Review of Crocodile Tears by Mark O’Sullivan (Transworld, 2013)

In the wealthy, seaside suburb of Howth, on the north side of Dublin city, property developer Dermot Brennan has been clubbed to death with a crowbar.  Having only joined the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation a couple of days before, Detective Sergeant Helen Troy is a little anxious about undertaking her first case, especially given her boss DI Leo Woods is still en route home from a holiday break.  Woods is a first rate cop but a wounded soul, disfigured from Bell’s palsy, haunted by a troubled youth, a disastrous marriage, and secondments to Angola and Bosnia.  He makes his way from the airport to the murder scene under instructions from his superintendent to tread carefully as Brennan had been involved in a ghost estate development with a junior minister’s cousin and a bunch of other influential individuals.  The superintendent has also assigned a rookie detective to the case, Ben Murphy, who’s competence and efficiency gets under Woods’ skin.  Given Brennan’s dysfunctional family, his collapsed business interests, and the disenfranchised residents of his unfinished development, there’s no shortage of leads for Woods’ team to follow.

Crocodile Tears is a very nicely written police procedural that has a strong blend of unpicking the mystery surrounding the death of Dermot Brennan, capturing the aftermath of the property crash in Ireland, and charting the interactions and tension between the cops and with the suspects.  O’Sullivan creates vivid characterisation, particularly with respect to the guards, and rather than concentrating on a single cop traces a handful from junior to senior rank, each well penned with a decent back story.  The dialogue and interactions are first rate.  In particular, I thought the first interrogation with Sean Doran, a resident on one of Brennan’s ghost estates, was excellent: all lies, threats, feints, and violence waiting to explode.  For the most part the plot worked well, though I felt it became a little derailed towards the end as it veered towards a more fanciful ending.  Overall, a very promising start to what I assume (and hope) is going to be a series and highly recommended.

Review of Screwed by Eoin Colfer (Headline, 2013)

After years of working the doors of night clubs, ex-Sergeant Dan McEvoy is preparing to open his own in Cloisters, New Jersey.  Life is just about on an even keel.  He’s a delusional girlfriend who thinks he’s her long-lost husband, a lecherous best friend who practices backstreet plastic surgery, and a truce with Mike Madden, a local mobster, so long as Mike’s mother remains alive.  But then lightening strikes, Mrs Madden is toast and the local boss is back on the war path.  To help pay off his debt, McEvoy agrees to be the middle man between Madden and a Manhattan-based boss.  But before he can deliver the bearer bonds he’s picked up by two local cops who have other plans for him.  A few hours later and McEvoy is the target of two sets of mobsters, the police and his own family, and is a viral hit on a porn site.  It’s taking all skills as a veteran soldier and a lot of luck to stay alive, especially given his aversion to killing those who are trying to kill him.

Screwed is a screwball noir that rattles along a quick clip, with McEvoy pinging from one dose of slapstick violence and gallows humour to another.  Colfer has an engaging voice and the narrative is witty and sassy, with a number of laugh out loud moments.  As with all comic crime capers the plot is a little ridiculous and the characters lean towards caricature, but that’s a key part of what makes them work.  Colfer sets out a series of quirky plot strands then weaves together to form a story full of collisions and ricochets, whilst also filling in more of McEvoy’s family back story.  As I noted with respect to the first book, Plugged, McEvoy seemed a little out of key - he’s meant to be scarred with deep psychological flaws courtesy of an abusive family upbringing and his time as a peacekeeper in the Lebanon, but he seems way too together, clear thinking and assured in his own violent abilities to fit that mould.  Moreover, some of the humour seems a little forced at times.  Nevertheless, Screwed is good rollicking fun and an enjoyable second book in the series.

May reviews

May was a month full of okay reads.  Rising out of the pack, my book of the month is Clare Mulley's The Spy Who Loved, a biographical account of the remarkable life of Krystyna Sarbeck (Christine Granville).

