaking news of high-profile crime cases, Dr Cassidy has turned her hand to crime fiction and she will be discussing her debut novel, Body of Truth, in conversation with bestselling crime writer, Liz Nugent. The festival will showcase the cream of Irish crime writing talent with Tana French, Jane Casey, Catherine Ryan Howard, Steve Cavanagh, Andrea Mara, Sam Blake, and Catherine Kirwan among those appearing on a range of solo events and hot-topic panels. UK visitors include the hugely popular, Sophie Hannah, 2023 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Tom Benn, Alice Feeney, author of the phenomenally successful Daisy Darker, plus cosy crime specialist, British Book Awards winner Janice Hallett, and highly praised debutante, Alice Bell.

True crime fans can look forward to events with Award-winning political journalist, Harry McGee whose book, The Murderer and the Taoiseach, retraces the extraordinary happenings in Dublin’s notorious Malcolm Macarthur murder case while Northern Irish academics, Elaine Farrell & Leanne McCormick will discuss their bestselling book, Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women.  Aspiring writers can also sign up for workshops with all-star panels of literary agents, and editors on Friday 6th October.

Wherever your tastes in the crime genre lie, you will be gripped by the plot of MURDER ONE as it unfolds across three days at Dun Laoghaire’s stunning LexIcon Library and Cultural Centre. With free access to two 3 x 10 Readings in the Studio events that make the Festival accessible to all visitors, plus an onsite bookshop - MURDER ONE will have you hooked from the moment you enter the building.  With views of the sea and Dun Laoghaire harbour, easy access to the DART and bus routes, plus plenty of parking and restaurant options, Dun Laoghaire will be the perfect place to enjoy your favourite crime writers this autumn.

Crime is one of the biggest-selling genres in the book business and Ireland boasts some of the world’s top crime writers, Uniquely, MURDER ONE is run by crime author Sam Blake, who together with festival director Bert Wright, further aspires to establish MURDER ONE on the Irish festival circuit.

Sam Blake explains, “Murder One is supported by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Libraries and that library connection is true synergy for us – bringing new authors to new readers and new readers to authors is at the heart of both the festival and the library’s mission.”

Bert Wright said, “MURDER ONE has established a huge following among Irish crime fans in a short space of time and in a country that boasts so many successful crime writers, it’s a joy to get fans and writers together on an annual basis in an ideal location like Dun Laoghaire.  We’ve put together a stellar programme and we’re looking forward to sharing it with our loyal supports. It promises to be enormous fun.”

Catherine Gallagher, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Librarian said “we are delighted to be involved again this year with MURDER ONE and to see this festival continue to develop. Connecting readers and authors is a key part of our remit in dlr Libraries and for our readers crime books are consistently popular. We look forward to welcoming audiences old and new to dlr LexIcon in October.”

Tickets were launched on Monday 17th July. Visit www.murderone.ie for booking details or follow @MurderOneFest on Twitter.

Murder One Ireland's International Crime Writing Festival 1-3 November 2019

Friday 1st November

The Gutter Bookshop 10th Birthday Celebrations @ The Gutter Bookshop

Join Bob Johnston and the Murder One team to celebrate Bob’s 10 years in Temple Bar – an informal evening of chat with some criminally good speeches – rub shoulders with your writer friends and colleagues to celebrate with one of Dublin’s landmark independent bookshops!

The Gutter Bookshop  

Friday 1 November, 6.30pm | Free entry

Booking essential

Saturday 2nd November

Things that Go Bump in the Night: CJ Tudor & Stuart Turton in conversation

with Sinéad Crowley

If you loved The Chalk Man and The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, this is the event for you.  Taking crime fiction in new directions, two incredible authors discuss inspiration, outstanding debuts and spine tingling goings on with bestselling crime author, RTE’s Sinéad Crowley. C.J. Tudor’s debut novel, The Chalk Man, was published by Penguin in January 2018 and was a Sunday Times Bestseller. Her second novel, The Taking of Annie Thorne, was published in February 2019. Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle won the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Best Novel and the Costa First Novel Award 2018.

