Detectives Beyond Borders around the world, in the news, and on the Web

I am pleased to have been quoted at length in the Irish Examiner's review of Akashic Books' upcoming Belfast Noir volume of  crime stories. The piece appears under the entirely appropriate headline "`Belfast Noir': Move over Scandinavia, the Irish are the real thrillers ...," and it calls me "an international authority on crime-writing, whose blog ‘Detectives Beyond Borders’ has for many years been the last word on all things noir." Grateful thanks to my Irish peeps, and don't go accusing them of committing blarney. 

Stuart Neville, author
and member of my
Belfast Noir panel.
Photos by your formerly
humble blogkeeper.

I'll discuss Belfast Noir next week at Bouchercon in Long Beach. The panel is called "Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland," and it happens at 11:30 a.m., Friday, Nov. 14. I'm not saying I'll buy a pint of Guinness for everyone who shows up, but there's only one way for you to find out.

Paul Charles, also part 
of the Belfast Noir panel
 at Bouchercon.

Over at Dietrich Kalteis' Off the Cuff, which has published a number of my noir photos, I put down my camera to join Dietrich and co-host Martin Frankson for a chat about crime-fiction conferences. Dietrich and Martin talk a bit about how how authors might approach conventions from a business point of view. I talk fun, including a link to the story of the wandering bridesmaids of Bouchercon 2009.

*

I took the two author photos at Noircon 2014, the most fun one can have without leaving Philadelphia. Here are two more photos, from the event's concluding program at Port Richmond Books, just before the pierogi-fueled piss-up.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

My Bouchercon 2014 panels: Belfast Noir

It's tough writing about a volume of short stories, since, even more than with novels, one wants to avoid giving away spoilers and narrative twists.

Suffice it to say that Belfast Noir, out in November from Akashic Books, looks like one of the strongest, possibly the best entry in Akashic's "City Noir" series, and I don't say that just because the book's two editors plus one of its contributors will be part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 in November.

The pieces are well-chosen and the volume intelligently planned. Its four sections recognize not just Belfast's violent recent past, but the realities of its quotidian present. Most of the stories depict no violence directly, but violence, and the possibility or memory thereof, loom always. That's a lot more effective than whipping out a kneecapping or rolling down the balaclavas whenever the action lags.

I especially like Brian McGilloway's "The Undertaking," which opens the collection with hair-raising humor and suspense.  Akashic's Dublin Noir also opens with a comic story (by Eoin Colfer), and that story was the highlight of the volume for me. I don't know if it's an Irish thing, but  comedy is a wonderful against-type way to open a collection of crime stories. Oh, and I'll also want to read more by Lucy Caldwell.

==============

Belfast Noir's editors, Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville, will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 Friday, Nov. 14, at 11:30 a.m.  So will Gerard Brennan, who contributed a story to the collection. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Northern Ireland comes to New York, and an alter kocker takes a header

Child of a Belfast father. (Photo 
by your humble blogkeeper)

This Northern Ireland crime thing just won't stop. No sooner had I returned from New York University's Glucksman Ireland House and the U.S. launch of Belfast Noir than I found a copy of Gun Street Girl, fourth volume in Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy trilogy, waiting for me. I suspect the book may come up next week during the Belfast Noir: Murder and Mayhem in Northern Ireland panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach.

Lee Child spoke about his family connection to Belfast and his childhood bewilderment and then growing awareness of the sectarian strife known as the Troubles. He also may have earned the bitter jealousy of other authors present by his disclosure that he does no rewriting at all, made sharper by Stuart Neville's declaration that Child's story for Belfast Noir was "the cleanest piece of copy I have ever seen in my life, not a comma out of place."

Mr. Child had trouble recalling our first meeting until I reminded him that it had occurred shortly after a bird crapped on his jacket one year at Crimefest (Bristol), in England. Though Mr. Child favors dark sport coats, I can state with some confidence that he has had his jacket cleaned or perhaps even acquired a new one since the shit hit the writers.

