A June of Ordinary Murders: Review

Some weeks ago I mentioned the publication of Conor Brady's new historical crime novel, A June of Ordinary Murders.  The book's publisher, New Island, was kind enough to send me a review copy and here, alas, is the review!

'J.G. Farrell, the Liverpool-born, Irish novelist, renowned for his historical fictions, who died, too young, in 1979, wrote: “History leaves so much out … It leaves out the most important thing: the detail of what being alive is like.”  In his debut historical crime novel, A June of Ordinary Murders, Conor Brady goes a long way toward showing us what being alive was like for a Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) detective working a murder case during a heat wave in Dublin, circa 1887.  A crime novel rich in period detail and confident characterisation, the reader of A June of Ordinary Murders can almost feel the heat oppressing Dublin, smell the stench of the rancid Liffey at low ebb.  

Dublin Castle--the seat of British rule in Ireland
and headquarters for G-Division of the DMP

Set against the backdrop of the Irish Land War, in a city set to host a Jubilee visit by Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, the novel presents us with Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow, a man tasked with solving the brutal murders of an unidentified man and child found in Phoenix Park.  To compound matters, the Queen of the city's criminal underworld, Ces 'Pisspot' Downes, has died and her retinue of vicious underbosses are beginning to jostle for control of her empire.  In a time when murders in Ireland were declared 'political' or 'ordinary'--with the bulk of resources devoted to  investigating 'political' murders in a country chomping at the bit of independence from the Crown--Swallow must negotiate the corridors of power in Dublin Castle as well as the mean back lanes and rough pubs of criminal Dublin in an effort to solve the murders.

Brady shows us early adaptations of
supposedly cutting-edge CSI 

It is Brady's portrayal of the murder investigation that is one of the book's strongest suits.  As a former journalist, Irish Times editor, Garda Ombudsman and author of the definitive history of the Garda Siochana, Guardians of the Peace: the Irish Police, Brady knows his cops and knows how they work.  In places, he exhibits this too well, one feels, with perhaps one too many scenes of crime conferences, which, while believable and fine summary of the story-so-far, could have been dealt with in a paragraph or two rather than pages.  This is a minor quibble, however, as Brady moves his tale along at a fine clip, pausing only to relish the minutiae of Victorian police work.  Much of this feels surprisingly modern, with revealing insights into the origins of much of what we take to be cutting edge CSI, such as the science of ballistics or facial reconstructions from the human skull.  He is especially good on the uneasily familiar relationship between detectives and their gangland nemeses which again, rings true.  There is a particularly fine scene where two young and ambitious detectives are somewhat too eager to believe the last-words of a dying underworld enforcer, and the results of their inexperience sail as close to real life as anything I've read recently in a crime novel.    


Swallow is a believable and sympathetic protagonist and his relationship with the publican, Maria Walsh, is particularly well drawn.  Another of the book's strengths, in fact, is its portrayal of female characters as rounded and modern in a way in perfect keeping with the waning Victorian setting.  All of the characters in the novel live on the page in a way that is never anachronistic.  It is the duty of the historical novelist to remind us that, while times change, people don't, and Brady pulls this off with panache.


His writing is clear and comfortable, as one would expect from a former journalist of Brady's stature, and the research, historical and criminal, exudes authenticity.  Again, a minor quibble, but perhaps too much of this fascinating research is evidenced in the early chapters; there is a long explanation of the Land War which, while interesting, admirably objective and well presented, would be better suited to a history textbook and could have been summarised neatly in a paragraph or bedded in the dialogue.  This tendency to over-inclusion of hard-won research--an occupational hazard for all historical novelists, myself very much included--fades, however, as the narrative progresses and we are left with a cracking whodunnit, rich in period detail and peopled with wholly believable, complex characters of whom I hope to see more of in future Joe Swallow novels.  All in all, a powerful, well-researched debut from Brady.  A June of Ordinary Murders is no ordinary historical novel and comes to you highly recommended by this reader.

Under the Boardwalk, Down by the Sea: HBO does it again

Kelly McDonald as Irish immigrant
Margaret Shroeder

Finally got around to cracking the dusty boxset of Boardwalk Empire last night and all I can say is: Why did I wait so long?  It is seriously excellent so far.  My wife and I have watched the first five episodes of series 1 and are enjoying it immensely.  As per recent posts, Boardwalk Empire is based on 'real' historical events and characters from prohibition-era Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Interestingly enough, and for much the same reason I explained of my own work in the previous post, the creator of Boardwalk--Terrence Winter, of Sopranos fame--took the figure of notorious political fixer/racketeer Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson and lightly fictionalised him as Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson so as to have more creative freedom with the story.

Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson and Steve Buscemi as
Enoch 'Nucky' Thomson

A few points from last night's viewing: 1) Steve Buscemi is wonderful as the crooked but complex Nucky.  His portrayal of venal...scratch that...mortal corruption would make the Mahon Tribunal blanche.  2)  Kelly McDonald, as the Irish immigrant Margaret Schroeder, (from Kerry--Schroeder is her married name though her husband...well, you'll have to watch it yourself...) is good and growing on me as a performance though the accent is dialogue-coach-101 for the most part.  McDonald is a fine actress--she was great in No Country for Old Men, where her accent was, to my ears, authentic and consistent--but could they not have found an actress from Kerry or Ireland at very least?  

Stephen Graham as Combo in
This is England

3)  Stephen Graham, conversely, is brilliant as a young Al Capone, despite hailing from Liverpool.  He is also a great actor and was cinema's most convincing psycho-skinhead in Shane Meadows' wonderful This is England.  I don't, in this case, mind that he's not actually from Brooklyn.  4) The sets are great but some of the panoramic CGI looks not a whole lot better than those shots of Atlanta burning in Gone With the Wind.  Technology is a funny old thing, but frankly, my dear, a minor quibble.

Martin Scorcese is an executive producer and directs the first episode, which I feel to be the best thing he's done on screen since Casino, though I've hardly seen everything he's done since then.  There is one long, Goodfellas-like tracking shot that roves along the boardwalk and into a dance hall only hours before the introduction of the Volstead Act and prohibition which is simply brilliant film-making.  

I'm surprised this series hasn't gotten the same resounding acclaim as, say, The Wire or The Sopranos.  Much like them, this is storytelling at its very best, most complex.  It makes one wonder (worry!), as a novelist, if the novel form is weaker as a vehicle for storytelling than high-quality, HBO-like TV series.  Any thoughts? 

Is This Real Life, Is This Just Fantasy...

I'm reading The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty at the moment and loving it.  Inadvertently, I find I'm on a real Troubles NI fiction kick at the moment.  This novel, as well as The Ultras, which I wrote about previously, are set in Northern Ireland in the 70's and (in the case of The Cold, Cold Ground, 1981) and both reek of cordite, boiled cabbage, bad haircuts, and ingrained hatreds.  Cheery reads, both...  But both evoke the period and the place(s) of the North brilliantly, particularly the sense that nothing was what it seemed and every act was believed to be driven by shadowy angencies with competing agendas.  Another thing both novels share is their use of 'real' characters from history in their narratives.  In The Cold, Cold Ground, Gerry Adams himself makes an appearance and not, I might add, protesting the 100€ Household Charge.

This got me thinking about the use of characters and events from 'real life' in fiction.  I've done it myself in Peeler and, most recently, in the forthcoming follow-up, Irregulars.  I generally, however, find it restricting and fictionalise characters from history, changing names etc.  (As does McKinty in Cold, Cold, introducing us to a certain Mr Scavanni, Sinn Fein spokesman and/or head of the IRA's Force Research Unit (Nutting Squad, I believe they called it)...would anybody care for some steak with that knife?)  I do this mainly because it allows me the freedom to have them act the way I want them to so as to suit the writing--occasionally, they resist direction and act any old way they please but that's true of all fictional characters and grist for another mill--rather than for the writing to have to bend to the demands of the lives actually lived by the characters.  

McNamee seems to have solved this problem in The Ultras by making Robert Nairac a cipher of sorts, an almost mythical construct framed by the (perhaps) delusional documenting of past crimes undertaken by the fallen cop Agnew.  This works (for me) because so much of the work done by men like Nairac and his (possibly) MI5 handlers in the book, as in real life, is mired in secrecy and rumour.  The violence is shadowed by the darkness of the cold ditch, by the quiet, lacerating shame of the compromised informer, by the black hatred of sectarian pseudo-gang set loose on the innocent and not so innocent.

