What turns a good joke into a good story?

I asked that question Friday on Facebook, and some fascinating replies ensued. I wanted to know how crime writers make a story work despite an improbable conceit, and also how they make their stories something more than nonstop yukfests.

Garbhan Downey, whose novels and stories about Derry in Northern Ireland I've written about often, said: "I just watch the news, then dial it back to something more plausible."

John McFetridge, whose crime novels set in Montreal and Toronto are unmatched in their seamless combination of story, history, and character, has this to say about the wild Christopher Brookmyre: "Lots of humor and some improbable conceits but they do work. Very good character development is the reason why, I think."

David Magayna, a big wheel behind Bouchercons, says: "I'd recommend Lawrence Shames and Carl Hiaasen. I believe they make their stories work because among all the absurdity there is enough truth about human nature. ... I think those who do it well, blend it in with the natural elements of the story: plot, setting, character development. I don't think they lead with humor, but incorporate it where they can."

"Plot," said David Biemann, to which McFetridge responded, "Yes, I think the plot is important, too. Brookmyre is very good at grounding his characters and plots in mostly believable, everyday stuff so the more improbable conceits don't overwhelm the book."

Mary Harris had this to say about Donald Westlake's Dortmunder novels: "The characters, hapless ones in Westlake's case, react to ridiculous situations in a way they think is normal."

Travis Richardson mentioned Jim Thompson's great novel Pop. 1280, about which I added that "Everyone mentions Jim Thompson's nightmare visions, but no one seems to talk about his dark, dark humor. What sets Thompson's psychopaths apart is the deadpan way in which they think themselves normal. That can be pretty funny."

Elsewhere on this blog, I call Pop. 1280 "Dark, hilarious, a stunning performance that sustains its mood in every word, far and away the best of Thompson's work that I've read." So, good choice, Travis.

I asked the question for a personal reason. Several years ago I encountered a series of sights around which I built an improbable and entertaining situation without, however, thinking about turning into a story. Where was the conflict that could turn the funny situation into a funny story? What makes the result a story rather than a drawn-out SNL sketch? The e-mail part of this discussion got me started on the story, and the comments here and on Facebook will stay with me as I write. It gets published, and you'll all get acknowledgments. Thanks, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and enjoy the season.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Modern Ireland and modern Irish crime writers: A St. Patrick's Day post

For St. Patrick's Day, here's a post from a couple of years ago about Irish history and what you can learn about it from Irish crime writers.

 =================

 A passage in Adrian McKinty's novel The Bloomsday Dead alerted me to a certain tendency in Belfast to romanticize the present and the past (though McKinty states the case more pungently), and I may first have heard the term irregulars, for the anti-treaty military forces in the Irish Civil War, through Kevin McCarthy.

The dicey subject of Irish-German relations in the middle of the twentieth century? Stuart Neville deals with one strand of its aftermath in his novel Ratlines. (And it appears that Declan Burke may do so as well, in his latest.)  And Eoin McNamee wrote about the chilling sectarian hatred at the heart of one of Belfast's most notorious murder gangs in his novel Resurrection Man.

The strange, orphaned position of Northern Ireland, unloved by both the United Kingdom and Eire (or is that Ireland? Or the South? Or the Republic?) cannot have been portrayed more directly and more touchingly than in the passage of Garbhan Downey's (I forget in which book) where a politician from the North tells a counterpart from the South something like: "I know you regard us as the unwanted child you'd rather tie up in a sack and toss into the river." And my first inkling that Irish history was more complicated than the Manichean pieties we get in America came when Gerard Brennan took me to the Irish Republican History Museum off the Falls Road in Belfast.

I've just finished reading Part IV of R.F. "Roy" Foster's Modern Ireland 1600-1972, and I was periodically surprised and delighted when his entertaining, opinionated, analytical, non-ax-grinding history would touch upon subjects dealt with in some depth by each of the above-mentioned Irish crime writers. Foster's declaration, for example, that

"For all the rhetoric of anti-Partitionism, opinion in the Republic was covertly realistic about this point, too: the predominant note of modern Ireland in 1972 was that of looking after its own."

says in historical terms what Downey does in fictional ones, and induces a similar twinge of sympathy for Northern Ireland's people, if not its leaders.

