My Favourite "Crime" Reads of 2011

In no particular order, here are some my outstanding reads of the year. Well, everybody else is doing it ...

Megan Abbott – The End of Everything

Just WHO can you trust? Friends, family? Can you even trust yourself?

This is a book about sisters, fathers and daughters, family and friendships, truths dripping reluctantly from the owner, but more than that, it’s a book about two young girls on the verge of discovering the confusing and heady power of their gender. It’s “noir” fiction, but not as we know it.

R J Ellory – Bad Signs

Two brothers on a road trip to hell. A fascinating take on the nature/ nurture debate from one of my favourites, and one of the most consistently excellent writers in the field today.

Maybe I’m becoming a wimp as I grow older, but there were several times during the race to the end of this book that the tension became too much for me and I had to set it aside for a few minutes. Now, that is good writing!

Tony Black – Truth Lies Bleeding

Our Tone gives Gus Drury a well-deserved rest and turns his eagle-eye on the police procedural.

In my Crimesquad review in April I said, “Another area where Tony Black excels is in his depictions of those living on the edge of the law. There is no soft edge to these people. Every flaw is stripped of shadow and every bad deed gets punished. Truth Lies Bleeding is fast, sharp and brilliantly plotted. It’s only just turned spring but if I read a better example of the police procedural this year I will be amazed.”  

Nothing came across my desk to allow me to review that opinion. ‘Nuff said.

Tom Franklin - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

An old crime returns to haunt the town’s loner, allowing us, the reader to examine our judgement of others and ultimately, our own conscience. The writing is delicious, the pace sure and steady and the sense of place offers an atmosphere that is impossible not to be seduced by. There is much to admire about this novel and a whole lot more to love and if there is any justice in the world this will become a huge bestseller.

Sam Hawken – The Dead Women of Juarez

This has to me my favourite debut read of the year. Visceral and haunting. The real-life victims of the crimes that pervade this city are in the background, their tragedy highlighted by the simple but effective ploy of showing the effect that their deaths have had on the people left behind. Time and again we see them draped in black, crushed under the weight of their grief: a much more effective device than a passage of torture. REALLY looking forward to seeing what Sam comes up with next.

Declan Burke – Absolute Zero Cool

Trying to describe this book adequately is like trying to grab a bar of soap in the bath. Just believe me when I say it is frickin’ brilliant. I'm totally in awe of Burke’s ability to craft a sentence and to unleash the bon mot. This a brave book, both in context and content. It has brains, wit and heart and the ending was pitch-perfect. Gave me a wee lump in my throat. This has got cult classic written all over it. Just off now to re-read. It’s that good!

Bill Kirton – The Sparrow Conundrum

Ahh, Bill. The man. In the interests of full disclosure I have to say that Bill is a friend (as are a few others on this list – but I knew Bill before I knew his writing) nonetheless, he has fully earned his place here. Besides, my list: my rules.

The characters that Bill Kirton serves up in award-winning, The Sparrow Conundrum are a continuous delight. My favourites were the sociopathic detective, Lodgedale and the crime boss, Eagle who surely had his head turned by a gang of bullies at a private school. Kirton is a master of the comic. If you like a change from the normal mystery/ thriller fare and you don't take your crime fiction too seriously you owe it to yourself to get a copy of The Sparrow Conundrum.

James Lee Burke – Feast Day of Fools

We’re in the Texan landscape with Hack Holland and we’re hunting a psycho. Which is nice.

Flippancy aside, JLB is one man who deserves that much used word – “awesome” in respect of his work. There is richness to this man’s writing that cannot fail to delight. He specialises in imbuing his characters with certainty of action, even while their motives are conflicted. Burke is the master of an oblique dialogue that in the hands of someone less skilled would serve only to confuse, but with him it never fails to enlighten and engage. Biblical. Epic. Awesome.

Adrian McKinty – Falling Glass

This is an archetypal tale of a man who is sent to find a woman he then falls for. What keeps the story fresh and fascinating is the quick-fire pace, the insight into his characters and the quality of the prose. Adrian McKinty is a fine stylist who says much with a few carefully chosen words and he rounds this off with touches of mythology and whispers of the arcane. A writer who deserves to be more widely read.