Other authors do this as well.  Ellroy, particularly in American Tabloid.  Alan Furst.  Many others.  My question, I suppose, is: why we do it as writers and why, as readers, do we seem to enjoy reading about 'real' figures in a fictional format?  Is history not enough for us?  Is fiction better able to elucidate truth than the hard data of documentation?

'A finely wrought thing...' The Ultras by Eoin McNamee

'A bleakly poetic, raging elegy for the twentieth century soul.'
Niall Griffiths

Eoin McNamee

As often as not, it is reading great writers that inspires one to want to write and as a writer, I'm given over to professional admiration (as opposed to envy, which I never, ever...no, really...never, ever succumb to...) when I come across a really well-written, well-conceived novel.  One such novel I read this week and it is The Ultras, by Eoin McNamee.

Having the honour of being mentioned alongside McNamee in a couple of reviews as a writer of serious historical crime fiction, I figured I'd better read a few more of his books.  I had read his debut, Resurrection Man, when it came out some years ago and had been mightily impressed, though less so with the film version, which I'm afraid somewhat coloured my memory of the book.  Orchid Blue I read last summer and was blown away by it.  It is crime fiction in the loosest but most serious sense, and the highest of art in every other.  Thus when I came across a copy of The Ultras in our local bookshop a few weeks ago I snapped it up and am pleased to report it is much the same in terms of quality.  

'Orchid Blue may be his finest novel yet.'
Declan Hughes, Irish Times

What the two novels share, besides a Northern Irish setting, is the use of actual, (criminal) events from (recent-ish) history as their starting point.  The novels are also populated by real figures from history--some obvious and well known to even the most casual observer of Northern Irish affairs, while others are obscure and others fictional entirely.  McNamee is so good it's often impossible to tell the difference.  The novels also share a sense of historical events--well-publicised though they may be--as being ultimately mired in the murk of...well, history.  The Ultras is particularly good on this, being ostensibly the story of British Army Captain Robert Nairac of the Grenadier Guards, a kind of free roaming predator who stalks the grey/green blur of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, possibly under the sinister direction of MI5, possibly not and possibly...  

It is this endless realm of the possible and improbable, of knowable and unknowable, that is the concern of the novel.  In life, nobody knows (or nobody is saying), in fact, what happened to the real Captain Nairac or any of his handlers--if he indeed had them--other than that Nairac was last seen drinking in a remote pub called the Three Steps Inn in South Armagh and was never heard from again.  Teeth and blood were found on a local bridge.  Reports of late night, cross border visits to a local meat factory are common.  Statements were made by 'witnesses' at a local RUC barracks with a reputation as bloody and brutal as that of the abattoir to which it is said Nairac's body was taken.  Men have been tried and convicted of murder though no body has ever been found.

 McNamee's brilliance lies in the way he constructs a novel about the construction of myth as historical record.  What is history, he appears to ask, when no one knows anything and those that do are dead or fear death if they tell what they know?  What is history when those in charge of the record construct it to justify the most invidious of political aims.  Here is one passage which does this amazingly well.  In it, a low level British spook is tasked with justifying the internment of republican suspects selected by his sinister boss.  He is creating historical record of the most unreliable kind and it is just such history that McNamee addresses in all its mire of misinformation.

David compiled documentation on them.  He learned that it was more reliable to invent a history for the target. Sightings of targets at known trouble spots by unnamed witnesses.  Spurious forensic evidence linking them to explosives finds.  He added unnecessary detail for authenticity...The more detail you gave, the more it seemed that guilt accrued...[He] thought that the profiles he created transcended the actual detail of the target's life.  The banal accounts they gave of themselves in distempered interrogation rooms.  David was tempted to show them what he had done to their lives.  To show them the finely wrought thing.  The troubled histories he had created, the brooding, overshadowed lives, the terrible symmetry of things preordained coming to pass...

A finely wrought thing, the fictional profile McNamee has created in The Ultras has indeed, in its own way, transcended the actual details of this period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.  I'll quote a blurb from Time Out magazine, as it appears on the jacket of my copy of The Ultras, mainly because I couldn't put it any better myself:

'What McNamee brings to the "facts" is a novelist's truth, which can often represent the organic mechanisms at work better than any record.'

Buy it folks.  McNamee is one of the finest writers of historical fiction working today in any country.  His books aren't comfortable, or easy.  They are not the kind of novels to end nicely.  They do not restore your faith in the good of humanity and the power of the noble, if flawed, policeman.    They are also profound, beautifully written, brutal, nuanced and often brutally sad.  The Ultras and Orchid Blue also happen to be just plain brilliant.