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November
11.00am -12.00 pm | €12/€10

Destination Murder: Alex Barclay and Lucy Foley with WC Ryan

From a luxury inn on a remote west coast peninsula in Ireland, to a Scottish hunting lodge, these dark stories are told by two of crimes leading female voices. Chaired by WC Ryan, author of House of Ghosts, a man who knows a thing or two about dangerous, lonely places. Lucy Foley’s departure to the dark side is her fourth bestseller, and Alex Barclay, the first lady of Irish crime, brings us her first Irish set standalone in a gripping event that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November
12.30pm-1.30pm | €12/€10

Untold Stories: The Five. Hallie Rubenhold with Joseph O’Connor

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though

they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders – 1888 – and their murderer, the man known as Jack the Ripper. Historian Hallie Rubenhold talks to Joseph O’Connor and sets the record straight, giving these women back their stories. Set just ten years previously, in his latest novel Shadowplay, O’Connor reveals the hidden stories of Bram Stoker’s life. Enter the dark world of Victorian London with two eminent authors.

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November
2.00pm-3.00pm | €12/€10

Sam Blake’s Fresh Blood Meet three stunning debut authors: Holly Jackson, Catherine Kirwan and James Delargy

Three completely different stories, three completely different books but one passion. Find out how these authors got their break and what made the difference for them. How did they get their ideas and how long did it take to go from idea to bookshelf? From ingenious premise, to writing what you know, do good girls really get away with murder?

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November                                                                               

3.30pm-4.30pm | €12/€10

Past Crimes: Jess Kidd, Henrietta McKervey and Paddy Hirsch with Declan Burke

From Things in Jars to Violet Hill, London’s only female detective, via Hudson’s Kill and the Irish gangs of New York, three novelists use the past as a backdrop to their page-turning adventures of deception, danger – and detection. Declan Burke, previously Dublin City of Literature’s Writer in Residence is an award winning author whose latest book is due soon from No Alibi’s Press.

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November
5.00pm-6.00pm | €12/€10

Martina Cole in conversation with Breda Brown

Martina Cole’s first novel Dangerous Lady caused a sensation when it was published, and launched one of the bestselling fiction writers of her generation. Twenty-seven years later, Martina has gone on to have more No.1 original fiction bestsellers than any other author. She won the British Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year with The Take, which then went on to be a hit TV series for Sky 1.  Her new novel No Mercy was published by Headline in October.

Smock Alley Main Space
Saturday 2 November
7.00pm-8.00pm | €12/€10

Sunday 3rd November

All About Agatha: John Curran and Andrew Wilson with Anna Carey

John Curran is one of the world’s leading experts on Agatha Christie and author of Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks; Andrew Wilson brings her to life as the protagonist in his fiendishly plotted 1920’s mysteries – as AJ Finn put it, ‘Andrew Wilson’s Christie novels do Dame Agatha proud’. The latest, Death in a Desert Land takes Christie to 1928 Baghdad. Journalist and author Anna Carey discusses the living legend that is Agatha Christie, one of the world’s greatest crime writers with two authors whose lives she has influenced.

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
11.00am-12.00pm | €12/€10

Steve Cavanagh in Conversation with Andrea Carter

Multi award winning author of the phenomenal international bestseller Thirteen, Steve Cavanagh is back this year with Twisted. Barrister turned bestselling crime writer Andrea Carter discusses life, the law and stunning plot twists with one of Ireland’s most brilliant writers.

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
12.30pm-1.30pm | €12/€10

Watching the Detectives: John Banville, Jane Casey and Roz Watkins with

Brian Cliff

Creating brilliant detectives is never easy, especially when so many great writers have left their mark on history. Mutli award winning authors John Banville (Benjamin Black), Jane Casey and Roz Watkins reveal who their fictional favourites are and why, and how they make their own characters stand out.  Brian Cliff is an Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin. His most recent book is Irish Crime Fiction (2018), and he has published essays on authors including Emma Donoghue, John Connolly, Tana French, Paul Muldoon, and Deirdre Madden.

