Reading on the edge

I’m not sure I’m cut out for psychological thrillers. It’s not something I’d ordinarily read, but I started Calumet City by Charlie Newton thinking it was a relatively straightforward, police procedural. Wrong. It’s a psychological rollercoaster. The more I read the more I need to find out what happens, but the more I read the more nervous I am to continue. Tough, ghetto cop Patti Black and her world is disintegrating as her carefully concealed past erupts back into her life. Child sex abuse, torture, murder, gang violence, city politics, and religious fervour swirl around her as she desperately tries to hold onto her sanity. She’s not the only one.

Review of Ship of Fools by Fintan O’Toole (Faber and Faber, 2009)

Fintan O’Toole is one Ireland’s best known social and economic commentators and cultural critics, and Deputy Editor of the Irish Times. Never shy about airing his views, he doesn’t pull his punches in telling it as he sees it, and in Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger he provides a damning critique of both the Celtic Tiger model of development and the Fianna Fail (and coalition partners) government since 1997. Rather than focus on one particular aspect of the present crisis – as with The Builders or Banksters – O’Toole provides a broad sided polemic on how Ireland went from bust to boom and back again in a twenty year period.

Written in a clear, engaging prose that is often angry and sometimes witty, he makes a compelling case that Ireland has experienced an acute case of crony capitalism – that is, the Irish government rather than steering the ship for the benefit of all its crew, became the vehicle for capital accumulation for the small group of friends milling about on the bridge. Indeed, it is telling that the book starts with two shipping anecdotes – one about the Sean Dunne’s (a developer) wedding to which high profile developers, bankers and politicians were invited for a two week Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht Christina O, owned since 2000 by an Irish consortium who wrote off up to two thirds of the €65 million cost against tax; the second about the Irish national yacht, the Ashgard II, which sank in September 2008 and which remains on the sea bed with little hope of salvage or replacement. The book consists of nine polemical essays, each focusing on a particular theme that together provide an overview of why Ireland finds itself in the mess it’s in.

The first chapter takes to task the notion that Ireland ever had a planned and coherent model of economic development (which it has recently been selling to every other wannabe developed nation), but rather was the beneficiary of a series of fortunate events largely outside of its control (such as the general, huge overseas expansion of US capital, structural funds from Europe, English language competence, social partnership, access to European markets, Northern Ireland peace process, etc), aided by lax regulation and a tax regime which enabled the attraction of significant foreign direct investment. Rather the narrative of economic development happened after the fact to explain Ireland’s catching up with other advanced economies, rather than forging ahead. And it was an economic model that had two fatal flaws: it only worked if there was sustained growth, and in O’Toole’s terms it was driven by stupidity and corruption that meant it became dangerous overheated so that collapse was inevitable. Simply put the economic model was geared towards over-extending ordinary citizens and over-rewarding those that were already wealthy.

The stupidity was the policy decisions of government and the head-in-the-sand approach to fiscal management and regulation, and the corruption was the blatant use of the state system for the benefit of high powered Fianna Fail supporters, the very close ties between business and state (particularly in the banking and property development sectors), and the general lack of accountability, transparency and prosecution of those defrauding the state (the focus of chapter 2). This corruption was powerful because it not only worked on a system of bribes but it: 1) fostered a sense of insider and outsider, wherein all other interested parties knew they had to participate to maintain competitive advantage (if one stock broker paid a bribe, they all had to to their maintain access to decision makers); 2) was largely condoned by the both the public sector regulators and the general public; 3) there was a culture of impunity wherein nobody was ever prosecuted for corruption and what is more if their corruption was ever exposed they maintained their access to power. In other words, corruption was allowed to flourish, and even now in the depths of the crisis it is still at work – for example in relation to how the banks have been bailed out, especially Anglo-Irish, and the setting up of NAMA protects the interests of high powered friends of Fianna Fail.

The vast majority of the electorate, he argues, let this happen because corruption, self-interest and self-duplicity and denial are embedded into Irish society. Low-level corruption, such as DIRT evasion or social welfare fraud, was widespread. Moreover, lots of people did well out of the boom with rising salaries, home equity, and small business growth. The politicians might have been corrupt, but many people were the beneficiaries. And if all politicians are corrupt, why wouldn’t you re-elect one that you knew to be so (because a tribunal had exposed them)? As long as they served local needs, they were welcome to skim a bit off the top.

