Lean, green Irish crime-writing machines
In other news, Alan Glynn's Bloodland won top crime-fiction prize at the Irish Book Awards last week, topping a shortlist that included Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke and Benjamin Black's A Death in Summer.The Burke and the Glynn are high-water marks of this or any other crime-fiction year. The only reason I hesitate to call each an uneasy monument of our uneasy time is that they're so much fun — sometimes angry or chilling fun, but fun nonetheless.
***
And to the reader hungry for more scraps of Adrian McKinty's forthcoming Cold Cold Ground, here's one:"`School's off. I just heard it on the radio!' I yelled across to them.
"`Piss off ya pervert!' a seventeen-year-old slapper yelled back, flipping me the bird as she did so.
"I'm the bloody peelers, ya wee shite!' I thought about replying but when you're in an insult contest with a bunch of weans at 7:58 in the morning your day really is heading for the crapper."
All crime writing should be this much fun.
© Peter Rozovsky 2011
Labels: Adrian McKinty, Alan Glynn, Benjamin Black, Declan Burke, Ireland, Irish Book Awards, John Banville, Northern Ireland
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 4:33 AM
20 Comments:
Great news and so well deserved.
We're all giddykippered here.
Bloodland is right up there at the top of the TBR pile.
P à D, I have never been giddykippered, to my knowledge, but I shall try to correct the oversight. It's a fine word.
Seana, it belongs there, if not off the pile and in your hot little hands.
3 books for the price of one. I love it!
Good value is more important than ever in today's economy.
Ali
Happy now?
Peter
I gotta admit I kind of stole/homaged that line from a similar scene in Withnail And I.
Homaged. That's a good one. I'm going to remember that for my arsenel of defense should I ever get sued for plagiarism.
Arian. homaging a scene is all right, as long as you don't pastiche a whole lot of homages.
Seana, too many homages can lead to damages. I am glad you are aware of the potential legal repercussions attendant on those who cling to outmoded concepts of "originality."
Peter
The scene directly before that one had more verisimilitude. The cows really did break out of the pasture and invade peoples gardens with amazing frequency.
I very much liked the cows as slow-moving, cud-chewing signs of disorder, but I didn't want to quote the whole book.
Peter
Here's the Withnail scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYDlX49yUSI
God I love that movie.
Thanks. My youthful vocabulary is all the poorer for scrubbers and slappers not having been a part of it.
For words, and lots of them, you cannot beat Hamlet.
"http://laburu.org/~alex/rants/challenging-the-view-of-hamlet-as-a-codependent/"
Ye gods, did anyone ever really call Hamlet co-dependant? That reminds me of Seana's comment somewhere that today we could call Holden Caulfield an at-risk youth.
I expect that down the centuries Hamlet may have been called many things, notably by those forced to play him.
There are so many characters who seek closure...
"http://www.lyricsondemand.com/s/saltnpepalyrics/geeofficerkrupkelyrics.html"
Geez, I suppose someone has said that he has passive-aggressive tendencies, too, and that Lady Macbeth was an enabler.
The links between Withnail and Hamlet is worth further analysis.
I think that the jury is still out on Macbeth's missus.
She's not a bad femme fatale.
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