Crime Beat

Two weeks ago Crime Beat ran a piece on Irish crime writing. The result of that was an unexpected note from the master blogger of Irish crime fiction (check out his site Crime Always Pays) – and major crime novelist – Declan Burke. One thing led to another and I took the opportunity to put a few questions to him about matters personal, writerly and the battles of Irish crime fiction writers which are so similar to our own. Do yourself a favour get hold of Declan’s books – Eightball Boogie and The Big O - and once you’ve done that buy more Irish crime fiction if you want to read some of the most innovative krimi writing around.

Crime Beat: Given the choice of getting on a whiskey or a wine drunk, which would you prefer?

Declan Burke: As an impressionable young man, I got savagely drunk one night on whiskey (and brandy, and Harp (lager) and Irish whiskies). I was found by a priest puking in a cabbage patch. To this day even the smell of whiskey gives me the horrors. So, wine. But cider/Guinness and/or White Russians by choice.

Crime Beat: Do you eat steak rare, medium or well cooked? Or do you only eat veg?

Declan Burke: I like a medium steak. Some blood, certainly, but not flowing. One night I was asked how I liked my steak, and I said, for a laugh, “The way the chef thinks it should be done.” The chef came out from the kitchen to thank me. He had tears in his eyes. No kidding.

Crime Beat: When you’re not writing what are you doing?

Declan Burke: I do a lot of non-writing writing – I work as a freelance journalist (reviews, interviews, features, etc.). I keep up a blog, Crime Always Pays. I do a lot of thinking about writing (more thinking than writing, these days). I play with my little girl, Lily (she’s 19 months now, and terrific fun, and the main reason I’ve cut back on my writing). I like to muck around in the garden. I watch some TV, mostly football (soccer) and Family Guy. And I read a lot.

Crime Beat: What’s the average kill count in your novels?

Declan Burke: Pretty low, I have to say. I’m not a fan of gratuitous murders, and I especially hate killing for the sake of advancing a plot, or to get rid of an inconvenient character, or to invoke some undeserved pathos. I think two people died violently in my first novel, Eightball Boogie, and none at all in the second, The Big O. Actually, The Big O was in part conceived as a fun exercise in how authentically I could write a crime novel without any killings and the bare minimum of violence. I had a friend who died young, and violently, so maybe that’s one reason I don’t take lethal violence lightly.

Crime Beat: How do you kill your characters?

Declan Burke: When they go, they go hard. One had her throat slit and died very messily (sorry, Imelda), the other was shot at close range.

Crime Beat: On a score of one to ten (where ten is outta sight) how do you enjoy writing:
(1) Kill scenes
Declan Burke (4) – It’s hard to resist the drama, the finality of it all.

(2) Fight scenes
Declan Burke: (10) – Vicarious pleasure, although I do try to make them real. Most fights I’ve been in have been ugly, awkward and short, whether I’ve won or lost.

(3) Sex
Declan Burke: (1) – I tend to gloss over them. My mother reads these books, for Chrissakes!

(4) Eating
Declan Burke: (1) Eating is a purely functional exercise for me.

(5) Torture
Declan Burke: (1) I’d rather write about someone being tortured than just kill them outright, but it’s never enjoyable.

Crime Beat: What music should we listen to when we read your books?

Declan Burke: Crikey, tough question. Do people really listen to music while they read? I once had a flatmate who used to do that, he was really cramming home the culture. I couldn’t do both at once, I’d find myself distracted by one or the other. I’d hope anyone reading my books would be distracted by the book. If not, get the Pixies on. If you’re going to be distracted, it might as well be by the best.

Crime Beat: Serious stuff now: in a blog you wrote that Irish readers might have an ‘inferiority complex’ when it comes to reading Irish crime fiction. We most definitely have the same problem in South Africa. But I sense that we’re way behind you in terms of backlist and number of writers. Did you have a long tradition of crime fiction to build on? Our tradition rests mostly on the shoulders of one James McClure writing in the 1970s, then Wessel Ebersohn in the 1980s but after his last book in 1990 things went quiet until a motorcycle maniac called Deon Meyer hit the scene in 1998. But the rush, such as it is, really started in 2006. How are you convincing the great unwashed that they should read you and your colleagues? I know, I know, you don’t call them the great unwashed for starters.

Declan Burke: ‘Inferiority complex’ might have been a bit of a strong phrase to use, but there is a thing in Ireland whereby if something is Irish then there’s a good chance that it’s not as good as something international. U2, for example, had to prove themselves in the States before the majority in Ireland swung in behind them. It’s also true that the Irish socio-landscape didn’t really lend itself to crime writing until the last decade or so, when we had that Celtic Tiger boom and the kind of gold rush mentality that lends itself to plausible criminal activities. And, generally speaking, the crime novel is an urban phenomenon, and we don’t have that many big cities. Also, it seemed a little impolitic, not to mention in bad taste, to write fictions about murder and killing when 90 miles or so up the road, in Northern Ireland, people were being slaughtered on a daily basis. It’s interesting, I think, that the two writers who are considered the ‘leaders’ of the current Irish crime writing wave, John Connolly and Ken Bruen, set their novels in Maine and London, respectively, when they started writing. Colin Bateman, who set his first novel in Belfast while ‘the Troubles’ were ongoing, is the exception to the rule – but then, Bateman is the exception to most rules.

I doubt very much if I can ‘convince’ anyone to read Irish crime writing. I started Crime Always Pays for two reasons – one, I didn’t have a red cent to promote The Big O when it was published, and two, there seemed to me to be a number of excellent writers coming through who were writing novels that were contemporary and relevant to the times we were living in. That those novels can be characterised as crime novels is both coincidental and convenient (for me and the blog). All I want to do with Crime Always Pays is to let people know about this continuing (and increasing) quality of excellence. Hopefully, enough people will cotton on to start the snowball rolling. Adrian McKinty, Alan Glynn, Tana French, Gene Kerrigan, Declan Hughes, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Stuart Neville – these are all terrific writers, all working in very different sub-genres, and they’re only the tip of the iceberg.

Crime Beat In the same post you mentioned that there’s now a prize for Irish crime fiction. Has this helped raise the profile of the local genre? Has it increased sales? Is the prize worth loadsa money?

Declan Burke: That prize for Irish crime writing is in the Irish Book Awards. The Book Awards have been going for some years, and last year I noticed (and pointed out to the organisers) that three of the six novels nominated for Best Novel were crime fiction novels, and maybe it was time the Awards had a crime fiction section. There’s no doubt that the prize has raised local awareness, because one of the Irish TV stations, TV3, really got behind the Crime Award and had a number of authors on (not just the nominated authors) to talk about crime writing in general. Will that penetrate in terms of sales? I really don’t know. I’d hope so.

Right now I’m in the middle of editing a book called ‘Down Those Green Streets’, a collection of essays and interviews with about twenty of the current wave of Irish crime writers, which will be published next year. There are some terrific contributions in there, most of which exceeded my expectations, and I’m hoping that that book will play its part in raising awareness, here in Ireland, about the quality and quantity of Irish crime writers. If it does, it’ll be fully deserved.