So thanks, Irish crime writers, for writing entertaining popular fiction while casting an intelligent eye on the problematic present and past of your problematic country.

*

Foster's bibliographic essay at the end of Modern Ireland mentions one Irish crime writer by name, though not for her crime fiction:

"There are few first-rate biographies for the period, one glowing exception being R. Dudley Edwards' Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure, which illuminates far more than its subject."

Looking for more? Edwards, Downey, McNamee, and Brennan contributed stories to Akashic Books' Belfast Noir collection, edited by McKinty and Neville.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

"Fuck, it was cheese": Dietrich Kalteis' The Deadbeat Club

I'm not as high on Elmore Leonard as some crime fiction readers are, and my misgivings about George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle verge on heresy, according to at least one highly partisan commenter on this blog.Yet some of my favorite crime novels of recent years—by John McFetridge, Declan Burke, Charlie Stella, Garbhan Downey—are of the Higgins/Leonard school, with its humor; its ensemble casts and multiple points of view; its wry views of men and women at work; and equal measures of sympathy, understanding, and careful observation granted to cops and criminals alike.

The latest entry is Dietrich Kalteis' second novel, The Deadbeat Club, about the complications unleashed by a drug war in southern British Columbia, a war with at least five sides and ensuing complications of which Kalteis good narrative advantage.

Throw in fast action, an interesting observation about Canada and the United States as settings for crime*, and a use of cheese that you've likely never seen before in a crime novel, and you've got a few hours of heartwarming and violent fun on the way.

===================

* "His baby face defied his age, hair as wild as Tanner himself. Plenty of practice with Russian AKs, Tanner did a stint in the ashes of the former Yugoslavia. Left a body count up and down the Congo, hunted Al Qaeda and Islamics, popped off insurgents in Iraq, Darfur, more in the Gaza and Georgia. Now there was talk of North Korea. All the same to Tanner. A resume that had the military contractors drooling.

"North of the border things were different, no military contractors up here. Tanner lying low and getting high, starting to feel bored. So when he heard Travis wanted guns, sending his boys to the shipyard, he offered to throw in, not worried what the gig paid."

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Why George V. Higgins but not Ross Thomas?

Crime writers and readers revere George V. Higgins for The Friends of Eddie Coyle, but we don’t talk much about Ross Thomas these days. This puzzles me, since Thomas was better than Higgins at some of the things Higgins is celebrated for: gritty looks at men at work, including criminals, and razor-sharp dialogue cleverly contrived to convey character and create the illusion that this is how people really speak.

 I base these remarks on Thomas' Missionary Stew, which appeared in 1983, thirteen years after The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and that's where the caveat comes in. Though an experienced novelist by the time ... Eddie Coyle appeared, could Thomas have been influenced by the younger writer, the way the similarly older, more experienced Elmore Leonard was?

I ask because the three previous Thomas novels I had read (Cast a Yellow Shadow, The Seersucker Whipsaw, and The Fools in Town Are on Our Side) either predate The Friends of Eddie Coyle or appeared the same year, and I don't remember those books bringing Higgins or Leonard to mind.

Though I don't get the esteem in which Higgins was held, I have no desire to knock him. But I would like to see a revival of interest in Thomas, and not just because he wrote with such wit about politics.

==========================

A wise commenter on my skeptical 2009 post about Eddie Coyle wrote: "I think it's comparatively rare for pioneering texts to stand up in the long term." Maybe Higgins is an example of that pioneer phenomenon, surpassed by his followers. I should like the guy, because I enjoy authors who look up to him and whose works is often compared to his: Bill James, Garbhan Downey, Dana King, Charlie Stella.

I'd hate to think that readers and critics might be scared off by Thomas because he wrote about politics. Don't be; he makes his subject real and funny/
© Peter Rozovsky 2015

More Irish history and why you should read it

Here's some more of what I've learned about Ireland's history, this time mostly from Ronan Fanning's Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910-1922:

1) German arms shipments to Ireland date back at least to April 1914—to the Ulster Volunteer Force; unionists, not nationalists.