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
2.00pm-3.00pm | €12/€10

Staring Death in the Eye: Unnatural Causes, Pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd in conversation with Paul Carson

As the UK’s leading forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has faced serial killers, natural disaster, ‘perfect murders’and freak accidents, all in the pursuit of the truth. And while he’s been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it’s often the less well-known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads. In his bestselling memoir, Richard Shepherd gives a unique insight into a remarkable profession, and above all a powerful and reassuring testament to lives cut short. In conversation with international bestselling crime writer Dr Paul Carson, Shepherd will take you into his world where he stares death in the eye.

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
3.30pm-4.30pm | €12/€10

The Killer Pitch with Literary Agent Simon Trewin

Sam Blake chats to Simon Trewin about what catches an agent’s eye, famous hits and misses and his top ten tips for writing a killer pitch. Giving examples of pitches that worked, find out how to make your book irresistible to a literary agent.

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
5.00pm-6.00pm | €12/€10

CrimeHawks: Three Must-Reads Before You Die

Rick O’Shea quizzes bestselling authors Catherine Ryan Howard, Louise Phillips and Liz Nugent on the three books they each recommend as lifetime must reads, bring your notebooks!

Smock Alley Main Space
Sunday 3 November
6.30pm-7.30pm | €12/€10

More information and how to buy tickets can be found here.

Murder One .... So Long, Farewell........

With less than twenty-four hours to go Murder One are currently having a sale with 40% off all their full price books. Tomorrow (Saturday 31 January 2009) is the last day if you want to get your hands on some goodies. The shop will be open from 10:00am until 2:00pm, so if you are planning on going into central London, don't forget to pop into the shop. The good news is that the mail order business will still be continuing and I understand that there will be a place (not exactly sure but I believe that it will be in Hoxton) where customers will be able to go and pick up their ordered books.

So, as they said in Sound of Music - So long, farewell Auf wiedersehen, adieu.

Murder One - Last Chance...........

Like many, I am upset about the demise of Murder One. However, there is still a little time left to potter on down to the shop and pick up some bargains. Initially Murder One was due to close on Saturday 24 January 2009, but luckily for us this has been extended by a week. So those of you who have not managed to get to the shop there is still a bit more time to do so.


I have at last got my hands on the excellent short story collection called “These Guns for Hire – 31 Short Stories about Hitmen” which was edited by JA Konrath. I have been trying to read these stories since it was first published.

A sad start for 2009

DONALD WESTLAKE RIP

2009 has started on a sour note with the passing of Donald Westlake. I know other blogs have put up notices before me but I thought that this tribute to the great writer by Mike Carlson is a good one. Note: This appears on Michael Carlson's Irresistible Targets: http://irresisitibletargets.blogspot.com

DONALD WESTLAKE: IN MEMORY OF A CON-MAN by Michael Carlson

Most obituaries of Donald Westlake concentrated, and rightly, on his prolific output, more than 100 novels and an equal number of short stories, as well as some exceptional screenplays. Westlake was one of the last of a dying breed, the generation which followed the great pulp magazine writers, and made their livings pounding out paperback originals on manual typewriters. For Westlake, the habit was so ingrained he never gave up his typewriters; he once explained to me that, although he stockpiled old machines to cannibalize for parts, the real difficulty was finding ribbons, which he went through at a prodigious rate.