Behind the Battle by Ralph Bennett **
Death of a Nationalist by Rachel Pawel ***
The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home ***
The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke ***
Black Irish by Stephan Talty ***.5
The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri ***.5
Bogmail by Patrick McGinley ***.5
The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel ***
The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley ****.5
Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier **.5

Lazy Sunday Service

June is set to be a busy month of work travel.  I'm off to Aberystwyth this coming week to externally examine at the university, the following week I'm in Iceland, and the week after I'm in Durham.  I haven't yet bought my reading for Iceland, but I'm thinking of Michael Ridpath's 'Where the Shadows Lie' and Arni Thorarinsson's 'Season of the Witch' - good choices?  (I've read books in the past by Arnaldur Indridason, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates, so looking to try new authors). 

My posts this week:

Review of Behind the Battle by Ralph Bennett
The value of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Review of Death of a Nationalist by Rachel Pawel
Irish exchequer tax receipts 2000-2012 data viz
Once in Another World
Academic and social media: opportunities, challenges and risks
Fearing rejection

Fearing rejection

‘Dreams don’t just come true, Terry.  They need a helping hand.’

‘They’re not good enough.’

‘You know that’s bullshit.  What’s the worst they can say?  “Thanks, but no thanks.”  So what?  People have different tastes; just send them to someone else.’

Terry stared at the sea, watching the breakers.

‘People can’t read your stories if they’re locked in a filing cabinet.’

‘I don’t want people to read them.’

‘If you didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  The problem is you’re afraid of how they’ll be judged.  But they won’t be judged at all if you won’t set them free.’



A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Once in Another World by Brendan John Sweeney

A new book from New Island turned up in the post this morning - Once in Another World by Brendan John Sweeney.  It's a historical crime thriller set in Ireland and England in 1937 and the blurb is below.  I've already zipped through the first four chapters and it's excellent so far. 

Dublin, March 1937. Holland, an idealistic young IRA recruit, is offered a strange assignment. He is told to guard and spy on a sinister Hungarian businessman and Sabine his secretary – a Jewish refugee.

The mission tests Holland’s loyalties and his idealism to the utmost and ends with a sordid shooting match in a field in England. Holland finds himself fleeing with Sabine into the depths of the Irish countryside, where treacherous swamps and dense woods protect them from their pursuers. An intense love affair between two young people from vastly different worlds suddenly becomes possible. 

But Holland’s closest friend in the Movement knows his mind too well, and seeks him out, leading to a confrontation as fateful and tragic as any Irish myth.

My review is here

Review of Death of a Nationalist by Rachel Pawel (Soho Press, 2003)

The civil war in Spain has just drawn to a close with Franco's Nationalists taking Madrid.  A young school girl walking home witnesses the death of a Guardia Civil and drops her school book.  Her aunt, a communist now in hiding, offers to retrieve it for her since paper is rationed.  At the body she is disturbed by two Guardia Civil officers and summarily executed for killing the nationalist policeman.  Sergeant Carlos Tejada, a hero of the siege of Toledo, feels no shame or guilt for killing the young woman; as a Red she deserved what was coming to her, but he is distressed to find that the dead man is his best friend, Paco Lopez, who he has not seen for some time.  Something about the crime does not add up and Tejada starts to suspect that the killing of his friend is not as straightforward as he first suspected.  He starts to investigate the case and discovers his friend was connected to the black market.  He’s not the only one investigating a death, however.  Gonzalo Llorente is searching for the sergeant who murdered his lover whilst she was trying to retrieve his niece’s school book.

The strengths of Death of a Nationalist are the atmosphere and sense of place.  Pawel captures the general paranoia and landscape of Madrid at the end of a civil war, where neighbours are not sure who they can trust and sections of the population are being hunted and arrested, people are starving and either hardened or broken, and the buildings and streets are damaged from bullets and bombs.  Sergeant Carlos Tejada is a complex lead character, a learned and cultured man but also a battle hardened veteran.  He is capable of torturing prisoners and killing in cold blood, and is generally standoffish, but can also be empathetic and romantic.  It’s an interesting mix, creating an anti-hero that is at the limits of reader sympathy.  The other characters are reasonably well penned, but there is little in the way of back story with regards to the Llorente family with whom Tejada finds himself tangling.  Moreover, the plot is a little convoluted and thin at times, and the ending is mostly told through an epilogue.  Nevertheless, this first book in the series shows promise given its historical setting and lead character and I’d be interested to give the second a read.