Nick Stone – Voodoo Eyes

As a fan of Nick’s work, Voodoo Eyes was a book that was well overdue. This is Nick Stone’s first outing since King of Swords in 2007 and boy was it worth the wait. His private detective, Max Mingus is older, not necessarily wiser but still determined to bring down the bad guy. And they really don’t come much badder than Solomon Boukman. Max is a wonderful literary creation. He is washed thin by personal tragedy, partly because he feels he deserves most of it, but still he keeps on coming. The sympathetic but honest eye that Nick Stone used to chronicle the past of Haiti in his earlier work is now used to good effect on the neighbouring island of Cuba.  Stone observes with the skill of a journalist and paints a word picture as effectively as any poet. The sense of place in this piece is so vivid you leave the books pages feeling as if you had just spent a few hours on the island itself.

Amanda Kyle Williams – The Stranger You Seek

Serial killers are (to borrow the cliché) ten-a-penny in crime fiction and it takes something a little bit special to grab and hold my attention. The Stranger You Seek has got “special” in bucketloads. Keye Street is my new favourite character and it’s her voice that takes us through this cracking read.  She is spunky, sparky (he feverishly seeks another word beginning with “sp”) and (goes for) sassy. (I didn’t get the “p” in there. So sue me.)

Aspiring writers who are struggling with the concept of “voice” should read this book and they’ll receive the message loud and clear. The author uses this to great effect not only giving the reader everything they would be looking for in such a novel, but with added warmth and wit. And this (despite the tension and body count) makes The Stranger You Seek such a joy to read.

Can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store!

Laters,

M

Here's a mixed bag ...

I haven’t been chatty much on this here blog of late. Sorry. My three regulars may be starting to worry about now so I thought I should stop by and say hi.

Hi.

Books as usual are on my mind, so here’s a glimpse of what’s on the top of my To Be Read pile ...

Horns by Joe Hill

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples. Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, Ig was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed with a terrible new power - with just a touch he can see peoples' darkest desires - to go with his terrible new look, and he means to use it to find the man who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge; it's time the devil had his due.

To borrow the cliché – the apple didn’t fall far from the tree – a quick scan of this in the bookshop and Joe Hill promises a talent every bit as formidable as his old man. (If you don’t know who I’m referring to, find a pic of Joe and then guess.) Horns offers an intriguing premise worked by someone with one of the most interesting “voices” in fiction. I loved his earlier book “Heart-shaped Box” and I’m REALLY looking forward to reading this.

Now for a horn of a different hue ... (did you like my attempt at a link? Did ya? Did Ya?)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

The blurb ...

Young marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company 

have been dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam, combatants in an increasingly desperate war. Standing in their way are the North Vietnamese, the monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, and disease and malnutrition. 

As racial tension and competing ambition build, the group threatens to crack at any moment. When the company is surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

First sentence ...  “Mellas stood beneath the grey monsoon clouds on the narrow strip of cleared ground between the edge of the jungle and relative safety of the perimeter wire.”

Down these Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21^st Century – edited by Declan Burke charts the evolution of the Irish crime novel since of the inception of the Irish state through a series of essays, interviews, personal testimonies and short stories. This collection offers a unique insight into the phenomenon of Irish crime writing, which Fintan O’Toole describes as “arguably the nearest thing we have to a realist literature adequate to capturing the nature of contemporary society”.

The editor, Declan Burke has gathered together some of the most fascinating voices in modern literature – they all just happen to be Irish. Included are John Connolly, Tana French, Alan Glynn, Declan Hughes, Arlene Hunt, Ken Bruen and more.

Fascinating just about covers it. Can’t wait to read more.

No More Mulberries by Mary Smith

This is a bit of a departure for me but as I know the writer and I’ve heard her talking about the book AND she was on the telly this week I got me a copy.

The blurb?

Miriam loves life as a health worker in Afghanistan but her marriage to her Afghan husband, Dr Iqbal is heading towards crisis.

Ignoring his anger at her attending a teaching camp as a translator without him, she travels into a remote region hoping time apart will help her understand where their problems lie.

As she undertakes a journey into her past, to confront the devastating loss of her first husband, Miriam realises how her own actions has damaged her relationship with Iqbal.

Set in the rugged grandeur of the Hindu Kush foothills, No More Mulberries is about love, commitment and divided loyalties.

