If you're going to make an error, might as well make it a big one

How do you lose €3.6 billion euro? You make a basic error in an accounting spreadsheet (that virtual money is tricky stuff given it's just 1s and 0s). As errors go its a whopper. It's 2.3% of Ireland's GDP or about 10% of the annual tax receipts or roughly equivalent to the amount that was cut out of the budget last year as part of the austerity measures. Basically, it's a massive amount of money. To put it in context, if you paid back a euro a second, it would take 11 days to pay back a million euro; it would take 114 years to pay back 3.6 billion. As the Irish Times reports, this accountancy error has just been discovered and reported by the Dept of Finance. Thankfully we've found the money, lowering the debt, rather than discovering we owe the money, but still. Given the financial mess the country is in, you'd think 101 accounting would be top of the agenda.

October reviews

A mixed bag of reading during October. The two standout books were Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues and William Ryan's The Holy Thief. Both are historical novels, one set in 1936 in Moscow, the other in Berlin and Paris in 1939/40. Both were excellent reads. Difficult to choose between them to be honest. One had better prose and character development, the other a slightly stronger plot. I think I'll call it a tie for best book of the month.

The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson ****
The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan ***.5
Nazi on the Run by Gerald Steinacher **.5
Garnethill by Denise Mina ***
The Holy Thief by William Ryan *****
Open Season by CJ Box ***.5
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan *****
Death Toll by Jim Kelly ***.5

Kinky philosophy

Kinky Friedman, that is. I read 'Greenwich Killing Time' over the weekend, the first in the detective series that stars Kinky Friedman as the private investigator. I enjoyed the book, especially his observations and humour. Here are a few quotes from the book.

"There are no good lawyers. There maybe lady wrestlers and Catholic universities. There maybe military intelligence. But a good lawyer is a contradiction in terms. When you needed one, you needed one, however, and I needed one."

"Some people wake to the sound of church bells. Some people wake to the sound of birds. But in New York City you wake to the sound of garbage trucks. Place is still filthy, of course. Can't have everything."

"Rain was a lot like vomiting. One of the few great equalisers in life. It soaked society dames and bag ladies. People and pigeons. Cops and robbers."

"Of course, most people didn't know what they were missing. And they sure didn't know what they weren't missing. Nor did they know that there was any difference between the two."

"Rather grudinglythe guy called the city editor, and before you could have cooked a two minute egg, the waves were parting, the wheels were turning, the metaphors were mixing, and the two of us were shaking hands with Virgil and following him down into the circles of Hell."

Lazy Sunday Service

I see that Google are starting to rein in their free API service for Google Maps. Developers using the API will start paying for the service after 25,000 map loads per day ($4 per 1000 views). We use the API on one of our projects, so this is something I'll be keeping an eye on. It's not going to affect usage in the short term for the users of sites that employ Google Maps mash-ups, though it will start to affect high volume providers of such mash-ups. Clearly, the strategy here has been to get people hooked and then introduce charging. It'll be interesting to see if the map load limit is gradually reduced over time and if Google roll out the charging model to its other services. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.

My posts this week:
Six to choose from ...
Review of The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson
Activity status of unfinished estates 2011
Intense, urgent and a little explosive
Review of The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan
You'd Better Sit Down

You'd better sit down

'I think you'd better sit down,' Mary said.

Kenny dropped into an armchair. 'I take it this is bad news.'

'It depends on how you look at it.'

'Bad then. Go on.'

'I'm pregnant.'

'You're ... how the hell did that happen?'

'How do you think?'

'But you're forty five!'

'And still fertile. And so are you. Two bottles of wine and no protection and ...'

'Jesus.'

'Is that all you've got to say? Jesus?'

'What do you want me to say?'

'I don't know? That you're over the moon. That it'll be okay.'

'I ... a baby ... Jesus.'