The only crimp in the evening came from the disagreeable older gentleman who, in his haste to squeeze past me in the row of the seats we shared, did not bother to say, "Excuse me" or heed my suggestion that he allow me to stand up so he could pass. Naturally it was my fault when the old prick tripped, went flying, and landed on his belly, complaining out the side of his mouth as he fell that "this guy (me) wouldn't get out of the way."  My reply to him was phrased and addressed rather more directly.

(I should make it clear that this was no frail oldster. He was in better shape than I. Nor did I swear at him, you dirty-minded rabble.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Akashic to publish Belfast Noir

Photos by your humble blogkeeper

In the best news out of Belfast since the Titanic Van Morrison, Akashic Books is adding Belfast Noir to its "City Noir" crime-fiction series.

Confirmed contributors include Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Colin Bateman, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Tammy Moore, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar and Gerard Brennan, with Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville as editors who I hope will contribute stories as well.

It's the world's best crime writing in one place, and you can read it in 2014. Learn more at McKinty's place.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

NoirCon 2014 is almost here // Noir at the Bar comes back home

I'll be part of another con before Bouchercon, the fourth incarnation of the event that introduced me to the joys of the con, Philadelphia's own Noircon.

This year's event happens Oct. 30-Nov. 2, and it has a more international flavor than the versions in 2008, 2010, and 2012, including several authors who will be part of my Bouchercon panels two weeks later in Long Beach. Stuart Neville will be here. So will Paul Charles, who will join Stuart, Adrian McKinty, and Gerard Brennan on my Bouchercon "Belfast Noir" panel.  Sarah Weinman and Charles Kelly will be here, sharpening their oratorical skills for their appearances on my "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras" panel in Long Beach.

The gang from Soho Press is coming to Noircon to receive awards. The delegation will include author Fuminori Nakamura and Paul Oliver, whose current reissues of Ted "Get Carter" Lewis' novels are an event of high importance to noir readers. Trust me: You want to read these books.

I'll be doing my part by MC'ing a NoirCon edition of Noir at the Bar as N@theB returns to the city where I staged the very first ones in 2008.    The list of readers includes several of the original Noir at the Bar authors and moderators, so here's a special thank you to Duane Swierczynski, Jon McGoran (who set this event up), Dennis Tafoya, and Sarah Weinman. Welcome back.

NoirCon 2008 was my first convention, my first chance to meet authors and others in the profession. It's where I met Ken Bruen and Christa Faust and Scott Phillips and Sarah Weinman and Reed Farrel Coleman and Ed Pettit and Charles Ardai and Megan Abbott and more, and not just met them, but hung out with them and talked with them. The experience was so much fun that I signed up for that year's Bouchercon almost immediately, and the rest is history. 

NoirCon: Because Not Everything Great That Started in Philadelphia Was Run By Guys Who Have Their Faces on Money.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Brian McGilloway on the personal, the political, and the police

Brian McGilloway's novels address Northern Ireland's Troubles in striking, though oblique fashion.  His story "The Undertaking" gets the upcoming Belfast Noir collection off to a rousing start. And, in this Detectives Beyond Borders post from a few years back, he offers some thoughts on the personal and the political in Northern Ireland.

================

I've pondered in recent posts Brian McGilloway's interesting choice of a police officer, or Garda, from the Irish Republic as protagonist of his two crime novels, both set along the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. I've also wondered about the place in the books of the North's bloody sectarian Troubles.

McGilloway, who grew up in Derry in the North, sent a thoughtful reply to my posts that reminded me of what Matt Rees likes to say when asked if he plans to include Israeli characters in his novels set in the Palestinian territories. No, Rees says, because to do so might lead to unseemly and distracting side-taking.