I’ve only had a quick glance so far but I’m already impressed with the quality of the prose, the complexity of the characters and the sense of place offered in the first chapter. And Mary’s a lovely wummin (and she was on the telly) so go buy a copy already!

Interview with Declan Burke (part 2)

(If you were one of the unlucky people who missed part one go HERE and be delighted and amazed.)

Part Deux ...

Me - Back to your man, Harry. One of the many things in Eightball Boogie that fascinated me was his relationship with his psycho brother. Tell us where that came from.

Declan - Another tough question. The honest answer is that I don’t know - if I did, I probably wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of writing a book about it. But these things tend to be buried pretty deep in our psyches, and take quite a bit of excavating.

As with all the ostensibly bad guys in my books - Rossi in THE BIG O, Karlsson in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL - I have a lot of sympathy for Gonzo, who is Harry’s brother in EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. He’s an exaggerated version of the milder kind of sociopath that people tend to meet in their lives - the bullying boss at work, the aggressive moron who lashes out at the end of the night after one too many beers, the passive-aggressive manipulator we’ve all met at some point in our lives. Gene Kerrigan makes the point that most criminals aren’t all that different to law-abiding citizens, they simply want to pay their mortgage off quicker, and are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. To a certain extent, Harry and Gonzo are two sides of the same coin, brothers who grew up the hard way and whose lives were directed down slightly different paths by their individual experiences. Harry, possibly belatedly, discovers a brake on his impulses at a particular time in his life; Gonzo doesn’t, and feels free to do whatever he needs to do in order to get what he wants. He’s a typical bully, a borderline sociopath who doesn’t have the ability to empathise with other people. Given that EIGHTBALL is a crime novel, it was inevitable, I suppose, that Gonzo would at some point end up with a gun in his hand, but that’s not what was interesting to me. What I was interested in was why Gonzo became that bully in the first place, in the factors that created his particular pathology.

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE is told in a first-person narrative, and Harry is a freelance journalist-cum-private investigator (he calls himself a ‘research consultant’) as a nod to Chandler’s Marlowe, so it’s Harry’s story; but the epigraph I used at the start of the book, from Jim Thompson’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME, is dedicated in my mind to Gonzo: ‘Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad.

So Gonzo is Harry’s doppelganger, in a way, his alter-ego. But I suppose too that both Harry and Gonzo are aspects of my own personality. In a parallel universe, I turned out like Gonzo; in another parallel universe, I ended up like Harry. Happily, I live in this universe, and don’t have to be either.

Me -  Another pleasure for me in Eightball Boogie is your facility for the bon mot, the wisecrack and the banter. Go on make me jealous - does this come naturally to you or do you have to work at it? And part 2 of this question - did you feel you had to add the humour to leaven the darker stuff?

Declan - Well, you’re very kind, sir, and I appreciate the good word. To be honest, at this remove, I think there’s probably too much wise-cracking in EIGHTBALL - there are times, I think, when it distracts from what’s happening. I’ve written a sequel to EIGHTBALL called THE BIG EMPTY, and Harry is less inclined to crack wise in that one, although there’s no pretending that he doesn’t have a smart mouth. But when THE BIG EMPTY opens, Harry’s just out of prison after doing five years, and that’s an experience that’ll teach even the smartest arse when to keep his mouth shut.

By the same token, he’s just a slightly subdued version of the Harry we meet in EIGHTBALL - my sense of humour tends to veer towards the absurd and the surreal, which is probably why I enjoy Chandler’s one-liners so much. And most of the humour in EIGHTBALL is in there because I was writing an homage to Chandler, in part, and I did deliberately over-egg the pudding because I wanted people to know that I wasn’t just trying (and failing miserably) to imitate Chandler’s style, I was trying incorporate that kind of style into a contemporary Irish setting - which is itself, of course, an absurd thing to do.

