His preferred method of relaxation is to keep working. While he swears he’ll keep his family happy by putting the pen down over Christmas, he reveals that he’s made inroads into the next Parker book. Tentatively scheduled for release in September 2012, with a working title of THE WRATH OF ANGELS, Connolly promises a return to more supernatural fare and a sequel of sorts to 2005’s THE BLACK ANGEL. There are other projects on the horizon too, and you can expect further adventures of Samuel Johnson, hero of Connolly’s newest franchise, albeit one aimed at a younger audience.For the full interview, clickety-click here …
“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
Friday, December 9, 2011
What JC Did Next
Thursday, December 8, 2011
On Small But Perfectly Formed Readerships
Naturally, the award has sent McKinty into a dizzying downward spiral of self-examination over at his blog, wherein he talks about the titanic effort required to write novels when the world at large, for the most part, doesn’t seem to care. He then goes on to say this:
“But maybe the struggle is the point. I bet if I put my mind to it I could write a knock-off Michael Connelly or Lee Child and make boatloads of cash. But I don’t want to. I’m not that much of a cynic and books are too important to me. I don’t want to write for money or for the whims of editors in corner offices, I want to write the books that move me and make me think and make me excited. My readers get invested not just in the characters and the story but also in the words and sentences that make up the story. My readers like irony and judicial profanity. My readers like a good joke and a well turned phrase. My readers admire wit. My readers know who Seamus Heaney is. My readers DON’T HAVE TO HAVE EVERY LAST THING EXPLAINED TO THEM. My readers aren’t prudes. My readers don’t have to be told why its wrong to pour a shamrock on the head of a pint of Guinness. My readers can spot the gag in the sentence that begins chapter 2 of FALLING GLASS. My readers can recite poems from memory. My readers aren’t frightened by a page without dialogue. My readers can name the Presidents back to 1932. My readers are sometimes poleaxed but seldom banjaxed. My readers are a select group and, you know what, I’m really glad about that. Slainte.”God bless you, sir, and long may you run.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Once Moe With Feeling
“HURT MACHINE is the 7th novel in the Moe Prager Mystery series. When the series began with the original novel, WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE, Moe was in his thirties. He had just been forced to retire from the NYPD due to an inglorious injury and knee surgery. He was alone, childless, in search of a future without his beloved job. In Hurt Machine, Moe is in his sixties. He and his brother own a large chain of wine shops. He’s been twice married, has one daughter on the verge of marriage, and has only worked one case as a PI in the last several years. Let’s face it, it’s tough to write a credible PI series when your protagonist takes long naps and worries about his Lipitor dosage. Yes, Moe Prager is coming around that last turn.Yes, yes - but is it any good? Well, Publishers Weekly likes it, for starters …
“In HURT MACHINE, his daughter is two weeks away from her wedding when Moe receives very grave news about his health. Things get even more complicated when his ex-wife and former PI partner, Carmella Melendez, shows up after a nine year absence, asking for a desperate favour. A favour Moe is not inclined to grant. It seems Carmella’s estranged sister has been murdered outside a popular Brooklyn pizzeria, but no one, not even the NYPD, seems very motivated to find the killer. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it?
“Fans of the series needn’t worry, though. The series isn’t coming to an end with HURT MACHINE. I plan on two more novels in the series. ONION STREET, the Moe book I’ve recently begun, is a prequel and will feature Moe just before he joins the NYPD. He’s an 18 year-old student at Brooklyn College and one of his closest friends gets in way over his head. As for the last book in the series … we’ll just see. It’s been a hell of a ride and I don’t know that it will be that easy to let go of my old pal, Moe.” - Reed Farrel Coleman
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
On Keeping Things Just The Right Side Of Ridiculous
Last weekend was particularly good for our humble tome, however, as Stuart Neville popped up in the Irish Times’ round-up of writers’ favourite books of the year, in which he gave a fully deserved big-up to Tom Franklin’s wonderful CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, and then went on to say this:
“Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (Liberties Press, €12.99) is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cigarette paper. A story in which a character steps into the real world to guide a novelist through a rewrite of his own tale could easily veer into the realm of the pretentious in the hands of a less able author, but Burke manages to keep things just on the right side of ridiculous. I recently found myself trapped on a delayed train for six hours. Thank God I had this sublimely crazy book to keep me sane.”I thank you kindly, Mr Neville, not least for allowing me to associate with such august company.