McGilloway's novels are Borderlands and the new Gallows Lane. Without further ado, here's what their author has to say about the personal, the political, the police and the hero of the books, Inspector Benedict Devlin:

"I know you've been questioning the issue of a Northern Irish writer setting his hero in the Republic, then working with the North's PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland). The main reason for it, I suppose, was to avoid the political. During the time of writing, policing was still a hot issue in Northern Ireland. I was aware that, as a Northern writer, people would rightly or wrongly look at the books for a political angle on the presentation of the PSNI. By filtering their presentation through Devlin's eyes, it allows Devlin to direct, to some extent, the reader's reactions and makes his response to the PSNI a personal rather than political one. I hope that makes sense.

"In addition, the PSNI was changing so much that, by the time the book would have been published, their presentation would have been out of date. Some Northern Irish politicians still complain if it's discovered that Guards are coming into Northern Ireland — on the ground it's happening much more frequently than people expect, I imagine. I thought that was an interesting and unique angle from which to approach a police procedural."And of course the Guards over here have had their own problems recently — considered more fully perhaps in the second Devlin book, Gallows Lane.

"As for the Troubles — I wanted to write a non-Troubles book but, around the Border, it would be unrealistic to assume that they're not there somewhere — thus the only representation of the Troubles in Borderlands is the disembodied voice, talking about the past. It's there, but increasingly insubstantial. Or that was my intention, at least."

==============

My Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014, featuring Gerard Brennan, Paul Charles, Adrian McKinty, and Stuart Neville, happens at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room at the Hyatt Regency, Long Beach. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008, 2014

Modern Ireland and modern Irish crime writers: A St. Patrick's Day post

For St. Patrick's Day, here's a post from a couple of years ago about Irish history and what you can learn about it from Irish crime writers.

 =================

 A passage in Adrian McKinty's novel The Bloomsday Dead alerted me to a certain tendency in Belfast to romanticize the present and the past (though McKinty states the case more pungently), and I may first have heard the term irregulars, for the anti-treaty military forces in the Irish Civil War, through Kevin McCarthy.

The dicey subject of Irish-German relations in the middle of the twentieth century? Stuart Neville deals with one strand of its aftermath in his novel Ratlines. (And it appears that Declan Burke may do so as well, in his latest.)  And Eoin McNamee wrote about the chilling sectarian hatred at the heart of one of Belfast's most notorious murder gangs in his novel Resurrection Man.

The strange, orphaned position of Northern Ireland, unloved by both the United Kingdom and Eire (or is that Ireland? Or the South? Or the Republic?) cannot have been portrayed more directly and more touchingly than in the passage of Garbhan Downey's (I forget in which book) where a politician from the North tells a counterpart from the South something like: "I know you regard us as the unwanted child you'd rather tie up in a sack and toss into the river." And my first inkling that Irish history was more complicated than the Manichean pieties we get in America came when Gerard Brennan took me to the Irish Republican History Museum off the Falls Road in Belfast.

I've just finished reading Part IV of R.F. "Roy" Foster's Modern Ireland 1600-1972, and I was periodically surprised and delighted when his entertaining, opinionated, analytical, non-ax-grinding history would touch upon subjects dealt with in some depth by each of the above-mentioned Irish crime writers. Foster's declaration, for example, that

"For all the rhetoric of anti-Partitionism, opinion in the Republic was covertly realistic about this point, too: the predominant note of modern Ireland in 1972 was that of looking after its own."

says in historical terms what Downey does in fictional ones, and induces a similar twinge of sympathy for Northern Ireland's people, if not its leaders.

So thanks, Irish crime writers, for writing entertaining popular fiction while casting an intelligent eye on the problematic present and past of your problematic country.

*

Foster's bibliographic essay at the end of Modern Ireland mentions one Irish crime writer by name, though not for her crime fiction:

"There are few first-rate biographies for the period, one glowing exception being R. Dudley Edwards' Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, which illuminates far more than its subject."

Looking for more? Edwards, Downey, McNamee, and Brennan contributed stories to Akashic Books' Belfast Noir collection, edited by McKinty and Neville.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Stuart Neville's Ratlines: Out of a different past

Several of Northern Ireland's brilliant cohort of crime writers write not just about their land's sectarian Troubles, but also about the conflict's afterlife (or persistence, if one prefers). Brian McGilloway, Garbhan Downey, and Anthony Quinn are just three who demonstrate that the Troubles continue to reverberate after the Good Friday Agreement.