In turn, he writes about the banking system, financial regulation and tax evasion; property development and the new class of super-wealthy; land speculation and development tax incentives; Ireland’s role in global financial markets and the crash; the failure to future proof Ireland for the next phase of development with respect to education, information communications infrastructure, and key transport and energy infrastructure; and the ad hoc approach to addressing the crisis once it appeared that seemingly had more to do with protecting self-interests than the national interest.

Central to O’Toole’s analysis is the notion that Ireland is not yet democratically mature, with a weak civic morality and underdeveloped system of political governance, and an electoral system that encourages and condones local clientelism and corruption. He suggests that Ireland failed to create a proper democratic republic, to go through a process of political and social reform, the establishment a strong welfare system and collective interest, and to create a state independent of Church and local interest, as in other post World War Two, European countries. Instead Ireland persisted with two, essentially ideologically barren, middle right parties that were for all intents and purposes identical and which used a form of machine politics that were highly clientalist, reactionary and short-termist.

For him, the Celtic Tiger represented an opportunity to lay the foundation for long term economic prosperity, but it was squandered by a political party more interested in short term economic gain for a small elite. The solution is to complete the democratic project in Ireland through a radical overhaul of our political system and consciousness. This means in the short term the election of a party with a radically alternative vision to Fianna Fail, and in the long term the establishment of a ‘second Republic’ with reform of the Irish electoral system, reform of the tax system, and systematic tackling of political and economic corruption accompanied by much stronger modes of governance and regulation

Overall, O’Toole’s analysis is compelling. The first half of the book is a lucid, tour de force polemic. The second half is more patchy in its argument and content, and its focus drifts a little. The book is driven by strong observational analysis, and to my mind could have benefited from some explanatory frameworks derived from the social sciences, particularly political science. There has, for example, been a debate between social scientists in Ireland as to the extent to which Ireland is a developmental state. It would have also been nice to have some comparative analysis that placed Ireland – economically, politically and socially - in relation to other European nations. Personally, I felt the conclusion also needed further elaboration on what needed to change and why, using examples from elsewhere, to really push the point home. Nevertheless, it’s a fine piece of work that will no doubt be popular reading for many people in Ireland keen to understand the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. I’ve already recommended it to a number of people.

The Lazy Sunday Service

Every time I travel into London on a train the same question pops into my head – how the heck does this place work? Why doesn’t the city simply crash in on itself under the weight of all its competing demands and overstretched infrastructure and services? Whilst many Londoners might complain about aspects of the city, the fact that it functions at all seems a miracle to me. As a system, London is an astonishing place. Goods, utilities, people, waste, services, flow in, out and around, and are distributed to where they’re needed. Society for the most part works, and hasn’t descended to total anarchy. There might be inefficiencies, differences and tensions, but the city does, for the most, part work.

The sheer logistics of making everything happen are mind blowing. Well there are for me in any case, because I do spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of things. Though not too well on today’s journey into the city. I spent the weekend with five friends from my undergraduate days. We’ve been meeting up at least once a year since graduating in 1991 from Lancaster University. The problem is we go out and pretend that we’re all still students. And we’re not. And it shows the next morning. And the day after that. And the one after that.

I failed to find a copy of C.H.B. Kitchin’s Crime at Christmas in any of the bookstores in Oxford, though I did buy the following books in the closing down sale in Borders.





They’ll go into an already bloated TBR pile where they’ll have to try and jostle their way up to the top.

Saturday Snippet: Henry

The Crime Scraps post about Geung, Colin Cotterill’s character with a learning disability, bought back fond memories of one of my own characters from an unpublished novel - Henry, who has Down's Syndrome and who works as an assistant to an amateur detective, who is herself wheelchair bound. Henry is one of the stars of the Irish Special Olympic Judo team, who is pretty handy in a tight corner and has great humour with a mischievous streak. He's a character I'm hoping will one day see the light of day as I'm very fond of him. Two Henry snippets:

Henry swivelled the chair around and pushed Mary down the drive. Jack trailed after them, leaving Mrs Roche stranded and confused in the doorway. As they turned at the end of the driveway, she gave a faint wave and slowly closed the door.

