Crimefest 4: Stump the Irish criminal mastermind

 

I can now reveal my role in the just-concluded Crimefest 2013 in sunny Bristol, England, without contravening the Official Secrets Act: I wrote the questions with which contestant Declan Burke had to grapple in the expert-knowledge segment of the festival's Criminal Mastermind quiz. (I'd have won the competition myself last year if I'd had more sleep, less gin, and a sharper ear for the unaccountable way the English speak English.)

My chosen subject last year was Dashiell Hammett, in a quiz I lost on penalty kicks on Hammett's birthday. Declan this year picked Irish crime fiction, and, through the magic of technology, you can now match wits with him.  It's like experiencing the clanging church bells and midnight kebabs of Bristol in your very own home! Do well on this quiz, and you'll win my admiration and maybe a book. Your two minutes begin ... now.

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1.  Which 2007 novel opens: "No offence, Taoiseach ... but you're talking out of your hole"? 
2.  Ronan Bennett’s fifth novel is Zugzwang. What is a zugzwang?  
3.  From which humorist did Ruth Dudley Edwards lift a scene in The English School of Murder, substituting a cat for a swan?  
4.  What was the purpose of Stonehenge, according to Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code?
5.  In which Irish novel is a character kidnapped, and “They made her perform Riverdance”?  
6.  Who said: “I think the great Troubles novel will be written by a woman”?
7. Which Irish crime protagonist’s name means the same thing as Sam Spade’s?
8. 
   Who is Fetch?
9. Who is Israel Armstrong?
10. What is LEPRECON?
11. Which novel headed Brian McGilloway’s 2009 list of “Top 10 Modern Irish Crime Novels”?
12. Which sectarian killer is the model for Victor Kelly in Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man? 
13. Who calls the 1970s a golden age of paranoia?
14. Which novel includes the following line: “Unity was always McShiel's programme, because it did not necessitate taking sides on any definite question.”?



15. Which includes this: “Thing was, he did look like Mickey Rourke. But late-night Brixton, most do, even the women."?
16. Which two non-Irish crime writers did John Banville call “Two of the greatest writers of the 20th century”?
17. Which Irish short-story collection pays tribute in its title to Damon Runyon?
18. Which Irish author was movie director John Ford’s cousin? 
19. Which Irish crime writer is the son of the writer and critic Seamus Deane? 
20. Which Irish crime writer wrote three books with Jason Starr?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013