2) A much smaller German arms purchase by Irish nationalists, co-led by Erskine Childers a month later for maximum publicity, resulted in a bloody a crackdown by a British regiment.

3)Yes, that Erskine Childers, author of the early spy novel The Riddle of the Sands.

4) The Irish tradition of secret societies and volunteer groups long predates the alphabet soup of organizations that became familiar during the sectarian Troubles that began in 1969.

5) That "The IRA’s initial focus in what is known either as the ‘War of Independence’ or the ‘Anglo-Irish War’ of 1919–21 was the ostracisation of the police."

What does this have to do with contemporary crime fiction set in the present, or a lot closer to it than 1910 to 1922? Not much, unless one is reading Stuart Neville or Adrian McKinty or Eoin McNamee or Garbhan Downey, or Kevin McCarthy, or Anthony Quinn, or Andrew Pepper, or ...

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Five Detectives Beyond Borders-approved soccer books

If you want a skeptical view of FIFA, world soccer's governing body, on the eve of the sport's quadrennial World Cup but can't stand the pubic-hair jokes, manic shimmying, and celebrity pandering of John Oliver, try Soccer in Sun and Shadow (published in the appropriate countries as Football in Sun and Shadow) by Eduardo Galeano.

Galeano writes with a palpable yearning for the days when soccer was a wide-open game, of the joy with which Hungarians, Brazilians, and his own Uruguyan compatriots once played the sport.  He excoriates FIFA's shameful banning of Hungarian players who supported that country's doomed uprising against its Soviet-imposed government in 1956. And he structures the book in extremely short, thematically organized essays, which makes it exceedingly easy reading for non-experts. (I'm only the most casual of soccer fans, and I've made just one visit to South America.)

(I will give Oliver points for including in his anti-FIFA rant a reference to Qatar, the host — for now — of the 2022 World Cup, as a slave state. For some reason, the Gulf states' treatment of dark-skinned peoples seems not to get much play in the American media. I'd hate to think said media are afraid of offending anyone.)

In the meantime, here are four more recommendations from the Detectives Beyond Borders soccer/football/fútbol desk of books that will take you miles from the moronic wasteland of American late-night television:

1. Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer, by David Winner. Odd theories and insightful observations that tie the Dutch school of "total football" tactics to the country's geography.
2. Red or Dead, by David Peace. A moving, stylistically demanding, immensely satisfying novel about former Liverpool soccer manager Bill Shankly and his love for his adopted team and city.
3. Across the Line, by Garbhan Downey. A riotous slapstick comedy about the lengths to which rival former paramilitary men in Northern Ireland will go to best one another in a soccer competition.
4. Off Side, by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Even more satisfying as an ode to the back streets of Barcelona than it is as a mystery.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Desmond Doherty's Valberg: A sort-of Swede in Northern Ireland

I haven't seen a finished copy of Derry's own Desmond J. Doherty's novel Valberg yet, and even if I had, professional ethics would prevent me from reviewing it. (I did a bit of editing on the book.)

I can tell you, however, that

• The author has an interesting professional background.
• The book comes to you from Guildhall Press, who also bring you the excellent Garbhan Downey.
• The grim story will afford readers glimpses of Derry's history, recent and not so recent, that might make them want to explore that history.
• The city makes a fine background for a serial-killer story.
• The novel's plunging of a grim detective of Scandinavian descent into the roiling passions of Derry's history is one of the more surprising and thought-provoking bits of authorial strategy I can remember in crime fiction. I like the idea of a sort-of Swede in Ireland.
• The protagonist's choice of music to listen to when he goes into a tailspin works for me. My antipathy for his favorite musical group — at least in the manuscript — makes the protagonist seem even more alienated than he might otherwise have. And if you like the group, so much the better. Get down with Valberg.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Fun and games from Garbhan Downey

Here's the post I was going to put up a week ago when the author, Garbhan Downey, preempted my plans by offering some comments that I turned into a guest post. The original post was to have been about matters humorous and serious (that is, soccer and politics) in the book, but Downey took care of the serious part with his guest. So this post is  fun and games. And here's a post about another political crime writer who also loved and wrote about soccer (football).