‘Ignorant cow,’ Mary muttered under her breath.

‘What Ms Carmichael?’ asked Henry.

‘I said, I thought that Mrs Roche was very rude.’

‘I thought you said she was an ignorant cow.’ Henry said loudly before bursting into a braying laugh.

-----

Mary was sitting at the wheel of her car, her fingers drumming off the steering wheel, staring over at Aidan’s house. In the passenger seat Henry was humming, bouncing his head to the tune he was making.

‘Henry, you’re repeating. How does the rest of the song go?’

Henry looked at Mary and carried on humming the same few notes over and over.

‘For god’s sake Henry, do another tune, will you.’

‘My favourite,’ stated Henry and then resumed his humming.

‘I know! We all know. Can’t you do another one, that one’s driving me nuts.’

‘How long we gonna be here, Ms Carmichael?’

‘I dunno, Henry. It depends on whether Aidan goes out or not. Maybe ten minutes, maybe a few hours.’

‘Can’t we just go and talk to him?’

‘No, no, not yet. We need to work out if he’s behaving oddly, you know, if he might be doing things he shouldn’t. Besides, what would we say?’

‘We could ask him if he’s seen Mrs Roche’s cat?’ Henry suggested.

‘We could, you’re right, but then what? Aidan, are you doing things you shouldn’t?’

‘Yeah,’ said Henry enthusiastically. ‘We could ask that.’

‘No! He’d know what we’re up to then, wouldn’t he. We need to catch him out. Get him to reveal what he’s hiding.’

Henry nodded his head and then started humming again.

‘Jesus,’ Mary muttered, ‘can you hum a different tune, Henry?’

‘It’s my favourite,’ he replied, continuing to repeat the same few notes.

Review of The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski (St Martin’s Minotaur, 2005)

The heist was doomed from the start. Holden and Bling get caught in the doors to the bank and Lennon is forced to reverse the getaway car into vestibule to free them. Driving away he ploughs into a woman with a pram. Five minutes later they have dumped the car, leaving their haul inside, and swapped vehicles. Two minutes after that they are flip-flopping across the street having been rammed from the side, and are left for dead. Only Lennon isn’t prepared to give up on the loot so soon. In very short order he’s tangled up in a game of deals, counter-deals, and double crosses with the Russian mob, Italian mafia, and bent cops, all intent on revenge and the ill-gotten gains.

If I had some spare cash waiting for an investment opportunity I would have sought to buy the movie rights to The Wheelman within the first thirty pages of starting. The novel starts at a ferocious pace and never lets up, driven by snappy dialogue and taut action, with almost every scene containing a twist. In fact I can’t remember a story with so many twists and turns, with double, triple and more crosses, as every character seeks to get the better of the others in the hunt for the stolen money. In so doing, Swierczynski drags the principle character, Lennon, through the wringer, so that although he’s no saint you can’t put help root for the guy. The book is not without its faults – for example, a couple of the scenes lack credibility notably the first scene at the pipe – but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The Wheelman is a rollercoaster of a book. I loved it from first page to last. I need the next Swierczynski book right NOW!

Another week another airport

On way to Exeter this morning to give a talk in the university this afternoon about the Irish and Scottish diaspora strategies. My first trip through Exeter airport. I've kind of been 'collecting' UK regional airports as I shuttle about to meetings and talks. Not the most sustainable form of travel, but taking the ferry and train would add a day each way onto each trip. As with many of these trips I doubt I'll see much of the town itself as I'll be leaving early tomorrow morning to catch a train up to London. The short flight should hopefully give me time to finish Duane Swierczynski's, The Wheelman, which at the minute is right up there in my top five reads of the year.

Futureproofing?

I've actually written two fairly long blog posts today, but they were advance postings that I'll put up in a few days, so this will be something of a filler. One of the posts is a review of Fintan O'Toole's book 'Ship of Fools'. I wanted to get it written before I went and saw him talk this evening so I didn't conflate the book and the talk. And what a talk. It's quite a while since I've seen a presentation that was in the best traditions of the public intellectual - wide-ranging, erudite and insightful across the very broad terrain of Ireland over the past twenty years.