Stuart Neville became an instant leader of the group with The Ghosts of Belfast, whose very title proves the continuing sensitivity of the subject. (The 2009 novel was released in the U.K. under the powerful but less politically charged title The Twelve.)

Neville crossed over the border and further into the past for his 2013 novel Ratlines.  The time is 1963, the occasion the murder of a Nazi given shelter in Ireland after World War II, and the novel's title a reference to the networks by which Nazis were helped to safety and, in some cases, to prosperity after the war.

Neville does a nice job imagining and investigating the sorts of corruption attendant on such arrangements, and not just the moral corruption that offers succor to evil men, either.  This novel's world has plenty of room for theft, dishonesty, and violence among the criminals themselves, and among the people who pursue them as well.  The book also contains flashes of just the sort of agony that haunted Fegan, the ex-IRA killer of The Ghosts of Belfast.   And, though I have never talked politics with Neville, I suspect after reading Ratlines that he is no fan of nationalism of whatever kind.

==============

Stuart Neville will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The fun starts at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

My Bouchercon panels: Paul Charles, youse two perverts, and a question for readers

Paul Charles' Northern Ireland, or at least the version of it in his current novel, is different from the ones in much recent Northern Ireland crime writing, because its setting is a village with a population of 617, rather than Belfast's bleak, violent streets.

The book is The Lonesome Heart is Angry, and the opening chapters suggest that Charles loves his setting and knows how to create a convincing picture of village life.

Two brothers, farmers and twins, have reached their late twenties and have decided the time has come to marry. Times being hard, however, they can afford just one wife between them.  Here's part of the ensuing dialogue with the village matchmaker, explaining gently while that sort of thing is just not done:

"‘Maybe you’ll be introduced, find an excuse to say something, just make that vital connection. So next time you see her, no matter where it might be, you’ll have the confidence to talk to her a bit more. ... You might ask one of those hypothetical questions, you know, “Em, you know, so and so, well, em, I was thinking: do you know what would happen if I … There’s this friend of mine and he really likes her and he was thinking, and I said I would check for him, so do you think if he asked her out, you know, would she go, you know, out with him?” And the friend will probably answer, “Oh yes – where were you thinking of taking her to?” 

"‘Then you ask her out. You go for a walk, you talk a lot ... and maybe, just maybe, after a couple of years you will discuss marriage. ... But it’s important, vitally important, that the early stages are as natural as humanly possible. Do youse understand that?’ 

"The twins nodded. 

"‘So at what point in this procedure were youse two perverts going to tell the sorry lass that she’d be sleeping with both of you?’"

That reminds me a bit of Pierre Magnan's crime novels of rural France for its amusing sexual slant, but especially for the delicious, slow pace with which the scene builds up to its punch line (I omitted parts of the exchange for reasons of length.) I look forward to more.

What are your favorite recent crime stories with rural or village settings? And why? Does country life get a fair shake in crime fiction? Comments are especially welcome from readers familiar with village life. 

==============

Paul Charles will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The panel happens at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

My Bouchercon 2014 panels: The Bloomsday Dead's best paragraph

Adrian McKinty suggested in a comment on this blog that the great Northern Ireland crime novel will be written by a woman. Declan Burke called David Park's The Truth Commissioner "a very brave stab at writing ‘the great post-Troubles Northern Irish novel’," whereupon I immediately added it to my to-read list.

Both those gents, being Irish and having grown up there, one in the North, one in the South, are obviously far more qualified than I am to speculate on this matter. But the notion of "the" great anything is dangerous, at least in the hands of an outsider such as your humble blogkeeper. It carries with it the whiff of a suggestion that once one has read "the" great novel, one can move on to other subjects. I hope that the great Troubles or post-Troubles Northern Irish novel will mark a beginning for discussion and examination, not an ending. After all, life will go on in Northern Ireland even after the great novel appears.