On Sunday, the Sunday Independent published a very nice interview with yours truly, courtesy of Hilary White, in which I held forth on writing, giving up cigarettes, becoming a dad and why crime writers are a pretty nice bunch of people, possibly because they leave all their nasty stuff on the page. To wit:
“There is a theory that goes along those lines, yeah, because you’re venting all the dark aspects of your psyche on to the page, and when you walk away you’ve left your vices behind. ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL toys with that idea, that the writer’s psyche is split and the good person he wants to be is writing this bad character that he could easily be -- and may already be -- out of his system.”For the rest, clickety-click here …
Monday, December 5, 2011
Playing Patsy
THE IMITATION OF PATSY BURKE, John J. GaynardInteresting stuff. I mean, it’s not often you stumble across a review of a crime novel that name-checks Jesus, Karl Marx, Caravaggio, Nietzsche and Dante, is it? Or am I just leading too sheltered a life these days?
Booze, brawls, sex and schizophrenia—such is the artist’s life in Paris, according to this raucous satire.
When Patsy Burke, a world-famous Irish sculptor living in France, wakes up in his hotel with his body torn and bloody and no recollection of how it got that way, he’s not particularly surprised. A raging alcoholic given to beating up pimps in Paris dives, he’s used to blackouts and drunk tanks. Unfortunately, his latest bender has left a dead man in its wake, and Patsy’s attempt to piece together what he’s been doing for the last few days triggers a reckoning with his past and his demons. Said demons take the form of bickering voices inside his head, including Caravaggio, a Nietzchean figure who eggs on Patsy’s fistfights and womanizing; Goody Two-Shoes, a prim woman who castigates his atrocious treatment of friends and lovers; a wispy romantic named Forget Me Not; and a scary demiurge called the Chopper, whose insistent promptings to behead women with a meat cleaver are barely fended off by the remnants of Patsy’s sanity. These clashing personae narrate Patsy’s violent picaresque and roiling internal conflicts; he’s bombastic, selfish, preening and cynical, yet steeped in Irish-Catholic guilt. (His downward spiral was touched off when he learned that a statue he made of Jesus being sodomized by two monks—meant as a protest against clerical abuses—is now presiding over orgies conducted by Vatican pedophiles.) Patsy’s saga is plenty lurid—”You bit off his right ear and you spat it out”—yet the author’s pristine prose keeps it under control. Despite the tale’s almost Dantean excesses, Gaynard makes the tone ironic and droll—during an odyssey through the Parisian demimonde, Patsy finds himself discussing Marxist development economics with a glamorous prostitute—and registers delicate shadings of his antihero’s psychic travails. The result is an entertaining, over-the-top farce that still draws readers in with pathos. - Kirkus Reviews
For more on John J. Gaynard, check out his Good Reads page …
Sunday, December 4, 2011
CAPNYA; Or, The Crime Always Pays Novel of the Year Award
To make it (slightly) interesting, and because the real object of the exercise is to bring the titles of great books to the attention of those who might have missed them first time around, I’m going to ask you to name your top three books, in 1-2-3 order, with the person who gets closest to the right 1-2-3 bagging themselves a signed copy of ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL by yours truly (runner-up gets two signed copies, etc.). In the event that two or more contributors tie, the names will go into a bobbly hat.
The list of books below isn’t so much a longlist as a suggested reading list, and please feel free to include any title that isn’t on it in your 1-2-3. I’m going to run this post for two weeks, with the winner to be announced on Monday, December 19th, and maybe for giggles I’ll post a ‘short-list’ of the most popular books this time next week.
Incidentally, I’ll be leaving myself and ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL out of the competition. As always, this has less to do with transparency and accountability and the democratic process than it has to do with the horrendous embarrassment that would come with my not winning an award I’m hosting on my own blog. You know it makes sense.
Anyway, on with the list, which is presented in alphabetical order:
NINE INCHES, Colin Bateman;So there you have it, folks. Vote early, vote often, and let the games commence …
A DEATH IN SUMMER, Benjamin Black;
THE POINT, Gerard Brennan;
HEADSTONE, Ken Bruen;
THE RECKONING, Jane Casey;
PLUGGED, Eoin Colfer;
THE BURNING SOUL, John Connolly;
THE FATAL TOUCH, Conor Fitzgerald;
BLOODLAND, Alan Glynn;
TABOO, Casey Hill;
GOODBYE AGAIN, Joseph Hone;
THE CHOSEN, Arlene Hunt;
THE RAGE, Gene Kerrigan;
HIDE ME, Ava McCarthy;
LITTLE GIRL LOST, Brian McGilloway;
FALLING GLASS, Adrian McKinty;
STOLEN SOULS, Stuart Neville;
BLOODLINE, Brian O’Connor;
TAKEN, Niamh O’Connor;
DUBLIN DEAD, Gerard O’Donovan;
THE BLOODY MEADOW, William Ryan;