Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Review of The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tail, 2012)

Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy is a Catholic cop in Northern Ireland in 1981 in a force dominated by protestants and targeted by paramilitary republicans. A few weeks after being posted to the CID in Carrickfergus, the Maze hunger strikers start to die, the whole province erupting into violent protest. Between having to don riot gear to help his beleaguered colleagues, Duffy has two new cases to investigate - the death of a homosexual man, his hand severed, and the apparent suicide of an ex-wife of a Maze hunger striker. This is quickly added to by the murder of a second known homosexual man. It seems that Duffy might be investigating the first known serial killer on the island, one that is taking advantage of the limited police resources. As Duffy works away at the case he has to negotiate the complex terrain of IRA, loyal paramilitaries and the security forces, none of whom prove cooperative. Duffy though has the bit between his teeth and is unwilling to let the case slide into the unsolved pile.

As an Irish police procedural, The Cold, Cold Ground is right up there with Brian McGilloway’s Inspector Devlin and John Brady’s Matt Minogue series. In fact, it might just be the best example of a police procedural so far produced on the island. It’s pretty difficult to pick holes in any aspect of the story, with perhaps the exception of forgetting to return a submachine gun left on the hall table back to the barracks for two whole weeks (not the kind of item that would escape one’s attention). McKinty immerses the reader in Carrickfergus and Belfast in 1981 - its politics, its riots, its policing, its fashions, music and social relations, its sense of place, without it ever swamping the narrative. The attention to detail is excellent. Sean Duffy is a complex, flawed and bright lead character, out of his depth and desperately trying to stay afloat amongst paramilitary groups and police and security service politics, and determined to solve the two cases. He’s surrounded by a well realised support cast, some of whom are real figures, other fictional characters. The plot twists and turns and is nicelyy paced, and McKinty shows his usual flair for poetic prose. A great read from an author who consistently turns out interesting and insightful books. The only let down - I have to wait for the next Duffy book to be published.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Short story heaven

Slowly getting myself on track to read 365 short stories in 2012. Here are the ones I read last week. There's some good stuff here, folks. Check them out.

The Vagueness of Maybes by Kieran J. Shea (A Twist of Noir)

Framed by CJ Edwards (Flash Fiction Offensive)

McDojo by Gerard Brennan (Shotgun Honey)

Monster by David Barber (Close to the Knuckle)

Cattle Call by Terry White (Thrillers, Killers and Chillers)

Cheating by Trey R Barker (Shotgun Honey)

The Worst Thing in the World by Albert Tucher (A Twist of Noir)

Grind by Chad Haskins (Spinetingler)

Man Down by Jason Chirevas (A Twist of Noir)

Drama’s wet dream by Anthony Venutolo (Bukowski’s Basement)

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Lazy Sunday Service

As with Facebook, I've taken the plunge on Twitter (@RobKitchin). In the end I've needed to do both to access content that I wanted to see and contribute to. I'm not one for dormant accounts, so I'll try to post regularly on both. Last week was incredibly busy. It ended with a conference on Irish economic policy. After my talk I was collared by The Irish Times and asked to present the whole talk again but in five minutes without notes or slides. The result is below.



I started to list the short stories I'd read during the week in this weekly post, but I'm going to do another regular spot for those on a Monday from now on.

My posts this week:
Review of The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man by Donal Conaty
Collapse of the Celtic Tiger
Housing affordability in Ireland
Into the lion's den
Review of The Dead Detective by William Heffernan
How about paying the Anglo bondholders with a €1.4 billion house?Link
Whiskey and tears

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Whiskey and tears

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared down at his son. The boy’s breathing was shallow and a touch breezy. The father brushed back a lock of brown hair from over an eyebrow. Jack needed a trip to the barber, but it was too late for that now. It was too late for anything, except whiskey and tears. He placed a pillow over Jack’s face, gently pressing down. The boy woke with a start and struggled, his legs kicking, but he quickly lay still. The father kissed his forehead, rose unsteadily and went to fetch his gun.


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Review of The Dead Detective by William Heffernan (Akashic Books, 2010)

When he was ten years old, Harry Doyle and his brother Jimmy were drugged by their mother and left in a garage with car engine running. Both were clinically dead when the Tampa police broke open the door after a neighbour had called the alarm. Harry was resuscitated, but Jimmy didn’t survive. Twenty years later and Harry is a homicide detective whose colleagues believe that because of his past he can talk to the dead. That supposed talent is called on when local beauty, ex-teacher and convicted child abuser, Darlene Beckett is found murdered, her throat cut, the word ‘evil’ carved into her forehead. Assigned a new partner, the feisty Vicky, Doyle starts to investigate, soon discovering another body. Two conflicting bodies of evidence start to emerge, one pointing to a local evangelical church, the other to one of Harry’s colleagues. To add to Harry’s worries, his mother is due for parole and he’s determined that she stays behind bars.

