Adrian McKinty and the fourth Sean Duffy novel: How to build a series

Here's a previous post about how an author can lay the groundwork for a series whether he wants to or not.  Once you've read McKinty's Sean Duffy books, why not try his other work? My favorite from a strong field there is probably Dead I Well May Be.  

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 Adrian McKinty has expressed skepticism of series fiction, but he does a fine job writing it.  Gun Street Girl, fourth in his Troubles no-longer-a-Trilogy (following The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, and In the Morning I'll Be Gone), shows McKinty laying the groundwork for further books, whether consciously or not.

The novel lays down plots and subplots ripe for development in future books, and it continues at least one subplot (or is it a leitmotif?) from the previous novels. (This book is set against the background of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, and includes thinly disguised versions of other historical events of the time, including one that will be of especial interest to Americans.) Moreover, it proposes a vision of Northern Ireland's post-Troubles history as a long-range game, so a long-range series could well carry Detective Inspector Sean Duffy along with that history, reacting to it and commenting, sometimes acerbically, on his place in it.  In Gun Street Girl, that commentary includes McKinty's customary good jokes and one of the funniest Beatles references you'll read anywhere.

Most important, perhaps, for its long term-prospects, the trilogy series has, in Duffy, an engaging protagonist/narrator with personal and professional triumphs and defeats that never, however, get in the way of the story. So sorry. Adrian. You may be in this for the long haul.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Adrian McKinty's Cold Cold Ground: Life during sort-of wartime

I've just reread The Cold Cold Ground, by longtime DBB favorite Adrian McKinty, and, by god, that back-cover blurb from Detectives Beyond Borders holds up:

"The Cold Cold Ground is very possibly the best crime novel published in English in 2012."

The book's U.S. edition contains an author's note that goes a long way to explaining the book's richness:

"I wanted to set a book in this claustrophobic atmosphere, attempting to recapture the sense that civilization was breaking down to its basest levels. I also wanted to remember the craic, the music, the bombastic politicians, the apocalyptic street preachers, the sinister gunmen and a lost generation of kids for whom all of this was normal."

Your job, readers, is to name novels or stories similarly rich in telling, surprising detail, particularly those set during wartime or other turbulent circumstances.

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The Cold Cold Ground is Book One in McKinty's Troubles trilogy, featuring Sean Duffy of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Read the first five chapters of Book Four at McKinty's blog.

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Adrian McKinty will be part of my Belfast Noir: Stories of Mayhem and Murder from Northern Irelandpanel at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, California. The fun starts at 11:30 a.m, Friday, Nov. 14, in the Regency B room. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014 

The Cold Cold Ground comes to America

I've been asked where I acquired this jones I have for Irish crime writing, and my answer is simple: from Irish crime writers.

Adrian McKinty is among those writers whose books have taught me so much and entertained me so well. Now, thanks to the excellent folks at Seventh Street Books, American readers can easily get their hands on his latest novel.

The Cold Cold Ground is hard-hitting and funny and very human, and it paints a plausible picture of what it must really have been like for ordinary folks to live through Northern Ireland's Troubles, circa the early 1980s.

The book is very possibly the best crime novel published in English in 2012, no shock from an author long a favorite here at DBB, and it lands in America just in time for holiday gift-giving. (And yep, the publishing company is named for the street where Edgar Allan Poe lived in Philadelphia. How cool is that?)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Crimefest 2012: Author says she'll give up sin

(Photos by your
humble blogkeeper)

Anne Zouroudi, Detectives Beyond Borders' favorite surprise of 2011, writes a series in which one of the seven deadly sins (and its consequences) features prominently in each book. Naturally she gets asked what she'll do for Book Eight.

(Little Shambles, York))

Zouroudi was part of my "Passport to Murder" panel at Bouchercon 2011, and I suggested that if she wanted to use Jewish tradition, she could write about the 613 mitzvot, which would leave Sue "L is for Long-Running Series" Grafton in the dust. (Yes, Grafton was also at the just-completed Crimefest in balmy Bristol.)

But Zouroudi told a Crimefest questioner that she'll likely take up the easier theme of the Ten Commandments next, which means more adultery, murder, covetousness, and dishonoring of parents for her protagonist, Hermes Diaktoros (the same name as the messenger of the Olympian gods) to negotiate.

It will be interesting to see what Zouroudi gets up to with graven images.

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In other news — and excellent news it is — Adrian McKinty's The Cold Cold Ground is on its way to America from Seventh Street Books (the name is a tribute to the site of the Edgar Allan Poe house in Philadelphia.)

The book is hard-hitting and funny and very human, and it paints a plausible picture of what it must really be like for ordinary folks to live through Northern Ireland's Troubles. Highly recommended to Irish Americans and non-Irish Americans (NIAs) alike.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012