Down these green streets a man must walk, plus a question for readers
It’s not my turn to host the Carnival of the Criminal Minds yet. No, the current place to go for a roundup of the best in crime-fiction bloggery is Material Witness.
Still, I’d like to direct you to Bert Wright’s essay about Irish crime fiction on the always straightforward and somber Crime Always Pays blog. I’ll cull a few highlights from the piece as an entrée, then let you click your way to the main course:
© Peter Rozovsky 2007
Technorati tags:
Irish crime fiction
Ken Bruen
Declan Hughes
Still, I’d like to direct you to Bert Wright’s essay about Irish crime fiction on the always straightforward and somber Crime Always Pays blog. I’ll cull a few highlights from the piece as an entrée, then let you click your way to the main course:
“Thirty to forty years ago, crime in Ireland might involve an ageing farmer murdered over an inheritance dispute, sweet nothings in the ballroom of romance turning to violence in a country lane. Now we have teenage drug barons plugged in cold blood on quiet suburban streets, headless torsos fished out of canals, contract killings as an extension of the services sector, and most notoriously, a fearless crime reporter executed in her car at a busy intersection.”With Declan Hughes’ statement in mind, readers, what other boom towns have produced classic crime fiction?
“As Ken Bruen, one of our most highly-rated crime writers wrote:`I didn’t want to write about Ireland until we got mean streets. We sure got ’em now.’”
“`It’s part of the tradition too,’ declares Declan Hughes. `The hardboiled novel always depended on boomtowns where money was to be made and corners to be cut: twenties San Francisco for Hammett, forties LA for Chandler.’”
© Peter Rozovsky 2007
Technorati tags:
Irish crime fiction
Ken Bruen
Declan Hughes
Labels: blogs, Carnival of the Criminal Minds, Declan Hughes, Ireland, Ken Bruen
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 9:08 PM
2 Comments:
Some of the denizens of Melbourne "town" were very relieved by the underworld war that sort of fell onto the streets a few years ago. It suddenly seemed to give the idea of "the mean streets of Melbourne" some legitimacy.
Of course nobody much is writing any crime fiction of that flavour, preferring to stick to Politics, Football and Horse Racing - the traditional forms of mean street functioning in these parts [VBEG]...
Ha! You mean some in Melbourne revelled in underworld glamor?
Interesting that no one is writing crime fiction of that flavor. Perhaps the underworld activity exercises an indirect influence. There certainly appears to be something of a boom in Australian crime fiction. And you'll know that much recent Australian crime writing concerns land deals, a very close cousin to politics, yes, but also to corruption and violence.
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