I was attracted to this book by the title and the premise that Harry shared some bond with the dead through his own death. That angle and Harry’s feelings for his mother are quite well developed. The rest of the story is a pretty straight up and down police procedural focusing on the hunt for an unstable serial killer. The characterisation is quite nicely realised, but the characters are cookie-cut from the genre’s tropes - Harry has a reputation as being a brilliant detective, a tough guy with hang-ups, who is happy to skirt around proper procedure (think Harry Bosch or Rebus); Vicky is the hyper-sensitive female cop with a large chip on her shoulder; the Church minister is mainly concerned with reputation and growing his flock and has a wayward son who has been trouble with the law, etc. Whilst Heffernan lays down a series of red herrings, the plot is fairly mundane and to a seasoned crime fiction reader the identity of the killer is fairly obvious a good distance from the end of the book. That all said, the story is well told and Harry Doyle is worth spending some time with.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Into the lion's den

It's been a very busy week so far, hence the lack of posts. Today we had a government minister out to the institute to take a look at our AIRO project. Tomorrow I'm presenting at the Irish Economy conference in Croke Park. I'm one of the couple of non-economists presenting in what is a kind of who's who of academic economic commentators on Ireland post-crash. There's going to be a live twitter feed #ieconf that will tweet away all day apparently, if you're interested and into that kind of thing. It'll be interesting to see what the economists make of my take on the property market. Oh well, always fun to wander into the lion's den. Back to a book review tomorrow - The Dead Detective by William Heffernan.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Collapse of the Celtic Tiger

A good, short video called the Collapse of the Celtic Tiger has been released by Al Jazeera. If you want to know what happened/is happening in Ireland this is a good place to start (even if I ended up on the cutting room floor after spending an hour walking around in the wind and rain on a bank holiday because the sound quality wasn't good enough!).

Monday, January 23, 2012

Review of The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man by Donal Conaty (Y Books, 2011)

Ireland is bankrupt and the IMF team headed by Ajai Chopra has flown to the country to negotiate the terms of the bailout. Amongst their number is an Irish-American who is a more than a little bemused by his ancestors approach to finance and public service. He is given the task of shadowing the head of the Department of Finance, Dermot Mulhearn, during the negotiations and is then left in place to monitor progress when the rest of the IMF team leave town. Mulhearn’s priority seems to be to maintain a certain kind of lifestyle for the civil service and to protect his various perks and assets such as investments in apartments, hotels and a room full of voting machines, rather than to broker the best deal he can for the country. The politicians on the other hand seem totally clueless, dancing the last waltz as the walls come crumbling down around them. Instead it is left to the Eighty Five Billion Euro Man from the IMF to go through the books and to try and get civil servants and politicians used to the high life to change their ways. Mulhearn and his cronies however have a touch of the Sir Humphries about them and they’re not about to simply lie down and roll over.

Based on the @IMFDublinDiary Twitter feed and stories in The Mire, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a satire/farce, starting with the IMF’s first visit to Dublin and ending just a few weeks after Enda Kenny took office as Taoiseach. It covers a whole range of different events and parodies both the civil service and leading politicians. The story is told mainly through dialogue heavy scenes that work well to capture some of the absurdities, ironies and tragedies of the bailout and subsequent political shenanigans. There is a lot to like about the novel. Some of the scenes are very amusing and the caricatures of some politicians are particularly well done, for example, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan, Brian Lenihan, Michael Noonan and Joan Burton. However, the plot is a little uneven, with the tail end of the book, in the lead up to the election and afterwards, notably weaker (partially because it starts to stray too far from the situation it seeks to satirise - especially Mulhearn running for election). The level of satire also varies a little and whilst it is very amusing at times it’s never quite as biting or cutting as it could be, and it doesn’t have the sophisticated wit and cleverness of a political satire like Yes, Minister. Given the in-jokes, I’m also not sure how easy it would be for someone unfamiliar with Ireland to follow some of the scenes. That all said, The Eighty Five Billion Euro Man is a recommended read for anyone who is interested in the crash in Ireland and the government response. It’s an amusing read and provides a counterpoint to the dry journalistic accounts that have dominated the shelves to date.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Lazy Sunday Service

I arrived home from a conference on Friday night to find that our accessibility mapping module had been covered that day in most of the main Irish newspapers - Irish Times, Independent, Examiner, Star, Sun, Mirror and Herald. Quite unusual, in my experience at least, for academic stuff to get both broadsheet and tabloid coverage, though they can do quite different things with the same material - see right. Nice that it was seen as interesting and useful.