New Irish Historical Crime Fiction from Conor Brady

I was thrilled to see some historical crime fiction getting pride of place in the Weekend Arts and Books section of the Irish Times, this Saturday past, in the shape of a full page extract from Conor Brady's new novel, A June of Ordinary Murders.  Read the extract here:    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0303/1224312672054.html

Brady's novel, published by New Island press and launched this week at Mansion House in Dublin, is  tells the story of a murder investigation led by Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) in late 19th century Dublin.  The blurb runs thus:

 In the 1880s the DMP classified crime in two distinct classes. Political crimes were ‘special’, whereas theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were ‘ordinary’. Dublin, June 1887: the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps up to investigate. Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past successes in need of a win. In the background, the city is sweltering in a long summer heatwave, a potential gangland war is simmering as the chief lieutenants of a dying crime boss size each other up and the castle administration want the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden jubilee to pass off without complication. Underneath it all, the growing threat of anti-British radicals is never far away. With the Land War at its height, the priority is to contain ‘special’ crime. But these murders appear to be ‘ordinary’ and thus of lesser priority. When the evidence suggests high-level involvement, and as the body count increases, Swallow must navigate the waters of foolish superiors, political directives and frayed tempers to investigate the crime, find the true murderer and deliver justice.

I can't wait to get my hands on a copy--payday's how many weeks away yet?--as I've read a good deal about the DMP in my own researches for Peeler and its follow-up, Irregulars.  The DMP were a separate force to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in which my fictional detective, Sean O'Keefe, served until its disbandment under terms of the Treaty post-War of Independence but as in the RIC, its members were Irish, predominantly Catholic and tasked with policing on behalf of the occupying  Crown in Ireland.  The unarmed DMP were a fairly conventional police force, modeled closely on the London Metropolitan Police, while the RIC was a para-military entity, armed to the teeth, with a presence in virtually every village in the country outside of Dublin.  Not for nothing were they known as the 'eyes and ears of the Crown' in Ireland.  All this, of course, is explained much better and in richer detail in Brady's  own history of the Garda Siochana (can't find the fada key on this computer anywhere!), titled Guardians of the Peace: Irish Police.  The other two indispensable books on both the DMP and RIC are by Jim Herlihy, a top drawer historian and gentleman never too busy to answer any of my occasionally ridiculous questions.  They are: Royal Irish Constabulary Officers: A Biographical and Genealogical Guide, 1816-1922 and 

The Dublin Metropolitan Police: A Short History and Genealogical Guide.

Have a great weekend all!

My name is Kevin and I'm a lexiholic...

I was at an event on publishing, some years back, at the Irish Writer's Centre.  My agent was on the panel along with a woman from one of the Irish publishers (can't remember which) and a young writer who had been recently published.  I had a meeting with my agent afterwards so I'd gone along early and sat in.  It was interesting for me as I had not yet been published and though I can't remember much of what was said, I do recall one thing that has stayed with me.  When asked by a member of the audience what a writer can do to improve her chances of being published, my agent responded with two words:  'Read more.'  He then expanded on this, saying that reading--anything and everything--is the first stage of any writer's apprenticeship.  (Writing hundreds of stories and several novels before one actually figures out what one is really doing as a writer is the second stage and fodder for future post.)  But a love for reading--an addiction to the printed word--he said, was the single most important quality shared by 'successful' writers of fiction he had represented over the years.

This was comforting to me at the time.  Though I'd had short stories published and had won said agent's services on the strength of a reasonably good novel (which we never did manage to sell, thank God!) I was as yet an unpublished novelist.  (Peeler was two more unsold novels in the future for me then.)  But I was addicted to reading and had a drawer full of apprentice work in the form of short stories--some good, some dire--and two prior completed but unpublished novels.  I was on my way, I thought.

I bring this up, because it is my addiction to reading--cereal boxes, Heat magazine, novels of any genre, forms in waiting rooms--that led me this week to reading one of the best short stories I've read in years.  A colleague, knowing my propensities, gave me a stack of old and more recent magazines, thinking I would make use of them during down times at work.  Among them were several issues of the New Yorker, a magazine I'm too poor (and tight) to subscribe to now but which I read avidly in the Boston College library years ago (along with the Paris Review, more of which in a future post) when I was supposed to be studying economics or chemistry.  The story, called 'Someone', is by the Irish-American writer, Alice McDermott.  I had read, some years before, her novel Charming Billy and thought it a wonderful evocation of the Irish-America of which I have much experience.  This short story, which is an extract from her novel-in-progress, is every bit as good.