Review of Behind the Battle: Intelligence in the War with Germany 1939-1945 by Ralph Bennett (Pimlico, 1999)

The back cover blurb for Behind the Battle states: “Many recent studies have covered aspects of the military intelligence available to Britain and her allies during the Second World War, but until now no succinct and authoritative survey of the whole field has existed.”  Unfortunately, this book does not provide a survey of the whole field and neither does it seem authoritative.  Rather, it principally focuses on Ultra and the use and misuse of intelligence gleaned from decrypting German enigma encoded radio traffic in various theatres throughout the war.  All other forms of intelligence gathering including aerial photography, the use of agents, interrogating and eavesdropping on prisoners, and Y traffic (the interception of localised radio traffic along the front line) are largely ignored and dealt with in a very cursory way.  Further, how intelligence was implemented in the field is also largely restricted to how Ultra was used tactically.  To be sure, Ultra proved highly useful for revealing strategic intelligence and shaping the Allied response.  However, it would have been very interesting to get an overview of all forms of intelligence employed, with some detailed vignettes of particular cases and personalities.  Even with respect to the analysis of Ultra the discussion tends to provide a broad brushstroke overview, rather than providing some in-depth illustrations.  The focus on Ultra should not perhaps be a surprise given that Bennett worked at Bletchley, where enigma traffic was decoded during the war.  That Bennett pushes the argument that the only meaningful intelligence came via Ultra, often in a very tiresome fashion, however is less forgivable, providing an overly narrow view of the many ways in which intelligence was gathered and used.  If you are interested in Ultra, then you might find this book of interest; if you want a broader overview of British intelligence operations during the war then you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Lazy Sunday Service

Last September I decided to write a new academic book about data.  For some unfathomable reason I thought I would have it written by January/February time.  It's now the end of May.  I've managed to work out a chapter structure and have populated each chapter file with masses of notes.  However, I've only cobbled together three just about complete chapters (out of eleven).  I also said I'd finish the book then seek a publisher.  Instead, I received and signed a contract on Friday to publish the book with Sage, who have published a couple of my previous books and for whom I edit two academic journals.  The submission date is January 2014 and I'm now worried whether I'll achieve that deadline given the pace at which I've managed to progress the text so far.  Hopefully I'll make up ground over the summer months as I'd really like the book to be published next year.  The good thing is that I'm enjoying the process of researching and writing it, and I'm learning a lot.

My posts this week
Smiley's People
Review of The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home
Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy
Exit strategy

Exit strategy

‘Don’t move.’

‘We’re not moving,’ Brady answered, quickly crossing an aisle and hiding behind shelves stacked with tins.

‘I said, don’t move.’

‘We’re not moving.  Just let the woman go.  This has got nothing to do with her.’

‘I’ll let her go once I’m safely away from here.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’  Brady peaked round the corner and signalled for his partner to creep up an aisle. 

‘I’ll shoot her if you don’t let me leave.’

‘You do and you’ll be leaving in a body bag.’

‘I’ll fucking do it, man.’

‘Please, just let him leave,’ the woman pleaded.





A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy

Back in January 2011 I reviewed Peeler, Kevin McCarthy's Peeler set in West Cork in 1920, featuring Sergeant Sean O’Keefe of the Royal Irish Constabulary.  This month, New Island release the second book in the series, Irregulars, this time set in Dublin a couple of years later.  The blurb runs thus:

Dublin, 1922, as civil war sets brother against brother and Free State and Republican death squads stalk the streets and back lanes of Dublin, demobbed RIC-man, Sean O’Keefe, takes a break from life as a whiskey-soaked waster to search for the missing son of one of Monto's most powerful brothel owners.

Hired to find the boy amid the tumult and terror of a country at war with itself O’Keefe soon finds that the story is not as simple as it first seemed and that the truth can be hard to pin down.

The second book in the O’Keefe series, Irregulars explores a fascinating and complex period of Irish history.