Short stories read this week:
Oh Superman by Colin Graham (Pulp Metal Magazine)*
Neighbors by Kieran Shea (Shotgun Honey)
Lucky Convenience by Chris Rhatigan (A Twist of Noir)*
Sex Crime by Katherine Tomlinson (A Twist of Noir)*
The Tut by Paul Brazzil (Cavalcade of Stars)*
Dudley Do Right by R. Thomas Brown (Flash Fiction Offensive)
Tight by John DuMond (Powder Burn Flash)
Musculature by Charles Dodd White (Plots With Guns)*

My posts this week:
Review of Black Sheep by Arlene Hunt
The Self-Preservation Society
To cut a long story short
Banning the boom
Crime fiction and contemporary Ireland
Mapping and graphing accessibility and deprivation
Review of Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Lost

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Lost

‘For god’s sake, Margie, where the hell are we?’

‘I ... we must be ...’ Margie twisted the map, peeked over it at the passing landscape, then back at the map.

‘You haven’t got a clue, have you! All you had to do was read the flipping map.’

‘I’ve been reading the flipping map! You must have taken a wrong turn.’

‘How could I have taken a wrong turn! You’ve been telling me which turns to take.’

‘Don’t yell at me!’

‘Do you have any idea where we are?’

‘No, but neither do you!’

‘I wasn’t reading the stupid map!’

Friday, January 20, 2012

Review of Storm Front by Jim Butcher (2000, Orbit)

Harry Dresden--Wizard
Lost items found. Paranormal investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment.

Harry Dresden is a PI with a difference - he’s a (mostly) white wizard who specializes in dealing with paranormal and supernatural events, acting as a consultant to the Chicago police force in cases where there are unexplainable happenings. Accident prone, destroyer of all things electrical, and shadowed by white council representative to make sure he doesn’t use magic inappropriately (after some previous offences), Harry is too proud to take anything but magic related cases and bumps along on the breadline. Shortly after he’s called by a frightened woman concerned about her husband, he’s called by the Chicago police to investigate a horrific death, where two lovers hearts have literally exploded out of their chests. On his way back to the office he’s given a ride by a local mobster and he’s then sought out by a sassy journalist. Something is going on and it involves black magic; a lot of it. And very quickly it’s clear that the wielder of this power wants Harry out of the picture; preferably permanently. Not only does Harry need to solve the murder case, he needs to find and neutralise the black wizard without using any illegal magic, as that will result in a death sentence from the white council. And that’s going to be damn difficult, especially when a number of supposed allies think he is black magician.

I loved this book. It captivated me from the first page to the last. It’s clever and funny (I laughed out loud several times and had a grin on my face the rest) and its as tight as a drum. Harry Dresden is a wonderful creation - he has all the stereotype hallmarks of the classic Chandler/Hammett PI, but Butcher has managed to give them a fresh spin. Written in the first person, Butcher has a strong and distinctive voice. The plot is intricate, well paced, and has nice twists and turns. And the action sequences are some of the best I’ve read for a while - a fight sequence with a demon midway through the novel is very well done. It is extremely rare that I will stay up into the wee hours to continue reading, but I did so with Storm Front. It was a five star read all the way. I’ve already sought out the second book in the series.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Mapping and graphing accessibility and deprivation

Just launched two new, all-island mapping tools - one that displays access to education, health and urban services for every house on the island (the map right is access to dentists by drive time), the other maps social deprivation using an index that is comparable in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. The systems can be accessed directly through:

All-island Accessibility mapping tool
All-island Deprivation mapping tool

The news page, which also provides access to the graphing tool that shows average results for every local authority, is on the AIRO site.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Crime fiction and contemporary Ireland

First announcement of an event I'm organising. All welcome, free entry.

Crime Fiction and Contemporary Ireland:
An audience with Declan Burke, Gene Kerrigan and Niamh O'Connor

Tuesday, 6th March, 5-7pm, Renehan Hall, NUI Maynooth

It is perhaps no coincidence that at time of crisis and social and economic upheaval Irish crime fiction is flourishing both domestically and internationally. More than any other genre, crime fiction is said to document and help its readers make sense of the social, political and economic landscape of its setting. Talking about their own work and that of other Irish novelists, the three authors will discuss the role of the crime novel in reflecting and understanding contemporary Ireland.

Register: nirsa@nuim.ie


Declan Burke is the author of Absolute Zero Cool (2011), Crime Always Pays (2009), The Big O (2007) and Eight Ball Boogie (2003) and editor of Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the Twenty First Century (2011). He writes the influential blog, Crime Always Pays, reviews crime novels for a number of newspapers and radio programmes, and is film reviewer for The Last Word on Today FM. Absolute Zero Cool was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2011.