It appears you have to subscribe to the New Yorker to read it online, but if you have an iPhone or iPad, there apparently exists a free app allowing access to magazine content.  Or you could try the local library, no doubt.  But do try to find it, fellow addicts.  It is simply brilliant.  Here is a link to a short interview she gives to the New Yorker re the story, but SPOILER ALERT, it does give some of the game away so perhaps find a copy of the story before reading it.  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/01/this-week-in-fiction-alice-mcdermott.html

Any other addicts have a rare gem they've come across recently?  Let us know!

Go Ahead, Judge a Book by Its Cover

Wayne Simmons

Check out the cover art for Wayne Simmons' new novel Fever.  It is brilliant and, importantly, instantly recognisable for what it is:  a horror novel and follow-up to his carcass-shredding masterpiece, Flu.  It appears so effortlessly representative of the subject matter—gut-ripping zombie invasion of Nor'n Ireland spurred on by a virus so lethal it makes my man flu look like…well, man flu—but it is the end result of hours of professional, hard-graft creative work from cover designer and publisher Emma Barnes at Snowbooks.  I know something of what I speak here as Emma's work adorns the cover of my recent novel, Peeler (Mercier Press, 2010). 

Give Me Fever

            When Mercier bought my novel I was told--it was in the contract, if I remember correctly--that I would have some ‘input’ into the cover.  I thought this would be a good thing and that I would have much to add.  It was, after all, my novel.  Who knew it better than I did?  Who better to guide the hand holding the (bloody) paintbrush or mouse?  (Computer mouse!)  More fool me.  I wasn’t aware at the time that Mercier contracted Emma at Snowbooks for the job.

            Some months later, after corrections, re-drafts and galleys, an email arrived bearing the draft cover for Peeler.  This would be the first time I saw a visual representation of my work.  This would be the painted face to the corpus of my words, the image by which anyone (please God) who stopped to think of my work for even a second would remember it by.
          And what I saw was good.  But Mercier had asked for my opinion and by God I was going to give it.  Too much blood, I thought.  Though I was as aware as any writer of the importance of a book’s cover and its relation to sales, and that as a crime novel Peeler needed to be seen as such from one look at the cover, I was concerned that the cover made the book look like something it was not.  It is a (hopefully) serious historical crime novel; it is not a serial killer/slasher type of book, not that I'm in any way against such a thing.  The brutal murder that sets my novel in motion happens off-stage.  There is bloody violence in the book; it is intended to be brutal and sudden and shocking, like violence tends to be in real life.  But does this cover, I asked myself, present the image of Peeler that I want? 

Too much blood?  Not by half?

            Thus I asked Mercier if it would be possible to tone down the splattered claret.  'Ummm, sure,' they said.  'We’ll get right on it.'

            All of which is to say, they shouldn’t have bothered asking me in the first place.  I know nothing about marketing books nor do I have any knowledge of which colours attract a book buyer’s eye and why or why not.  I think Emma might have toned down the blood splatter somewhat but I’m not actually certain she did.  Mercier might have said, ‘Hey, Emma Barnes is a pro.  This is a great cover and will sell books.  Ignore him.  He’s a writer.  Let him stick to writing…’ And they would have been right to do so.

            This came to me some months later when I was asked to go to Mercier’s distribution warehouse out in Sandyford Industrial Estate to sign a stack of books for shops.  While there, I got chatting to the distribution manager, a great guy whose name I can’t for the life of me remember.  I asked him how he thought the book was selling.  ‘Great,’ he said.  ‘We’ve had a good few re-orders and Eason’s have upped theirs.  The cover, apparently, is selling it.  According to the shops, buyers are picking it up, checking out the cover and heading to the tills.’

            Wayne, no doubt, will have the same experience with Fever. The moral of the story: listen to the writer when it comes to writing.  For all else, there’s someone like Emma Barnes who really knows what she’s doing. 

            And good luck to Wayne with Fever.  I haven’t read it yet but it looks great and if it’s half the book Flu is, he’s onto a winner.