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan (Mantle, 2011)

Militia captain Alexei Korolev is still living with the ghosts of his last major case when Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks him to investigate the supposed suicide of a young woman, Maria Lenskaya. He has little choice in the matter since the directive has come the Commissar for State Security, with whom she was having an affair. With good reason, Korolev fears political cases; this is after all the period of Stalin's great purges, and a wrong step by Korolev will have knock on consequences for his family and colleagues. Moreover, the young woman died on the film set of The Bloody Meadow that is being shot at an agricultural college near to Odessa on the Black Sea. A thousand kilometres outside of Korolov's usual patch of operations, and in the heart of Ukrainian resentment at the ravages of collectivisation, his presence as investigating officer is hardly welcome. Quickly establishing that Lenskaya was, in fact, murdered he starts to try and determine who killed her. The case though is not straightforward and seems to hint at a conspiracy against the state.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ryan debut novel, The Holy Thief, so I had high expectations for The Bloody Meadow. It's a good read, but doesn't quite match the quality of the first book in the series. The Holy Thief had a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere, with a very tight plot. The Bloody Meadow is more expansive, felt a little looser in the plotting, and Korolov as a character is little developed in terms of backstory and personal life. And because there is a lot going on and there is a big cast, the development of characters in general is a little bit too much surface and not enough depth. There are also some unlikely coincidences, which enable a couple of characters from the first book to appear in the second. That all said, the book does have historical richness and The Bloody Meadow is an enjoyable read, and if I hadn't read the first book I'm sure this review would read more positively than it might seem. To be clear then, I am still recommending it as worthy of a look and my sense is that this is a series with a lot of potential. Personally, I hope the third book is set back in Moscow, allowing a further engagement with the militia and pathology characters from the first book. Regardless of setting, I plan to read it.

Intense, urgent and a little explosive ...

The Irish Times today has a piece penned by Declan Burke entitled 'Flash fiction: Intense, urgent and a little explosive'. He very kindly included one of my drabbles - Blood Pumping Quick - as well as a piece by Nuala Ni Chonchuir. I am, of course, delighted with this! For anyone interested in penning a piece of flash fiction, The Irish Times has issued a challenge seeking flash fiction stories of no more than 500 words. They'll publish the best of them. There are no parameters re. genre or focus. There's no set date but stories should be submitted to flashfiction@irishtimes.com. At only 500 words, you've nothing to lose by giving it a go.

Review of The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson (Penguin, 2005)

In Kiruna, a small town in northern Sweden, a young man is stabbed to death in a church. He'd previously died years before, but had been revived. His story received global coverage through his book and preaching and led to the three main churches in the town coming together to form a much larger entity. The victim's sister, Sanna, discovers the body and very quickly becomes the main suspect for his brutal murder. Desperate, she calls her former friend Rebecka Martinsson, who left the town and the church in disgrace years previously and is now a tax lawyer in Stockholm. Reluctantly, Martinsson returns and working with and against the local police tries to piece together what happened, at the same time discovering what had occurred in the town in her absence. What she finds is a conspiracy of silence and threats. And the nearer she edges towards the truth, the more danger she finds herself in.

The Savage Altar is the first novel by Asa Larsson and won Sweden's best first crime novel award. The book has a police procedural feel to, and it does have that side to it, but it primarily focuses on Martinsson's efforts without ever really straying into legal thriller territory. Rebecka Martinsson is a feisty character, and is easy to identify with. Indeed, the characterisation throughout the book is strong, with a good range of supporting cast and I felt the pregnant cop had a lot of potential to front her own series. The story also has a good sense of place, transporting the reader to the frozen landscape of northern Sweden. One feature of the storytelling I particularly liked was the change in perspective between characters, which could alter mid-scene as one character left. The story itself was relatively straightforward. The plot was nicely constructed, though it has no real twists (which was fine by me), andits tension points were a little flat because they were well telegraphed. Overall, a solid start to a series, which I intend to follow based on this outing.

Six to choose from ...