Just prior to the talk I got the news that my basic salary is being cut by the government (5% for the first 30,000, 7.5% for the next 40,000, and 10% for anything over that - only for those working in the public sector). That's on top of a cut so far this year of take home pay of 15% (made up of pension levy, income levy, health levy, and an increase in the ceiling of social insurance payments [PRSI]). All in all, I think I'm down about 22% on the start of the year. They've also changed my pension from being based on final salary to my average annual salary over my entire career. I'm well paid, so I'll cope okay. It's the people who are low earners I feel sorry for. They're being squeezed because of the follies of the neoliberal policies designed to bloat the coffers of the already wealthy.

On the positive side, I got a new set of bookcases installed (right). Plenty of space there to fill up! Hopefully that's future proofed me for a while.

C.H.B. Kitchin, Crime at Christmas

I read with some interest on Mysteries in Paradise blog a mention of a crime novel by namesake, C.H.B. Kitchin, who published a number of books in the first half of the twentieth century. Kitchin is the 5816th most common surname in the UK according to the National Trust Name mapper, so its not that often that I come across the work of other members of the clan. I've been trying to get a copy of Crime at Christmas (first published in 1934, and reissued this year) ordered through a local bookshop in time for the xmas break, but I've had no luck so far as it's sold out in Ireland. Rather than resort to an online retailer I'm going to have a search for it on a trip later this week to Exeter, London and Oxford (it'll be an excuse for a good browse).

C. H. B. Kitchin was born in Harrogate 1895. He read classics at Oxford (Exeter College) and, after serving in France during World War I (1916-1918), worked at the stock exchange before being called to the bar in 1924. He led a varied and colourful life, born into wealth which he increased after inheriting in the mid-1920s through shrewd stock market investment. On inheritance he moved to Brighton to become a full-time writer. He published 13 novels (4 of them crime novels) and one collection of short stories. He died in 1967.

Kitchin's approach to crime fiction is revealed a little by Warren, the detective in his crime novels, when he tells the reader in a Crime at Christmas, "A detective story is always something of an étude de moeurs--a study in the behaviour of normal people in abnormal circumstances.... You want the revolver shot, the blood-stained knife, the mutilated corpse--but largely because they bring out the prettiness of the chintz in the drawing-room and the softness of the grass on the Vicarage lawn." The detective story, Warren continues, provides one with "a narrow but intensive view of ordinary life, the steady flow of which is felt more keenly through the very violence of its interruption." (from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which I managed to get partial access to at Bookrags).

Faber have reissued six of his novels - Crime at Christmas, The Auction Sale, The Secret River, Streamers Waving, Death of my Aunt, and Mr Balcony.

Review of The Build Up by Phillip Gwynne (Pan Macmillan, 2008)

Dusty Buchanon used to be the rising star of Darwin’s police force with an uncanny knack of solving difficult cases. That changed, however, with the failure to prosecute Evan Dale Gardner on circumstantial evidence for the rape and murder of a young backpacker. A couple of years on and Dianna McVeigh’s body has been found, but the case has been assigned to a hated colleague by the new, hardnosed commander. Frustrated at being sidelined, when Dusty hears that the body of another young woman has been found in a billabong, deep in the outback near to a Vietnam vets camp, she heads off to investigate. Only when she calls in reinforcements the body has disappeared and she is demoted back to uniform. Determined to prove that a murder has taken place and to catch the killer, she enrols a ragbag collection of friends to continue the hunt. All the while the heat and humidity continues to build-up prior to the monsoon rains falling.

Like Marshall Karp’s ‘The Rabbit Factory’ (reviewed here), The Build Up seeks create a police procedural underlain with dark humour, mostly mobilised through some comic set pieces and the ragbag collection of friends (including a gay art dealer, an aboriginal rock star, a German twitcher, and a pet pig). For the most part it kind of works. I enjoyed the book, but was not blown away by it. The writing is fairly perfunctory, the characters a little stereotypical, and plot a little haphazard. What should have been twists and turns in the story came as little surprise, and it kind of peters out towards the end rather than coming to a climax. The story has some nice observational asides about the Northern Territories and its inhabitants, but mostly the story felt quite shallow, contra Adrian Hyland’s ‘Diamond Dove’ (reviewed here). Overall, an okay read that has its amusing moments that will appeal to readers who enjoy comic crime capers.

