"The truth? Would you fuck off, would you?"
The blurbs for Alan Glynn's Winterland are full of words like powerhouse, resonant, memorable, classic and uncomfortable, but my favorite one is wit.The line quoted in this post's title passes from a decayed but alert inmate of a retirement home for Irish politicians to a younger pol about to attain a lofty position and belatedly seeking the truth about a long-ago incident.
The old man's dismissive incredulity marks a sly, comic turn in the final hundred or so of the novel's 311 pages. In those pages, newspapers both sensationalist and somber speculate with great gravity and greater inaccuracy over the cause of a multiple killing.
In those pages, the protagonist, a woman seeking the reason for the deaths of her identically named brother and uncle, a woman who might reasonably have spent the final hundred pages being driven to hysteria or death, pauses to deliver a genre-tinged mission statement that must have had Glynn smiling as he wrote it:
"`I don't know,' she says, her voice a notch or two louder, `but I think I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing all along.'Many a crime writer has used real estate development as a plot device and a vehicle for political corruption. Not many let corruption and the uncertainty created by its concealment seep into their characters' bones as deeply and drive so many to distraction, painkillers, alcohol, and painfully wrong — though sometimes grimly entertaining — guesses.
"`What's that?'
"Closing one eye, Gina raises the gun and points it at the wall. `Asking questions.'"
***
Alan Glynn talks about paranoia, money, crime writing (“I haven’t read a lot of it, really.”) and other interesting subjects in an interview with Crime Always Pays.© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Alan Glynn, Ireland, politics, Winterland
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 2:53 AM
12 Comments:
When I did my own brief review on Winterland awhile ago, I found out that sometime commenter Photographe à Dublin was actually the photographer behind that beautiful cover for the American edition.
Well, shut my mouth!
I'm so pleased you like the cover.
The art department in Minotaur did a very fine piece of work. The statue is on the book spine as well so that it looks well even shelved.
Lots of good, strong verticals dwarfing the statue. The "A" pressing down on the statue's head is a nice touch, so the designer did a good job, too, I'd say.
There is a very insightful interview with David Rotstein here:
"http://www.jungleredwriters.com/2010/03/busiest-art-director-in-new-york.html"
(I have stopped live linking in comments, as it is possible that the system may interpret it as spam. It's good to see your comments back to normal.)
That was an interesting piece, Photographe. That point about how a cover has to communicate with an audience that hasn't read the book really struck me.
Thanks for that link, Photographe. I think the authors on that site are a little cozier than Alan Glynn. it would be interesting to learn what Rothstein has to say about cover of harder-edged books. I wouldn't mind reading a longer, more comprehensive interview with him.
I think the comments problem was due to a new spam-filtering system that Blogger had neglected to tell users about. Comments that had apparently disappeared turned out to be awaiting clearance as non-spam.
Seana, I liked what Rothstein said about the necessity of trying to do too much with the cover.
Anybody interested in cover art will find fine work on the Behance sites.
I'll upload some links, in time.
Also, Tumblr is gaining in popularity with artists and some cutting edge work can be found there.
It would be great to know more about fonts used by book designers.
I think I've written at least once, somewhere on this blog, about a cover artist's Web site, but I can't find it now,
As for fonts used by book designers, I would take a guess that the cozier a mystery is, the more serifs its over font will have.
Peter, I have some vague recollection of this too, but can't find it either. However, there's this, which might offer something.
It offers something, and I always like to compare Camilleri's British and U.S. covers. But the comment I was thinking of mentioned a site devoted to cover design.
Dash it all, maybe the discussion was on a blog other than this one.
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