The shortlists for the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2011 have been announced. The shortlist for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award is:

A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black
Absolute Zero Cool by Declan Burke
The Reckoning by Jane Casey
Bloodland by Alan Glynn
Taboo by Casey Hill
The Bloody Meadow by William Ryan

You can vote for your favourite book by clicking on the image above. I've only read Absolute Zero Cool and Bloodland, so far. I've made a start on The Bloody Meadow. I'm a little surprised that Gene Kerrigan's The Rage didn't make the shortlist, but as Declan Burke notes over on Crime Always Pays, 2011 was a bumper year of quality Irish crime fiction.

Lazy Sunday Service

Just started to read Anglo Republic: Inside the Bank that Broke Ireland by Simon Carswell. Not far into it and it's a sobering, depressing, interesting read. Just about everything about the bank should have been setting off alarm bells, instead it was feted and copied as the other banks tried to compete. The blame for Ireland's crisis is often placed squarely at the door of the banks and Anglo in particular. However, Ireland's political economic model and its regulatory regime gave free license for the banks to pursue dubious business models. It'll be interesting to see if Carswell manages to site and explain Anglo in this wider context.

My posts this week:
Review of Nazi on the Run by Gerald Steinacher
The El up Ninth Avenue
Some of the dark stuff
Two gritty takes on justice
Review of Garnethill by Denise Mina
Unfinished estates 2010-2011 change
I know you're not the answer

I know you’re not the answer

I know you’re not the answer,
I know you’re not the answer,
Black and blue, forty different hues,
Oh love, oh god, oh ...

Black nights, grey mornings,
Walking into doors and falling,
Clutching, weeping, tight false smiles,
Life is more than little white lies.

That’s the hope at least,
As I know you’re not the answer.
How can you be the answer?
Oh love, oh god, oh ...

Heaven help the fool,
Who looks in the mirror,
And self-deludes,
Who frets and forgets and fails to regret.

Mostly.

I know you’re not the answer.
I’ll never have an answer.


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Garnethill by Denise Mina (Bantam, 1998)

Maureen O’Donnell is a survivor of abuse by her father and a psychiatric hospital. She now works in a theatre ticket booth, is mistress to Douglas, a therapist, and is in perpetual conflict with her alcoholic mother and her doubting sisters. After a drunken night out she wakes to discover Douglas tied to a chair, his throat cut. The police, her family, Douglas’ family and the media all have Maureen pegged as his killer. Sensing that the only way the truth will be discovered is through her own investigation, she turns to her few friends who believe in her and starts to nose around. She soon discovers a scandal, a conspiracy of silence, and a whole heap of trouble.

I had mixed feelings about Garnethill. Mina is clearly a skilled writer and the story is well plotted, with some nice twists and tension points, and is particularly strong on characterization. It also has a nice sense of place and contextualisation with respect to incest, abuse, family feuds, friendship and mental health issues. The full complexity of Maureen as a character shines through. My problem was with Maureen, however. If there is a difficult path, she seems to take it. The story is set up so that you’re meant to feel sympathy and empathy for her in opposition to the characters that oppose her, in particular her mother and Joe McEwan, the policeman in charge of the investigation into Douglas’ death. My problem was that I often identified with McEwan more than Maureen, especially as the book progressed. In her obsession to exact a retributive justice, she actively misleads the police and brings people into real danger and harm, including herself. And the end is quite callous in many ways as she rejects someone she’s being trying to protect. It might be realistic in many ways, but I found it a little frustrating and tiring. Overall then, a book that has a lot of pluses, but which didn’t resonate with me personally as much as I hoped it might.

Two gritty takes on justice

Patti Abbott and Paul Brazill, two very fine crime short story writers, have published collections recently.

