“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
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: Being A Dolly Mixture Pick-‘n’-Mix Of Interweb Baloohaha
The Tremayne Man
“The fascinating law system and culture of 7th Century Ireland, sadly, was little known when I started writing the books – the amazing position that women enjoyed, the fact that they could divorce on equal terms with men, that women could aspire to all the professions and be lawyers, doctors, poets and so on, a situation not really paralleled in other European societies at that time, seems to be one reason why the books attract attention. I was even worried about how I could put this across to readers in the English language but it seems to carry into all cultures. The fact that, as of this time, Fidelma has gone into 15 languages, from Japanese to Russian, Bulgarian to Spanish and so on, has been surprising. It seems that readers find a resonance with Fidelma, whom Books Ireland have described as ‘an Irish heroine for both the seventh and the twenty-first centuries’.”Well, what are you waiting for? Get thee to a nunnery, people …
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
The Crime Spree Round-Up: Because You’re Worth It
“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 974: Darragh McManus
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
I was blown away the first time I read The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. The bebop rhythms of the writing, the labyrinthine plot, the complexity of the characters, with all their ambiguities, their casual racism and fundamental decency … So original, I didn’t really know if I liked it or not until halfway through.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
The TV listings, to see what movies are on. Also partial to the odd trashy novel about zombies.
Most satisfying writing moment?
There have been a few times, writing fiction, when the sentence or paragraph has come together so perfectly that I’ve thought, ‘Yes. There it is. This can’t get any better’, and actually thought of myself, however temporarily, as somewhat comparable to all the great writers I admire.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Can Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man count as a crime novel? It’s certainly my favourite Irish novel of all time.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
See above. (Yes, I know they already made a movie of it, but it could have been better.)
Worst/best thing about being a writer?
The opportunity to let your mind go free and make stuff up – it’s that simple. Inventing people and situations and conversations. Much more satisfying than the real world.
The pitch for your next novel is…?
‘In a world of pain, Jim ‘Propane’ McDonovan is the really, really bad toothache.’
Who are you reading right now?
George Orwell, Why I Write; Primo Levi, If This is a Man; and, believe it or not, I’m also trying to grapple with James Joyce’s Ulysses. This is an atypical week, clearly. I’m not normally this highbrow.
The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
Funny, smart, sincere.
Darragh McManus is spit-‘n’-polishing his crime debut Even Flow as you read. His current work of non-fiction, GAA Confidential, is “Perhaps the funniest, most cultured book ever written about [Irish] national sports.” (Irish Independent)
Ask Not For Whom The Bell Polls
Every Dead Thing by John Connolly (27%)Wanna quibble, punk? The comment box is officially open: let the inquibbilating begin …
Dead I Well May Be by Adrian McKinty (22%)
Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman (22%)
Quinn by Seamus Smyth (16%)
In The Woods by Tana French (11%)
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Never Mind The Pollocks
“Let the pictures speak for themselves. When I write I see everything in pictures: the words then follow. In art I have been inspired by Miro, de Kooning, Pollock, Calder, Picasso, Chagall, Rothko, Stella, Kandinsky, Matisse – abstract expressionism, modernism and post-modernism.”Hmmm, lovely. Check out more of Pat’s oeuvre over at the Saatchi Gallery … and if any other writers-cum-artists want to fire us off a sample of their work, we’d be only too delighted to get an informal gallery going to decorate the electronic halls of Crime Always Pays Towers. KT McCaffrey, this means you.
The Not-Quite-Inaugural Crime Always Pays ‘Best First Line Of A Novel That Will Never Be Written’ Award: # 1: Nick Stone, Again
“I wrote the epilogue to King of Swords in my notebook on the beach between Loews and the Ritz Carlton hotels with eight very strong mojitos in my belly. It was around 6pm, the sun was starting to set, people were drifting away and the seagulls were circling the refuse. I started scribbling with my feet in the sand. I felt like Brian Wilson going mad in his sandbox.”Yep, he gives good interview, yon Stone. Jaunt on over to the Daily Telegraph for more …
Flick Lit # 164: The Butcher Boy
The Popcorn Preview # 237: The Bourne Ultimatum
Monday, August 6, 2007
“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 417: Tana French
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
If Donna Tartt’s incredible The Secret History counts as a crime novel, then definitely that. Otherwise, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. I like crime books that mess with the conventions.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Eva Ibbotson – not a guilty pleasure, exactly, but definitely a self-indulgent one. She’s the fiction equivalent of a big box of good chocolates.
Most satisfying writing moment?
Finishing In The Woods. I’d got to the point where I thought the bloody thing was never going to be done, I’d be eighty and it would be the length of a phone book and I’d still be writing, so finishing it was hugely satisfying. Also, I did a reading in the East Village in New York a couple of months ago, and I ended up signing a skateboard. Maybe I’m easily amused, but that made my day.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy. It grabs you by the throat and drags you straight into the narrator’s twisted world; you come up gasping for breath.
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Come on, just about every writer in the world is going to say ‘Mine! Mine!!’ I'’d love to see any of John Connolly’s books on film, though, and any of Arlene Hunt’s would be great on TV.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Best: I get to wake up every morning and know that the only thing I have to do today is something I love doing. I’m constantly amazed by how jammy I am. Worst: It’s hard to switch off. When you’ve got a deadline, the temptation is to go into full-on panic mode, handcuff yourself to the computer and forget to have a life.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
He could have lost a pub bet and had to let his mates pick his name for his next book, except that ‘Benjamin Black’ is sort of mild for that. I don’t know what John Banville’s mates are like, but mine would have come up with something a lot more embarrassing.
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
I’d love to say something like ‘dark, tangled, haunting’, but going by readers’ e-mails, the real answer is probably ‘makes you late’. I’ve had a bunch of people tell me that they were reading In The Woods and ended up being late for work / missing their stop / staying up all night. I like that. Being a bad influence is one of my favourite things.
Tana French’s In The Woods is on a best-seller list near you
Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh
Sunday, August 5, 2007
The Monday Review: Being The Crème De La Crème Of This Week’s Interweb Big-Ups And Hup-Yas
Hold The Black Page
“Paying For It was a real labour of love and to know it’s now found a comfortable home at Random House is fantastic. The central character, Gus Dury, is a kind of reluctant investigator, a hack who’s been bulleted from his job and finds himself poking into the death of a friend’s son. The lad’s been tortured to death in the middle of an Edinburgh beauty spot but the police seem to have little interest in solving the case ... Gus wonders why. He soon turns up links to a shady vice ring, fronted by some heavy-duty gangsters from Eastern Europe. But there’s more ... one of the city’s political figureheads is involved and Gus soon finds himself up to his neck in a shitload of trouble.”Black grew up in Galway during the ’80s, and manages to wangle a couple of Irish characters into the Edinburgh-based tale:
“There’s two quite prominent Irishmen in the book, one’s a cop – a good one – and the other’s a fragile old geezer that just gets caught up in the chaos ... It’s a joy to get the Irish in there because those brilliant lilting, lyrical voices are all there in my head from childhood ... mainly teachers blasting me for carrying on in school, ha-ha!”Okay, so that’s Ray Chandler and Tony Black who (mis)spent their teenage years in Ireland. If you’ve any crime writer additions to that list, drop ’em in the comments box, folks …