The Lazy Sunday Service

I've just had one of those horror moments when Thunderbird decides that my inbox needs to be rebuilt, then taking 30 minutes to do it. The last thing I need is for my inbox to be zapped or rearranged into mush. Last time this happened the inbox looked fine until you clicked on a header, at which point a totally unrelated message popped up. All the messages were there, just not linked to the right headers! Nightmare. In the end I only lost 7 days of email after uploading the backup, but it still caused havoc.

Yesterday I took a trip into Carrick on Shannon to collect a couple of books I'd ordered. Over the past couple of weeks the town was reduced to an island along the River Shannon (pictures right from WillowIreland blog). There are still large parts of the town under water. What a disaster. Your heart cannot help but go out to people living there or those whose businesses were swamped. Thank god I don't live on a floodplain.

Posts I enjoyed this week
It's shameless the way we flirt - Adventures in Writing
I've seen the future, baby, it's murder - Crime Always Pays
Mr Geung - Crime Scraps
What's your genre - Criminal Brief
Femme Fatales - Do Some Damage
Ass-backwards on gays - International Crime Authors Reality Check
Lost People of the Amazon - International Crime Authors Reality Check
Winterland by Alan Glynn - International Noir
Don't mess with the peer review process - Petrona

My posts this week
DDDA re-assessed
Review of Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman
How to look like a twit
Review of Banksters by David Murphy and Martina Devlin
When smart economy and planning collide
November Review
Review of Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland
Saturday Snippet: Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman

Saturday Snippet: Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman

A short snippet from my November book of the month, Reed Farrel Coleman's, Walking the Perfect Square, with the main character, Moe Prager, being his usual philosophical self.

Leaving Pooty's I felt as much as I did after my college statistics classes: more confused on the way out than on the way in. But that was less Jack and Pete's fault than mine. My first step was a misstep. I could see that now. I was a bloodhound with no nose for blood. My forensics training was rudimentary at best. I wasn't going to find a magic carpet fiber or blood splatter. There was nothing at Pooty's for me to find that any of the other investigators, most far more experienced than myself, wouldn't have already stumbled upon. Maybe that's why they hadn't gotten anywhere. Sometimes, I thought, experience gets in the way. Even if I was wrong, it sounded good.

I found myself staring at Patrick Mahoney's poster pasted to a mailbox next to my car. 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?' the bold block letters wanted to know. It struck me that I hadn't really. I remembered a slide of a Magritte painting from my Introduction to Art History class - I guess I had college on my mind that day. It's funny what you think about. Anyway, the painting was of a tobacco pipe and the artist called it Ceci n'est pas une pipe. In English I'm pretty sure that translates into 'This is not a pipe'. The point is, it wasn't a pipe. It was a painting of a pipe. And the poster I was looking at wasn't Patrick Mahoney. I guess that's what hit me.

My review is here.

Review of Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland (Text Publishing, 2006)

Emily Tempest has always felt a bit of an in-betweener, not quite in the world of her white, mining father, nor the aboriginal world of her long dead mother. Having gone for an extended walkabout through Australian cities, drifting from one unfinished course to another, and around the world, now in her mid-twenties she has returned to Central Australia and the scruffy camp of Moonlight Downs, unsure what to expect or how she’ll be received. Her mob welcome her back, but within hours her former mentor is brutally murdered and the group scatter to the winds in grief. Emily retreats to Bluebush, the nearby, rough and ready, mining town, determined to track down the killer. Only the clues point in different directions – to a loner, aboriginal who is a law unto himself, and a white, cattle farmer who has his eye on the sacred lands of the Diamond Dove. What soon becomes apparent is that finding the truth in part means finding herself.