Patti's collection of 23 stories is Monkey Justice and is published by Snubnose Press. It's been praised thus:

"Patricia Abbott proves that there are many shades of noir as she expertly layers her stories with melancholy, loss and the frailness of the human psyche" – Dave Zeltserman

“In this collection of short contemporary noir fiction, Patti Abbott distinguishes herself as an extraordinary storyteller of the dark recesses of the human heart. Abbott’s characters hit hard, fight dirty, and seek a brand of hardscrabble justice that will leave you both wincing and wishing for more.” – Sophie Littlefield

Paul's nine story collection is Brit Grit and is published by Trestle Press. Reviews run thus:

Brit Grit gives you a meaty, informative introduction to the genre followed by nine terrific fast-paced stories populated for the most part by stoned, drunken, thieving losers. The absurdities of everyday life are meat and drink to PDB, and his observations and characters are in turn sad, poignant, greedy, wicked, ridiculous and funny - Julie Lewthwaite

'Brazill's knack for mining life's absurd moments ... is on full display here, as is his razor sharp dialogue' - Death by Killing

'Paul Brazill's writing is a wonderful mix of gritty urban noir stylings, superb dialogue and wonderful one-liners' - Gone Bad

Both have nothing but five star reviews on Amazon UK and US. If you like the short story form, worth checking out.

Some of the dark stuff ...

Two books to keep an eye out for if you're a noir aficionado, both released this month. Gerard Brennan's The Point and Nigel Bird's Smoke. Gerard writes the blog Crime Scene Northern Ireland and Nigel blogs at Sea Minor. Expect dark, dark reads. Here are the blurbs:

The Point
Small time crook Paul Morgan is a bad influence on his brother, Brian. When Paul crosses one thug too many, the cider-fuelled duo flee Belfast for Warrenpoint, the sleepy seaside resort of their childhood memories. For Brian, a new life in the Point means going straight and falling in love with Rachel, while Paul graduates to carjacking by unusual means and ‘borrowing’ firearms from his new boss. Brian can’t help being dragged into his brother’s bungling schemes but Rachel can be violently persuasive herself . . . and she isn’t the only one who wants to see an end to Paul’s criminal career.

Smoke
People from Tranent aren’t called ‘the Belters’ for nothing. It didn’t take Carlo Salvino long to find that out the first time around and, now he’s out of the hospital, he’s all set for revenge. The Ramsay brothers, on the other hand, are keen to rise up in the world and get the hell out of town. They gather all their hopes in the one basket, ‘The Scottish Open’ dog-fighting tournament. In Leo they have the dog to win it, now all they need is a fair wind. The Hooks, well they’re just a maladjusted family caught up in the middle of it all. A tale of justice, injustice and misunderstanding.

As the last line of Nigel's blurb on Amazon says: Belts on and hold on to those hats.

The El up 9th Avenue

The challenge set by Patti, over at Pattinase, was to write a short story, no more than a 1,000 words long, inspired by the art of Reginald Marsh.


The picture my story relates to is "Why not use the L" (1930) which is held in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.


All the other stories are listed over on Patti's site, with some great contributors. Check them out.


Marian folded over The New York Post and peeked round the corner, swaying with the rhythm of the railcar. ‘How you doing, sugar?’

‘What?’ Elsie turned her head, her eyes blinking behind round glasses like a mole trying to adapt to sunlight. She’d been staring out the grimy window opposite. Perched thirty feet up on a steel frame, as the train passed the side streets she could catch glimpses of the dark waters of the Hudson River speckled with reflecting, fractured lights, and the flat expanse of New Jersey.

‘Are you doing okay, petal?’

Elsie nodded her head shyly, trying to block out the acrid, cloying smell of the bum next to her. Or perhaps he worked a manual job; something that built up a heat. Maybe he laboured at the docks or one of the waterfront factories. Regardless, his thick woollen coat was stained with oil and god knows what and reeked of wet dog and cheap liquor.

‘You want to take in a movie?’ Marian asked. ‘There’s a Gary Cooper talkie at Loew’s. Morocco. A romance about a legionnaire and a cabaret singer who meet in the desert. The canary’s that blond kraut with the bedroom eyes.’ Marian tapped the advert in the paper with a manicured nail. ‘Marlene Dietrich.’