I’m afraid that the answer to your first question is yes, that I find comedy easy to write - or far easier, I should say, than writing consistently serious material. I’ve tried in the past to write a serious novel, but it either flops miserably, or it twists itself into something funny. It’s probably a failing of mine that I can’t write anything without raising an arched eyebrow above it, but then, the crime novel these days verges on self-parody as it is, so all I’m doing is giving the conventions a bit of a tickle once in a while. Maybe some day I’ll run out of gags, and then I’ll get to write a proper, serious novel. It’d be a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

That said, I’m a big fan of the notion peddled by the ancient Greeks that tragedy is simply underdeveloped comedy, although they had a different interpretation of ‘comedy’ than we do. Still, I can’t see why you shouldn’t write a novel that has something serious to say, and not leaven the darkness in the process, as you suggest. Elmore Leonard, Kurt Vonnegut, Spike Milligan, Colin Bateman, Carl Hiaasen, Barry Gifford, Chandler himself - there’s a very good reason why I’ve read virtually everything those writers have written. Eoin Colfer’s PLUGGED, incidentally, is a welcome addition to those ranks.

Me - A wee birdy (well, your blog) tells me you're bringing to market a book about this new and exciting wave of Irish Crime Fiction. Tell us about that.

Declan - DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY is a collection of essays, interviews and short stories written by Irish crime writers about the phenomenon that is the current explosion in Irish crime writing. And it’s not simply a case of quantity, as the roll-call suggests: John Connolly, Tana French, Eoin McNamee, Adrian McKinty, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Stuart Neville, Jane Casey, Colin Bateman, John Banville, Declan Hughes, Niamh O’Connor, Alan Glynn, Brian McGilloway, Alex Barclay, Ken Bruen … they’re all writers who can hold their own in any company, crime or otherwise. 

It just seemed to me that a whole generation of writers was coming through at the same time, all writing during a period of time in Ireland that has proved convulsive - from the murder of Veronica Guerin and the IRA ceasefires in Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s, through the rise of the Celtic Tiger economic miracle, and then the decline and fall into economic meltdown - and I thought it might be an interesting exercise to have the writers themselves explore the reasons - personal, political, commercial, literary - why they chose to write crime fiction. 

Hopefully it’ll appeal to crime fiction fans all over the world, though, because the writers mentioned above have already proven that Irish crime writing can compete with the best the international stage has to offer.

Me - Now I'm going to do to you what you do to your victims, sorry guests on your own excellent blog (If you're not a follower, get your butt over there pronto)  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS - God dictates you can only read OR write, which do you go for?

Declan - Read. Read, read, read, read, read. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write, and God knows I get like a hungover bear if I don’t get to write when I need to. But if I had to make a choice, and being all too aware of my own limitations as a writer, and all too aware of the fact that there are writers out there that I couldn’t match in a thousand years of trying, then I’d be happy to sit back and read until my eyesight fails. 

To write is to be; to read is to live.

An Interview with Declan Burke (Part 1)

Declan Burke is an author and freelance writer. He writes a monthly crime column for the Irish Times, and reviews fiction for a variety of other outlets, including RTE radio’s Arena programme, the Sunday Business Post, and the Sunday Independent. He is the editor ofDOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY (Liberties Press). His novel Eightball Boogie was reviewed on these here pages recently and I was so in awe of his talent I thought I should have a few words with him on your behalf. If you like books, you're gonna love this ...

Me. You have 3 words. Describe Eightball Boogie.

Declan: Chandler on poitín.  

 Me. I had to look that up. It's that illegal alcoholic brain-rot stuff, innit. (Pocheen) Declan, you now have another 21 ...

Declan: Irish freelance journalist Harry Rigby gets caught up in a paramilitary feud investigating the story behind a politician’s wife’s apparent suicide.  

Me. Why fiction? Why crime?

Declan: They say that most writers write their first books because the book they most want to read hasn’t been written yet. I like to read all kinds of books - different types of fiction, and non-fictions - but I’ve never yet read a non-fiction that made me feel like I wanted to write a better biography / history / pop science book, mainly because I’m not qualified enough in any one area to do so. And then there’s the fact that books that are made up, invented, require the least amount of research. I quite like the fact that I am, as a friend once pointed out to me, the world’s greatest living expert on Harry Rigby. He’s the one topic on which I can’t be contradicted.

As for why crime: I like that the crime novel has an in-built narrative arc, and that its narrative arc is very similar to the classical three-act tragedy. It’d be tough to reinvent the wheel every time, although when I’m writing, I always do my best to push the conventions as far out of shape as possible. Plus, crime stories tend to favour life-or-death scenarios, which gives good crime writing an edge over less intense tales. It’s also true that I have a personality that is disposed to peeking over the edge of abyss, and crime novels, by and large, tend to drag you into dark places that you wouldn’t normally dream of going in your day-to-day life.  