Gene Kerrigan is the author of four novels, The Rage (2011), Dark Times in the City (2010), Midnight Choir (2008), and Little Criminals (2007), and seven non-fiction books including Hard Cases (1996) and This Great Little Nation (1999). He is one of Ireland's leading political commentators, working as a columnist for the Sunday Independent. He won the Irish Book Award with Dark Times in the City and has been nominated for the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award.

Niamh O'Connor is the author of two novels, Taken (2011) and If I Never See You Again (2010), and the author of the true crime books, Blood Ties (2009), Cracking Crime (2001), and The Black Widow (2000). She is a journalist and true crime editor at The Sunday World. If I Never See You Again was nominated for an Irish Book Award in 2010.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

To cut a long story short

One of my short stories - To Cut a Long Story Short - was published on Shotgun Honey yesterday. Check out the other stories there. Bite-sized, max 700 words, of tight, punchy noir. There's some great stuff for 3-5 minute fixes for story addicts.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Review of Black Sheep by Arlene Hunt (Hodder Headline Ireland, 2006)

David Reid, a successful furniture designer, has been found dead in a Dublin canal. He was drunk when he died, and his death has been ruled as misadventure by the local gardai and coroner. His brother though is convinced that David was the victim of foul play and hires QuicK investigations, run by PIs Sarah Kenny and John Quigley, to discover what really happened. Reid’s car is missing, and on the day of his funeral, his house is broken into by two teenage twins and his laptop and other items stolen. Sarah is a witness to the robbery and it provides an initial clue that suggests the Reid’s brother might be right. As the case progresses it’s clear that Reid had a dark secret to hide, one that could have repercussions for others if revealed, and by pursuing the killer, Sarah and John have unwittingly stirred a hornet’s nest that will potentially lead to further skulduggery.

Black Sheep is the second in the QuicK Investigations series. In many respects, there’s no great mystery to the story - an astute reader will have a fair idea as to how the story is going to unfold and who the killer is from near the start - but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the telling and unfolding of the story and the characters that make the book work. The plot is nicely constructed and hangs together well, and the procedural elements of the private investigation are credible, even if the police seem fairly incompetent (though that might be a fair assessment). The first third was a little slow, but then it picks up and the latter third rattles along with no flab. What I particularly liked was the characterisation of the suite of secondary characters - Big Jack, the Quinn Brothers, the golfing buddies, JJ, Jimmy and Billy, Sarah’s sisters and mother, etc are all well penned and come alive on the page. Somewhat oddly, it was the two leads - Sarah and John - that felt a little lifeless and distant to me; for some reason I couldn’t really get a handle on them or their relationship. Sarah seemed all unnecessary hard angles and John somewhat bland, and their back stories were a little thin. I’m wondering if that’s because I’ve come into the QuicK series at the second book. Regardless, this was a good, solid, enjoyable read set in the context of Ireland at the height of its excesses, just prior to the crash.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Lazy Sunday Service

Some of the books I ordered turned up at the local bookshop on Friday. I collected them yesterday. Really looking forward to tucking into them: The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty; Killed at the Whim of a Hat by Colin Coterill; White Heat by Melanie McGrath; Death on the Marais by Adrian Magson; Or the Bull Kills You by Jason Webster; and Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller. I'm going to start with Adrian McKinty.

I'm not one for following blog challenges, but I'm going to have a go at this one - reading 365 short stories in a year (and in my case mostly flash fiction). The associated blog is Shortstory365. It'll probably go in fits and starts, rather than one a day. I'm already behind, but only started a couple of days ago. I'm going to keep a record of them in Sunday Service slot (* denotes the standouts for me).

Short stories read this week:
Two and a half miles by W.D. County (Spinetingler)*
Fashionably late by R. Thomas Brown (The Laughter Shack)
What Could Happen by Matthew C. Funk (Flash Fiction Offensive)
Lambs of God by Patti Abbott (Spinetingler)*
Scrapbook by Joe Myers (Shotgun Honey)
T-Bone's Girl by Edward Vaughn (Shotgun Honey)*
Teddy in the Tree by Wayne A. Conaway (Thrillers, Killers and Chillers)

My posts this week:
Review of Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer
Facebook and Irish Crime Fiction
ALA Choice Award
Review of In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes
She has to go

Saturday, January 14, 2012

She has to go

‘This can’t go on, Tom,’ Mary hissed. ‘She has to go.’

‘What do you mean, go?’ He looked up from his cereal.

‘You know what I mean! When we got married, I didn’t sign up for caring for your mother.’

‘But ...’

‘There’s no but. I’ve raised our kids and worked for the last fifteen years. I’m not spending my retirement running around after your mother, washing, cleaning and listening to her complain about me.’

‘But where’s she meant to go?’

‘I don’t care! To your brother’s; into a home. All I know is that if she stays, I’m leaving.’