‘I ... I’m not so taken with Gary Cooper,’ Elsie admitted.

The bum snorted a laugh without opening his eyes. ‘Honey, all you white broads love Gary Cooper.’

Elsie looked at Marian, but her companion’s amused smile offered little support.

‘Well ... well, I don’t.’ She preferred Clark Gable. He seemed more ... dashing.

‘Maybe you need to get those glasses checked, lady?’

‘And maybe you’d better mind your own business.’ She couldn’t quite believe she’d said it. Six months previously, when they’d first moved to the city seeking work and a little adventure, she wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. Marian had instantly slid into the bustle, noise, dirt and language of the city. Elsie still felt like she was living in an alien world.

The bum opened one eye, stared at her for a second, then closed it again.

‘Forget the movie palace, sisters,’ he mumbled. ‘The only place to be is Connie’s up on Seventh and 131st.’

The train pulled to a halt, passengers stepping out onto the platform.

Marian took a seat opposite Elsie. ‘That’s up in Harlem,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh.’ His eyes were still closed, his oversized cap pulled down low.

The train set off again, rocking and clunking to a rising beat.

‘Connie’s is a theater?’

‘Jazz club, honey. Satchmo hisself will be playing there tonight.’

‘Satchmo?’

‘Louie.’

‘Louie?’

‘Where you been at, Sister? Louie Armstrong. The top cat. Everyone knows Pops.’

‘It’s a ... black club?’

‘Only on the stage. White only out front. You’d fit right in, like snowflakes at the North Pole.’

‘So how do you know about it, if it’s a white’s only joint?’

‘I’s the best axe man from here to Chicago, kitten. Play there off and on.’

‘You’re in a band?’

‘Well ... I’ve played with them all. Fats, Duke, Ella, Cab, Dizzy. I set their rhythm rocking.’

The women stared across at one another, trying to decide if the bum was telling the truth.

‘I’s just ... I’s just between bands right now,’ he continued. ‘But I’ll be playing with Pops tonight. Pops always done right by Paws Jackson.’

‘Paws?’

He held up his massive hands, their palms pale, the fingertips calloused. He cracked open an eye to watch their reaction.

Marian’s eyes widened. She’d never seen fingers so thick and long. They were like something you’d see in a comic. Like giant octopi.

‘I could help get you muffins in, if you wanted. I know the doorman pretty good. He lets me store my fresh togs there, so I can make a bee-line straight from the front line.’

‘I ... I don’t ... I don’t think so,’ Elsie said, unable to believe that the ruffled man next to them was anything more than a bum or labourer; that they were even talking to him.

‘We’d need to get changed; if we’re going on the hop,’ Marian said.

‘Marian!’

‘You ladies look just fine. Workin’ girls are always welcome at Connie’s.’

‘We ain’t no working girls, Mister,’ Elsie said.

‘Sure you ain’t. I never said you were.’ Paws pulled a sly grin, closing his eyes again.

The train started to slow to a halt. Elsie rose to her feet and shuffled to the door, unable to hide her relief. ‘This is our stop, Marian.’

‘How about we head up to Harlem,’ her friend replied, not moving, ‘listen to some jazz?’

‘I don’t ... I don’t know.’ The Gary Cooper movie now sounded swell. They could watch the feature, grab a coffee and a bite to eat in Sammy’s before heading back to their cramped apartment.

‘You need to live a little, Sister,’ Paws said. ‘Let your hair down. Nobody going to put the drop on you less you want them to.’

‘I ...’

The train lurched, pulling out of the station, gaining speed.

Paws cracked open one eye and laughed. He could already feel the bass pounding, Pops’ trumpet blasting over the top, hitting sugary high notes.

There’d be some sweet music tonight.



Some info on Connie's Inn, Harlem (1923-33) can be found here.

A useful site for 1930s American slang can be found here.