Me. You talk about peeking into the abyss and the dark places. Do you ever get strange looks or comments from friends or readers who wonder if the violence you describe (not that you're particularly violent in the grand scheme of things) is really you?

 Declan - Not really, I have to say. As you suggest, my books aren’t overly violent anyway, although there have been a few scenes here and there when I pushed the boat out. Actually, one of my motivations for writing THE BIG O was to see if I could write a believable crime fiction novel that had no murders and the absolute bare minimum of violence. What violence does happen in that book happens ‘off-stage’, other than an accidental knee-capping.   

My latest book, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which will be published in September, is a different matter entirely. It’s a story in which an author engages with the protagonist of a draft he’s abandoned, and the two decide to rewrite the novel to see if they could make the protagonist a more likeable sociopath, in the process blowing up a hospital. The author in the book is unnamed, although it’s made explicit that he is the author of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, and together the pair descend into a rare kind of madness … 

When it was finished, I sent the book out to some writers I know and respect, hoping they might give it a few kind words, which most of them did. But I also got a couple of follow-up emails, asking if I was, y’know, okay, and hoping my mental health was sound. Which suggests that the book, for all its failings, achieved what it set out to do. And yes, thanks for asking, my mental health is perfectly fine. When I’m not writing, anyway.”

Me -  Now, let's jump into the abyss ... when writers write about violent events what, if any, responsibility to the reader do they have?

Declan - That’s a very tough question to answer. The easy way to do it, I think, is to take flight for the moral high ground, and say that the writer’s only responsibility is to the story, following it to its logical conclusion to the best of his or her ability. Once the story is written, it’s up to the reader to accept or reject what the writer says, or what he or she has the characters do.

I suppose it’s all to do with intent, and perhaps even as much to do with the kind of violence being described. For example, there seems to be a fascination at present with some writers (and readers too, obviously) for a graphic depiction of rape, torture and other kinds of degrading violence towards women. I can understand the logic behind that kind of story, because the majority of fiction readers are women, who live their lives, if the statistics are to be believed, with an acute awareness of the possibility, or threat, of sexual violence hanging over them; in that context, a story in which a physically or sexually abused woman exacts vengeance on her abusers can be read as, ultimately, an uplifting one. In a sense, such novels are simply grotesque exaggerations of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.

What matters there, I think, is the fine line between a graphic description of such violence for the sake of verisimilitude, and one which is simply exploitative and titillating. In that scenario, the writer - or the serious writer, at least - most certainly has a responsibility to his or her readers. 

But it really is a matter of intent, and context. I remember when the movie ‘Fight Club’ came out first, and it was hammered for its depictions of violence, which were shown - particularly in the fight club scenes themselves - in all their gory detail. In other words, when you hit someone hard, bones crack, blood flows, suffering follows. That same month, the latest Bond movie was released, in which God only knows how many people were wiped out with machine-gun fire and explosions in the opening sequence alone. By contrast, only one person dies violently in ‘Fight Club’, and it’s a death that has very serious consequences, whereas Bond simply goes his merry way, bedding women and blasting baddies. Bizarrely, the movie that got the sordid reputation for being overtly violent was the one that engaged with violence and death as a serious issue, while the glorified cartoon of mass killing was greeted with whoops and cheers.

I’ve been in fights, in my time. Not many, and always for defensive reasons, but the experiences were such that I never take violence lightly, either as a writer or a reader.

Me - Oooo - not a man to mess with then. 

(Note to reader - all 3 of you - the interview with Declan was so good I've stretched it out over two posts. Come back next time for more crime fiction goodness.)

Bob and my Kindle

The Great Kindle experiment, for me at least, is over. For now. Why, I hear you chime in response?

Because the dog ate it.

I’ve not had to say that since I was ten and a teacher asked me where my homework was. 

Yes, like many other people’s dogs, our Bob has a taste for the written material. I could just about handle it when he ate Lee Child’s latest hardback. Next up for a gnashing was Jim Butcher’s “Changes” and that earned Bob a swift rebuke. For “rebuke” read a loud voice, a skelp on the bum with said book and being ejected into the back garden.

The wee fella was watching and said, ‘Dad, you over-react. It’s only a book.’

