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?

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(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

New-media distribution systems, Philadelphia-style



(The same block where I shot this, close to Detectives Beyond Borders World Headquarters, though a different time of day)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

"Take this, Job, and shove it"

So, how is the Book of Job like a crime novel, anyhow? Like many crime novels, not all of them Scandinavian, it has an ominous prologue before it gets to the good part.

And here's some of that good part, from Stephen Mitchell's translation:

"Why is there light for the wretched,
life for the bitter-hearted,
who long for death, who seek it
as if it were buried treasure,
who smile when they reach the graveyard
and laugh as their pit is dug."

That's noir, but it sounds more like a noir author or reader than a noir protagonist, most of whom go more meekly or at least resignedly to their fates.  It's as if one of David Goodis' wretched protagonists sat down to write his own story instead of letting Goodis do it.

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And now, turning from the substantive to the atmospheric side of noir, here's a view right around my corner, photo by your humble blogkeeper.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

My local bar is open through the hurricane ...

... (complete with at least one crappy-weather special), which is a welcome surprise and brings to mind yet another weather-appropriate Bob Dylan song that's better than "Hurricane."

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Extreme nonsense, plus a question for readers

What's your favorite buzzword or slogan? All-natural?  Green? "Going forward"? How about the insurance company that suggests it "could save you up to 15% or more"? (Analyze that for a minute, with special emphasis on the boldface words.)

What about extreme? Do you like your sports extreme? Your skin care? Management tools?  Law-enforcement supplies? How about your edge switching?

This week I received notice of a service where extremity is the last thing I'd expect or want. I don't know about you, but when the dentist leans over my head, furrows his brow, and reaches for his tool kit, the last thing I want him thinking about is street luge or half-pipe.

How about you? What's the oddest or most ridiculous application of extreme to a product or service that you know of? For extra fun, let loose your inner ad man and make one up! Extreme baby food, anyone?

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(Here's a list of Top 10 Unfortunate Product Names for your reading pleasure. But wait, there's more!, though your humble blogkeeper can vouch for the genuineness of none of these.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Salvation Lite™

(St. John's Baptist Church, 13th and Tasker Streets, Philadelphia)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays ...

... c'est l'hiver.

That's French for No whingeing from Australia or California about the weather where you live.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

San Franciscan nights and Philadelphian grammar

(Photos by your humble blog keeper.)

Here's a picture I took on Russian Hill in San Francisco after Bouchercon 2010.

And here's one I took this week in Philadelphia. The sign sits right outside the headquarters of the Philadelphia School District.

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P.S. A day after I posted the photo at left, the grammar-mangling sign disappeared. So think of this photograph as a piece of vanished history — and evidence that someone at SEPTA reads this blog.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Merry Christmas!

(South 13th Street, Philadelphia, by your humble blogkeeper)

"`A fellow who'd worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of idea or invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife's throat — I don't know what all — if he didn't come across. We never caught him — must've scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened.'

"Nora stopped drinking to ask: `Did Wynant really steal it?'

"`Tch, tch, tch,' I said. `This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man.'"

— Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

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Put some noir in your Christmas at Do Some Damage.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

DBB welcomes Noircon

Early arrivals are on their way to #Noircon2010 in Philadelphia, which opens Thursday evening. Here's what they can expect when they get here.



See you at the hotel bar and the P&P.

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I was a convention virgin when I signed up very late for Noircon 2008, but I got experienced quickly, and before the event was over, I resolved to sign up for that year's Bouchercon. I attended, and the rest is convention history — an ongoing history, I am happy to say. So I have a certain sentimental attachment to Noircon 2008, because a crime fan never forgets his first con.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

July 4, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Isn't that pretty?

That urban scene of delicate nocturnal beauty was my street at the height of last week's second snow storm.

Now snow is melting, schools are reopening, streets are being cleared, and by sometime next summer, local media should stop writing and broadcasting about the storms. Here, snow is news. Back home we called it winter.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Cold case

That's the scene here at Detectives Beyond Borders world headquarters: 30 to 45 cm. of snow (12-18 inches) since yesterday, 70 cm. (28 inches) over the weekend, and all this on the heels of 59 cm. (23.5 inches) in a day a month and a half ago.

I think I'll head to the Southern Hemisphere for my next bit of crime reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Niche marketing

What's your favorite example of blatantly money-grubbing niche marketing in the book trade? (Your title need not include chicken soup.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Honey, I think the Sixties are over

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Why we fight

(U.S. Army recruiting poster, Tasker-Morris Station, South Philadelphia)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Noir at the Bar IV: Caught in the act

A stimulating time was had by all at Philadelphia's fourth Noir at the Bar reading last evening at Fergie's Pub when authors were not being nabbed in the act of pinching bicycles.

John McFetridge read from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Declan Burke read from The Big O, and subsequent discussion shed light on crime fiction not just from McFetridge's Canada and Burke's Ireland but from England and the United States as well.

I shall ponder and perhaps discuss further McFetridge's observation that American crime fiction had "removed the author's voice and given it to the characters."

Burke offered at least three possible explanations for the boom in Irish crime writing: the post-Troubles phenomenon of newly unemployed paramilitaries with finely honed criminal skills, the 1996 murder of Veronica Guerin, and an explosion of chick lit that may seem antithetical to crime fiction but nonetheless gave genre writing, including crime, a foothold in a country of towering "literary" writers.

Burke draws inspiration from Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard, McFetridge from Ed McBain. This naturally led to an examination of American crime fiction, and an audience member offered the astute observation that "Americans take you through a place" as opposed to the traditional English plot-driven murder mystery. This may interest readers familiar with sneering references to recent international crime fiction as mere "guidebooks." Americans did it first, Clive.

(In the photo above, Scott Phillips demonstrates American-style crime for an attentive international audience of, from left, John McFetridge, your humble blogkeeper, Declan Burke, Brian Rademaekers, and our courteous and efficient barmaid, Claire Wadsworth.)

Tomorrow: In Baltimore to see how pros run a Con, or drinks on Iceland.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Thigh-high black-leather high-heeled boots our specialty

(Tasker and Juniper Streets, South Philadelphia)

If only there were a sub shop nearby.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Not a crime, but a question

(Twelfth Street near Passyunk Avenue and Morris Street, South Philadelphia)

Can anyone tell me what's going on in these murals — or write a caption for this odd juxtaposition?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Crime-scene photo, South Philadelphia

(Broad and Tasker Streets)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008