In the meantime, McKinty has written a worthy contender for best post-Troubles Northern Irish paragraph, in The Bloomsday Dead, after the protagonist, Michael Forsythe, has returned to Belfast:

"They say the air over Jerusalem is thick with prayers, and Dublin might have its fair share of storytellers, but this is where the real bullshit artists live. The air over this town is thick with lies. Thousands of prisoners have been released under the cease-fire agreements — thousands of gunmen walking these streets, making up a past, a false narrative of peace and tranquility."

I have my own ideas about why that paragraph works, but I'd like to hear yours. Let us discuss! While you're at it, let me know what you think about the whole notion of The Great Novel.

==============

Adrian McKinty will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Irelandpanel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The fun starts at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008, 2014
 
Technorati tags:
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My Bouchercon 2014 surprise: Charlotte Armstrong

I've been touting Northern Ireland crime fiction for years, so it's no surprise that I liked the books I'll discuss when I moderate Belfast Noir: Murder and Mayhem from Northern Ireland on Friday, 11:30 a.m., at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach.  The real revelations for me have come as I prepared for Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras, which I'll moderate at 3 p.m. Friday.

The panel will consist of five authors or editors talking about one or more favorite crime writers from out of the past. You may not have heard of all those writers; I certainly had not before I put the panel together.

You'll read more about those writers over the next few weeks, but suffice it to say that each of my five panelists will discuss at least one book that has turned out to be among the highlights of my year's reading.

I won't pick a year's best yet, but I have read no more virtuoso authorial crime fiction performance this year, or maybe ever,  than Charlotte Armstrong's 1947 novel The Unsuspected. The book is a masterfully told tale of suspense in which everything, everyone, is in doubt and knocked out of balance from the first scene to the last, a sort of Agatha Christie meets Georges Simenon meets Cornell Woolrich, with a few sly jabs thrown in. I thank panelist Sara J. Henry for choosing to discuss Armstrong.

See you in Long Beach.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

The books my Bouchercon panelists die for

Five members of panels I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach next month contributed to Books to Die For, John Connolly and Declan Burke's 2012 collection of essays by crime writers about their own favorite crime novels and stories. Here's some of what my panelist/contributors had to say about the writers who influenced them:

"Dexter's books are essentially puzzles. He once said that he was as anxious for the detective to manage without a pathology lab as he was for the crossword puzzler to manage without a dictionary."

-- Paul Charles on Colin Dexter 

"For all the talk of Hammett and Chandler as the founders of the hard-boiled feasts--and I revere them as much as the next guy or gal--it's Spillane and [James M.] Cain who were the most influential."

-- Max Allan Collins on Mickey Spillane 

"As she grew more successful and confident, the humanity began to drain from her books. Most of us would not act like the unruffled, aloof Tom Ripley, but every one of us could see himself falling into the abyss of cowardice and mendacity that finally drives poor Guy Haines to kill."

-- Adrian McKinty on Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train 

"The greatest thing I've gained from Ellroy is the will to take my characters farther and deeper into the dark places than I, or the reader, might be comfortable with."

-- Stuart Neville on James Ellroy 

"This was not literature that uplifted the race. Cooper wasn't profiled in the pages of Ebony or, I imagine, discussed much, if at all, among the self-identified arts and literature crowd. The Urban League wouldn't be inviting him to speak at their annual dinner."

-- Gary Phillips on Clarence Cooper Jr.'s The Scene

===========================================

Paul Charles, Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 on Friday, Nov. 14, at 11:30 a.m.  Max Allan Collins and Gary Phillips will be part of my Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras panel Friday at 3 p.m..

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Adrian McKinty's Cold Cold Ground: Life during sort-of wartime

I've just reread The Cold Cold Ground, by longtime DBB favorite Adrian McKinty, and, by god, that back-cover blurb from Detectives Beyond Borders holds up:

"The Cold Cold Ground is very possibly the best crime novel published in English in 2012."