Only a f~/&*ing book? Luckily, I had finished both books. (BTW, Jim Butcher is very, very, very good. You like vampires, wizards and fast violent action? JB is your man.)

Next up for use as a teething toy was myKindle. I was in the middle of Bill Kirton’s The Figurehead as well. i was reading into the wee hours, eventually went up to bed and yes, I left it in the wrong place and yes, it is now gubbed. Bob was satisfied with a chomp at the top right hand corner of the machine so the bottom half of the screen is perfectly readable. I just have to guess at what Bill is saying for the first ten lines of very page.

See me? Not a happy chappy.

If any of you kind people at Amazon are reading this and you would like to donate a kindle to the May Contain Nuts community leader – i.e. me – please don’t dilly dally. First class should get it here before Sunday.

To be honest though, my reading habits hadn’t really changed that much. I bought the thing early December. I downloaded about half a dozen books and read one and a half. (The half read piece being the afore-mentioned The Figurehead. Bill, I’m trying to give you as many mentions as possible; is this ok?)

In comparison, over the same period of time I have read, oh at least a dozen novels. True, most of them are free, but still.

Conclusion? I’m never going to go full-on-digital with my reading material. I LOVE browsing in book shops. I LOVE holding the weight of paper in my hand and flicking through the pages.

However the e-book debate rages on with the media desperate to tell us that the paper book is dead, long live the e-book.  We’ll see. The only thing that’s for sure is that the times they are a-changing. And some “mid-list” – gawd, what a horrible term – authors are seeing their books sell in previously unimaginable numbers. Which is nice.

Allan Guthrie, one of the finest crime-writers in these here shores has a blog where he talks about e-books that sell. Go HERE   for a wee read.

Friend of this blog, all-round good-guy and wonderfully talented crime-writer Declan Burke is selling his e-book. Got a spare pound or two?  click HERE Give him a try. Guaranteed enjoyment. Word.

What do you guys think? Have you made the switch to E? 

Crime/ Thriller picks of 2010 (part deux)

And to carry on from my blog of the other day, here’s some more books that lit up my year.

This first book is not one that was new, but one that was new to me in 2010.

This is my blog, so I get to make the rules. It’s Eightball Boogie by Declan Burke.

Declan writes regularly over at Crime Always Pays and is one of the smartest writers out there. You want a book with heart and brains then look no further.

The main character, Harry Rigby, is a private eye and a reporter. As a reporter, he loiters around the edges of a crime scene: a woman has been stabbed to death in her home, and the killing has been poorly disguised as a suicide. The woman’s husband was a corrupt politician, and police will say little about the death, even about how the body was discovered. A client then hires Rigby  the P.I. to prove that his wife is having an affair. Rigby the detective finds the wife. Rigby the reporter finds another reporter who was working on a profile of the murder victim at the time she was killed. Drugs are involved as are shady property deals.

And then there’s Harry's girlfriend – who he hasn’t slept with for 14 months and their son, Ben that Harry loves to distraction. And THEN there’s Gonzo, his psycho brother. Give all of that a good stir, add writing that’s so sharp you could shave by it and the scene is set for a fantastic read.

I am quite frankly in awe of Declan Burke’s ability with a sentence. His writing is at turns lyrical and succinct; his dialogue snaps in your ear and his characters are so real they stay in your head long after you’ve turned the last page.

Search out ANYTHING he’s written, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, I'll refund your money if you don't. (Good luck with that. Poorer than the poorest of church mice, me.)

Walter Mosley one of those writers I look for when latest releases is being mentioned. He’s a living legend and he released Known to Evil in 2010.

The book blurb ran as follows...

Leonid McGill, P.I. is struggling to stick to his reformed ways while the people around him pull him in every direction. He has split up with the only woman he has ever loved, Aura, because his conscience won't let him leave his wife. Meanwhile, one of his sons seems to have found true love - but the girl has dangerous men in her past who are now threatening the whole McGill family. And his other son, the charming rogue Twilliam, is doing nothing but facilitating the crisis.

Most worryingly of all, Alfonse Rinaldo, the mysterious power behind the throne at City Hall, the fixer who seems to control every little thing that happens in New York City, has a problem that even he can't fix - and he's come to Leonid for help. It seems a young woman has disappeared, leaving murder in her wake, and it means everything to Rinaldo to track her down.