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Review of In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes (1947, reprinted Feminist Press, 2003)

Post-Second World War and pilot Dix Steele has drifted to Los Angeles where he is notionally writing a novel, living off a monthly allowance posted to him by a wealthy uncle, and staying in the apartment of an old university friend who is away in Rio for a year. Clever, charming, confident and missing the meritocracy of the armed services, Steele resents not being independently wealthy and tries to attach himself to rich folk in order to sponge from them. He also possesses an almost uncontrollable rage against women and for the past six months he has vented his anger by strangling and raping one woman each month. Prowling the fog-bound beach area he loses a potential prey and decides instead to look up an old war buddy, Brub Nicolai. It turns out that Brub has married and settled down, and more ominously, has joined the police and is working as a detective on the murders. Rather than backing away, Steele seeks to use Brub to keep him informed on progress on the case. In the meantime, he has started a whirlwind romance with the smart and sassy actress Laurel Gray, a femme fatale that whilst at first smitten becomes increasingly concerned at Steele’s jealously and possessiveness. As the murder investigation gathers pace and closes in, Steele remains confident that he has outwitted them all.

Dorothy B Hughes writes literary hardboiled noir taking on and matching Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Thompson at their game. In a Lonely Place is atmospheric, taut, tense and dark. Although written in the third person, the story is told exclusively from the point of view of Dix Steele, a misogynist with a murderous psychosis, and Hughes does well at capturing his corrupted rationalities. This is not however at the expense of the other characters, who are still well realised and rounded. The pacing is nicely done, with the gradual unfolding of Steele’s back story and the investigation of the murders, yet there is no flab, the story being tightly told. There's also no violence, with Hughes able to create drama and tension without directly portraying any of the crimes or their aftermath. For my tastes, the story is a little too melodramatic in places and I whilst I enjoyed it and recognised all its merits, I was never fully captivated and swept along by the story. Nevertheless, a very solid piece of hardboiled noir and I hope to read more of her books in due course.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

ALA CHOICE award

Got an email last night from MIT Press to say that my co-authored book with Martin Dodge, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, has been awarded 'CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2011' by the American Library Association. Very pleased with that. That's two years in a row - last year the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, for which I was editor in chief, won an award. It won't happen for 2012 as I've no academic book due out this year!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Facebook and Irish crime fiction

At the weekend I finally signed up with Facebook so that I could access the Irish Crime Fiction group. And very informative it's been so far. A great resource for anyone interested in Irish crime fiction.

People keep telling me I need a Facebook presence. Now I have one, I think I need to spend a bit of time working out how it works, what I might do with it in terms of the wall and other functions, how the whole friends things works, and issues around privacy and sharing, etc. I'll try and feel my way into it. Anyway, if you're on Facebook and you want to find me on there and connect or whatever, I think this link should work.



Link

Monday, January 9, 2012

Review of Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer (Hodder, 2007)

Christine van Rooyen is a high class escort with a young daughter that she dotes on and a rich client who wants her to play the role of a wife. Thobela Mpayipheli served as a elite soldier overseas before returning to work as a bodyguard for a criminal in Cape Town and eventually settling down on a farm with a wife and young son. The wife has died and the son becomes everything, but then at a service station two armed robbers shoot the boy as they make their getaway. Whilst on trial the two men escape and the police seem resigned to leaving them on the run. Thobela though isn't and he has the skills and the patience to track them down, and whilst he stalks them he can do the work that the justice system fails to. Inspector Benny Griessel is an alcoholic cop on the verge of losing his wife, kids and his job. He's been given one last chance to get himself off the drink and to solve the case of a vigilante killing paedophiles and child murderers that the justice system has failed to deal with. Christine, Thobela and Benny start to dance around each other, slowly circling until their inevitable convergence.

The real strengths of Devil's Peak are the characterisation, plotting and sense of place. Meyer provides an intricate story based on three in-depth character studies embedded in the turmoil of South African society, its criminal underbelly, and overstretched and corrupt police force. Over the course of the novel their back stories are revealed and teased apart as their lives start to intersect. The story moves at a steady pace, at times a little too slow for my tastes, slowed by detailed description, as Meyer carefully moves the inter-connecting pieces into place, but it builds to a page-turning finale. At its heart, the story is about the strengths and failings of people, families and institutional systems, and it raises questions about human nature, justice and the balance between self-destruction, love and survival. Benny Griessel and Meyer's storytelling reminded me of early Harry Bosch stories by Michael Connelly. Meyer writes with the same intensity, layering, and level of detailed knowledge that Connelly does, raising the story above the average police procedural fare. The overall result is a very fine read and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out Meyer's other novels.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Lazy Sunday Service

The distributor failed to deliver a batch of books to my local bookstore on Friday, which meant my attempt to buy Adrian McKinty's The Cold, Cold Ground was thwarted yesterday. Hopefully, it'll be in stock sometime next week. Unable to get stuck into the first Detective Sean Duffy outing, I instead starting reading Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place. I'm about halfway in now and the pages are ticking over nicely. A really excellent filler whilst I wait for the book distributor to get its act together.