Diamond Dove is a wonderful novel. Engagingly written, with good prose, a well crafted, multi-textured plot, and perfectly paced, Hyland transports the reader into the natural and social environment of the Australian outback, the worlds of aborigines and white settlers, and their interface. In both the bush and the town, Hyland evokes a rich sense of place conveying their respective sights, textures, sounds and smells. The characterization is excellent, with Emily Tempest particularly well drawn, with just the right amount of back story that the reader understands the context but is always kept in the present. The scenes and dialogue are well constructed, with a good blend of observations, pathos, wit, and social commentary without it ever becoming a sermon. Indeed, Diamond Dove cleverly explores race relations and social and political tensions in contemporary Australia without straying from Emily’s quest to discover who killed her friend and mentor. I’ve already started recommending it to friends.

November reviews

The slowest review month since I started the blog; it's been extraordinarily busy time. My book of the month was Reed Farrel Coleman's 'Walking the Perfect Square'.

If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr ****
Rubble by Jeff Byles **
Death of a Red Heroine by Qui Xiaolong ***
The Builders by frank McDonald and Kathy Sheridan ***
Dirty Sweet by John McFetridge ****
Walking the Perfect Square by Reed Farrel Coleman *****

Review of Banksters by David Murphy and Martina Devlin (Hachette, 2009)

In Banksters, RTE business correspondent, David Murphy, and Martina Devlin, columnist with the Irish Independent, seek to chart the rise, collapse and rescuing of the Irish banking system. The story they tell is split into four parts – the origins of the crisis, an overview of each of the banks and the key banking officials, the crisis, and the fallout. Their tale can essentially be boiled down to the following:

1) In the early 2000s, Irish banks stopped using their deposits to underpin loans and started to borrow money from other (international) banks and to offer easier forms of credit to home buyers (such as 100% mortgages over longer time spans) and investors (such as deferred interest payments).

2) Property prices, especially development land spiralled exponentially and unsustainably upwards (and did not meet stress test criteria) and yet the bankers kept lending money to developers driven by personal bonus schemes and inter-bank rivalry to generate record annual profits.

3) Regulation was very light and the financial regulator failed to intervene in poor and suspect banking practices or overheated property speculation; the Irish Central Bank could not directly influence consumer spending as it did not have control of interest rates (which resided with the European Central Bank); and the political establishment were in cahoots with the developers and were not only blind to the potential problem but poured scorn on anybody who tried to warn of the impending disaster. Crony capitalism was in full swing.

4) As property markets slowed and financial crash hit, international banks stopped lending Irish banks money.

5) Banks thus didn’t have funds to lend to investors and businesses, nor did they have the means to pay back loans to international banks.

6) This prompted a share price collapse. (Between May 2007 and November 2008 Irish shares fell in value from €55b to €4b).

7) Which in turn spooked depositors who, worried that the bank might fail, withdrew their deposits to move them to a more secure institution.

8) This took all the liquidity out of the Irish banking system and reduced the share price further.

9) A run on the banks thus became inevitable without intervention which, given that the Irish government had decided that the banks could not be allowed to fail, came in the form of the Irish government underwriting the entire banking network (to the tune of €440b), thus halting the outflow of deposits.

10) By guaranteeing the banks, the Irish government in turn put the country’s future on the line, making tax payers liable for all bad debts.

11) Once the brake was in place the Irish government needed to decide how to proceed to put liquidity into the banking system. Initially it wanted to avoid recapitalisation and nationalisation and instead it tried to force mergers between financial institutions to gain economies of scale and to recapitalise the banks through private equity investment.

12) Ultimately though it had to nationalise Anglo-Irish Bank and partly recapitalise the others, taking the role of a preferred shareholder, and also created NAMA (National Assets Management Agency) – the world’s largest, state-owned, property portfolio - to take the bad debts off the banks' books.

For the rest of the review see Ireland After NAMA blog.

How to look like a twit ...

I'm in Galway today at a conference on the relationship between the public policy and the social sciences. I turned up to find I was meant to be giving the 15 minute introductory speech. Sometimes it pays to actually read the programme and the advance material that conference organisers send through! What they got was a hastily constructed, half-baked, back of an envelope address. What I got was a new manifestation of the crisis management lifestyle that I seem to be leading these days. Not a great way to stumble through life, but there we go; sometimes it's probably not a bad thing to look like a twit ...