My review ran thusly...Leonid McGill is an anti-hero, a fallen man who is working to redeem himself, but is constantly held back by the murk of his past. This is a device that has been worked well in the past by other writers and this does nothing to detract from Walter Mosley’s achievement with Known to Evil.

Following on from the much loved Easy Rawlins (and if you haven’t read any of those books, boy are you in for a treat) Walter Mosley has created another serial character of complexity that, I’m certain, continued to breathe out of sight whenever I closed the book. Which I did often as I was keen to savour every sentence. For many writers I greedily consume their words as I anxiously race to the end, but with Mosley I find that I consciously slow down so that every insight, each description, every word is rubbed against the microscope of my thoughts.

I love it when I come across a new (to me) writer with a backlist of books to go at and one such introduction (to me) during 2010 was S J Rozan and “Trail of Blood”

Synopsis: Estranged for months from fellow P.I. Bill Smith, Chinese-American private investigator Lydia Chin is brought in by colleague and former mentor Joel Pilarsky to help with a case that crosses continents, cultures, and decades.

In Shanghai, excavation has unearthed a cache of European jewellery dating back to World War II, when Shanghai was an open city providing safe haven for thousands of Jewish refugees. The jewellery, identified as having belonged to one such refugee - Rosalie Gilder - was immediately stolen by a Chinese official who fled to New York City. Hired by a lawyer specializing in the recovery of Holocaust assets, Chin and Pilarsky are to find any and all leads to the missing jewels.

My crimesquad.com review began as follows...

Published as The Shanghai Moon in the US, Trail of Blood is one of those books. You know, the kind that demands your attention and refuses to allow you to do anything else – other than drink coffee and visit the bathroom – until it is finished.

There is so much to enjoy and admire about this novel, great characters, neat prose and a writer who plots expansively and ambitiously. SJ Rozan offers up a rich tapestry of historical mystery stitched in to contemporary suspense. Using letters and journal entries from the 1930s and 1940s, Rozan illustrates a little known facet of the war: the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, setting the stage beautifully for a modern quest for missing valuables stolen during the Holocaust. The plot dips, weaves and turns to the very last page offering a tantalising clue here and a fascinating insight there.

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer is the second book from South Africa to make my faves for the year.

Synopsis: Some say Detective Benny Griessel is a legend. Others say he is nothing but a drunk.
Either way, he has stepped on too many toes over the years ever to reach the top of the promotion ladder. However, as Thirteen Hours opens he is working at staying sober in order to win back his estranged wife and kids, while mentoring the new generation of crime fighters - mixed race, Xhosa and Zulu.

Two crimes demand his attention; a prominent figure in the fledgling South African music industry is murdered and a young American backpacker disappears in Cape Town. The politicians panic. North America is a huge tourist market for the country and this is a situation they do not want to grow into an international news event.

 Benny has just thirteen hours to save the girl, save his career, and uncover a conspiracy, which threatens the financial stability of the whole country.

Review: “Thirteen Hours” opens with a young American girl running away from a group of men with guns. We soon find out that she witnessed the death of her best friend at the hands of these men and she knows if she doesn’t get to safety she will be next.  From this rip-roaring start the action never lets up.

Meyer is genius at maintaining the pace at a breakneck speed while inserting just enough information about his characters and their world to make the action relevant and the characters believable.

The flavour running through the very human stories at the heart of this fine novel is unmistakably African. Meyer demonstrates his affection for his country while highlighting some of the issues that affect it as it works towards re-building post-apartheid.

Thirteen Hours is a fascinating read that offers pulsing action, a beautiful setting and a very real set of characters. It’s one of those books you finish with regret and then immediately begin searching for more of the author’s work.

Another author who never fails to deliver is Robert Crais and with “The First Rule” he stuck to his unfailingly high standards.

Synopsis: The team thought that Frank Meyer had got out of the 'life' safely. For the love of a good woman, he had put an end to his days as a mercenary and settled down to a normal life with a “proper” job and 2.4 children. It had been a decision he laboured over, but encouraged by his boss and friend Joe Pike; he committed to it and walked away from the only life he had ever known.

Ten years later, a group of vicious killers charge into his Los Angeles home and brutally gun him and his family down. The local cops are convinced that Frank never entirely left his former life and their cursory investigation convinces them that Frank was involved with some unsavoury characters, and that the deal backfired big time.