My posts this week
Best reads 2011
Around the world in 365 days
New to me authors read in 2011
Top read book reviews of 2011
Wee Rockets launches
Review of White Nights by Ann Cleeves
100 up
Reviews of books published in 2011
Swimming with loan sharks

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Swimming with loan sharks

'Where's my fuckin' money, Michael?'

'I ... I don't have it, Mr Doyle. I'm sorry ... things haven't worked out as I hoped.'

'I don't give a shite how things have worked out, Michael. I want my one thousand euro back.'

'But I only lent five hundred!'

'At twenty percent interest per week. It's been four weeks.'

'But one thousand euro! That's, that's ...'

'That's capitalism. I provided you with a service, Michael. You needed a loan, I gave you one. You knew the terms.'

'I need more time.'

'Two weeks. Same rate of interest. And next time ... '


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Reviews of books published in 2011

Out of the 103 books I read last year, 34 were published in 2011, 31 of which were fiction. All of these books were bought, bar three. I'm not sure how much they cost, but buying books in the year they were published is a fairly expensive business. I'm not sure a third of my reading this year will be books published in 2012. Here are the books listed by my rating. The balance of ratings were reflective of those across all books read.

Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke *****
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan *****
Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo *****
The Rage by Gene Kerrigan *****
Devil Red by Joe Lansdale ****.5
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen ****.5
Ashes by Sergios Gakas ****.5
Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill ****.5
Outrage by Arnaldur Indridson ****
The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still by Malcolm Pryce ****
Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski ****
Dirty Old Town by Nigel Bird ****
Bloodland by Alan Glynn ****
Plugged by Eoin Colfer ****
The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin ***.5
The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan ***.5
The Quarry by Johan Theorin ***.5
White Death by Tobias Jones ***.5
The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald ***.5
One of Our Thursday's is Missing by Jasper Fforde ***.5
Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty ***.5
Death Toll by Jim Kelly ***.5
Taken by Niamh O'Connor ***
Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli ***
The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi ***
The Killer is Dying by James Sallis ***
The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris ***
The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland **.5
Frozen Out by Quentin Bates **.5
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry **.5
Agent X by Noah Boyd **

100 up

I was having to update something this morning and realised that at some point last year I passed the 100th mark for volumes edited/authored. The vast bulk of these are issues of academic journals. The tally is: 20 academic books, 2 novels, 12 volumes of an encyclopedia, 68 issues of the journals Social and Cultural Geography, Progress in Human Geography and Dialogues in Human Geography, and 5 special issues of journals. I've no idea how much that totals in words, but my guess is somewhere between 11-12 million (the vast majority of which I didn't write, but edited). If nothing else, it amounts to a fair amount of dead trees and a lot of zeros and ones.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Review of White Nights by Ann Cleeves (2008, Pan)

On the Shetland Isles the white nights of mid-summer when the sun barely sets over the horizon has everyone a little crazy. One evening a practical joker gate-crashes the opening of an art exhibition in the remote village of Biddesta. The next morning he is found hanging in a boat shed. Inspector Jimmy Perez was at the launch, hoping to start a new relationship with artist Fran Hunter. He's called to the scene and the local doctor rules the death murder rather than suicide. Whilst Perez waits for Chief Inspector Roy Taylor to arrive from Aberdeen, delayed by fog, he gets to work investigating the crime. The village of Biddesta is small, but tight knit, with a long shared history and secrets. The hanged man not yet identified, another murder is committed; this time a famous local musician is found at the bottom of a cliff. Taylor is wound like a cog, always wanting to force the pace of the investigation, whereas Perez is more reflective and circumspect. As a shetlander, Perez knows the people and place, but the puzzle of the deaths and the reason behind it are elusively out of reach and take a while to fall into place.