The book's U.S. edition contains an author's note that goes a long way to explaining the book's richness:

"I wanted to set a book in this claustrophobic atmosphere, attempting to recapture the sense that civilization was breaking down to its basest levels. I also wanted to remember the craic, the music, the bombastic politicians, the apocalyptic street preachers, the sinister gunmen and a lost generation of kids for whom all of this was normal."

Your job, readers, is to name novels or stories similarly rich in telling, surprising detail, particularly those set during wartime or other turbulent circumstances.

*

The Cold Cold Ground is Book One in McKinty's Troubles trilogy, featuring Sean Duffy of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Read the first five chapters of Book Four at McKinty's blog.

==============

Adrian McKinty will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Irelandpanel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The fun starts at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

Six Bouchercons, plus what I'll do at a seventh

 Relaxation after the convention.

Shamus Awards dinner, Albany,
N.Y.,  2013. I left the gun. I took
a picture of the cannoli. 

Cant't talk. Got to go. Busy preparing for Bouchercon.

Wandering bridesmaids,
Indianapolis, 2009.

I arrive in Long Beach Wednesday evening, and I'll moderate two panels this year, both on Friday. At 11:30 a.m.. it's "Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland," and then, after I eat a modest but nutritious lunch and brush my teeth, I'll be back at 3 p.m. with "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras."

In the meantime, here's an idea of what Bouchercons are like. See you in Long Beach.

Straggling to the annual festive
post-Bouchercon dinner, St.
Louis, 2011.

Waitress guest of
honor, Albany, 2013.

Bouchercon 2009, where I
had so much fun hanging with
smokers from many lands
that I wanted to start
smoking. Never too late,
I figure.

San Francisco, 2010.

Looking up in Cleveland, 2012.

Festive dinner after my first Bouchercon, Baltimore, 2008.

My peeps: From left, Ali Karim, R.J. Ellory, your humble blog keeper, Albany, 2013.

The view from my Albany hotel, 2013.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

My Bouchercon 2014 panels

I'll moderate two panels at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, and I am excited about both.

On Friday, Nov. 14, at 11:30 a.m., it's

Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland, with Gerard Brennan,  Paul Charles, Adrian McKinty, and Stuart Neville.

Then I'm back at 3 p.m. for

Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras,  Max Allan Collins, Sara J. Henry, Charles Kelly, Gary Phillips, and Sarah Weinman. Each will discuss one of his or her favorite authors, a list that includes Dan J. Marlowe, Joseph Nazel, Dolores Hitchens, and to be announced.

So, one panel with some of my favorite writers from the planet's most dynamic crime fiction scene, and another with some of crime fiction's sharpest minds shining their intellectual searchlights into out-of-the-way corners of the crime fiction world. This is going to be fun

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Bob and Ray meet Jim Thompson in Gerard Brennan's The Point

Lots of Northern Ireland crime writers take the Troubles and their aftermath as a subject. Here's Gerard Brennan's take in his delightful comic (and dark) novel. The Point (The scene is two young hoods surprised by a young woman as they burgle her apartment):

"`The IRA knows a lot about you, wee girl,' Paul said. `You better stop what you're doing.'

"`What are you talking about?' she asked.

...

"Brian shoved him ... `What the fuck was that for?' Paul asked.

"`You know what it was for.'

"`Ach, fuck off. Maybe if she thought the IRA was really watching her she'd make an effort to do a dish or two. You saw the state of the place.'"

At the risk of wallowing in identity politics, Brennan is a few years younger than, say, his compatriot crime writers Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville. I wonder if that renders him more able to joke about the Troubles because he's farther removed from them. I'll have to ask Brennan about this the next time I see him. In any case, The Point is Bob and Ray meets Jim Thompson, Give it a look.

============== 

Gerard Brennan will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The fun starts at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

My Bouchercon panels: The Wall Street Journal discovers Northern Ireland crime fiction

The Wall Street Journal this week writes about crime fiction in Northern Ireland, beginning the piece with a discussion of Stuart Neville, an idea that remains as fresh today as it was when I did the same thing three years ago. I'll discuss it again next month at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, when I moderate a panel called "Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland." The panel will include Neville, Adrian McKinty, Gerard Brennan, and Paul Charles, and I look forward to seeing you there.