Pike knows better. He starts his own investigation and it doesn't matter that, as he delves deeper into the events of that traumatic evening, he discovers that this group of criminals are bigger and more well-organised than he ever could have imagined - part of sprawling gang of east European mafia. None of that concerns him. One of his team has been killed and everybody involved will pay the ultimate price.

Here’s an excerpt from my review of this one: Fans of Robert Crais will be well aware of his work with Elvis Cole and his side-kick, the enigmatic Joe Pike. Most of the previous works are fronted by Elvis, but in The First Rule, Joe gets the nod.

Joe Pike is my favourite “bad”, good guy out there. Crais has created a wonderful character that embodies everything you want from an action hero. An expert fighter, with or without weapons, dependable to the last, and with an unwavering belief in his own set of ideals. He will act as judge, jury and executioner and once set on that path he will do so without question.

This is heroic fiction with high voltage action scenes as carefully choreographed as anything on the Broadway stage. Once again Robert Crais delivers. What can I say? I’m a fan.

So booklovers, I've bored you with my choices - what got your literary juices flowing this year?

Its the first of the month and that means...

...there are fresh reviews on CRIMESQUAD.COM

A few of mine are sitting there waiting for your delectation, including John Connolly's The Whisperers and our Book of the Month, Cross Country Murder Song by Philip Wilding.

Also included is a review of a new novel by a friend of this blog; Donna Moore and Old Dogs. Donna has her own blog - absolutely well worth a read - go here bigbeatfrombadsville in which she (mainly) highlights Scottish crime fiction. Bless her wee cotton socks and thigh-length boots.

Donna's latest novel was described by book reviewer extraordinaire, Declan Burke as being like an Ealing comedy with salty Glaswegian patter. Or somebody did. I should check but I don't have time/ can't be arsed.

Here's what I had to say over at Crimesquad...


Having established her credentials with her first published novel “Go To Helena Handbasket” Donna Moore turns her wit and attention on to the world of the crime caper with gut-achingly funny results.


With care and precision Donna introduces her main players and their foibles and then very cleverly drops them in and out of the action to maximum effect. How she orchestrates her comic set-pieces is nothing short of genius and designed to eke out every last piece of humour.

An extra ability added to the already impressive list of skills that Donna exhibits in her writing is the ear she has for dialogue. For someone who is not a natural Scot she has the accent and the patter down to perfection.

If Alexander Pope was here to turn his attention to crime writing rather than philosophy he might have said, to laugh is human; to make other people laugh is divine. Donna Moore shine your halo.




Now people, go do yourself a favour and buy a copy.

A Novel Approach

You’ve had two books published to critical acclaim. Your next manuscript garners exciting reviews from commissioning editor and your peers...but you can’t gain any concrete interest from a publisher so it remains a stream of words in a digital file.

Here’s what a couple of respected names have said about the book concerned...

“A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O’Brien and Raymond Chandler.” – John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of THE SEA



“A GONZO NOIR is unlike anything else you’ll read this year … Laugh-out-loud funny … This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone … a feat of extraordinary alchemy.” – Ken Bruen, author of AMERICAN SKIN



Sound brilliant doesn’t it? But the publishers are saying the book lacks commercial appeal. And a writer with a track record and a proven readership goes without a contract.

What do you do in this situation? Do you give up on a book that you know is worthwhile or do you try and come up with a fresh way of bringing it to the market?

Well, Declan Burke is planning on doing just that. Rather than have his work wither in a file he has decided to self-publish with a difference. Print-On-Demand gives writers a chance to see their work in print for a relatively modest outlay, but what Dec is doing with it is testing the waters before any money is spent. I’ll let him explain this in more detail....



“Generally speaking, self-publishing involves a writer investing his or her own hard-earned money in having a book published, and then hoping that enough readers will buy the book to make it worth his or her while. Generally speaking, I tend to go about things backasswards, so I’m going to invert the conventional model and ask the readers to put their money where my mouth is. It’s a variation on crowdfunding, in which a reader pledges a certain amount of money to see the book published, and in return receives a copy of the book when it sees the light of day.”



I’d love to see this succeed. For more details why don’t you visit Dec’s excellent blog and see for yourself. It can be found at http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/