===============

Garbhan Downey says his novel Across the Line is about politics and football (soccer), the lines being both those on the soccer field and that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

So it's no surprise that two of the book's best jokes are about soccer, to wit:

"He'd always hated the descent into Cityside Airport. Because of the airport's topography, the little jet had to stay almost five miles up until it was directly above the runway. The first sign you knew it was on its way down was when the London stewardesses, to a man, would belt themselves into their seats, close their eyes and bless themselves. After which the plant hit the ground quicker than an Italian striker."

and

"`The entire squad walked out of Muff Hall last week when they heard I'd been signed as centre-forward.' 

"`You're joking?' 

"`I'm afraid not. Something about mafias taking over football clubs. That they wouldn't go the way of Chelsea."

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

The Man Without Qualities visits a newspaper

After an excursion into crime fiction in the mild forms of Derek Raymond, Garbhan Downey, and Charlie Stella, I'm back with more from The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, if you prefer the original German), by my man Robert Musil.

Unlike some of the bits I've quoted from this supremely entertaining novel, these latest have nothing to do with crime fiction. One, however, does contain some telling and entertaining reflections on newspapers (and, by extension, media that did not exist when Musil worked on the novel from 1930 to 1942):

"`His Grace believes that we must take our direction from the land and the times,' he explained gravely. `Believe me, it comes naturally of owning land.'"

and

"If he were alive today, Plato—to take him as an example, because along with about a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived—would certainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchanging, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out for its content of reason and reality. [ed. note: Ha!] ... The moment his return has ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little piece on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section..." 

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Garbhan Downey on why Northern Ireland crime fiction is so funny — and so serious

I was ready to put up a second post about Garbhan Downey's novel Across the Line, sparked by this bit of dialogue:

"`Those dirty Fenian bastards,' said Harry, shaking his head sadly."

"Harry" is Harry "the Hurler" Hurley, a Catholic paramilitary leader gone (mostly) legitimate, here enraged because his Protestant counterpart, "Switchblade Vic" McCormick, has schemed to sign a squad of players from the traditionally Catholic soccer team Glasgow Celtic to play for Vic's team in an all-Ireland soccer tournament on which Harry and Vic have a sizeable wager. (Harry had previously pulled a similar stunt for his own team, signing players from Manchester United), and he's outraged to have been outfoxed by his rival, particularly with a team of Catholic players.

Harry's use of the anti-Catholic slur did a number of things for me. It exposed Harry's venality and self-interest. It showed me a Catholic writer confident enough to write words he might not have dared set to paper a few years ago — and a belief that readers in Northern Ireland were ready to accept fun being poked at words they may have heard or uttered in hatred not so long ago. And it was damn funny.

Then Downey surprised me with an e-mail about my first post, which I'd called "Garbhan Downey, humor, and (the specter of) violence."  So, instead of my speculations, I reprint, with his permission, Garbhan Downey on humor and violence in Northern Ireland and the relationship between the two.

================

As always, you ask very salient questions — in this case as to why Irish writers often use humour as a response to violence.

As I might have said to you before, I have no complete answer, though you've set me thinking again as to why I do it myself.

There are those who often misconstrue our levity as callousness. They believe we've become inured because of prolonged tragedy. “Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart, as Yeats would have it.

But I'd contend it's not quite that simple, and we're certainly not heartless. A large part of our humour, I figure, is a defence mechanism to prove to ourselves (and others) that we're not scared of what is often truly terrifying. I say prove to, but I actually mean convince — because the gallows humour is often little more than a thin veil.

For example, in my next book I have included a character called Clack-Clack, who has two artificial knees as the result of a double kneecapping. It's funny because it's the noise he now makes when he walks.