I met Westlake a couple of times; the last was a wonderful lunch thrown by Quercus at Chez Elena in Charlotte Street, where Don and Abby were literally the life of the party. I started thinking how that Donald Westlake was the antithesis of his Richard Stark alter ego, in much the same way that the Dortmunder books are a reflection in a fun house mirror of the Parker novels, and then it occurred to me that a central theme of Westlake's work has always been human frailty. His characters are done in, or nearly so, by their weaknesses, their foibles, and in his plots, which he basically made up as he went along, letting the characters find their own ways through situations which usually arise out of those flaws. Then they generally run up against people with more serious flaws, most commonly greed, and things accelerate from there. 'You never really know whay you're doing,' he said to me, and I think that applies to most of his characters too.

Even Parker, who wants to know, and control, everything. In fact, Parker is a successful professional thief precisely because he has none of those human failings, the reason for that being he has very little in the way of human feeling, especially in the first series (the redux is a somewhat kinder, gentler sociopath), and he takes advantage of, or takes revenge on, those who do have them.

Like many great comic writers, Westlake's humour had dark roots. The best comedians see the world as a noirish place, and find it funny. Westlake described the Parker books as growing out of an image he had of a man walking across the George Washington Bridge, the feeling of being an outsider he'd experienced himself coming to New York during a peripatetic youth. When he said that, it reminded me of the somewhat lost hero of 'Up Your Banners', a straightforward comic novel he wrote around the student protest movement in the late 1960s, and Westlake loved being reminded of that. He made the connection to Parker himself, saying he'd introduced Grofield, the actor and part-time thief, to the Parker novels in order to have a little comic relief. Grofield spun off into a few books of his own, and at about the same time Westlake, as Tucker Coe, wrote five novels about the ex-cop Mitch Tobin, whose existential angst in expressed by his working on a wall in his backyard. It was as if Tobin were the antithesis of Grofield. Remember too that the opening of the Grofield novel Blackbird, with its failed armored car robbery, was used as the opening of the Parker novel Slayground which was also made into a British movie starring Peter Coyote, Robbie Coltrane, and Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's favorite actress.

It's tempting to concentrate on the playfulness of Westlake's writing: how he and Joe Gores inserted their characters into each other's books, how Grofeld pops up in The Hot Rock (still one of the great heist movies, and one of Robert Redford's best roles, with Ron Liebman and Zero Mostel stealing every scene they can from him) or how in Jimmy The Kid the Dortmunder gang use a fictional Parker novel, Child Heist, as the blueprint for their own kidnapping. It was while contemplating how one can write the words 'fictional Parker novel' with a straight face that it finally occurred to me that what Donald Westlake actually was, what made him such a treasure as a writer. Westlake was a con man, a first-class con man, and we readers were the marks.

This is no great revelation. Go to Westlake's website and you're greeted with a quote 'I believe my subject is bewilderment' and then another one 'but I could be wrong'. He even wrote a novel called 'God Save The Mark', which won the first of his three Edgars. When he wrote an Arthur Hailey-style paperback original, Confort Station, as J. Morgan Cunningham, the book appeared with a blurb saying 'I wish I had written this book'. Signed Donald E Westlake!

Think about it. Westlake started out working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, writing critiques of manuscripts sent in, with a fee, by hopeful would-be writers from across America.
Meredith found some great wordsmiths there. Evan Hunter, of course, like Westlake, would establish a second identity for a different sort of book. Lawrence Block would, like Westlake, move between hard-boiled and comic crime. This crowd included Brian Garfield and John Jakes, who would become best-sellers. All of them would write to order under multiple pseudonyms. Some, like Robert Silverberg, could turn out perfectly-typed manuscripts as quickly as they could type. These guys would play poker every week, and practice their con games. They even wrote one novel as a joint enterprise to help one of them out, one player sitting out and writing as chapter while the rest played on, then another sitting out, and so on.

