A crime writer whose name is a soft drink, and an antipodean award

While I travel across the country, interesting things happen in crime fiction around the world:

If you should happen to be in Belfast next Thursday, December 12, No Alibis bookshop will present

INTERNATIONAL CRIME FICTION RESEARCH 

State, Crime and Investigation in Kondor Vilmos’ Crime Fiction 

Dr Kálai Sándor, University Debrecen. Introduction by Dr Andrew Pepper, School of English, QUB h, 5-7. University Square, House 11, Room 101 Refreshments provided.

I wonder what Dr. Pepper's students call him. And I suspect that Dr. Andrew Pepper is also crime novelist Andrew Pepper.

*

Down in the Antipodes, Paul Thomas has won the Ngaio Marsh Award for his novel Death on Demand.  I'd read Thomas' Guerrilla Season years ago and found the humor annoyingly wacky and obtrusive. But Thomas has chops, and I said back then that

" ... slowly I began to realize that damn, this man knows how to tell a story. I’ll be reading more of this guy and, without knowing anything about his body of work, I’d bet Paul Thomas could write a first-rate, not necessarily comic thriller if he set his mind to it."

Asked recently to name his favorite hero and favorite villain from crime fiction, Thomas chose Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and, for the bad guy, P.G. Wodehouse's Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts. I note Thomas' predilection for characters whose creators attended Dulwich College.  And I think the time has arrived for me to read more of this guy.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

McKinty reads

In one more piece of evidence that Belfast is the center of the universe,

No Alibis invites you to an evening with Detectives Beyond Borders favorite

Adrian McKinty

to celebrate the launch of his latest novel, Fifty Grand,
on Wednesday, July 8, at 6 p.m.

Cuban cop Mercado has a score to settle on behalf of a deadbeat dad, a ‘traitor’ who skipped free from Castro’s control to set up a new life working illegally in Colorado. He settled in a ski resort popular with the Hollywood Scientology set, where a façade of legality is maintained by the immigrant cleaners and laborers working for below minimum wage while the local sheriff is bribed to turn a blind eye. Mercado Sr.’s dreams of fortune and freedom are shattered when he is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Sworn to avenge his death, Mercado has some obstacles to overcome, not least getting out of Cuba, where visas are as elusive as constant electricity.

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics at Oxford University, and after a failed legal career he moved to the US in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach and bookstore clerk before becoming a school teacher. He now resides in Melbourne, Australia.

NO ALIBIS BOOKSTORE
83 BOTANIC AVENUE
BELFAST BT7 1JL
david@noalibis.com
ph. 02890-319601
========================================

Here's part of what I had to say about Fifty Grand:

"The book opens with what has to be the most gut-clenchingly tension-upping prologue in all of crime fiction, and it goes on to tell a story about Cuba, espionage and the human costs thereof.

"It's also about class distinctions, exploitation of immigrants and celebrity worship in America, which means it's always timely, and its protagonist takes a dizzying journey from privilege of a kind over to something quite opposite.

"In typical McKinty fashion, deadpan funny lines find their way into the action at the most desperate moments."

McKinty flew all the way from Australia for this reading. Go hear him, buy a book, and stake him to a pint of correctly poured Guinness. It's the least you can do.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Down time

(Dundrum Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland)

When John de Courcy founded this castle in 1177 overlooking Dundrum Bay and the Mourne Mountains, little could he have suspected that Dundrum would one day become the home of Gerard "Crime Scene NI" Brennan, blogger, wearer of several crime-fiction hats, and my gracious host yesterday. (Little more could he have dreamed that Carrickfergus, site of his other great castle, would one day become home to the Joymount Arms pub, its proprietress, and her crime-writing brother.)

Our restful drive through the fields of County Down followed an afternoon of talking, shopping and talking shop at Belfast's No Alibis. The day's bounty included books by Brian McGilloway, David Peace and Reginald Hill; a calendar with gorgeous illustrations inspired by classic crime-book covers; and the only novel ever placed into my hands by its own putative protagonist.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Belfast's and Bateman's little shop of crime

The estimable Gerard Brennan of Crime Scene NI gives a thumbs-up to Colin Bateman's upcoming novel Mystery Man:

"There’s a new PI in Belfast. His qualifications? He owns No Alibis, a bookshop specialising in crime fiction. Is he a fast-talking, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing tough guy? Um, no. Not at all, really. He’s a bit ... well, he’s cut from a different cloth. Oh, and he most definitely is not David Torrans."

Now, Mr. Brennan is always worth a listen when the subject is Irish crime fiction, but that's not why I bring the matter up. No, I mention Mystery Man because I have not only visited No Alibis (may its sales increase!), but I have met its real-life owner, the same David Torrans on whom the protagonist of Mystery Man is definitely not based. I offer photographic evidence here. I'm the one with the beard (I looked so much older then. I'm younger than that now.)

(Read the first two chapters of Mystery Man here, and learn what a good author can do with a pair of leather women's trousers.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Shopping for books

Did I mention that I've been visiting Ireland and that I've acquired a book or two? In any case, I've had a shopping experience in Dublin to bookend the exceedingly pleasant one I had a week ago at Belfast's No Alibis.

My host this time was Michael Gallagher's Murder Ink on Dawson Street, attractively situated near Trinity College and some of the city's best shopping. Like No Alibis, this shop reflects a commitment to crime not to be found in chain bookstores. As is the case in Belfast, the stock is both comprehensive and reflective of what I take to be the owner's own tastes. No Alibis stocked few if any mysteries that would be called cozy, for instance, and Murder Ink has a separate shelf for historical mysteries.

Like No Alibis, too, Murder Ink repays all the love that a crime-fiction fan has to offer. I stopped by the shop well after closing time one evening, for example, and doors were flung open and inventory searched purely for my convenience.

So tonight, on my final evening in Ireland, I'll drink a pint of Bulmer's to two of the most pleasant and welcoming experiences this crime-fiction reader and shopper has had. To Murder Ink and No Alibis: Sláinte! May your customers always leave your stores with their shopping bags heavy and their wallets light.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Good craic, No Alibis

How plugged-in are David Torrans and his Belfast house of books, No Alibis?

I learned from Torrans this afternoon that Philadelphia's own Duane Swierczynski, who had an actress friend read for him at Philadelphia's first Noir at the Bar reading in June, could probably be persuaded to do the job himself if offered enough beer.

"What kind of beer does he like?" I asked.

"Anything," Torrans said.

Now, I don't know Swierczynski's drinking habits, but I am impressed that Torrans was conversant enough with crime fiction and the people who write it that he could even feel comfortable discussing such matters. (Torrans had a copy of Swierczynski's novel The Wheelman on a shelf of signed books in case you wonder how the subject came up.)

So, how plugged-in is Torrans? "He knows guys that haven't even written yet," said a customer whom Torrans pointed in my direction.

That same customer, "A Tyrone man," gave a rousing big-up to Declan Burke's The Big O, a copy of which he was buying for a friend and whose dialogue he loved, especially that between its male and its female characters, with a special hosannah for co-protagonist Karen: "This is the way real men and women talk over breakfast," he said.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008