Another Irish crime novel I'm really looking forward to reading.  Along with Mark O'Sullivan's Crocodile Tears, Eoin Colfer's Screwed, and Alan Glynn's Graveland, the next couple of weeks is set to be a bit of an Irish crimefest.

Review of The Woman Who Walked into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home (Sandstone Press, 2013)

When just a few hours old Anna Wells was dropped at a hospital in Inverness, anonymous except for a broach left with her.  Twenty six years later, events in the coastal village she was born in lead to her being informed as to the identity of her mother.  Leaving her young daughter with a friend she travels to Poltown to discover why she was abandoned, lodging in her mother’s old house.  What she discovers is that the night she was born her mother walked into the sea, her hat and bag being found in the next bay.  As Anna comes to terms with her history and tries to discover the reasons for her mother’s apparent suicide, her presence unsettles a community that is already divided between those wanting the place to stay as it is and those who favour allowing a large electricity company to build an offshore windfarm and onshore facility.  She’s also being used as a pawn in a bitter personal rivalry.  Coming to her aid is Cal McGill, a young oceanographer who runs a detective agency tracing how bodies and objects move with the wind and currents, who is in Poltown to talk to a local beachcomber about his finds.  As Anna pushes on with her quest, those with secrets to hide move against her.

The first Cal McGill book, The Sea Detective, was one of my reads of the year so far.  I therefore had high expectations for The Woman Who Walked into the Sea.  In many ways it is quite a different kind of book.  The pace is much slower, the narrative is dominated by long descriptive passages that, for my tastes, are too much show and not enough tell, and nearly the entire story takes place in and around one village.  Whereas the first book had a set of intersecting storylines and a relatively large cast of characters and rivalries, this book is more circumscribed and the focus is for the most part follows Anna, the daughter of the woman who walked into the sea, rather than Cal.  In fact, there is very little sea detection in the story.  Given the amount of work that Douglas-Home does in providing the back story to the tale and setting up the end play to the book it concludes quite quickly and linearly, reliant on a couple of coincidences and underplays the possibilities for dramatic tension or twists and turns.  Personally, I would like the next book in the series to focus more on Cal McGill and his sea detection and to have the same faster-paced storytelling style as the first book.  Overall, a solid, okay read, but in my view not in the same class as the excellent first book in the series.

Smiley's People

Having watched the excellent, Original BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy a few weeks ago, I've just finished viewing the sequel, Smiley's People.  If anything, Alec Guinness' Smiley has become even more dour and withdrawn, and the pace of the storytelling is positively glacial compared with present-day television dramas.  Nevertheless, it is completely compelling, hooking the viewer in early on then slowly spinning out its yarn in a very understated fashion.  This is spy drama as it's played out in reality - a chess game of patient, minor moves within a larger strategy, with many pawns of weak insights and powers and a grandmaster in the background pulling the strings - rather than the whizz-bang of Bond, Bourne, etc.  If you want to watch a pair of clever, thoughtful and layered drama's then these BBC adaptions of John Le Carre's novels are worth a viewing.

Lazy Sunday Service

You know when you have a book problem when you go away for two nights - knowing that you will be busy all day and in the evenings - yet you take four books with you.  Just in case there's some weird re-arrangement of time and space that will free up a couple of dozen hours.  I was thirty pages into Death of a Nationalist when I left for Galway.  I am presently at page fifty. 

My posts this week:
Review of The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke
New Irish crime fiction releases
Review of Black Irish by Stephan Talty
Review of The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri
The morning after

The next morning

Kevin’s arm flopped out of the bed.  He slipped into consciousness through the thick fog of a hangover.

‘Oh, feck,’ he muttered and wished he hadn’t. 

He lay motionless, his eyes closed, stomach queasy, memories of the previous evening flitting across his mind’s eye like the flipping of television channels.

A street, a bar, a crowd of people, then an altercation -- a flash of auburn hair, a slither of white skin, an angry voice, raised hands -- a street again, another bar.

He tried to flip back, already sensing shame and regret, wanting but dreading the moment of recall.




A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.