 ====

My article "Trouble’s Aftermath: Northern Ireland’s Crime Fiction" is up on Macmillan's new Criminal Element Web site. The site includes fiction and features covering a wide spectrum of crime writing including a section called Writing the World devoted to international crime fiction. That's where my article appears, along with pieces on Japanese detective stories, Swedish crime fiction, John Burdett, an English cop's look at The Wire, and more.

Looks to me like the crime-fiction world has a worthwhile new magazine on its hands. Drop in, and leave a comment.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

My Bouchercon panels: Requiems for the Departed

Sure, the messy birth of the political entity called Northern Ireland offers a rich setting for grim stories, but Irish crime writers can reach further back into their country's past for source material. Four years ago, a bunch of them did, in an anthology called Requiems for the Departed.

==================

Myths don't work unless they're with us, around us, even in us.

That's why the Requiems for the Departed collection is so powerful. Its stories invoke Irish myth, most of them updating settings and, often, names, but retaining what seems to this non-expert the unsettling power and bringing it to crime fiction.

The contributors are an all-star list of Irish crime writing, some of whom readers of Detectives Beyond Borders may know (Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Garbhan Downey) and others whose names may be new (Arlene Hunt, John McAllister, Sam Millar, and quite a number more).

He was around when the myths were real.
Bog body ("Gallagh Man"), National
Museum of Ireland, Dublin. Photo by
your humble blogkeeper.

Bruen's story is brash and chilling, McKinty's. Neville's, and McAllister's the stuff to keep you awake at night, and McGilloway's a little police procedural with a delightfully comic ending. (The story features his series character, Inspector Benedict Devlin and offers evidence that myth can mix easily with a contemporary setting.)

Pop on over to Crime Scene. N.I. for all kinds of good stuff about the book from co-editor Gerard Brennan.

==============

Gerard Brennan, Adrian McKinty, and Stuart Neville, will be part of a panel I'll moderate at Bouchercon 2014 called Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland. The panel happens Friday, Nov. 14, at 11:30 a.m. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010, 2014

More on Beaux-Arts, books, and bouncers (Ellroy, Paul Charles, Joseph Nazel)

Here's a bit on what I bought in the land of Beaux-Arts buildings and of bouncers who are not so much stupid as they are the very idea of stupidity given human form, thick in body, thicker in mind, the kind who would be rejected for the role of a bouncer in a movie because they go a little over the top. (About the only thing to be said in favor of last night's specimen is that he did not wear a pony tail.)

1. James Ellroy has said he no longer writes crime novels, yet I bought his new book at a crime fiction bookstore, Mysterious Bookshop, where, furthermore, Ellroy will appear next week. The novel's jacket copy makes the story sound an awful lot like a murder mystery, albeit with the grand historical sweep of Ellroy's recent books.
2. 
   Paul Charles' The Beautiful Sounds of Silence, my first novel in this Northern Ireland crime writer's Christy Kennedy series, looks set to take up a gruesome case with a degree of amused detachment. The opening chapter avoids the extremes of trivializing the crime with humor on the one hand and wallowing in its horror on the other. Charles says his inspiration for writing crime fiction was Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse. That's not a bad model.
3. 
   Joseph Nazel's Death For Hire arrived earlier in the week. A hard-hitting tale of black ghetto life in 1970s Los Angeles from an author and editor who also wrote biographies of respected African American historical figures, the novel has its good guys and bad guys, glorifying none, but with a measure of understanding for all. Los Angeles author Gary Phillips discusses Nazel and other Holloway House authors in an article on black pulp fiction at criminal element.com.

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Paul Charles will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Ireland panel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California, at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14.

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Gary Phillips will discuss Joseph Nazel as part of my panel on Beyond Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane: Lesser Known Writers of the Pulp and Paperback Eras, on Friday at 3.p.m.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014