White Nights is the second book in the Shetland Quartet. My review of the first, Raven Black, is here. The strength of White Nights is its sense of place and characterisation. Cleeves immerses the reader in the small community, ways of life, and landscape of the Shetland Isles. The characters are well penned and the relationships between them credible and compelling. The telling was a little too descriptive at times for my tastes, especially near the start, but Cleeves has a nice easy going style of storytelling that is pleasant to the eye. I thought the middle of the book, once the investigation is well underway and Taylor is adding spice to tale, was excellent. My main problem was the resolution, which didn't quite gel for me. Regardless, this was a good, solid enjoyable read and I look forward to the third book in the series.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Wee Rockets launches

It wasn't too long ago since I noted the publication of Gerard Brennan's The Point (Oct 19th, in fact). Hot on its heals, he now has a new book out as of January 1st - Wee Rockets published by Blasted Heath. Here's the blurb:


Wee Rockets is a gritty, urban morality tale; a wake-up call for society. It follows a gang of fourteen-year-old hoods as they rampage through West Belfast, fearless and forever upping the ante in their anti-social crimes. They mug pensioners to pay for the cider, cigarettes and sweets they hope will ease them through so many long, aimless days of summer. Their actions send shockwaves through an already damaged post-Troubles society that has yet to build a relationship with a new ‘catholic-friendly’ police force.

Stephen McVeigh, a local Gaelic football ‘star’ and concerned resident has had enough. He wants the kind of justice the Provos dealt in their heyday and he believes he’s the man to fill that void.

With rat-like instincts, Joe Phillips has realised that his luck can’t hold out much longer. He wants to relinquish his post as the leader of the Wee Rockets. But as Stephen McVeigh closes in with his ham-fisted investigation has Joe left it too late to change his ways? Without his loyal gang to back him up, Joe’s just a vulnerable fourteen-year-old kid from a broken home with nobody to turn to.

Wee Rockets does for Belfast what Irvine Welsh did for Edinburgh. It’s a frank look at the drink and drug-addled youth ejected onto the streets of a socially deprived community as they smirk in the face of authority and play Russian Roulette with their adolescent lives.

There's a promo video that accompanies the release. From 60 secs in it has Gerard walking a street in West Belfast discussing the area and the book.


Wee Rockets by Gerard Brennan from Blasted Heath on Vimeo.

At present, it's available from Amazon.co.uk for a special introductory price of 99 pence (or on Amazon.com for $1.50). I really am going to have to invest in an e-reader in the next couple of weeks as this is another e-only book I'm interested in reading. More details can be found at the publisher's website.


Top read book reviews of 2011

I thought it might be interesting to look at the most popular book reviews read on this blog in 2011 (not from when they were first published). Not unsurprisingly, the older posts feature more strongly given that they have had the longest to attract hits. The top 15 were:

The Builders by Frank McDonald (review posted Nov 2009)
Operation Napoleon by Arnadalur Indridson (review posted Oct 2010)
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (review posted Jan 2011)
I, The July by Mickey Spillane (review posted Nov 2010)
We Die Alone by David Howarth (review posted Dec 2010)
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (review posted Feb 2011)
Field Grey by Philip Kerr (review posted Feb 2011)
Wild Blue by Stephen Ambrose (review posted Feb 2011)
Spitting on a Soldier's Grave by Robert Widders (review posted March 2011)
Cogan's Trade by George Higgins (review posted July 2010)
The Main by Trevanian (review posted Mar 2011)
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen (review posted June 2011)
A Stone of the Heart by John Brady (review posted May 2011)
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (review posted Jan 2011)
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (review posted Feb 2011)

The top two are also the reviews that have been most read since the blog started in July 2009.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New to me authors read in 2011

I read 74 books by 71 new to me authors in 2011 (out of 103 books read). Below are listed the 61 new to me fiction authors (listed alphabetically), the vast majority of whom are crime fiction writers. I plan to read other books by a fairly large number of them, which means a similar list for 2012 should hopefully be shorter than this!

Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen ****.5
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson ***.5
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry **.5
Frozen Out by Quentin Bates **.5
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes ***.5
Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill ****.5
Dirty Old Town by Nigel Bird ****
Open Season by CJ Box ***.5
Agent X by Noah Boyd **
A Stone of the Heart by John Brady ****.5
Plugged by Eoin Colfer ****
LA Requiem by Robert Crais ****
The Serbian Dane by Leif Davidsen ***
The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle ***.5
The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland **.5
The Rainy City by Earl Emerson ***.5
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan *****
The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris ****
The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald ***.5
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin *****
Greenwich Killing Time by Kinky Friedman ****
Ashes by Sergios Gakas ****.5
Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler ***
Winterland by Alan Glynn *****
Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein ****
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths ****
Headbanger by Hugo Hamilton ***
30 For a Harry by Richard Hoyt ***.5
White Sky, Black Ice by Nathan Jones ****.5
White Death by Tobias Jones ***.5
Death Toll by Jim Kelly ***.5
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov ***
The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson ****
The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin ***.5
Peeler by Kevin McCarthy ****
Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee ***
The City, The City by China Mieville ***.5
Garnethill by Denise Mina ***
The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris ***
The Cutting Crew by Steve Mosby ****
The Big Mango by Jake Needham***.5
Borkmann's Point by Hakan Nesser ***
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn ****.5
Taken by Niamh O'Connor ***
1974 by David Peace ****.5
Still Life by Louise Penny ***.5
The Ice Harvest Scott Phillips ****
Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli ***
He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond ****
The Holy Thief by William Ryan *****
The Killer is Dying by James Sallis ***
Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel ****
Mixed Blood by Roger Smith *****
The Vienna Assignment by Olen Steinhauer ****
The Quarry by Johan Theorin ***.5
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson ****.5
The Main by Trevanian ****.5
Black Diamond by Martin Walker **.5
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford ***
Stratton's War by Laura Wilson ***
The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi ***