But I can still remember the chill of fear that shot through me when, as a teenager, myself and a pal took a late-night shortcut and inadvertently walked in on a youth being kneecapped by a gang of men wielding hurleys.

I'm not a psychologist of any ilk, but I imagine that to survive in any conflicted society (as ours was until about twenty years ago), it doesn't do any harm to live in an advanced state of denial.

My own experience is that levity can deflect attention from the macabre and puncture the seriousness that violence so often demands. The humour stops us from staring for too long into the abyss. It forces us back to the superficial.

The black humour in my writing reflects a real response, apparent among survivors (by which I mean the entire island of Ireland and many of our neighbours besides).

But, it's also important to note that there has been considerable softening in this humour as the years wear on and peace beds in. People are much kinder now and much less frightened — if at all. Our jokes are more inclined to be about what politician got caught swiping money from the Peace Fund than the gunman who tried to blow his own brains out but missed his ass by three feet.

Not that we're finished with the darkness by any means. There is still a major job to be done satirising the simplistic brutality which went before. And ridiculing it is perhaps one way of ensuring that it never happens again.

— Garbhan Downey

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Garbhan Downey, humor, and (the specter of) violence

I write often about Northern Ireland crime fiction and, from time to time, about humor in crime writing. In the latter discussions, readers sometimes express reservations about whether laughs and mayhem are a suitable combination.

One answer, as long as the author does not make light of violence, is that the combination is true to life. All kinds of people see the absurd or the comical in unexpected situations. Why should criminals, police, or victims be any different?

Another is that humor can sharpen the threat of violence rather than blunt or belittle it. Here's an exchange from Across the Line, the latest novel by Derry's own Garbhan Downey, whose books about Northern Ireland are comic and nothing but comic, but always with an edge of menace understandable in a land so long wracked by bloody conflict and still occasionally shaken by violent aftershocks:

"`One more word and I'll bury you in my back garden. And I'll get Derry's top cop to swear in court that you never got off the plane.'

"`Some republican you are,' laughed Dee-Dee. `Get into bed with the cops one time and you're colluding against your own people.'"

Downey's novels are comic in the classic sense, with resolution coming when lovers pair off with their appropriate matches, but that reference to collusion had to have caused some squirming in Northern Ireland, where the ideological purity of paramilitaries on both sides of the sectarian fighting has long come into question. It's not for nothing that Stuart Neville titled his second novel Collusion.

What do we learn from this, other than that Northern Ireland has some interesting crime writers? Maybe that tragedy and violence are fertile soil for humor that has an edge. What do you think, readers?

***



(New Year's fireworks near my house, with color temperature adjusted. If I had a sound file, you'd be able to share my favorite sensory experience of 2013 so far: the car alarm several blocks from the pyrotechnics that went off in sympathy with each blast: Boom! Boom! Whine! Whine! Boom! Boom! Whine! Whine! etc., etc.)


© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Damon Runyon is hard-boiled more than somewhat

Contractions run rampant in my newspaper; we could use a man like Damon Runyon again.

But the writer whose stories of Prohibition-era Broadway inspired Guys and Dolls was more than just colorful nicknames and eccentric grammar, and even that grammar may have had a point.

I'm giving Runyon another try on account of a blonde doll who is putting her hands on her hips and giving me the eye and saying: "Big Pete! I am reading Damon Runyon's stories, and I am liking them, and I am very much wanting to know what you intend to do about this."

The story she suggested begins like this:

"One night I am standing in front of Mindy's restaurant on Broadway, thinking of practically nothing whatever, when all of a sudden I feel a very terrible pain in my left foot."

and ends— well, the ending, has the same off-beat grammar and syntax and rough good humor, but it's a whole lot darker. And that's why Runyon, at least some of him, still makes it as a crime writer today. But why take my word for it? You can read the story, "Sense of Humor," yourself.

And then you can take a look at a contemporary Irish crime writer's homage to Runyon.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

E-reading in NI

I didn't know when I proofread Garbhan Downey's The American Envoy that the book was something of a landmark in Northern Ireland publishing.

Downey says Guildhall Press is the first Northern Irish publishing house to issue a novel simultaneously in Kindle and printed form and possibly the first in all of Ireland.

In an article he wrote for Verbal: The NI Literary Review, under a headline I'd have been happy to write ("Don't fear the reader"), he's sanguine about a technology and possible business model that have some readers, authors and publishers apprehensive.

To wit:

"Finally, and very importantly, it looks that e-publishing could be good news for writers. Some authors have already negotiated between 50 and 75 percent of the royalties to their digitised books – as opposed to the eight to 15 percent they get from printed volumes.

"In addition, publishing houses will be more inclined to recruit and develop new talent on an “e-book only” basis, as the financial risk to them is much lower.

"And of course, your work can be dispatched instantly to readers across the planet, without any additional cost or haggling with distributors. Just try getting a single US chain to take one hundred copies of your hardcopy novel. You could literally drown in the paperwork."

I was especially interested in the last paragraph. You've seen the debates elsewhere about e-readers. Here I'll ask you to think about what electronic publishing means for books beyond borders, for reading translated work and other literature from outside your own country.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

A delicious way to spend your hard-earned pounds

It's funny, it's Ireland, it's America, and I'll be embarrassed if there are any typos in it.

Buy it here or here, and read what Detectives Beyond Borders has had to say about the author here (scroll down after clicking.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

A meaty book from Derry

Planning to be in Northern Ireland for America's birthday? Get yourself to Easons, Foyleside in Derry from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. July Fourth to join Garbhan Downey in celebrating the release of his novel War of the Blue Roses.

"The subject is roses," Detectives Beyond Borders wrote in April, "specifically a competition to design a peace garden for the White House – and if you think gardening is a clean pursuit, this book will shock you. Downey brings back some of the characters from his previous books, tough, savvy, engaging and, in some cases, unscrupulous folks from Ireland north and south, and he throws in Americans and Englishmen this time. These last give Downey fresh new satirical targets."

Newly pertinent professional ethics prevent me from saying much more about the book, but I hope you'll find the proofreading satisfactory.

====================

Here's what I've written about Roses and Downey's four previous books of political crime comedy (His Yours Confidentially made my short list of best international crime fiction published in 2008).

And here's Downey's Web site for info about the books, a promotional video for War of the Blue Roses, and some covers that will make you smile.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Pilot to control tower: Missed it by that much

Much of Brendan O'Carroll stand-up comedy act could probably not be repeated on a family blog, but he's accurate when it comes to accents; most Americans really do talk like that.

He's also dead on about Ryanair and the surreal results of its ultra-low fares and ultra-high, ultra-rigid service fees. (Ryanair is the airline that has recently contemplated charging passengers to use the lavatories on its flights.) The airline is such a figure of fun that O'Carroll got big laughs at the Millennium Forum in Derry with a mere allusion to an incident in which one of its pilots landed at the wrong airport.

The politics are pretty funny here, too, or should I say they provide rich material for comedy. I'd been impressed that Garbhan Downey could turn out that much fine political crime comedy in just a few years. After a chat with Downey today, I'm surprised the lazy so-and-so has not written three times as much.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Garbhan Downey beyond borders

I owe my presence in the United States to U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy and former Representative Brian J. Donnelly, both of Massachusetts. More than twenty years ago, they sponsored legislation to let 30,000 people a year obtain permanent residency ("green cards") in the U.S. under relaxed requirements.

The 30,000 places were allotted by nation, ranging, if memory serves, from 9,000 from Ireland and 4,000 from Canada down through smaller numbers from other countries and territories.

Since the four annual incomers from New Caledonia were far less likely than the 9,000 from Ireland eventually to swell the voting rolls of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts, I am predisposed toward fond sympathy with Garbhan Downey's upcoming novel, War of the Blue Roses. As the novel opens, the (fictional) Irish taoiseach, or premier, chides the (fictional) U.S. president for overstating his (the president's) Irish ancestry. "Don't knock it," the president replies. "It was enough to get me elected." Irishness has a powerful political presence in America, and Downey gleefully follows his cast of politicians, gangsters and hangers-on to the U.S. and Canada for significant chunks of the new book.

The subject is roses – specifically a competition to design a peace garden for the White House – and if you think gardening is a clean pursuit, this book will shock you. Downey brings back some of the characters from his previous books, tough, savvy, engaging and, in some cases, unscrupulous folks from Ireland north and south, and he throws in Americans and Englishmen this time. These last give Downey fresh new satirical targets.

Pre-publication etiquette forbids my saying much more. And what does the future hold for Downey? Massive international success, perhaps, and adaptations of his work into comic operas. Is Mozart still working?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

A belated best of 2008

In December, my newspaper solicited staff members to choose the best of what they'd read, watched or listened to over the course of the year. The editor, accusing me of being "an expert on the international crime novel," put me on his list. Here were my choices for some of the best international crime fiction published in 2008:

Canada: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge

England: Second Violin, by John Lawton
Iceland: The Draining Lake, by Arnaldur Indriðason
Ireland: The Big O, by Declan Burke; Yours Confidentially, by Garbhan Downey
Italy: Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, by Amara Lakhous, a great little novel that made book critic Carlin Romano wonder: "Do we have an Italian Camus on our hands?"
Switzerland: The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Reading a series out of order

I like this passage from Garbhan Downey's Private Diary of a Suspended MLA, and I like to think I'd enjoy its vivid descriptions, political jabs and lusty good humor even if I were an Ulster Scotsman:

"An Ulster Scots ceili, it seems, is exactly like an Irish one, except all the good bits are taken out. For a start, the musicians were all Scottish and couldn't play in tune; secondly, no-one knew any of the dances, because they were all invented just last week by some chancer from Larne on a big Stormount grant; and thirdly the uileann pipes were replaced with bagpipes, which for us purists is like removing a grand piano from a chamber orchestra and installing a very loud farting machine."

Private Diary ... is the first of Downey's four (t0 date) volumes of comic fiction, and reading it has been a lesson in the pleasures of reading a book out of series order. I've already read Running Mates, Yours Confidentially and Off Broadway, so I especially enjoy the story of how Shea Gallagher and Sue McEwan first met, clashed and loved despite coming from opposite sides of Northern Ireland's political divide. And I enjoy seeing the Stan Stevenson byline on the newspapers stories that form part of the narrative because I know Stevenson takes center stage in Running Mates.

How do you feel about reading out of series order?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Garbhan Downey's politics as unusual

Here are some of the observations on post-Troubles Irish politics that Garbhan Downey gives his characters in Yours Confidentially:

– "In the old days, our methods of winning (and wiping people out) were, admittedly, quite crude – but they were effective. But we've supposedly stopped all that now and are in the business of learning real politics – craft, guile and deceit – as perfected by our Southern neighbors over the last century or so."

– "Word is that the Loyalist Action group – or whatever they call themselves now they've scrubbed off their ACAB tattoos – were very annoyed that Bent had studiously avoided dealing with them over the road. ... One of my dodgy loyalist friends informed me that Vic was so annoyed at Bent's proposed route that he was considering gifting the MP his own little portion of mountain bogland, free gratis. But he was overruled on the grounds that we all love one another again (at least as long as the checques keep coming in)."

– "The problem with the South at the moment is that for the first time in almost two decades there's a fear sneaking back into the economy. They're so worried about losing their new-found wealth that they're cutting back on everything. And they certainly won't want to waste their savings on a prospect as volatile and thankless as the North."

– "But given that we've got equality, of a sort, our constituents are soon going to realise that the prospects for both communities are equally bad. Now that the focus is off their own petty squabbles, they are going to discover just how hard it is to compete in a world where plasma TVs can be produced for a tenner apiece in China and where call-centre workers in India will do the job for a fifth of what people are paid here. And our Get Out of Jail card, which was effectively `Give us extra or we'll blow up your Stock Exchange', is no longer valid. The question for our new masters is: will we still all be happy to sing off the same hymn sheet when the collection boxes are empty?"

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What other crime novels have commented so acidly on politics, recent history, and current affairs?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008