Meredith, as their agent, would get them bulk contracts for paperback originals and contract the work out. This included a huge number of adult novels, of which Westlake claimed to have written 28, though others put the number at 39, or more. He used the name Alan Marshall (or Marsh) for most of them, wrote some with Block who was writing as Sheldon Lord, but also let other writers use the name to sell books published under imprints like Bedside, Nightstand, and the probably unintentionally punning Midwood. It was the same publisher who printed Jim Thompson's later novels, including The Grifters, for which Westlake won another Edgar, and an Oscar nomination. He described writing these books by doing exactly one chapter, fifteen pages a day, for ten days, and figured out that at $900 a pop, he was earning $22.50 an hour. In the Dortmunder novel Bank Shot (filmed with George C Scott lisping for reasons best-known to him) Kelp hits a car whose trunk is filled with adult novels, and all the titles Westlake lists as being visible are ones he wrote.

Westlake then wrote a very funny novel, Adios Scheherazade, about a man who writes porn, cashing in one more time on that genre which is probably the biggest con of all, when you think of con-men as giving the mark what he thinks he wants. I wonder if one of the reasons Westlake wasn't more successful in Hollywood was that those guys never really know what it is they want. But you look at his best work, like the screenplay of The Grifters, or the original screenplay for The Stepfather, or his adaptation of his own novel Cops & Robbers, or the Hammett adaptation Fly Paper (despite some odd casting) for Showtime's Fallen Angels series.
Or maybe it was because he simply liked sitting at the typewriter and being the master of his own destiny.

But I can't escape this sense of Westlake carrying on the con as the reader turns the pages, and I think that's why the Parker books are so special, and may remain the focus of critical attention on Westlake's career. Critics tend to value seriousness over humour, and Richard Stark's books were written with such a taut prose, especially considering the early Sixties milieu in which they first appeared, that they jumped out at you. He was performing that same con, keeping your attention focused, but with such economy that the story-telling was subsumed totally in the force of the story. I remember being transfixed by them when I discovered them, somewhat bizarrely, in the library at Dickinson College, where I found myself teaching. I've written at length for both Shots and Crime Time on the film adaptations of the Parker books, although Point Blank remains a classic film, and was Westlake's own favourite, I remain exceptionally fond of John Flynn's The Outfit, with Robert Duvall the screen's best Parker (though, like all the adaptations, not called Parker). It is a small and perfectly formed crime film that deserves a higher reputation.

Westlake's reputation, on the other hand, has probably never been higher. The early Parker books are being reprinted by the University of Chicago, which says something about American academe as well as the quality of Westlake's writing. Those fabulously entertaining Sixties novels are re-appearing, and as for the early adult stuff, well, let's say university presses need not worry.

But anyone who knew Donald Westlake, even casually, was aware of how full of life he was.
You imagine someone who writes seven days a week as being an introvert, but he was anything but. He died on New Year's Eve, as he and Abby were about to go out, and although that is tragic, I see something touching in the thought that he lived his life at a full pace until he just suddenly stopped.

Writers never die, of course, as long as they are being read. And I believe Donald Westlake will go on being read for a very long time. Readers love being conned, after all, and who could do it better?

MURDER ONE

The famous London Crime Book store MURDER ONE is to close its doors just short of reaching it's 21st birthday. Sarah Weinman was one of the first to blog on this. Every one is the business will have fond memories of the store (where ever it was located). It was a great place to not only find books, but to bump into authors and attend some really good launches. The owner, Maxim Jakubowski, seemed to be keeping it on an even keel whilst all around him failed but alas, the current economic crisis forced him into "early retirement" from the book trade. Mind you, that leaves him more time to write.

ALEX KAVA ON THE MOVE

This isn't the news I was expecting to give you from Sphere/Little Brown this January but Alex Kava has been bought by Nikola Scott and David Shelley at Sphere. She has signed up to write two MAGGIE O'DELL thrillers. Scott and Shelley outbid three rivals for the author, who is moving from Mira. The first hardback, set in Florida during a devastating hurricane, will appear in autumn 2010. "Alex is such a talented writer and I’m a huge fan of her series heroine Maggie O’Dell," Scott said. Sphere has UK and Commonwealth rights; in the US, Kava is moving from Mira to Doubleday.