Monday, January 2, 2012

Around the world in 365 days

Below are all my 2011 reviews organized by the country in which they were set (not by the nationality of the author). I managed to get a decent international spread, visiting 22 countries. The list is still dominated, however, by the US (29 books), although I managed 12 books set in Ireland, reading 17 books in total by Irish authors. Oddly, I only read one set in Australia, having read a number set there last year. Here's the split.

29: United States
12: Ireland
9: England
5: Russia
3: Greece, South Africa, Sweden
2: Iceland, France, Denmark, Wales, Scotland, Canada, Italy
1: Australia, Ukraine, Argentina, Thailand, Laos, Netherlands, Austria, Hungary
4: Fictional
2: Multiple countries
11: non-fiction

United States
The Killer is Dying by James Sallis ***
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin *****
LA Requiem by Robert Crais ****
Greenwich Killing Time by Kinky Friedman ****
Open Season by CJ Box ***.5
Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli ***
The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle ***.5
White Sky, Black Ice by Nathan Jones ****.5
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott ****.5
Pariah by Dave Zeltserman ****
Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski ****
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly **.5
The Deputy by Victor Gischler *****
Plugged by Eoin Colfer ****
The Saints of New York by RJ Ellory ***.5
Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel ****
Agent X by Noah Boyd **
Devil Red by Joe Lansdale ****.5
Slow Burn by G.M. Ford ***
30 For a Harry by Richard Hoyt ***.5
The Rainy City by Earl Emerson ***.5
Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston *****
Secret Dead Men by Duane Swierczynski *****
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford ***
The Ice Harvest Scott Phillips ****
Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein ****
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson ****.5
Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler ***
Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill ****.5

Ireland
Bloodland by Alan Glynn ****
Winterland by Alan Glynn *****
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry **.5
Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke *****
The Dramatist by Ken Bruen ****.5
Headbanger by Hugo Hamilton ***
The Rage by Gene Kerrigan *****
A Stone of the Heart by John Brady ****.5
Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty ***.5
Peeler by Kevin McCarthy ****
Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee ***
Taken by Niamh O'Connor ***

England
Call for the Dead by John Le Carre ****
Death Toll by Jim Kelly ***.5
The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths ****
1974 by David Peace ****.5
Stratton's War by Laura Wilson ***
The Burning Girl by Mark Billingham ***
He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond ****
Dirty Old Town by Nigel Bird ****
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson ***.5

Russia
The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris ***
The Red Coffin by Sam Eastland **.5
The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan ***.5
The Holy Thief by William Ryan *****
People Who Walk in Darkness by Stuart Kaminsky **.5

South Africa
Mixed Blood by Roger Smith *****
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes ***.5
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn ****.5

Sweden
The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson ****
The Quarry by Johan Theorin ***.5
Borkmann's Point by Hakan Nesser ***

Greece
Ashes by Sergios Gakas ****.5
The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi ***
Crime Always Pays by Declan Burke ****.5

Scotland
The Hanging Shed by Gordon Ferris ****
Garnethill by Denise Mina ***

Wales
The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still by Malcolm Pryce ****
From Aberystwyth With Love by Malcolm Pryce ****

Italy
White Death by Tobias Jones ***.5
The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald ***.5

Canada
Still Life by Louise Penny ***.5
The Main by Trevanian ****.5

Denmark
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen ****.5
The Serbian Dane by Leif Davidsen ***

Iceland
Outrage by Arnaldur Indridson ****
Frozen Out by Quentin Bates **.5

France
The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin ***.5
Black Diamond by Martin Walker **.5

Netherlands
The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan ****

Australia
The Brush Off by Shane Maloney ****.5

Hungary
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Maj Sjowall and Pers Wahloo ****

Argentina
Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo *****

Ukraine
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov ***

Austria
The Vienna Assignment by Olen Steinhauer ****

Thailand
The Big Mango by Jake Needham***.5

Laos
Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill ***

Multiple
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan *****
Field Grey by Philip Kerr *****

Fictional
The City, The City by China Mieville ***.5
One of Our Thursday's is Missing by Jasper Fforde ***.5
The Cutting Crew by Steve Mosby ****
The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett ****